The Spot nightclub isn’t exactly my local, but it’s maybe ten minutes walk from my house, and on a Tuesday night its comedy shows were a moderately amusing way to pass the time, even if the comedians weren’t exactly cutting-edge stuff. So it’s a shock to hear that somebody was stabbed to death just outside it:
Luke was stabbed five times by a group of men outside the 7-Eleven store at the corner of Brunswick Road and Royal Parade about 2am yesterday as his sister-in-law and her friends watched.
The men had followed him to the store after Luke broke up a fight in which they had been involved outside a nightclub about two blocks away.
Whatever the full story of this incident is (and it seems to my possibly naive eye that there must be slightly more to it than has currently been released to the media), it’s certainly put the frighteners up Brunswick locals. I know I’ve always thought Brunswick was immune to the kind of thing you see in the CBD or Prahran. It seems like, at least outside some venues, it’s arrived.
Yeah, pretty horrible stuff. You get that awful ‘could have been anyone’ feeling. But Im not sure about your Brunswick comment: about half the Melbourne gangland killings took place in the People’s Republic of Moreland.
I’m not so sure about this. When we moved here a little over a year ago, there was a shooting on Sydney Road — a drunk who’d been kicked out of a strip club came back and shot the bouncer. I’m sure I’ve seen reports of stabbings since then. And of course the Brunswick Club is famous for one of the Moran murders.
Having said that, I’ve never felt unsafe in Brunswick, and this latest incident won’t make me feel unsafe either.
Not to go stacks on the mill Robert, I’m a long term resident of Brunswick, and I’m afraid Murders R Us. All sorts, all over the burg – which to be statistically fair, is an enormous burg.
Like you, never felt a worry, but agree with you on the odd media reports. At risk of lancing cliches, “good samaritan”? Who’s made that judgement call in the middle of the night between a night-club and a 7-11?
Yep, fourthed, sorry. Maybe it depends which part of Brunswick you’re in. I lived for eleven years in Blyth Street just round the corner from Sydney Road, and I saw and heard an awful lot of stuff I would prefer to forget about, like the regular drunken assaults up on the main drag (broken bottles, blood, ambulances), or the gone-bad drug deal in the alley underneath my living room window. And that 7-11 was sinister back in the late 1980s.
Yeah, hence the book, ‘Death in Brunswick’ – which, in true Melbourne style, my ex-flatmate’s once-removed-cousin wrote.
Also, hasn’t that pub on the corner of Sydney Road and Brunswick Road got a ‘reputation’? Brunswick Road is hardly the place I’d like to hang out at night.
(Disclaimer: just back from a very pleasant night with a bunch of poets at the Brunswick Hotel).
You’d never get that kind of thing happening in peaceful, sunny Struggletown.
(Exclaimer: Poets in a Brunswick hotel? Where’s a murderer when you need one?)
I had my Mum staying for the weekend, and took her up Sydney Road for breakfast on Sunday morning.
Didn’t notice anything odd at the 7-11, other than that it was shut and had a photographer slouching on his car outside.
As we approached the scene of the original brawl it started looking a little murdery though. Flashing lights, coppers in gloves, do-not-cross tape, TV cameras. Then we saw a mangled baby carriage across from the Phoenix and thought “oh shit”. So in a sense I was relieved by the real story.
Poor bugger.
Never good when someone is killed by thugs. Ill make a bet now that if the group are caught they wont prosecute any individual one for murder (as it should be), because none of them will finger the others for the death.
I was a bit shaken up by this. I live ten minutes away, and I’m the same age as the victim. There but for the grace of god…
The underworld killings were known gangsters killing other known gangsters. I’m referring more to the kind of pub fights turning super-nasty that we’ve been hearing so much about in the CBD.
Like everywhere, certain pubs attract certain crowds. The Spot does seem to attract a rather less poetry-inclined (and, if I may be so snobbish, a less Brunswick) kind of crowd on a Friday and Saturday night. There are other venues with a completely different crowd and corresponding vibe; Lygon Street is gradually developing one of the highest concentration of alt-yuppie bars outside the CBD I’ve seen…
Brunnie’s rough as guts Robert. No, really it is. Under the poesy and trendy cafes, a murderous river runs. Caine boy shot dead in a Lygon Street pub (Quarry?), early 80s. Nobody saw nuthin’.
Lewis Moran, in the Brunswick Club; bodies dumped, shootings, etc.
Please don’t gloss over the bleeding history, it’s as Brunswick as the brick works and tiny cottages, dirt floors and poverty. Bob Santamaria: son of a Brunswick fruiterer.
Diversity and scum. Life in the raw. Now the Sudanese refugees walking tall and proud in Sydney Road.
But murder and thuggery and ugly drunken fights are not to my taste either.
Meanwhile, in a far-off kingdom that sort of thing shouldn’t happen around here
Yes, historically, it was rough as guts. But these days the place is filled with yuppie cafes and whatnot.
“That sort of thing doesn’t happen round here.”
Ho, ho.
