I was introduced to St Jerome’s very early in its existence —perhaps even as early as its first few weeks — by a man shouldering a Crumpler bag who invited me to, ‘come see this new bar’. It turned out that the bag-toting man was Jerome and the bar was his. It was pretty ‘impressive’, in the vein of less-is-more. A sign saying Garden of Eden pointed outside to what was literally a concrete slab. Back in those days, there was no deck area. It was just nothing served up on a flat slab of concrete and some highly dubious toilets out the back.
For a while ‘nothing’ blossomed into something of a second storey. Well, kind of. It was really just a little hangout on the staircase with couches lining the edges. I kissed my Strike Bowling Bar supervisor up there on my 21st birthday. Yep, that’s right, Strike Bowling Bar. See, even a simple bowling attendant was accepted wholeheartedly in those early stages of St J’s. That would have been 2004 when there wasn’t such a divide between cool and un-cool — my golden year at St Jerome’s. But at the end of the year I graduated from my first degree and moved away.
I returned to Melbourne in 2006 and texted Jerome for a job. Busy as always, it took a few days for him to reply but I got a job. On my first shift, I worked the second annual St Jerome’s Laneway Festival, out of Shit Town — the space formally known as the storage room. Nudie Jeans hung from the sky, and people were stuffed in like cattle. I knew I’d been gypped towards the end of the festival when all the main team had finished for the night and me and several other newbies were left to clean up booze and literally sweep the whole of Caledonian Lane. Ah the memories!
Two shifts later, Jerome came up to me and said, ‘I was worried you wouldn’t fit in here.’ Hrm, I figured he did refer to St J’s indie explosion as ‘the fucked up hair club’ (never one to mince words) and my hair was unmemorable. The mood in St J’s had changed. It was much more fashionable at that point which had its advantage and its disadvantages. There were plenty of creative achievements amongst the staff, but there was also an influx of the jock and corporate brigade that we all resented openly. Comments such as ‘don’t you have lemon or lime?’ or ‘what kind of bar doesn’t make cocktails?’ were regular questions which triggered a look of mutual disdain from bar staff.
Accompanying this ‘new-wave St Jerome’s were new additions including: the questionable hiring of teenagers to run Rancho Notorious (although they seemed to be in their element — one actually putting his Wesley College blazer up for sale in the shop window); there was Sam who loved to dress up like a pirate and drink rum before 10am; and a cigarette machine — which was the first indicator that St Jerome’s was actually a legitimate business. I worked there for another six months, in the café as well as doing all Jerome’s little admin jobs. Working alongside coffee experts such as Sivaan, Nick Crazy Eyes, Spiro, and Dannii was nice — but not contagious in my case (my coffee making skills are still bad). Despite all the fun, I couldn’t keep up with the ridiculousness of working at St J’s. I once caught Gez during his shift sitting in the upstairs storeroom just playing with two Transformer figurines without a care in the world. The mind boggled, I couldn’t help but think, ‘who is this kid!?!’
In conclusion- Particularly for kids that didn’t come from Melbourne, St Jerome’s was a second home to us that we gravitated towards autonomously. And now, the dream is over.