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Picture the scene: it's a balmy summer evening, Friday after work, you're sitting back, high on a rooftop above Wollongong, with a long cool drink.
Perched above the corner of our two busiest streets, you look down at the newly refurbished Crown Street Mall as the sun sets.
There's a glimpse of the ocean to the east, beyond the street scene where you watch city life pass by.
With the city looking spick and span after the completion of GPT's massive Wollongong Central expansion, and crowds of young people taking advantage of the nearby hubbub in Globe Lane or along Keira Street, the rooftop bar completes the picture.
It's our little slice of Newtown or Darlinghurst nightlife right here in the Gong.
Sounds like a sublime scene? Perhaps. But to some pen-pushers in the NSW government, this is a potential nightmare.
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On Wednesday, the state's independent liquor body - the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority - is due to decide whether to grant said rooftop bar, Humber, a hotel licence.
Despite widespread support - from the community, Wollongong City Council, Destination Wollongong and even other bar owners in the city centre - the state's Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing has recommended the licence be refused.
It did the same thing with the innovative shipping container bar Sifters, which has now opened as a cafe on Market Street.
The reason for knocking back both venues? Alcohol-fuelled violence and the idea Wollongong drinkers already have enough choice when it comes to hotels, restaurants and bars.
Sure, there have been problems here. But anyone who has stepped out at night in Wollongong in recent years - especially those who remember what it was like just a few years ago - will have raised their eyebrows at the idea a rooftop bar that closes at midnight is going to churn out drunken, violent revellers.
We still have our share of drunken violence - there were 435 alcohol-related, non-domestic assaults reported in the Wollongong local government area (which stretches from Helensburgh to Windang) in the year to June 2014.
But, according to the government's own crime stats, these alcohol-related, non-domestic assaults have dropped by 5.7 per cent a year in Wollongong over the past five years, so things are improving.
And something a Sydney-based bureaucrat looking at data can't possibly know is how different something like Humber (and Sifters) would be from the beer-barns and cavernous clubs that dot any CBD.
Instead of a closed-door club where punters throw down as many drinks as they can in a short space of time, the new breed of smaller bars let people talk and take in the vibe.
The way people drink is changing and it's reflected in the popularity of Wollongong's smaller bars - where fights are rare, atmosphere rules, and most punters walk out in a straight line, under their own steam.
It started with Otis, a tiny bar occupying the very space Humber will transform, which showed Wollongong patrons there was a slow-drinking cocktail alternative to the bourbon and coke/vodka Red Bull throwdowns served up at other clubs.
Its owners and their killer cocktails eventually moved to bigger premises and established the Little Prince, but by that stage plenty of small venues - Yours and Owls, His Boy Elroy, Dagwood and Red Square - were open or in the pipeline. Destination Wollongong and the council jumped on board this success, working on an evening economy strategy that recognises, and tries to build on, the value of inner-city entertainment for the Illawarra.
The tourism body heavily promotes the "27 small bars and restaurants" that have opened in the CBD in the past two years, and says more of these are needed - especially as hundreds of new apartments go up, bringing in new residents.
For a place that is trying to transform itself to include more tourism and services in its economic drivers, iconic destinations like a rooftop bar are just what this city needs more of, not less. Rejecting it because of the number of premises already existing in the CBD is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Wollongong punters have welcomed our small bar boom with open arms, and a rooftop bar is exactly the direction we want our nightlife to take. Let's hope the independent liquor licensing body considers this next Wednesday.