No passing FAD – Chinatown bar clocks up 31 years

Over three decades FAD Gallery Bar has proved its appeal lies well and truly beyond the dictates of fashion. Times have changed and clearly gotten tougher, but the venue is still serving up the art, relaxed vibes and love of life to its eclectic community.

On a Thursday night a colourful bunch of regulars are sitting at the bar at quirky Chinatown venue FAD.

Some of them have reportedly been occupying the stools there for decades.

Friendly and curious, they shuffle up to make room for a newcomer as they exchange stories and sledge each other about topics like Trump, AI, the footy and their love lives.

One of them met his partner here many years ago and had a surprise wedding in the bar just two months back.

“It’s hard to describe the community in this place,” he says.

Manager Oriana Aprico-Wister also found love at FAD.

“I met my better half John here 11 years ago,” she tells CBD News.

Secluded in a bluestone laneway still struggling back after COVID, the bar has a rock ‘n’ roll, “come as you feel” kind of vibe.

Dimly lit, it is jammed with bottles, glassware, lamps, clocks, figurines and knickknacks, with chandelier-style light fittings and disco balls projecting low-brow glamour.

The blue-painted brick walls are hung with a mix of paintings and photographs in a variety of genres, with more than one bare-breasted torso on display.

From under the bar, strings of fairy lights throw a red glow while high on the back wall the blue neon slogan: “Damn fine” hangs.

On the other side of the large, concrete-floored room, members of Melbourne’s Got Soul Choir, having finished their weekly session upstairs, have spilled across the retro furniture and are settling in among the artworks to chat over cheese platters and ripped open bags of chips.

Before he started the business in 1995 licensee Johnny Halleday spent a few years in the well-paid corporate world before being urged by a friend to follow his passion and deciding to “live creatively”.

After meeting someone who had started one of Melbourne’s first photographic galleries, Johnny decided to open a gallery too.

He found the empty former perfume factory in Corrs Lane and cleaned it up, clearing something like 18 bags of accumulated pigeon shit from the back and revealing a hidden toilet in the process.

Landing on the name FAD – which stands for Fotographic Art & Design – for his business, he launched it.

Looking back, he was “incredibly naïve,” Johnny says.

Four or five months after opening, it hit him that he was going to go broke and he came up with the idea of using his big ground floor space to throw parties and sell alcohol.

“It took a while to get going, but it turned out to be a great place to have a party,” he says.

“Eventually I was having so many functions that I had to get a full-time liquor licence”. That led to the decision to open a full-time bar downstairs.

Oriana (“Ori”) was still a teenager when she first came to the venue.

“I walked in and I haven’t left,” she says.

“Because I love a chat, obviously, and you just meet people from all walks of life here.”

“I went, ‘this place is amazing,’ and I fell in love with it and with the people and I started working here.”

Johnny, she says, is “like my big brother, and one of my best mates too, which works well when … you spend all your time together”.

Over 20 years Ori has brought a contemporary touch to the enduring FAD, notably in changes to the décor, the addition of cocktails and a focus on social media.

The 36-year-old also brings phenomenal energy and positivity to the enterprise.

“FAD is a bar and it’s an art gallery where you can get a great cocktail, a great local wine or a simple tinny, but it’s [the fact that it’s] that place of assembly where no matter who you are, what you do, you can come in here and just enjoy life amongst people who want to do the same thing which I think really makes it feel like home,” she says.

While COVID, which put an end to regular live music and reduced trade long term, has had a real impact, she and Johnny “don’t dwell in the past,” Ori says.

“We might as well look towards the future and be content instead of being miserable.”

And in the past few months the pair have had good news about the future of the business.

“Like anywhere in town, the building is still up for sale, but we’ve been renegotiating a new lease … and we’re pretty much set to go for another five years, which is quite amazing,” she says.

“I think that places like ours and other independently run bars and cafes and businesses make Melbourne what it is.”

“So, if a few of us are still going, it’s something worth celebrating, in my opinion.”

FAD Gallery Bar, at 14 Corrs Lane, plans to celebrate its 31st birthday in September. It has free stand-up comedy on Wednesday nights and happy hour every night until 7pm. fadgallery.com.au •