A handwritten note stuck to the window of a small business is never a good sign.
It’s the kind of thing movies like to use as a visual cue for the shock arrival of a zombie apocalypse or imminent invasion by aliens that look like daffodils with teeth. Hand-written notes on windows seldom say things like, “Hi! We’re just in the back having a quick snoozels. Take whatever you need and leave some money on the counter.”
More often than not, they’re shorthand for “things are not going well”.
And so, while driving home from work the other day, I noticed just such a handwritten note stuck to the window of what had, over the past two years, become something of a beloved and favourite Joburg wine bar.
It was the kind of place that got so many things right – striking a careful balance between dressed-down and a sense of understated chic, with the sort of properly diverse crowd that Joburg does so well.
I have this simple test I apply to any bar or restaurant in our beloved, ragged gem of a city: would you recommend it to a visiting Capetonian? This was one of the few places you could proudly do that without worrying that Petunia would come back at you later with complaints. Said very slowly. And with lots of unnecessarily wistful pauses.
The sign said the owners were “taking a sabbatical”. Which I guess fooled no one. Especially when, a couple of days later, a social media announcement clarified that they were, in fact, closing their doors for good.
Unexpectedly, I found myself actually getting really miserable about it. When something new and good like that comes along, you just want it to “stick”. You want it to become that familiar landmark, the thing that springs immediately to mind when organising a drink after work. You want it to be a place where you can return, become something of a loyal, recognised customer. It’s the joy of Central Perk or the Cheers bar where everybody knows your name in a world where the “third place” has taken on such huge importance in all our lives.
Every city is haunted by the ghosts of landmarks that once were. It’s the restless nature of cities. I have my own that I can’t help but mark whenever I happen to pass by. CD shops that are now Food Lover’s Markets. Live music venues that are now office blocks. Art galleries that have become exhaust fitment centres. Restaurants that are now places where people supposedly want to buy your Kruger Rands.
A revolving door
Joburg seems to have a problem with this kind of thing. That “stickiness”. Of course, there are some places that have burrowed in with the stubbornness of a Vodacom telesales agent. I’m literally sitting in one of these places as I write this. Let it Snow is inexplicably playing very loudly in the foreground as the heavy 34°C of a Gauteng late afternoon settles on everything like a weighted blanket.
I’m pretty sure I could take five years off to row across the Atlantic in a plastic bag and when I got back to the table I’m sitting at, they wouldn’t have so much as changed the specials menu. But it feels like the exception rather than the rule.
Cape Town is good at this. Joburg less so, with a revolving door of shops and small businesses sprouting up like enthusiastic mushrooms and then withering away like dehydrated PR interns. This city is tough ground in which to grow something small and personal and lasting. And as much as I would wish it weren’t so, the finger must be pointed back at us – the people who live here.
To look at the retail landscape of any city is to stare into its soul. You learn more about a city by looking at the things its citizens want to spend their money on than by just about any other metric. By that measure Joburg has a pretty deep obsession with fast food, vaping, cellphone repairs and sex shops.
It’s a joke, but I do think it underlines this profile of us Joburgers as a cold-eyed, mercantile bunch – we’ll turn on you faster than a car guard who senses you’re in fact, not going to give them any small change. Combine that with a tendency to be more enticed by newness and novelty than comfort and familiarity, and that’s a stiff headwind for anyone brave to try open something new.
And so, in the end, this is just the passing of another wine bar, like so many others that tried before and will no doubt try again. Mourned by a few for a brief while before we get distracted by whatever the new thing is.
So, I raise a glass, at home … obviously, to a place that shone briefly and flamed out. A Joburg tale as old as time.
The handwritten sign has subsequently been replaced with a printed banner; massive blocky red letters that shout SHOP TO LET to everyone who now passes by.
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