Inner suburban Melbourne is a hot-bed of semi-organised crime, based mostly on the drug trade.
For some years we had a semi-permanent drug pedlar parked beneath our window. Our initial, bourgeois, instinct was to call the police. But soon we recognised that this chap was better than a policeman on the beat. He wanted a secure base for his business. Our neighbourhood was very sedate.
Only after his removal, probably to the greener pastures of Richmond, did the tagging outbreak begin.
Yes, I think you’re right Rob. I took your tone to be ‘…around here any more‘ – since I’ve lived in the area (5 yrs) there have only been a handful of murders, which I gather is historically low.
As for feeling unsafe; never had a problem myself, so I think I’ll go on acting as if it’s relatively okay.
Nice little Brunswick hagiography there Ambi – I reckon the place sums up the DIY warts-’n'-all approach to Oz multiculturalism rather well.
FDB: while I love Brunswick, it’s not a saint
No, that would be Kilda.
Poets in a Brunswick hotel? Where’s a murderer when you need one?
Heh. Touche.
Ambi – how then do you explain the Lebanese sausage pizzas at A1 Bakery?
The roti omelette at Tom Phat?
Well?
Wait, sorry. This Catholic stuff isn’t my strong suit. I need 3 miracles, right?
Okay, how about the tracksuited dude with the cruddy early-90s undercut who’s been dealing drugs with impunity for 5 years outside the tanning salon opposite the Brunswick Hotel?
In other local news, somebody tried to blow up the Starbucks a block from my apartment in Mahattan: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/nyregion/26blast.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion
It wasn’t me. I hate Starbucks, but I don’t *HATE!!!* Starbucks.
Rob, I hate to join the pile-on too, especially since I’m the one who brought this story to your attention in the first place! It might be that your feeling of safety depends on where in Brunswick you live. I spent several years living in a cheap but dodgy block of flats up the east end of Blyth St, and do recall feeling somewhat vulnerable working home late at night – and, occasionally, at home at night with the door locked and bolted! While at least one of the gangland shootings took place right around the corner, it was the low-level stuff that impacted most on my consciousness: burglaries, idiots yelling stuff out of cars (when they do a u-turn and come back for another go, your heart can’t help but skip a beat), and drunk neighbours driving their cars through the fence, weed-bed and into my bedroom wall (not to mention forgetting which flat was theirs and trying to break into mine at 2 o’clock in the morning). Most memorably, I managed to acquire a stalker, a dishevelled young man who would follow me home from the tram stop, tap on my window and issue threats, obscenities and apologies, and then more threats and obscenities when the apologies failed to have the desired effect. (The police seemed far more interested in the property crime than in this latter incident, I have to say.)
I now live elsewhere in Brunswick, but I wouldn’t live anywhere else though!
This is true. Lower Sydney Road, Brunswick, is all cafes and pubs and hipsters. Walk one or two blocks to the west and things start getting dodgy.
I used to live in Coburg, which is closer to the Hume Highway and the former Pentridge Prison. You’d get a lot of bikies and toughs coming in from out of town. But the most noise I usually got on my street – just two blocks away – was the train.
Fine,
That Kilda sounds like the Patroness Saint of gangland murders
Merkel must have grown up in the Counter-Earth Happy Sunny Daisies Growing Brunswick, rather than the one I spent my teenaged years next to in the 1980s.
Kiashu: I didn’t move there until 1999.
don’t be unkind to Robert: it’s a shocking thing when random brutality erupts close to home!
Indeed it is.
My family considered buying a house about 40m from the spot. We were worried about noise from Sydney Rd and asked the tennants. They said, “It gets really noisy on Saturday nights – lots of fights, bottles being broken.” That had us worried, but the sealer came when I spoke to a friend who owned the cafe across the street. She informed me that one of the staff of another cafe had had both his legs broken when the patrons of the Spot took a dislike to him for some reason.
We eventually bought a place a bit further west. Can’t say I understand TimT’s comment – pretty much the only time I’ve felt unsafe in the two and a half years I’ve lived here is when my route home took me past the Spot. Since we’ve been here a woman stabbed five people (none fatally) at … well spotted.
I really hate those people who move into an inner suburb and then try to get the music venues shut down. But I do have to say that there seems to be a common theme here. There are a lot of other venues in Brunswick that used to be really dangerous. A friend said when he moved to Brunswick you couldn’t look someone in the eye at the Edinburgh without punches being thrown, and the then Sarah Sands, on the corner of Sydney Rd and Brunswick Rd was a neo-Nazi hang out for a while. But all that was well gone before I moved in. No other venue in the area has had any trouble I’ve heard of, other than the strip club someone mentioned above.
Interesting reading,
have just moved out of Brunswick and always make a joke of the crime that we have left behind, mostly stabbings and shootings that happened in the dead of the night while I’m tucked up in bed! Can’t say that this latest incident really changes my thoughts on Sydney Rd though, it is, what it is! You kind of know the dodgy places to stay away from and rohypnol spiking at the spot is always no.1!!
robert – you have to realise that Moreland Council has a secret dept that arranges for whacks and a bit of sleaze action in Brunswick just to stop it losing its appeal to the cashed up professionals.
