‘Topless bar’ stirs storm in Brisbane

Sydney: A grand old pub in the heart of Brisbane’s justice precinct has enraged local businesses after it modernised its look and added new features like table dancing, pole dancing, shower shows and topless barmaids services.

Local businesses say the latest incarnation of the new Grosvenor Hotel on George Street is an unwelcome development, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. Once a “posh” watering hole for the city’s legal eagles, the pub has been heavily modernised by a multi-million dollar fit-out that includes sports bar, beer garden, boardroom function area and topless barmaids from 10am. Advertising material on the hotel’s Facebook page also promotes the hotel’s kitchen specials, claiming their “F--- Me Burger Thursdays” offer “the best buns in Brisbane”. Grosvenor’s General manager Jasmine Robson said introduction of table dancing, pole dancing and “shower shows” attracts a customer base of “predominantly white-collar males”. Robson, who managed a similar venue in Mackay before moving to Brisbane, described her patrons as office-working gentleman who posed “no risk to anyone.” But solicitor Kerry Douglas-Smith, whose office was next door, said the establishment was a threat to public safety, morality and local commerce, with one of her solicitors recently going to the aid of young woman being harassed by patrons exiting the premises. “It’s making the area not safe for women,” the paper quoted Douglas-Smith, the high-profile lawyer and former Gold Coast councillor, as saying. “There are fights occurring… people urinating in alcoves. [The Grosvenor on George] is not wanted in the area,” she stated. A spokeswoman for the Java Coast Cafe, which trades six doors down from the pub, said they’d lost customers since the hotel had opened in June. She said the café’s garden courtyard shared a wall with the beer garden and that the noise and language heard was “offensive to many of our regulars”. ANI