\u201cTwenty-five years ago I walked into a cafe on K Rd to meet a friend,\u201d Gibson wrote in a message to the Herald from New York, where he and his family are now based.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis girl he knew quite by chance walked in. She sat down and I moved over. It was the day of her 21st party, and I promptly invited myself to it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ended up writing a song about that very moment called Verona, and I\u2019ve been with that girl ever since. We\u2019re about to celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n
Elemeno P (from left) \u2013 Justyn Pilbrow, Dave Gibson, Scotty Pearson and Lani Purkis, with long-time musical wingman Godfrey de Grut.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo to hear Verona is closing is genuinely sad. It\u2019s one of the few spots left of K Rd that reminded me of my youth, the early 2000s.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne time, years later, I got a couple of free beers at Verona. I felt like I had truly made it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks for [the] beers, and thanks for the memories and thanks for the song.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verona, from Elemeno P\u2019s debut album Love & Disrespect, begins with the line: \u201cWhen I saw you in Verona; you sat down, I moved over; pretty people, but all I saw was you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verona Cafe & Bar was placed in liquidation last week by the High Court at Auckland after a petition from the Commissioner of Inland Revenue.<\/p>\n
A post on Verona\u2019s social media channels said the cafe would be closed \u201ctemporarily\u201d due to \u201cunforeseen circumstances\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will update you as soon as we know anything. Thank you for all the support and love over the years, we hope to see you all soon!\u201d the post read.<\/p>\n
Kristal Pihama of KPMG, one of the liquidators appointed to JCK Holdings Limited (trading as Verona Cafe & Bar), told the Herald the grounds for liquidation included outstanding GST and PAYE arrears of about $692,000.<\/p>\n
Pihama said they had decided to close the cafe\u2019s doors while \u201cwaiting for further information to come in\u201d, with the first priority being to try to sell the business.<\/p>\n
Verona was opened in 1992 by Hilary Ord and Janet Sergeant during a \u201cvery specific and unique time\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat really established Verona\u2019s reputation was that first decade or so,\u201d Ord told the Herald.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause we didn\u2019t have mobile phones, you had to say … \u2018let\u2019s meet in Verona\u2019. That\u2019s kind of what happened. It became this hubbub of meetings, and films were being written there, and it was just this hub of wonderful creativity.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had something really special going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verona inspired Elemeno P’s pop-punk hit. Photo \/ Richard Robinson <\/p>\n
Ord, who with Sergeant sold the place in 2004, says \u201cthere\u2019s a real feeling of sadness out there\u201d about Verona\u2019s closure.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is such a warmth, even if people hadn\u2019t gone there recently. It\u2019s been 34 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel sorry for the new owner, that\u2019s really tough.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ord says Elemeno P were regulars at the cafe and she \u201cfelt so humbled\u201d by the song.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe guys used to come in all the time \u2026 they were such a good band.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet them know I was always too shy to say thank you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verona may still be handed a lifeline if a buyer comes forward, with many hoping for, as Gibson once wrote, \u201cgood fortune at the bar\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cTwenty-five years ago I walked into a cafe on K Rd to meet a friend,\u201d Gibson wrote in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[51,34726,6326,138,1882,17163,9635,208917,17465,3594,4508,16569,13458,14442,7240,111,139,69,10142,20442,2642,4625,8628,1361,61,20838,110067,540,1842],"class_list":["post-405665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-auckland","tag-bands","tag-biggest","tag-business","tag-cafe","tag-closure","tag-dave","tag-elemeno","tag-gibson","tag-hit","tag-hits","tag-iconic","tag-inspired","tag-karangahape","tag-lead","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paid","tag-pays","tag-rd","tag-singer","tag-song","tag-that","tag-to","tag-tribute","tag-verona","tag-where","tag-wife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}