I’ve been privy to their Strategic Plan and their biggest fear is that the area will come to reflect its current inhabitants, uni lecturer couples with a sprinkling of tertiary educated arty 30 somethings in skinny jeans riding fixies or old school basket bikes.
So in order to ensure that the myth of the gritty working class suburb survives amongst the soy lattes, chai teas and carrot cake they pay for a bit of controlled low life street action every now and then to keep house prices up and the ratepayers happy they aren’t “non Brunswick types”
FXH
well, that could explain it, but then why don’t chaps arraigned for their [alleged] shootings stand up in court and dob in Cadres of the People’s Republic of Moreland?
Or is said People’s Republic so cunning that it covers its tracks and the shooters think they’re just gunning for rival crims?
Long live the broad spectrum of our little Braunschweig! She merits a paean.
Myself and my One True did live in Moreland for seven years and watched in horror as the double-wide baby buggies and generic ‘Cool Cafes’ slowly spread up Sydney Road. As we (sadly) left for pastures green just recently, the pace of the invasion was slowing somewhat but I don’t hold out much hope. Doomed to go the way of Fitzroy I’m afraid.
The Spot always was a shit hole.
I used to live in King’s Cross, opposite the Pink Panther. Once I saw bloke get stabbed on a Friday night while watching the passing crowd from my balcony.
I also used to live in a block of flats in (I think) Darlinghurst Road opposite the Venus Room. (it’s been so long I forget the names of some of the streets. The place is for back packers now and is next to some steps) Coming home one day, I heard but did not see some famous criminal get shot, way back when.
Living on the outskirts of Footscray, we’re living in a place where shit definitely happens. But we live in a happy street where the neighbours look after each other. Most killings happen between one criminal and another. Except in the case of young men outside alcohol serving venues, if you’re simply an innocent bystander you don’t stand an enormous chance of being suddenly and randomly killed. The problem of Melbourne’s pubs and clubs is one we are going to have to address.
Chad C, I don’t agree with the wailing and keening people make about the gentrification of Sydney Road. Give me a nice relaxed scruffy bar with food and children welcome, like the dear departed Brunswick Green, any time over some loud and obnoxious yuppie pub or sinister men-only hangout. Yes, double wide prams can be annoying, but the fact that you see these prams that so annoy you is partly due to the fact that mums are no longer pariahs expecting to stay under house arrest until they can sally out brat-free, and also the fact that Dads are starting to share the wheeling-Junior-around duties. It’s great to be privileged and child free (or free of childminding duties) but that isn’t the case for all of us.
what was the name of the pub on the corner of sydney road and brunswick road originally. Ahhh, memory banks… The Sarah Sands. Man that was a hellhole. I used to go to a punk night there on Wednesdays, “earwigs at midnight” in the early 90s. That was a pretend pretty nasty scene – it was actually much scarier with the usual bikies on weeknights.
helen, I’d hate to disagree with you yet again, but I find the outskirts of Footscray pretty safe and happy. There are potential scenes near the train station and on the trains, and it appears pretty fucked up to be an indian student, but by and large not that much happens (that gets reported in the papers). Drugs appear to be coming back a fair bit, but they did a sweep the other week, arrested 47 or something.
So it’s a shock to hear that somebody was stabbed to death just outside it:
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I used to go The Spot a lot. They had music on every night and different kinds of it. But it’s a real gangsta wannabe dive. Too many fuck-wits. I’m not the least bit surprised sorry. ‘Tis a shame however.
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And that 7-11 was sinister back in the late 1980s.
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Still is.
Doomed to go the way of Fitzroy I’m afraid.
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True but still a way to go. Brunswick is the new Fitzroy and Footscary will soon be the new Brunswick.
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As for cool cafes Tom Phat’s pretty good. Great for breakfast.
Wilful, helen, I’d hate to disagree with you yet again, but I find the outskirts of Footscray pretty safe and happy. Yes I said we lived on the outskirts of footscray but were pretty safe and happy where we are, why are you disagreeing with me?
I have witnessed 1 murder. In Barkly st West Footscray.
I live 2 doors away from the Spot and see the losers that go there and that bloody Irish bar every weekend .These are the major thorns in this suburbs side.Just make sure that you cross to the other side of road when passing these bars. From my experience that majority of the trouble is when all the plastic gangsters go to the hip hop nights at the spot.C’mon council fingers out time
I have witnessed 1 murder. In Barkly st West Footscray. Really?? OMFG! That’s awful. That would change my perceptions of a place.
my disagreement was that you said “shit definitely happens”, but I haven’t seen anything apart from Leeds st in central footscray. There aren’t that many licensed venues around, and they’re all pretty good (though I haven’t been to the Anglers on a Saturday night).
Shit happens everywhere. It happens in Glen Waverley.
I like Jeremy Sear’s observations: http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/why-would-they-believe-what-we-work-so-hard-to-convince-them/