You know how this one goes, right?

There is a house in Orange Grove. They call it The Radium…

I’m sure you’ll disagree (ahem) but I think The Animals meant it most sincerely when they sang so fondly of The House of the Rising Sun, a place where they’d lost their innocence and broken the hearts of their mothers by following their fathers into this den of debauchery.

I think I know what they meant.

I can’t quite remember which of my world-weary and battle-hardened journalist friends summoned me to the Radium Beer hall on one dusty June afternoon in 2010. I was new in Joburg, and under the impression that everybody retreated to their gated communities to cower behind electric fences every weekend.

Well, I was living in the northern wastelands of Joburg at the time, surrounded by literally hundreds of fake Tuscans and snarling dogs. The suburb is called Paulshof and gets ball tighteningly cold in June.

So it was with immense trepidation that I ventured out to Orange Grove to this place called The Radium to watch the US play Slovenia – a match that would prove to be a harbinger to the terrible refereeing that would dog the tournament right up till the final whistle.

The place was packed to the rafters with an assortment of Americans, including two sloshed US Marines who came over to the table around which the South African scribes had gathered. They didn’t understand the “soccer”, and we didn’t care much for some of the Yanks openly pinching bottoms, but it was the World Cup, Phillip was still in town and the Black Label draughts were stupidly cheap. If you asked really nicely, anyone would lend you a fag.

That was the last time I went to the Radium without something terribly stupid happening to me later on in the night. Once, I ended up back in my apartment at 04h00 without a clue where I’d left my house keys. That night, we watched Kathy Raven and her band play. They weren’t astonishingly good, but that doesn’t matter when you’re at The Radium. You can always look at the amazing and rude posters plastered on the wall behind the band for titters and distraction.

On Saturday, we were back at the Radium, just about exactly the same group of people who first met there last year, to bid an American friend farewell. I’m slowly learning my lesson – the worst thing I did was accept two shots of port to go with the Zamalek I’d quaffed earlier. Ugh.

The Radium is reputedly the oldest surviving beer hall and grill in Johannesburg, and unlike places like The Brazen Head, it genuinely has that aged feel. The chairs and tables creak ominously under the weight of the patrons and the food. The pavement outside is littered with ash and the odd beggar. The only things they seem to have added in the last 20 years are a stainless steel urinal and the big TVs.

It is exactly my type of place to hang out, down a few cold ones and perhaps have a pizza. Try their Jim Neversink. It’s fantastic. Just what a pizza should be – crowded with salami, garlic, olives, a bit of artichoke and a smattering of chilli.

When you’re next in Johannesburg, do drop into the Radium. It really is the sort of place where a man can lose his soul and consider it a fair exchange for the good times he receives.

https://theradium.co.za/

Read more:

Kevin McCallum’s fantastic column The United States of the Radium.