Bar bans men approaching women
There’s been a lot of talk about a new Canberra bar, the Maple Bar, that bans men trying to chat up women.
The bar, the newly revamped second level of the established Treehouse Bar, is targeting an older clientele than the kind of people who come to the downstairs venue.
As part of the new look, the place has been completely renovated with dark furnishings and a chandelier.
It also has a semi formal dress code - cocktail dress for the ladies, smart shirt, pants and dress shoes for the blokes.
The house rules have been put in place to distinguish the Maple as a classier establishment.
“We have a set of house rules and the one that people have found most interesting is that gentlemen don’t approach ladies,” the bar’s owner Mike Kadinski told the Daily Mail. “And the rule is, if a gentleman is lucky enough to be approached by a lady, he speaks to her as if he would speak to his mother.”
The ban has not gone down too well.
According to a Canberra Times online poll, 49 per cent of people said the Maple Bar ban was “ridiculous.”
And the place has drawn all sorts of comments on social media. While some say the bar is trying to bring manners back to the place, one man on Facebook gave it a one star rating with the comment “Maple Bar is for cuckholds” [sic].
Kadinski has since put out a statement explaining why the Maple Bar has adopted the strategy.
“Don’t let the house rules scare you off! Maple Bar is not taking a stand on feminism, rather we’re about kicking it old school … They should be read and understood with an old school point of view, rather than a 2017 equal rights point of view,” the statement said.
“We really want to bring some class back to Canberra. It’s disappointing that so many ladies put so much time and effort into getting dressed up, only to be met by a guy who thinks it’s okay to put a T-shirt on with a pair of thongs [flip-flops]”.
by Leon Gettler, February 28th 2017
