MANA BAR

My good friend Steven was in town this weekend for the Supanova pop culture convention, and as he is a fellow who appreciates a video game or two, I thought it the perfect opportunity to visit Brisbane's newest hippest acquisition in the form of Australia's first video game bar: Mana Bar.

You guys! It's really cool!

So yeah, maybe we had to wait in line for like half an hour to get in because it's so small (60 person capacity), but it's free entry AND free games! And sure, maybe we had to wait in line some MORE in order to get drinks - but - wait, in LINE? For drinks? Rather than in a beer-sweating scrum of handsy morons in scoop-neck t-shirts, a la the rest of the Valley?

YES, IT IS TRUE: Mana Bar has the best crowd to be found on a Saturday night. Bitches bein' all polite up in herr, bein' all "excuse me" and "please" and "thank you". We made friends in line with some rad cats (hi Jess and Jeremy et al!), one of whom had an E Cigarette that glowed blue on the end (I gasped "It's so future!"), and she even took it apart for us and showed it how it works! And then when we finally reached the front of the line, the security guy, Gabe, was dressed as Shaun of the Dead (complete with mini-cricket bat) and used the phrase "unknown variable" 30 seconds into conversation! A+++ WOULD CHAT AGAIN.

Inside is very small but not over-crowded, and when everyone's so nice to each other you don't really notice the squashiness anyway. And, of course, there are video games. I feel it would be prudent of me to put here a DISCLAIMER: I don't actually play video games. Thanks to my parents' cries of "READ A BOOK!" in response to my whining for a GameBoy, I completely missed out on that portion of popular culture and am only just begining to grasp some of the basic theories (thanks to Yahtzee, who is, incidentally, a part-owner of Mana Bar). Anyway, we managed to rock up on the Blade Kitten launch night (Steven played it and said it wasn't very good), but also in action was some weird sort of multi-player thing called Skull Rascals, systematic arse-kicking via Street Fighter 4, three dudes ripping it up on Guitar Hero, and me actually not coming last (!!) on Wii Mario Kart. There were concise "house rules" for the controllers up next to the games, and everyone seemed to be fine with following them. Unsurprising I guess, considering you could literally walk up to anyone, say hi, and be warmly included in the crowd around whatever bloody schoolgirl vs. Russian soldier street-fight was currently taking place on-screen.

The bar staff were also super-friendly, and maybe more importantly, talented! There's a short but diverse list of cocktails (the menus are in game-cases! hee!) with names like Mana Potion and Ocarina of Lime and they are delicious, and in some cases, sparkly! The music was fun and appropriate (MC Frontalot, anyone?) and not so loud that I couldn't yelp for help while trying to navigate a particularly tricky corner as I almost crushed the Wii-controller in my over-zealous claws. We drank. We played. We made friends. I Twittered about it (how appropriate). Everyone I talked to seemed thrilled with the novelty of "going out" and being able to "talk nerdy".

Like I said, I don't play video games. But I am kinda dorky (she types, from her bed-cave, on her "web log"), and I'm pretty sick of the bad taste in my mouth after your regular night in the Valley - literally and figuratively. Mana Bar is this exhilarating breath of fresh air - full of fun, attractive (yes!), friendly people who probably don't go out all that much and thus have a really rad time when they do. While it's a niche bar, I don't think it's exclusively so - video games obviously haven't been a fringe subculture for a while (please don't make me link to statistics). And according to the bar's Facebook page, people have been coming from all over to visit, and having a great time. Sounds like a success to me!

Nice work Yahtzee & co. I really can't recommend the place enough. I'll definitely head back, though probably on a weeknight when the line is less intimidating - I have a friend I feel would really appreciate Ocarina of Lime.