Kerre Woodham: Hands off the cheery local pubs

Within lurching distance of my front door, I have four choices of drinking establishments. All of them are small neighbourhood clubs and bars and they suit the area.

The Grey Lynn RSC is across the road and I can count on one hand the times I've been bothered by living in such close proximity to a bar.

The locals are never the problem - the disturbances have happened after the upstairs room's been rented to outsiders. Once I had to complain to the club manager about the vileness of the visitors, I received an apology and a bunch of flowers and more importantly, things changed.

Security was kept on for an extra hour to ensure the outsiders went back to their own neighbourhoods and didn't continue rocking on in the carpark all night.

Not bad for 11 years.

My watering hole of choice is the Gypsy Tea Rooms, a neighbourhood bar which can take 60 people comfortably but where five people wouldn't look out of place. You'll have your own favourite depending on which suburb you live but the basics are the same. It's the bar where everybody knows your name.

Neighbourhood bars are lovely, low-key places - great music, great wines and a bit like being at a friend's home.

I go to the Gypsy maybe once a month and as far as I'm aware, there have never been any problems. Staff and patrons are considerate of those who live nearby and to a certain extent the bar is self-policed. The shame of being banned from the Gypsy would be enough to drive me out of the neighbourhood. But now the Gypsy and other bars are under threat of 11pm closing if the Auckland City Council has its way.

The council wants all on-licence premises outside the CBD to shut at 11pm unless they're in so-called "entertainment precincts" like Ponsonby, Parnell, Newmarket or Mission Bay. It's ridiculous. There have been precious few booze-related incidents in our neighbourhood - but I can cite plenty in the CBD.

I would never choose to spend a rare night off fighting for space at the bar with trolleyed trollops in their sluttiest Supre and picking my way around drunk oiks spoiling for a fight. I much prefer being among my own kind - old trollops - and thus we stick with what we know.

To be honest, the neighbourhood pretty much closes down at 1am-ish. We're old. We have to work long hours to pay the mortgages to live here. But we're also the broad spectrum of Generation X. And Generation X-ers don't like being told what to do. If you tell us to be home in bed by 11, we'll take No-Doze and alternate shots with black coffee to prove to the bloody council we need a bar with a licence til 3am.