Clik here to view.
G’day
I’ve got big news: We’ve been kicked out of our building.
As you are probably aware, our landlord has been planning for some time to demolish the building. After the NSW Government re-opened the construction industry in Sydney last week, they have decided that now is the time.
We have until September 3 to leave our premises.
This is awkward timing, as Sydney is in the middle of a shut-down of essentially all other commercial activity until at least August 28, probably much longer. So we’re going to have to do some improvising.
Here’s the plan, as a one-sentence summary:
We will hold a sale of stock and some second-hand stuff, return all gear to members who’ve left theirs on-site, put everything else in storage, and then hide under a rock until the situation in Sydney improves.
Some more detail:
We do not plan to immediately move to a new site. but we are planning on re-opening in future.
Here’s the blunt truth: Sydney is a mess right now, but the commercial rental market is still stupidly expensive. Given the combination of inflated prices and almost perfect uncertainty about when we’ll even be able to legally operate again, we are not going to commit to a new venue right now. We may not be able to do so for at least 3-6 months.
When we do choose a new venue, it will be somewhere within a 20-minute driving radius of Drummoyne. Think Lilyfield, Five Dock, Leichhardt, Burwood, Concord etc.
There is a distinct possibility, depending on how soon our glorious overlords on Macquarie St decide to declare a “re-opening” based on 50% of adults having had one dose of AZ or whatever, that we operate an interim club in a part-time venue as an ad-hoc stop-gap thing. Yeah, like every other fencing club, except of course ours will be cooler.
We’ve done it before, way back in the day, and we can do it again.
Your personal gear can be picked up or delivered, but please claim it as soon as you can.
Do you have stuff at the club?
If you do, please get in contact with us ASAP.
We will be open for collection by appointment for a couple of hours every day, or John can deliver your stuff to you if you’re in Sydney. If you’re not in Sydney, we can arrange shipping.
If you don’t collect your gear before the end of August, we will put it in storage with the rest of our stuff. It may not be accessible while it is in storage and we don’t know how long it will be in storage for.
So, please come and get your gear, or let us know where to send it.
All passes, store credit etc will be extended indefinitely until we resume normal operations.
If you have passes of any description, they will remain valid until we re-open the club.
They’re frozen in time, as of the start of the lockdown. They’ll sit there in tranquil stasis until we find a new site.
We are holding a sale of all of our retail stock.
We have quite a lot of stuff in our shop right now, and we don’t want to be packing all of it away. So we’re having a sale. Not that it was particularly expensive anyway, but here we are.
We have shoes, sabre masks, whites, weapons and blades, lames, bags, and an assortment of second-hand foil and epee gear if you’re into that sort of thing. We even have scoreboards and reels, if you want to set up a piste at home. We also have the best-written book about sabre fencing ever written, according to some guy on Facebook.
We will do free delivery in metro Sydney (bear in mind this is John driving to your place, so please no parcel locker addresses), or flat $20 delivery Australia-wide.
To order, go to our online store. If you want a discount, use the code BANKSIA10 at checkout.
We are giving away gym gear.
We have a bunch of gym gear we don’t want to move: an elliptical trainer, boxing bags, dip bar/pull up thingo etc.
If you want any of it, let me know. Free to good home or slip us twenty bucks or something if you’re feeling nice.
Also, if anyone wants to borrow our treadmill for a few months, please speak now. It’s not technically ours so we can’t give it away.
We will be moving the rest of the club’s stuff into storage.
If you can provide us with any expertise on the subject of commercial storage for bulky stuff that only needs to go in and out once (pistes, furniture, shop counters, etc) I would deeply appreciate any light you can shed.
So, that’s the important stuff. There’s quite a bit of stuff for me and John to do in the next *checks watch* 28 days. I might even fit in some time to get brutally nostalgic about leaving the place we’ve spent the last ten years in.
Anyway, I’m going to get back to it.
If anyone wants to chat, has any brilliant ideas etc please do let me know.
Otherwise we’re going to keep making our little armoured seed-pod, and wait for an opportune time to germinate it and grow something pretty and new.
Cheers,
Frances