Brunswick St, Fitzroy appears to be slowly turning into a ghost town, with a number of bars and restaurants being forced to close their doors as rents rise and customer spending drops. Mana Bar is the latest casualty, with The Age reporting today that the video game-themed bar will be closing for good in September.
In a Facebook post made last week announcing their closure, Mana Bar said: “Venue size and debilitating license restrictions has finally gotten the best of us, we simply couldn’t support ourselves on day traffic alone since as soon as everyone was in the bar and having fun we aggravatingly had to kick you all out at 11.”
Mana Bar is the latest in a line of more than a dozen venues to close on the strip between Alexandra Parade and Gertrude Street, which started Melbourne’s thriving hospitality scene in the late 1980’s. Mirrors Lounge Bar, Retro Café, and St Jude’s Cellars are just some of the hotspots to have gone the way of the dodo in recent years. Earlier this year the fun police Victorian Government announced an extension on the freeze on the allocation of late night liquor licences, meaning that no new licences will be issued to allow bars, pubs and nightclubs to operate past 1 am until after June 30, 2015. This, along with higher rents for the gentrified district and a decrease in average customer spending, has been blamed for the closures.
While north-side beard-owners will be no doubt distraught at the diminishing options for soy lattes and organic micro-brewed local beers, the impending death of Brunswick St is another kick in the pants for Melbournians both sides of the river who like doing stuff, with issues like the uncertain future of the Palace Theatre and other live music venues still causing anxiety.
Won’t somebody please think of the hipsters.
Words by Jack Haycox
