The Snakepit, St Kilda’s late-night indie club of the 90s and 00s, reopens in November as a live music venue.
Ganley Group, which already runs Freddie Wimpole’s upstairs, has taken over the basement under the George Hotel on Fitzroy Street. Studio Y and stylist Eleisha Gray have built the new Snakepit around a stage and a vinyl-led bar, with jazz, blues and soul acts and DJs booked every weekend.
The bar mixes drinks from the Golden Age of cocktails, and a late-night larder runs supper-club service, with cured meats hanging on display and chefs slicing charcuterie to order.
The Snakepit
- What: live music venue and cocktail bar with a late-night larder
- Where: Basement, 127 Fitzroy Street, St Kilda
- Opening: November, date to be announced
- Music: jazz, blues, soul and DJs every weekend
- Open: to the public three days a week, private hire seven days
- Design: Studio Y with stylist Eleisha Gray
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The group wants the old Snakepit’s glamour back, not its grit. “St Kilda has always had an unconventional character, and we want to bring back the beautiful disorder and revelry that the original Snakepit was once known and loved for,” says founder Liam Ganley, a construction manager turned publican who arrived from the west of Ireland in 2011. He reckons late-night cocktail bars with live music are “few and far between in St Kilda”.
The George opened in 1857 as the Terminus Hotel, across the road from the end of the new St Kilda railway line. Frederick Wimpole bought it in 1873, became mayor of St Kilda in 1886, and his family held on to it until 1958. The next owners turned the dining room into a nightclub called the Crystal Room, and by the 60s the hotel was staging strip shows such as Getcha Gearoff. In 1976 it changed its name to the Seaview to shake its reputation, and the original Terminus building came down to make way for a drive-in bottle shop.
By the late 70s punks had the run of the first-floor ballroom, known at various times as the Wintergarden, the Crystal Ballroom, the Seaview Ballroom or just the Ballroom. Nick Cave fronted the Boys Next Door and then the Birthday Party there, and Paul Kelly, Hunters and Collectors and INXS played it before they were famous. Downstairs, the Snakepit was the hotel’s dive, and its early regulars called it the Flying Jug.
In 1987 the Seaview lost its licence and shut after becoming a known drug-dealing venue, and squatters, thieves, fire and flood had four years at the building. Restaurateur Donlevy Fitzpatrick reopened it in 1991 and later turned it into apartments. Through the 90s and 00s the basement ran as the George Public Bar, a late-night indie and alternative club, before mellowing into the George Lounge, a cocktail room with DJs. On 1 March this year the St Kilda Blues Festival used it as a stage for Paulie Bignell and the Thornbury Two, Kim Volkman, and Jimmy Lowdown and the Dirty Shames.
The Snakepit is Ganley Group’s seventh venue. The group also picked up the Windsor Castle and the Carlton Club out of administration.
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