I’m looking forward to 2012. I was getting worn down by 2011. Bar falling down, insurance scraps, non-stop trouble with finding a new site, the Council saying the right things in public then finding nothing but obsticles in my way when I tried to get back into the central city… Nothing seemed to be easy.

So, I’m hoping the hard work is behind me. We have secured a site. The Council seem to be playing ball. Construction has begun and we hope to be open shortly.

Goodbye Blue Monday has finally made it onto the immediate demolition list which is shit for the building but makes getting insurance money a lot easier. I went into the Red Zone last week to see what Sam at C1 is doing and it is like a wasteland in there. We are going to need pioneers like him to get that part of the city on its feet again.

This will spell the end of Goodbye Blue Monday. I didn’t want to take the name to our new site as people would have just complained that the new place isn’t as good as the old. Tim has moved on and the Council has indicated it is anti live music; so the next spot will be something different. I quite like the idea of GBM being mythologised and never having to go through that cycle all bars go through where they eventually get shit.

We are calling the new site Smash Palace which we think is fitting in the current environment. Currently it is a flat bit of land on the corner of Victoria St and Bealey Ave. The plan is to create something temporary that will be on that site for at least a year. Following this, we hope to pack it up and relocate it on GBM’s old site. But if the last 12 months has taught me anything, it’s that long-term plans often work out quite different to what you had envisaged.

So here’s GBM as it stood last week. I love the old sign that has been uncovered by the building next door coming down. I thought it was hilarious that it sold sperm but Tony d tells me this was quite a common type of oil in the olden days.