In March 2006 a former cafe manager and barman named Maz Salt got a one year lease on a carpark off Tattersals Lane in Chinatown, a space that he dropped in two shipping containers into – one for serving drinks and the other as toilets. This relatively cheap start-up was named Section 8 but for many patrons it was, and is still, known as ‘the container bar.’
Salt explains the inception of the idea in his own words. “A couple desperate bartenders with very little money had access to a carpark! When we started we had a one year lease and a one year license but the success of the place within the first year meant that the council supported the change of permit from one year to ongoing and now eight years later we’re still here!”
With the relevance of the number eight, Salt and Section 8 began the eighth birthday celebrations on Sunday March 9 with US act Awesome Tapes From Africa and finished up on Sunday March 16 with a huge laneway party that saw Rat & Co. performing on a balcony looking over the laneway and Melbourne disco/house legends Otologic closing the night. The entire week of festivities for Salt was a somewhat noisy catharsis after eight years of hard-fought success on two fronts: noise complaints and a constant supply of power. However, relative success on those two fronts has resulted in Salt now helming Office of Public Works that owns and operates Section 8, neighbouring bar Ferdydurke and the north side’s The B.East.
That being said, as Salt explains, Section 8’s battle with noise complaints remains. “It’s a continuous and ongoing issue with Section 8 for eight years and it has at times felt like dog years. I have been to VCAT over it, I have probably spent somewhere in the vicinity of $50,000 over the eight years defending myself over various fines and charges.”
However, one of the venue’s early battles that has been resolved is that of power supply. “The first quote I got from city power to connect power to the site was $50,000 to $100,000. That was a lot more money than we had so the very good folk from Curtain House let us run a coaxial cable 100m from their stairwell for the great cost of two boxes of a wine a month for about two years until they opened Rooftop Bar. It was the end of our supply from them,” explains Salt with a wry chuckle.
In the ensuing years Section 8 ran its power via a rented apartment block but every time they had a DJ, the coffee machine on and the dishwasher on they blew a fuse! Finally this was all resolved when the shop that is now Ferdydurke came up for rent so Salt and his team quickly rented the space, firstly as a power supply and secondly as the space that would become Ferdydurke (said Fer-dy-dur-ka).
The name Ferdydurke comes from a 1937 novel by Polish author Witold Gombrowicz that tells the tale of man who is fighting conformity and becoming more immature as he matures in a desperate attempt to reclaim his youth. This intellectual veneer is backed up by the venue’s innovative entertainment schedule.
“Probably one of the best nights at Ferdydurke is the spoken word with jazz music around the spoken pieces. It is a really exciting collection of young people doing some cool things and it is actually a really happening night. Sometimes I feel like I am not the owner/operator but simply a custodian of a space that has become so much more than just a bar.”
BY DAN WATT
