Spiro was the first customer of St. Jerome’s and it was like he just never left. In the first couple of weeks he had his 21st birthday out in the back courtyard so it was the first event that the space had ever had. He ended up working there. He epitomized everything. Jerome dubbed him his good luck charm.
Cory, my wife, was a really good friend of some regular crew. It was about the second week of Movember and all the bar staff were growing their moustaches. I walked past Spiro one day and he asked me if I had a date for the Movember Gala Ball. He was sitting at one of the tables having a smoke. I told him I didn’t know we were taking dates. Anyway, Corey was my blind date to the Movember Ball, and a couple of years later we’re married with kids. It’s been crazy.
For the first 18 months it was such a tight crew of bar staff that it became a little family that did everything together. Once you get into a situation where you’re working with people who you just love hanging out with whether you’re at work or not, why would you leave a bar like that? Jerome was a pretty cool boss; he let us get away with a lot of shit that no one else would let you get away with. I stayed because I wanted to see where it was going to go. The bar was constantly evolving for the first 18 months, and there was so much buzz about it that everyone wanted to know what was going to happen next.
Then all of a sudden The Avalanches were playing once a month in this shitty little courtyard out the back of the bar and then from that, the Laneway Festivals. Then we were hosting Laneway Festivals in Sydney. Jerome wasn’t going to pay for us all to fly up to Sydney, so we all crammed in Alfredo’s minivan with an esky full of beer trying to get as drunk as we could to ease the discomfort to go and check out this party that we created. It just got bigger and bigger, and you didn’t want to step away because it was out of control.
The first summer series we did, the line-up was incredible. We had The Presets, Midnight Juggernauts, Clare Bowditch, Temper Trap obviously, Children Collide. All these bands two or three years before they became massive. What we’d try and do is kick everyone out and make them pay to come back in and see the show. But by about the third or fourth show, kids started finding hiding spots around the venue — breaking into our storage room, or heading up the stairway that ran onto the Myer rooftop. 20 minutes before every gig we’d start patrolling all those areas and find kids hiding. ‘Just get out or at least go and pay your five bucks so you can stay.’ Anything to avoid forking over any cash.
Awesome.