Supermild

My very favourite bar/​beer garden/​dance spot in Adelaide. Supermild is a chilled out underground bar with old school funk, swing and hip hop playing til the early morn’. I honestly couldn’t say a bad word about it. Bouncers are familiar and friendly, atmosphere is fantastic. Dark red lighting in a cosy little bar area with dance floor, couches and tables. The bar staff make the place. The most friendly I’ve ever run into and they never fail to make you feel at home. Wide range of drinks to choose from including a well priced cocktail list. The beer garden is a huge draw for a lot of patrons. Heating operates during winter outside and theres plenty of space to grab a large table for your group of friends. And if your group doesn’t take up one by itself, all the better! We have had many nights vastly improved by the meeting of characters in the beer garden. If dancing, drinks and friends is what I’m going for, I’ll never willingly go anywhere else.

Sometimes (actually, kinda often…) I like to have a few drinks and have a dance with my friends. It’s on these nights when I hear Supermild calling my name…
The tiny basement room heats up at around 1am (but opens much earlier) and the dance floor burns til the early morning, with retro and indie tunes a plenty. You can definitely lose yourself here, the vibe is fun and friendly, as are the staff. The venue is totally un-​pretentious and I hope it stays that way. Supermild was hipster before it was hip, with dingy and seedy old finishings giving a relaxed and chilled vibe. Team this with cheap enough drinks and you’ve got a fun night ahead — in fact… I think I hear supermild calling my name…

I’m split on whether or not I like Supermild. Whilst I like the underground (literal and metaphorical) character of the bar and the people are great to have random conversations with, the bar itself is actually quite frustrating.
The bar is far too small to accommodate the number of people that are squeezed in there, and when you manage to get a drink, you’ll be lucky to find a seat again. The music is usually far too noisy, making it even noisier when people are screaming over each other to be heard, so resorting to the outdoor area is usually necessary to save your eardrums. The beer garden is great in summer, but one of the worst places to be in winter. Not too long ago I froze my arse off sitting out there, as the one heater that was stationed outside was surrounded by people trying to warm themselves up.
I do love the fact that they sell longneck bottles though, and they’re not too expensive either. There’s just something awesome about drinking from a longneck, and so far this is the only place I’ve come across in Adelaide where you can do that.

12/​11/​2007 1 photo
Make sure you choose to go on their best night.
(I went on a very quiet Thursday night just recently, but have been to their much more packed Saturday night before.)
As you walk downstairs (Thursday night = no security whatsoever), you gotta head straight to their bar on the left corner back wall — as soon as you take your seat with the drinks, you will quickly notice that everyone in there were all tucked away in their small and medium-​sized cliques. It’s best if you come in with more than two of your favourite people, because there is a high likelihood that no-​one will be willing to step outside of their clique and meet new people. Not my nature… I talked to anyone who was interested in an introduction! NO-​ONE really talks to one another here… so what I’m saying here is the more people you already know and feel comfortable with, the longer you will stay inside this club. The less number of people you know, the quicker you’ll leave. Trust me on this one.
Once the music you like starts cranking, and your friends are pumped to dance, that’s when this club becomes much better! Two possibilities: ‘Dancing to the latest pop music with several tall beautiful girls, then meeting two new people’ OR ‘Sitting down listening to some funky porno music and meeting only one new stranger or none’. (Be careful about the second option, though, there are some lurking older male creeps sitting inside this club). To keep it positive, you might end up meeting someone from interstate, because I’m aware that some tourists that are in Adelaide for the first time can end up here!
So despite my analysis, just make sure you are invited to a party that’s already there, or you bring a large group of friends with you. This club defines, «It’s not where you are, but who you’re with.» Thursday night inside here is quite dead and empty, just a word of caution.
Supermild is like Shaft taking you down to the dark Subway — it forces you to self-​reflect on why there are no other dance clubs open on a Thursday night in Adelaide (oh, everyone’s working Friday morning, huh?). There is an absolute utter lack of great dance clubs in this city… yet this was the only one open on Hindley Street so you want to give it a go anyway… cos well… you and your friends are pretty darn bored and in a desperate need of a dance… and we’ve just been let down. Let’s get out of here and start hunting again…

The place served as a bastion from the messy endings of many outings in town. There’s some stairs, make sure you’re sober enough to walk down them. The bouncers are good at spotting the over-​sauced.
The chilled out atmosphere makes you feel like you can kick back and relax, waiting for the sun to come up.
Jiving (whilst not a Jive Bar) is a staple on the dingy dancefloor, watching the feet of street walkers pass by through the window.
The beer garden gets cramped on busy nights, it adds to the charm. Super tends to attract the alternative and friendly, so you can strike up a conversation with the person squished next to you.

