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July 8, 2007
A little painful feedback in the ears: On not saving the Hydey.
Dear Woolworths,
Re: The Hyde Park Hotel
Let's be clear on one thing, first up: you don't owe us anything. You have no obligation to keep the Hydey open. After all, it's a shithole with few punters and many questionable memories embedded in the carpet. No sensible corporation would keep such a thing running as a loss-leader -- it's not like you really need to be popular in the Hydey's demographic. Our lovable shithole's death warrant was signed a year ago when Paul Higgins sold up to the man (you). I wrote at the time that we'd lost it, and I haven't ever felt that statement was premature.
To make another thing clear, Higgins had every right to sell -- he, also, did not owe us a thing. In fact, all of us -- we punters who watched bands there for the first time, the bands learning what it's like to try and hold a song together while spillovers from the TAB are jostling your bass player, where strange drunks dance vigorously to drone-rock, where bad amplifiers reflect from terrible walls to turn distortion into a weapon of mass destruction -- we owe the Higgins family. They gave us a space for play and experimentation. Where everybody knows your name. And are, occasionally, glad you came. And they had every right to sell up.
So if we aren't owed anything by you, or the Higgins family, what noise then do we have a right to make? I suggest that there is one thing we have a right to ask for: honesty. Don't take us for suckers. That you haven't even fooled the Minister suggests you're not going to get away with this one as easily as you might like.
So, you say there was a noise complaint. I'll be generous for a moment and presume that there was. Was this delivered to council, or to you directly? Was it for a specific event, or for an ongoing problem (it couldn't possibly have to do with the hardcore night recently introduced)? Was it from a resident, and if so, from where? The Colonel trying to sleep in his KFC bucket? Surely not the new development across the road? Most new developments come with caveats for residents that they can't complain about the noise that's already there, so that you don't have to suffer the problems that brought the Grosvenor to its knees, or currently afflict The Bakery. What measures did you take to alleviate the issue? McHale tells us you never asked for money available for sound attenuation that they would have been perfectly happy to give you. Nobody saw sound monitoring equipment being utilised during gigs. You didn't even put back up the thick curtains that you took down after you took over.
But let's still be generous, and presume you've been doing these things and we haven't noticed. Why does this necessarily lead to the cessation of all amplified music? I'm going to be quietly confident and suggest the complaint wasn't relating to the Perth Jazz Society's Monday nights in the back room, where they've been plugging away for twenty-seven years. That history is worth something, isn't it?
It didn't have to be this way. Like I said, you owe us nothing, except the truth. If I can take a guess, it's something along these lines: You bought the Hydey for its bottleshop, which at the time brought you valuable Sunday-trading territory in the inner-city. That's fine, we know that. Nothing else in the venue makes money, and money is why you exist. Changes to the liquor-licensing laws, very welcome changes, meant that a bottleshop that can trade on a Sunday is no longer anything special, so you're stuck with a dead-end asset that can only realize returns now through massive reinvention. You can do the bistro thing, or you can do the giant liquor barn thing, but you'll do one or the other. And you'll make your money. Or you'll sell up.
You could just tell us that, you know. We know it anyway - we may only be punters, consumers, music-lovers, drunks, smokers, lovers, fighters, and pool players, but that damn place means a lot to us. And it's earned that last dying bit of honesty. Beer-fuelled conversations over the last few days with punters and bands alike have shown me that nobody thinks your story stands up to more than a second's scrutiny, but nobody is surprised. You're a faceless, soulless corporation, and you've acted like one.
We don't want you to keep our pub running. We don't want you to look after the bands you'd booked through to November, who now have nowhere else to play. We don't want you to look after the bands still forming in bedrooms and brains right now, who currently have no viable shithole in which to play their first gig to three people. We don't expect these things. We'll survive -- we've lost the Shents, we've lost the Grosvenor, we've lost a hundred other pubs over the years. The history of Perth music is richer, stronger and more beautiful than you. We just wish you'd walk away with a little more decency. That's all.
Thank you.
Tags: hyde park perth music woolworths
Posted by patrick at July 8, 2007 1:01 PM
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Comments
an elegy for the masses, patty. amen.
Posted by: mark s. at July 9, 2007 3:32 PM
And they've backed down.
Posted by: James at July 16, 2007 8:29 AM
