Rumpus Room

Reminder: your favourite bar will close one day.

Right now I’m writing my Z to A of bars 2022 and reminiscing on my first and last visit to the Rumpus Room. A bar that had been around so long I thought I’d always have the chance to pop in, but after 16 years they announced their closing for good, I had to check it out! And I finally did – one day before they shut the doors.

On a ridiculously rainy night, I Ubered it into West End and I don’t know what I was expecting. A rumpus room? A big room? It was a really spacious bar..

When I was a teenager we had a rumpus room in our house. I think it started as a well-meaning “TV room” but throughout the highschool years it evolved into a party room, then a band room and at one point there were DJ turntables, and lasers! (I still have lasers). We had a rumpussing good time in that room. Oh boy did we rumpus.

So when I rocked up at the Rumpus Room bar, a drinking establishment with turntables in the corner, it felt very much like home walking in. The owners were pouring last drinks and said they were simply not renewing the lease. I felt for all the locals who called it home, all the memories made and forgotten there. The end of an era.

I sat at the bar and sipped my cider. Watched some hand-rolled “cigarettes” change hands, and generally soaked up the atmosphere of the last days that were.

I’m glad I got a visit to what will now be “where the Rumpus Room used to be”.

R.I.P. the Rumpus Room.