This Unofficial Monopoly Board Featuring Melbourne’s Best Bars Makes for an Excellent Isolation Drinking Game

Photo: Callum McDermott

Build houses and hotels on Bodriggy, the Gaso and Angel Music, then collect a $200 dole payment as you pass Go. Itching for a dance at Revolver? Well, now you can buy it, and do Chap laps from your coffee table to celebrate.

This article first appeared on Broadsheet on April 6, 2020.

Last month, I turned down a night out at Revs because I wanted to have a quiet night in. I’m not feeling so smug anymore. And I bet heaps of people around Melbourne are kicking themselves over missed nights out right now, too.

Recently Melbourne DJ Floss Dogg posted a photoshopped mock-Monopoly board lined with Melbourne’s best bars and clubs (Queen Victoria Market is there too for some reason) to her Facebook page. It was shared as a joke, but because I have literally nothing better to do, I printed it out to see if it could work as an actual (drinking) game The great news is, it does. You can have a big night out on the town without taking off your dressing gown.

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Start at Go (“collect $200 dole payment as you pass”) and make your way through a board that includes Monty’s, The Gaso, Section 8, Angel Music Bar, Colour and Lounge.

Revs and One Six One are there of course, as is dearly missed subterranean club Mercat – so you can buy it and build a hotel over it, which is basically what happened in real life (just replace hotel with high-rise apartments). It was an awesome feeling to roll a four and pull up outside Revolver in my Monopoly car – a Chap lap, at my coffee table.

Along the way you can also buy Flinders Street or Melbourne Central stations, try to land on “Free Entry”, draw Drink Cards (Floss Dogg’s ingenious Community Chest card replacements), and dodge taxes. Land on “Go Home” and that’ll take you straight into self-isolation. I recommend writing a “Get Out of Isolation Free” card to add to your homemade Chance deck. The drinks cards are also a vessel for your imagination. They can be just that – land on “Drink Cards” (nestled between Dr Morse and Bodriggy Brewing Co) and it’s your turn to drink. Or make things more interesting by assigning different cards to random drinks you find around the house. (In the McDermott house, that’d be peach schnapps.)

Unofficial Melbourne Monopoly is the perfect alternative to the regular game, and a reminder of the great bars and dancefloors waiting for us on the other side of this damn thing.

Download the board here and listen to some Floss Dogg while you play.

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