A brand new bar set to open in Melbourne in June is being slammed for fetishising the prison experience and making a mockery of how traumatic incarceration can be for Australia’s Indigenous communities.
‘Alcotraz: Immersive Cocktail Experience’ promises patrons “orange jumpsuits”, “crooked” and “corrupt” guards and the need to “smuggle” in alcohol. God, another day, another bar in Melbourne that simply refuses to read the room.
Alcotraz is brought to us by marketing firm Fever and UK business Inventive Productions, who have already had success with the idea over at coloniser central. Makes sense, really. The bar is named after the notoriously brutal Alcatraz Prison in the US, which shut down in 1963.
In a media release urging Aussies to boycott the upcoming bar, Tabitha Lean from the National Network of Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women & Girls (AKA The National Network) slammed the bar as a “slap in the face”.
“Alcotraz needs to read the room. They are building their business on lands owned by the very communities that are being ravaged by prisons,” she said.
“The very notion of a prison-themed bar on land with a history of dispossession and ongoing oppression of Aboriginal communities is abhorrent.
“Prisons are sites of immense pain and suffering, especially for Aboriginal people who face higher rates of incarceration and deaths in custody. Turning this into a theme for a bar is a slap in the face of those who have experienced real trauma and brutalisation.”
Debbie Kilroy, chief executive of the non-profit organisation Sisters Inside and member of The National Network co-signed the media release, where she called the bar’s concept “incredibly disrespectful”.
“Alcotraz’s attempt to turn incarceration into a form of entertainment is a gross minimisation of the suffering endured by people who have been criminalised,” she said.
“Creating a space where people can pay to pretend they are prisoners is not only reductive but also incredibly disrespectful.”
This isn’t the first time a Melbourne bar has been slammed for being abhorrently insensitive.
In 2023, City of Melbourne was slammed for promoting a temporary prison-themed event titled the “San Quentin Immersive Prison Cocktail Experience”. And of course who could forget 2021’s Rickshaw Bar, which was themed after the Vietnam War and included multiple references to Agent Orange. What is in the water over in Victoria?
In a statement to the Guardian, Inventive Productions and Fever maintained the bar was aware of criticisms against it and has paired up with the Innocence Project, a non-profit based in London that works to prevent wrongful convictions and “free the innocent”.
“The partnership demonstrates its commitment to the education and enrichment of its customers and communities on issues relevant to their immersive experiences,” the spokesperson said.
“Inventive Productions continues to be sensitive towards the real-world difficulties that could be associated with such stories and evaluate how best to support those around us.”
I think I’ll stick to the bars in NSW that close at 3pm, thanks.
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