31/05/2026
Henry would have turned 10 tomorrow (June 1). I've been feeling very nostalgic in the last month, so I thought I'd share 10 things you might not have known about Henry. And if you do, you're a real one.
1. My friend Dave and I started working on the Henry on Eighth brand in 2014. Here are some early mock-ups of the logo. Dave's designs even included 1992 Subaru Brumby livery. I can still hear that car.
2. We had always planned to be a cafe first, bar second. If both things could work, then perfect. It was a big ask for Perth, let alone Maylands. I had hoped to land Allpress Espresso as our inaugural coffee supplier but they knocked me back, so we got Mano a Mano instead. They ruled. Our second and last roaster was Leftfield. They were also great. Then we said goodbye to the coffee machine altogether.
3. We were randomly plugged in Monocle magazine before we'd even opened. The mag, from the UK, had got wind of the building's history, the extent of our renovation and the name. Very English and royal, yes. People still ask me about it. For the record, the King was everything we weren't, or believed in, so we tried to have some fun with it. My early thoughts were for a name that included a person, preferably male, and a location. Steve's was thankfully taken.
4. The first cocktail I wrote for Henry was 'The Flirt'. It was a blended vodka-something named after the first film shown in the building when it opened as a cinema in the 1920s.
5. If you ever wondered why the bathrooms looked too flash for Henry, it's because we intended to put an 80-seat restaurant upstairs. Our early applications reflected this. It was to open a year after Henry and we had a brilliant chef (it was to be mostly his business). We'd put the floors down and run provisions for the kitchen and bar. Sadly, building costs - and the early fight to even get Henry open - broke us.
6. We once tried to give away a bunch of Young Henrys beers but the event was stopped by Liquor Licensing. The idea was that you got a free schooner of Young Henrys beer if your name was Henry, Henrietta, Hank, Henri, Enrico, Harry, Harriet etc if you came to the venue on a certain day at a certain time. It would have made the best photo.
7. We did regular live art nights before anyone else in Perth, maybe Australia. Definitely Perth. Jodee inspired them when she muraled the side of the building, Leo and Bertie made them a Monday night fixture, Brendan reinvented them when he took his canvas to the median strip on Eighth Ave, then David live-streamed his appearance to almost 200,000 people. We hosted over 100 live art nights.
8. I originally wanted to put the stage above the front door, like a platform with a ladder. It was a half-baked idea from a bar in Europe that would have never got the OK here. We built the existing stage using bricks from small demos elsewhere in the building, and treads from the original staircase. It became a live art stage, a music stage, a [wedding] speech stage, and a spot to take photos from. In our last few months, I considered taking the stage apart and selling the bricks to help pay our bills. Maybe I should have.
9. Pete Bibby played on that stage to a tiny crowd. He was a surprise plus-one of Pete Leveson-Gower, the Henry performer I still miss the most.
10. The bar top was temporary, but stayed for Henry's whole life. I hadn't quite found the timber I wanted so we bumped a basic one on to open and, for the first couple of years, replacing it was on the 'to-do list'. Then it came off said list. And if you look through the window, it's still there.
Happy birthday, Henry.
Love, Steve.
P.S. I keep these social media accounts alive because once they're gone, everything's gone. Memories live.
P.P.S. Welcome to any new followers.
