Three Nights of Latex and Poor Decisions: Halloween in Melbourne
From Friday 30 October to Sunday 1 November, Melbourne's queer rooms split between heavy South Yarra clubbing, Smith Street takeovers, and a ten-hour Sunday darkroom. Here is where to spend your weekend.
You have three nights to ruin a perfectly good costume, and most of the heavy lifting happens at 
Chasers Nightclub (opens in a new tab) before the northside rooms even warm up.
Continue reading the guideThat's enough for now
Halloween in Melbourne lands on a proper weekend run from Friday 30 October to Sunday 1 November, which means nobody is pretending they have to be fresh for work the next morning. The whole stretch orbits the big Friday night at Chasers, when the 
Thick 'N' Juicy (opens in a new tab) crew bring their Melbourne Halloween party to Chapel Street with go-go monsters, a dark room play space, and a crowd of men who treat a costume mandate as an excuse to wear less fabric than usual.
Chapel Street vs Northcote on Friday
For $49, that Friday night at Chasers gives you seven hours from 9pm to 4am, and the dark room generally fills up faster than the main floor if you time your arrival right. You do not go there for a quiet chat. You go because it is the biggest queer room on the Friday and half the people you know have already bought their tickets.
If South Yarra is not your speed, head north to 
24 Moons (opens in a new tab) in Northcote for Bleeding Hart from 8:30pm to 4am. They have Berlin's Tom Peters headlining the decks for a night of queer techno and strange performances — the kind of room where someone is always wearing four-inch platforms in a stairwell that definitely was not built for them — and the crowd leans much more club kid than circuit.
You don't have to commit to Northcote or Chapel Street if you'd rather stay closer to the grid on Friday. Collingwood has Pop. Club. Camp. (opens in a new tab) at 
The Peel Hotel (opens in a new tab) from 10pm, bringing Sundaylicious and DJ Tonky in for a high-energy pop dancefloor — the Peel floor is always sticky enough by midnight to pull a cheap costume shoe clean off your foot, so dress accordingly. Just up the road in Abbotsford, 
The Laird Hotel (opens in a new tab) is doing Sing Stud (opens in a new tab) from 8pm, giving the bear and leather crowd a proper Friday sing-along that doesn't require fake blood. Or skip the inner north entirely and head west to 
Pride of our Footscray Community Bar (opens in a new tab) for Legendary Fridays (opens in a new tab), running 9:30pm to 2am for free with drag, guests, and DJs.
Saturday's Northside Split
Saturday 31 October is where your group chat will fracture. If you somehow still have Chapel Street in your legs, 
Poof Doof (opens in a new tab) is back in Chasers for Halloqween, running 9pm to 5am with tickets starting from $66.20. It is their annual costume rave, and the production budget will be ridiculous, though the price tag reflects it.
Save the cab fare and stay on Smith Street instead. Kingz and Melanated in Melbourne are collaborating on Black-O-Lantern, taking over Sircuit (opens in a new tab) and Mollie's from 10pm to 3am for $25 with a full lineup of Bla(c)k excellence, drag, and a costume contest. Just down the road in Collingwood, 
New Guernica (opens in a new tab) has the twenty-second instalment of e from 10pm to 4am for $18.14, which is comfortably the sharpest value for six hours of proper clubbing on Saturday night.
And if you are actually trying to meet someone whose face is not painted green, Lesbirun: Mates and Dates has 
Smith St Hotel (opens in a new tab) from 7pm to 1am for $28.46, complete with icebreakers and compliment cards — which sounds terrifying until your second drink kicks in and you realise it is much easier than yelling over a techno set — before turning into a proper sapphic dancefloor.
If you want to do the dress-up thing on Saturday without paying big-room club prices, 
Theory Bar (opens in a new tab) is running The Theory Bar Halloween Show from 8pm to 1:30am for $15. They're doing a Rocky Horror tribute drag show for Tim Curry with Witchy Lil Succubus, Pompey Fress, and Zero, plus DJ Wendy Moors on the decks, a costume comp, and a market stall by Offworld Aesthetic — which is the sort of glorious multi-tasking only a queer bar attempts on Halloween. Back down on Chapel Street, Poof Doof also has Poof Doof this Saturday (opens in a new tab) listed at Chasers from 10pm to 4:30am with clickbaitdj, djjasonconti, wdjforty, and heyitsmrcl, where you can email their birthday list if you're trying to blag free entry on the biggest weekend of the spring.
Two Ways to Handle Sunday
By Sunday 1 November you have a very clear choice between daylight and total darkness. For daylight, the 
Sundaylicious (opens in a new tab) crew return to 
The Precinct Hotel (opens in a new tab) in Cremorne to kick off their summer series with Sundaylicious Melbourne (opens in a new tab), running 3pm to 11pm for $27.78. It is an easy, high-energy courtyard session where you can wear normal clothes and compare bruises from Saturday.
For the opposite of daylight, 
BARBA (opens in a new tab) is running Monstruo Darkrooms (opens in a new tab) at 
Brown Alley (opens in a new tab) from 9pm right through to 7am on Monday morning for $39. Ten hours in the backdoors of a city club requires serious stamina — though with the Cup Day public holiday sitting there on Tuesday, plenty of people will be calling in sick on Monday anyway — and it is the only place you should be if 4am elsewhere felt like an early night.
One More for Sunday Afternoon
If you stayed local in Fitzroy on Saturday night and have no intention of crossing the river on Sunday, you can keep your recovery entirely on Smith Street. 
Mollie's Bar & Diner (opens in a new tab) kicks off Drag Roulette (opens in a new tab) at 3pm for free — I still haven't worked out how the performers do a full face of paint on a Sunday afternoon when the rest of us can barely face a hash brown. It is a very easy daytime drag session where you can sit in a booth, let someone else do the work, and still be home before dark.