Gay-friendly pub for Camperdown
Inner west GLBTs living near Parramatta Rd have a gay-friendly local to drink at again.
The new owner of Camperdown’s Hampshire Hotel, Richie Haines, told the Star Observer he was keen to create a venue that would appeal to local GLBTs while keeping the pub’s old-world charm.
“The GLBT community is in many ways underserviced in the local area,” Haines said.
“As a member of that GLBT community myself, and having spent years as the licensee at Kinselas in Darlinghurst, I want to create a venue that offers the local GLBT community a safe and friendly place to hang out.
“Pubs, especially beautiful old locals like the Hampshire, have a vital role to play as community centres — a place for people to escape the hustle and bustle, to enjoy a drink, some dinner and catch a gig.”
Richie will leave the interior of the pub pretty much as it is but he has commissioned local street artists to transform the beer garden into a more vibrant and dynamic space.
“There is no way this place is going to join the growing list of venues who lost their soul by ‘modernising’,” he said.
He said he hopes the venue will attract a mixed and diverse crowd.
“I would love to see groups of students drinking jugs of beer and playing ping pong, along with young professionals sipping a glass of wine, and a tradie or two drinking Reschs schooners at the bar.”
The Hampshire is currently open but will close for a refit in the middle of June with plans to reopen in July.
Would love to have a schooner at your old-world pub, and suck up a bit of Sydney’s fabulous past. Imagine the old days when hard working men were six foot deep trying to get a middy before going home to the kids and their chops and mash. Their wifes were in the lady’s parlor earlier, sipping a single, two penny dark, shelling the peas wrapped in newspaper, for dinner and listening to the local gossip.
Ah! and yes, old Kinselas parlor. Was it in the sixties and seventies?
Mad instant parties after 10 PM closing time. Everything inactive was wheeled out onto the veranda to make way for the guests.
Just a bit of old history of Gay Sydney.