These are Sydney's best dive bars

The Dock is like a house party where everyone is invited and you don’t need to carve out fridge space behind Thai leftovers and half an elderly watermelon for your drinks. It’s a cosy, low-lit, ramshackle place where the playlist is a freewheeling party mix of cheesy-but-secretly-awesome school disco bangers.

By the look of this dive you’d expect peanut shells crunching under foot. Regulars – like birds on a wire – perch at the bar and a middle-American accent comes from behind it. The worn-in, down-home atmosphere, though, belies expert cocktail, beer and wine chops and sophisticated bar bites.

One of Redfern’s original small bars is still as loud, fairy-lit and friendly as ever. And cheap. Where else can you get a eminently drinkable semillon sauvignon for six bucks and a grilled ham, cheese and tomato sandwich for a fiver, other than student housing? There is a wonderful reliability to any visit to Arcadia. It’s always full but somehow you can manage to rustle up a bar stool or one of those vintage metal chairs, or find a spot out in the brick courtyard.

If you want to see Sydney at her absolute best, go for a drink at Redfern’s neighbourhood art bar, the Bearded Tit. Inside this uber queer-friendly establishment you get a glimpse of what it could be like if we all just got along. The weird and wonderful are welcomed here; there is a mix of punters that properly reflects the Sydney rainbow, and nobody gives it a second thought. We’re all too busy having a brilliant time.

Believe it or not, Enmore has a country club – though don’t expect to see any blindingly white golf get-ups or stuffy membership options. It's a little more country than club – a 60-seat neighbourhood bar that was recently launched by two hospitality mavens and all-round nice guys, Dan McBride and Dynn Szmulewicz. The space comes with Big Cowboy Energy and retro touches.

This subterranean club has had a few leases on life – it was once a favoured haunt of the city’s goth and fetish community and it then went on to serve as a destination for club kids across the city. Now, to celebrate its 25th birthday, the William Street club is back with a total New York basement redux.

If, god forbid, anyone ever flipped on the grown-up lights at the Ramblin’ Rascal, what might it look like under the cold, sober light of fluoro? A barely renovated former comedy club in the basement of a nondescript city office block full of dentists, orthodontists and maxillofacial surgeons. The booths are vinyl and the carpet is – well, the less said about the carpet the better. Eyes front, people.

Up above the Bank Hotel is a cocktail den and live music venue for late night shenanigans and the perfect balcony for bumping into strangers. Follow the red glow of the neon guitar up a flight of stairs and slide into a booth while you wait for the pool table to free up.

Yes, Mary's may be taking over the city one burger at a time, and perhaps theirs isn't everyone's style – but if we're talking dive bars, the OG Newtown outlet cannot be overlooked. There's plenty of 'for a good time' style graff on the walls and no matter what time of day you head in, it always feels like Saturday night so for the atmosphere alone, Mary's is one of the best.

Describing a venue as a dive bar might, on the face of it, sound like a negative critique, but at this cool-as-hell new drinking den in Bondi Beach, it's very much a compliment. Bringing an entirely different energy to the area, perfect for those wanting to sink beers in their boardies by the beach, Chuck Trailer's delivers a flavour of the Inner West and the US to the eastern beaches.