Bondi denied small bars
Almost two years after Sydney was promised a Melbourne-style small bar culture on the back of a community campaign, progress is slow. In spite of visionary small businesses, both Waverley Council and the State Government have denied Bondi a civilised drinking culture.
The Shop on Curlewis Street and Bar Lovento, Tamarama, remain the area’s only small bars, and both close early.
A plethora of cafes, unaffected by a one-year State Government ban in the city, have had their licence applications rejected by council.
An authorisation to serve alcohol without food requires agreement between the Department of Liquor, Gaming and Racing and the council. It also requires a Community Impact Statement, where businesses must survey locals in a process that Melbourne small bar architect, John Nieuwenhuysen, calls “vague and unmanageable”.
Waverley Mayor Sally Betts said a Development Control Plan would be completed by 2010 and would include a plan on small bars.
“We haven’t yet had that dialogue. We have a lot of residents concerned with the increased generation of noise,” she said. “And just because you have a noisy pub, any addition to that noise, irrespective of how much, is a concern.”
Labor councillor John Wakefield spoke against an application for a bar licence at Deli Bottega, soon to open on Glenayr Avenue. Their vision, said co-owner Michael Huang, was “offering a sophisticated product of food, wine and cheese to sit 20 people”.
The deli received a licence to trade until 9pm, with the sale of alcohol banned, and is considering a Land and Environment Court challenge.
Fausto Zizioli and his brother, Damiano, applied for a licence to sell local wine with and without their Italian food at La Piadina a year ago.
“But every time I call Waverley Council it’s hard to get in touch with someone. We’ve lost interest,” he said.
Roberto Weil, whose application for an alcohol licence at Jed’s was thwarted by the landlord, said: “You can’t bring people to Bondi if you don’t set up the infrastructure for it. People are jumping in their cars and going to Surry Hills. What’s going on here is 21st century feudalism, and it’s so conservative.”
The Beach Rd Hotel supports the introduction of small bars.
“We’d like to see places like Jed’s with an alcohol licence. It creates more of a European ambience for a different clientele,” the manager, Tom McCarville, said.
Community activists remain optimistic. Jonathon Larkin of Raise the Bar said councils were the hardest to convince of a “slow moving revolution”.
In the meantime, the words of Australian Hotels Association president John Thorpe seem true for Bondi: Sydneysiders don’t want to “sit in a hole in a wall and drink chardonnay and read a book”.
– By Matt Khoury
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