The Think while you Drink Tour

Drink and think. That’s the spirit behind the fabulous Jozi Rooftops and Bars Tour hosted by Gerald Garner of Joburg Places www.joburgplaces.com. About forty of us meet at the City Lodge in Newtown. Gerald tells us how Jozi became a rough tented camp overnight after the discovery of gold and thereafter the Sodom and Gomorrah of the bushveld. He is very entertaining. There is even dramatic thunder and lightning and then it hails. Gerald has to organise a bus change (from open top to closed) so we get a free drink and my two cohorts and I get to know some of the other okes on the tour - "Ja, we used to drink at the Dev in Braamfontein back in the day, hey", and then the sun comes out and we all depart. 

Our first stop is the Parktonian Protea  Hotel in Braamfontein, 23 floors up with extraordinary views. These are the Swedes who start out as a neat and tidy, happy and shiny group of fine upstanding people and, well, after six bars.. hahaha. I am already already on my third G&T and I'm loving the Swedes. We marvel at the views, the old fort, Constitution Hill, the Hillbrow Tower, the Brixton Tower. Gerald tells us more tales about the boom and bust of this bizarre urban landscape. 

It starts pissing with rain again and so our second stop is indoors, street level, a hipster bar where we change to whisky and my cohorts and I meet this group of beautiful young women who are celebrating a twenty fifth birthday.  The rain is not lifting, Gerald herds us onto the bus again and we're off to Maboneng.

  

The sun comes out en route and everything is golden around the Agog Gallery and Rooftop Bar, "home of the curious". The Nine Barrels Bar is in the same building, and some people go straight in there. We pour ourselves upstairs and from the rooftop bar see old industrial Jozi, theatrically lit.  Gerald talks about the apartheid days when it was one of the richest cities in the world, run on greed on gold. Everyone's pretty tanked up by now and I am feeling passionate about the creative renewal of Maboneng and New Doornfontein and life and art and the new Jozi and well, everything. www.agog.co.za

I drink more whisky and love these umbrellas hanging over a nearby rooftop. They're styling this precinct as the new African New York with its mix of shops, bars and restaurants, and combination hotel-and-apartments, like at Hallmark House with its resident hip club, the Marabi Club which does fine dining and live jazz. My head is starting to spin and things are getting interesting in the city as the sun goes down and we head off again. www.hallmarkhouse.com

This is the lovely swimming pool at Curiocity Backpackers in Maboneng which is full of young backpackers from the continent and abroad, who are very calm about the noisy onslaught of some forty middle aged drunk local tourists all baying for another drink. It's uncharacteristically cold tonight in Jozi so I sit on the edge of the pool, you know, like it says: explore our world. www.curiocitybackpackers.com

 Did I mention, hic, that Curiocity is such a great backpackers, it's full of people from across the world who have come to explore our bad-ass crazy, creative city and I just want to love them all and make friends and so I talk to these two whose names I forget and also which distant city they come from alas.  

We are herded back onto the bus where madness takes hold. My new best friend here finds her inner naughty schoolgirl and gets delightedly into the dogbox, the back seat, as we call it in South Africa.  She is very happy indeed and shrieks at her man Les who is staggering down the aisle and tells us how he used to be a bad motherfucker but now he's in his loving phase. 

Apart from being struck by its splendour, I can't remember too much about our visit to the old Barclays Bank Building which was built in the 40s and is now home to Bridge Books. This is Commissioner Street which some amazing buildings like the old Library apparently and this one, where we go upstairs and perhaps I have another whisky. However I do remember this amazing lighting made from taxi bags, at our next stop which is Hangout Jozi at 1 Eloff Street. This is the coolest spot I've seen for a while. Restaurant and bar, art space, indoor, outdoor venues, great design and look. www.hangoutjozi.co.za

My cohorts and I are now raging and raring for more so we make a note to return to this hip and fabulous place and we don't even say goodbye to any of our new best friends and instead we hire an Uber and head for the Troyeville Hotel, always a good Jozi jol and a suitably devilish end to the think and drink tour.  

This is Gerald Garner our Fearless Leader and master storyteller who beautifully paces his talk about the history of Jozi to fit each view and venue. Did you know - like many of the participants by the end of this tour - that Jozi has fallen and risen six times? Do it, it's such fun, check out www.joburgplaces.com.