The Sandringham Hotel (or ‘Sando’, if you know what we’re talking about) was known as a staple for budding musos, visiting punk bands, and every barfly in the Inner West of Sydney.
It’s lauded as one of the most important venues for live music in Sydney, and its closure and transformation into Newtown Social Club marked the end of an era in local music, despite how much the dank place needed a fkn upgrade.
Even though every musician that had the chance to belt one out at the Sando over the years looks back fondly on it’s glory days, the space has a dark history, which the team at Lentil As Anything didn’t uncover until they moved into the building.
Stono Caves, one of the chefs and volunteers at Lentil As Anything, admitted there was hate speech etched into the walls of the upstairs space so horrible that it had to be covered with art and tapestries to mask the offensive language scrawled into the concreted walls.
“We found a lot of offensive, sexist graffiti etched into the walls, including things that alluded to child abuse and sexual violence. We used to try and cover it up with material, but now it’s had a proper paint job thanks to lots of helpful volunteers.”
The walls had graffiti etched into them. (Photo: Marty Upham)
Stono said that although it was a café for a short time before Lentils moved in, she believes that the wall carvings happened while the Sando was using the space for live shows.
“We never had the chance to approach anyone [from the Sando days], but we knew there was probably nobody who could do much, so that’s why we did the paint job ourselves.”
Lentil As Anything is a great pay-what-you-want restaurant that gives opportunity to marginalised and long-term unemployed people to come together and make some of their favourite traditional dishes for the public.
To have to come into a space where there is hate speech literally carved into the concrete walls is so damaging, and exactly the kind of hatred that many of them have had to cop for most of their lives.
It’s upsetting that something like this has been lying dormant in a suburb like Newtown, which many have known to be a ‘safe place’ to watch live music for many years.
Now that Lentil As Anything has given the venue a much-needed paint job, it is registered as a fully functioning ‘safe space’.
