Abbotsford Convent
1 St Heliers St, Abbotsford VIC 3067
Obviously at the Convent you've got Bar Familiar (which is basically just Cam's with a fresh lick of paint and much less tax debt) but also they're only open til 3pm at the moment while they find their footing. So here's the play: you have a classy one or two drinks at Bar Familiar, and if you wish to keep the party going, you get on your bike and ride up the road to Blackhearts on Johnston St, you get a bottle of something and a couple of cups, and you come back to the convent and just hang out in the grass, it's pretty great.
Blackcat
252 Brunswick St, Fitzroy VIC 3065
Oh, you think you’re above having a drink at the Cat? Get real. It’s a classic. Go here on a random date, it’ll 100% be funny. You’ll meet some freaks. Get a bottle of something white and soak up some sun. Slink under the heaters when it gets chilly. Bona fide banger of a venue, there’s a reason it’s been here forever.
Chronicles Bar
91-93 Fitzroy St, St Kilda VIC 3182
I met Chronicles owner Justin when he managed Whitehart in the CBD. He was incredibly kind and generous then, and he still is now, all that’s changed is that he’s running a way better bar these days. Chronicles is simple. You go in, you get a beer. You sit outside in the sun. You’re on Fitzroy Street, in St Kilda, and life is good. They don’t do food, but you can BYO from the Sri Lankan joint next door, or anywhere else really. The Chronicles team also run Tom’s Liquor up the road, a thoughtfully curated little drink-in-or-take-out bottle shop, so if the vibe is more Beach Beers, support independent and get your goods at Tom’s.
Community Wine House
7/177 Beavers Rd, Northcote VIC 3070
Community Wine House is no doubt on your radar already if you’re friends with anyone who lives anywhere along the Merri, or if you’re actively dating in the inner north. It’s a hotbed. The new venture from Minimum Wines (not to be confused with Minim, in Castlemaine) is woefully underequipped for how popular it will be this summer. They don’t have a bar, you just order from a rightfully frazzled waiter with an ipad, and someone, somewhere behind the scenes, pours your wine, and then they come out and shout your name into the sea of hundreds, like we’re at Boost Juice. But ignore the absurd sequence of service, because their house white, rosé, orange and red all come in at $10, and the pours felt generous. Prepare to pull up a patch of pavement, there’s no way you’re getting a table.
One of Con Christopolous's Joints
The group behind The European does al fresco so well that it's a little hard to pick one, but here's the shortlist...
- Siglo, for the spectacle of it all. You park up on the roof, you get yourself a cocktail (might I suggest a Trinidad Sour?) and you get yourself a cigarillo – the cheapest one, obviously. You, and I, and your waiter all know that you don't know what you're doing, so don't spend $85 on a cigar trying to impress your date.
- Kirk's Wine Bar, because we have Paris at home. Pull up a bentwood chair on Hardware Lane, get a glass of something chilled, people watch the arvo away. Maybe a snack while you're here, but probably better to eat at Lulu's up the road (razor clam char kway teow is the order btw) or next door at...
- Le Pub, Kirk's chill neighbour. There's only three or four tables outside in the little balcony nook at Le Pub, but if you can get one on a sunny arvo, don't let it go. That is HOT property. Plenty of beers on tap, heaps of bottles in the fridge, and a great menu for snacking or dining in earnest, provided you're not vegetarian. This is offal country.
Cookie
252 Swanston St, Melbourne VIC 3000
I know, when it comes to Curtin House, the obvious late arvo sunshine pick would be Rooftop. Everyone else will have the same idea. It’ll be packed. It’ll be too loud to chat, but you won’t be able to complain about that because it’ll be a friend, or a friend-of-friend manning the decks. Plus the drinks list is crap. So skip it, keep the party a few levels lower, at city stalwart Cookie. Here’s the pitch. There’s six balcony tables (for groups of two). They’re west-facing, sit just around the canopy height of the trees on Swanston, and you get light all afternoon. It’s gorgeous, and a criminally underrated spot for a beer in the sun. Grab a plate of crispy fried school prawns with green chilli mayonnaise, a schooner of something local, and soak it all up.
The Great Northern
644 Rathdowne St, Carlton North VIC 3054
Get in quick here, because there’s really only one place to be. The tables out the front (on the Rathdowne St side) for the late afternoon sun, pretty hard to beat for a sunny 5pm pint of Carlton. If you can’t get a spot here, don’t even bother with the beer garden – it’s a whole different pub out there, and not a good one. Alternatively, take your pints for a walk up to the Linear Park Reserve at the end of Rathdowne. If it’s busy enough, they won’t notice, but you didn’t hear it from us. Just make sure the glasses come back!
Raffy’s
656 Smith St, Clifton Hill VIC 3068
A quaint beer garden out back, a scant few outdoor tables out front, and late arvo indoors is actually very nice and sunny too (in the front room anyway). Affordable drinks, nice atmosphere, usually someone cooler than you on the wheels of steel. Some pretty good cocktails too! A great bar in a shit part of Smith St… PS. If you need a bottle for later, stroll down to The Recreation Bistro x Bottleshop, a secretly very well stocked wine store on a quiet, leafy corner a couple of minutes walk away.
The Royal Oak
442 Nicholson St, Fitzroy North VIC 3068
I mean, duh, it’s kind of known for this, but it’s hard to overstate just how good the 4pm sun is at the Roak once DST kicks in. You’ll be fighting tooth and nail for one of the perennially popular round tables on the Freeman Street side of the pub. It’s not hard to see why. This might be one of the most successful ‘parklet’ conversions in the city. Utterly charming, vaguely European, the white marble tables bring a certain level of decorum to the seventeen pints you’ll drink here in the waning sun.
The Town Hall Hotel
33 Errol St, North Melbourne VIC 3051
Ahh the Townie. They really don’t make them like this any more. The interior feels like a Catholic proto-punk themed op-shop; mismatched ephemera lining every available centimetre of space, countless instances of Christ on the cross (seriously, try to tally them up) and signed posters of Iggy Pop and The Ramones hung high and proud. But that’s beside the point, because you’re ordering a pint of lager and going outside. You’ve got three areas to choose from, all of them (charmingly) a bit shit. The charming laneway, where trivia goes down on Tuesdays. The beer garden, a lush green space where every seat is somehow uncomfortably positioned. And… the parking lot. The parking lot is the most popular, for some reason. You’ll be sharing the space with a mix of the north’s hotties on dates and with mates, some locals having knockoffs, a couple of old part-of-the-furniture geezers, and a whole bunch of bins and dumpsters. I really don’t know why this space is so pumping. It’s literally just bins. You’re having beers out by the bins. Rock on.
The Tramway
165 Rae St, Fitzroy North VIC 3068
There’s a handful of tables on the Church Street side that get some good lingering sun. Last time I stopped in for a late arvo pint, a corporate coworker group had positioned one of the large umbrellas sideways to entirely block out the sun for the whole area – presumably because of their vampiric nature – but usually this isn’t the case and you can catch mad rays. Hargreaves Hill ESB is often on tap here, and pairs exceptionally well with a cheeseburger with a side of poutine.
The Wine Corner Store
50 Princes St, Carlton North VIC 3054
Arguably the best place in the whole city for a late arvo beer in the sun. Drinking on the Wine Corner’s local piece of Canning St is the kind of civil disobedience we can get behind. Free the strip!