So, the security is pretty relaxed here, one of my girlfriends made it out of Supermild with a retro table lamp tucked under her arm. I don’t know how she got away with this, no one even saw her unplug the thing and considering it was sitting up on the bar I can only laugh with incredulity. If you have light fingers perhaps this is where you can get some new furniture.
It kind of feels like you’ve just entered some ultra popular persons downstairs pool room. The bar is quite tiny and there isn’t much room to move, but if being crushed against someone who is wearing their granddads suit and keeps flicking their ginger dreads in your face is where you feel most comfortable, then by all means, settle down for the night.
Tip: don’t ever ask the DJ to play Cold Chisel, because he clearly takes himself too seriously and you may find yourself out on the street with Liz chatting to the security guard.

Without a vibe a dive is just a dive. Like most I’ve had some crazy times at Super, and I have many great memories, but this bar is fast losing its seedy charm to become just plain seedy. They have a new cocktail menu and work hard to promote this place, and the tunes are still great for a dance, but it feels like the people there are chasing the old charm it used to have and finding it lacking.
Sure the old crappy furniture and creatures lurking in dark corners has its novelty factor, and we all enjoy watching people fall down the stairs. But sooner or later the Super crew are going to have to update it to keep up with other places getting their makeover on like Benjamin on Franklin and Zhivago’s. One thing I don’t ever want to change: the security guard. He is the best dude to hang with when you get forcibly removed for covering the beer garden in vomit and tears.

I have MANY a memory of standing in line at this joint (for there is always a line on weekends!) surrounded by flanellette shirts, tattered jeans and somwehat odd hats. I’m dressed to the nines feeling ridiculously out of place and liking it coz in truth noone can (or at least should) be totally out of place at Supermild. Come one come all. It is grunge extraordinaire with the furniture to match. In fact if I’m wrong that all the seating wasn’t obtained on one wild night during hard-​rubbish collection week I’ll happily eat an aforementioned hat. The soundtrack is funky, soulful, before-​your-​time beats that induce the bizarre blend of bopping, stumbling, breaking and salsa on the d-​floor. Essentially it is the basement of that cool friend you never really had coz actually you were watching ‘That 70’s Show’. It is Adelaide’s peace and free love den, with a relatively harmless nutter quotient thrown in for good measure. If you do need to ‘go’ heed my warning that the toilets are ridiculously small, no really, insanely tiny. But just beyond them is the beer garden (also squishy sized) that feels like the backyard of your mate’s house party and it works. Come for the alternative mix of people and music, watch and learn. In a nutshell — good time vibes!

Down the stairs to Supermild. A slightly dingy, but super friendly night spot on Hindly St.
The music of choice is generally cheesy funk and soul and a bit of electro. Long necks of beers are on sale as well as the smaller variety and simple spirit mixer drinks.
There is a small dance floor, next to where the DJ is located at the top of the long skinny underground room that is Supermild.
Every evening I have been to Supermild the dance floor seems to go through waves of enthusiasm. At first it is empty, then one brave and likely drunken individual ventures in to get his of her solo boogy shuffle on.
Soon they will be joined by a friend or suitor, and then another and another, until within minutes one is barely capable of moving, let alone dancing within the cramped space.
And so one by one they begin to retire, to be bar or the beer garden for a smoke, or to take a seat at one of the booths and catch their breath. And soon the floor is empty again, only for the cycle to repeat itself.

Supermild is sleazy, but in a fun longnecks-​of-​pale kinda way. Various DJ nights around Adelaide seem to frequently pop up and just as frequently disappear, but Supermild’s rotation of themed nights has managed to survive (although the venue’s décor has taken a beating).
What draws me to Supermild over most of the other indie club nights around Adelaide is the following: it’s small, it has a great outdoor area, the staff swing between charming and churlish, there is a dance-​floor *and* couches. And it is sufficiently dark and greasy for the kinds of activities that people tend to undertake at two in the morning. Supermild’s décor has long let its pretensions of classiness fade away — either that or hipsters wilfully destroy all attempts at it* — which makes me feel much more at home. I prefer to go on a Thursday night, avoiding the wider population of people with real jobs they need to unwind from by enacting their various violent fantasies.
I have some pretty good memories of Supermild, most of which include things like vomiting in pot-​plants, pashing strangers, falling down the incredibly steep stairs and using a longneck as a balance of force to increase the lurchiness of my dancing.
*I actually saw someone ripping velour wallpaper off the wall once. They won’t LET Supermild be classy!
Supermild doesn’t have a website but you can check out their Facebook page here:
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