Collective experience By Alan Perrott 4:00 AM Monday Dec 22, 2008 "And that's when I became a Mormon" would sound jarring coming from anyone but Russel Green. Shanghai Lil's slightly cadaverous bon vivant is holding court and such statements are being tossed about wildly. Not bad for someone who was working until 5.30 this morning. Names, dates and potentially litigious details pour out, you just nod at every rhetorical question and try to keep up. It's great entertainment - even if most is unprintable. Still, when you're enclosed by as many distractions as Green has crammed into his Freemans Bay, Auckland bar - Shanghai Lil's - details of his life story are just the ticket to stop your attention from drifting. We're sitting in a space where eras clash as vividly as the colours. The result suggests Dr Phibes meets Busby Berkeley in a Raffles-themed whorehouse, a faded decadence that alone makes the place a fabulous curiosity. It's Green's kimono-clad presence, though, that turns a few quiets into an experience. If you don't have a story about him, then you've clearly never been here. But the 49-year-old's nightly performances at Shanghai Lil's aren't set for an extended stay. As with most of Green's life, change is approaching (courtesy of a wrecking ball), and Lil will soon have to move on to her third incarnation. But that's okay. Just as growing up in 1970s Hamilton drove him to religion, Green doesn't like being fenced in. Conformity riles him, it led him into bother at school and then into the Latter Day Saints, a brush that ended when a letter arrived telling him to start saving. Missionary work was a step too far, so he dropped out and gave up his only chance of getting some Mormon undies. They probably wouldn't have suited him anyway, his fashion sense hasn't been the same since his first stay with his Auckland relatives Besides, he's adamant that missionaries end up in the CIA or FBI - it's a long story, ask him yourself. He adored his grandmother. She lived in Te Aroha while also owning a home in the North Shore suburb of Beach Haven, which doubled as a bach and lodgings for her three daughters. None had married, although one, Lena, managed to remain engaged just long enough for her to catch her fiance talking to another woman, all the evidence of philandery she apparently needed. The trio transformed their mum's bach into a treasure trove of Victorian and Edwardian finery, and it became Green's favourite holiday destination. "I was fascinated living in that environment," he says. "Of course, people say it's no wonder I turned out the way I have after being bought up by a grandmother who doted on me and three spinster aunties - they were outrageous, quite mad. I loved staying there, I looked forward to every holiday. They had wardrobes full of these amazing old clothes and I used to dress up in them. Not that I'm cross-dresser, no, but yes, I guess they had an impact on what I've become." If not a cross-dresser, a manic collector definitely. Green's obsession began at the age of 7 when he bought a wind-up gramophone with a Maurice Chevalier 78 record for a princely 20c. He still has both, and over the following 40-odd - very odd - years they have been joined by enough stuff to fill friends' garages, storage rooms, one bar, and the home he shares with his partner and Shanghai Lil pianist, Billy Farnell. But we're not there yet. Back to Hamilton where Green was coming to the end of his school days and washing dishes for extra cash. His increasing fondness for antiques had him dead-set on an apprenticeship in furniture renovation, but when that fell flat in 1977 he used his dishwashing connections to become a chef instead. Two years later, in Auckland for what he thought would be a brief visit, Green fell among the fading embers of the local punk scene and stayed. "I didn't play anything, I just played up." He was living at the Empire Hotel and working at the Mae West bar, above the long-gone City Hotel, a popular spot with certain criminal elements such as safecracker Peter Wright. It was all rather headturning for a new boy in town. Just as he was settling, though, his girlfriend dragged him off to Christchurch. He returned a year later to get serious about his cooking. First there was Guadalupe on Karangahape Rd, where Alt TV now is, then he set up and ran Bonapartes in Parnell for six years, before a quick trip to Wellington to see his brother saw him accepting a job and accumulating some excellent mafia stories. A year later he was back and eventually set up The Business in Mission Bay. He looks back on those days with fondness: "Maybe it's just me but it seems that time moved more slowly back then, there was time to smell the roses." Green was also a fixture on the local gay scene and began developing something of an encyclopedic knowledge of Auckland bars - "I have to admit to being a bit of a drinker, but I think I could have picked worse vices" - while mostly circulating around Backstage, the Crypt, Alfies, Cream, the Empire, and the Alex. "Compared to then everything seems so much more sanitised today, don't you think? There was more acceptance of people then [within the gay community] and more places to go. When [homosexuality] was legalised everyone splintered off into their own little groups. I don't know, I just felt safer then, people watched out for each other more." It was then he met a childhood hero. "I think I was about 11 or 12, and I remember reading this story about Billy in a woman's magazine. He was a mad collector, and it talked about all the things he had in this wonderful home and some of the great musicians he'd met, people like Nat King Cole, Count Basie, and the Ink Spots. When I came to Auckland, I met people who knew him, and I even got a job with him, but I never realised who he was until I went to his house and recognised it. To have eventually met him and to now have been living together for 20 years, well, it's quite amazing really, isn't it?" It's also slightly alarming, considering how much they must have squirrelled away together. There must have been some relief when, in 2005, an opportunity arose for them to put all that lovely tatt to use. After hearing a mutual friend was off overseas, Green offered to take over the rent on the charmingly squalid space he'd been living in at the bottom of Anzac Ave in the central city. It was only $250 a week as the whole building was up for sale. Shanghai Lil's had a home, so had the city's boho community, at least for the few months it lasted. The interior looked like a clapped-out brothel dressed down in black paint, bead curtains, dim lighting and Asian antiques. It was lovely squalor, and for three nights a week you could enjoy any cocktail you wanted, as long as it was one of the two on their list. Another mutual friend, Grant Chilcott, a crooner about town who always parties like it's 1929, was a regular. He's known Green and Farnell individually for more than 30 years: "Billy's even been to most of my weddings. That place was hilarious. Those two are true gentlemen, eccentrics without even trying, and it really showed out there. You'd get all sorts of dodgy people looking through the door to see what was going on. They were quite scary types you really wouldn't want to have around, but they'd be welcomed in to have a look around at all the furniture and masks, then they couldn't get out fast enough. It was great. Definitely a place for people who were out there on the edge." It couldn't last, and within four months Lil was homeless again. Then in February 2006, Green was wandering through Freemans Bay and stopped to peer into the Birdcage's historic corner bar. Apart from a couple of pool tables and the massive portrait imported by former owner and current Auckland mayor, John Banks, another avid collector, the bar appeared unused. He approached the owners, the McCabes of the Saratoga Estate winery, who agreed he could re-establish Shanghai Lil's and away he went. Green says punters often suggest he must be raking in the money, but he says he's paid only about $400 a week. Licence-holder Kathy McCabe says this figure varies, depending on how much money comes over the bar. "When it's good everyone gets a bit of it." An admirable stance but regulars might still be surprised, especially given the venue's star-pulling power (Sir Ian McKellen, Scarlett Johansson, Geoffrey Green, the list goes on...). But Green is remarkably eager to defend the situation. He owns almost everything on display and pays for any repairs himself. "Oh, I don't need the money, not really. All I need is enough for the bills and whatever, but other than that I get to have a night out every night. It's a hard job, but it's a passionate job and we've managed to build a lifestyle around it. It wasn't like I didn't go into this with my eyes open, and it wasn't about us saying 'let's start a business', because it's not a business. It's an experience. We get to take people to another time where they can do pretty much whatever they want. To my mind, it doesn't matter how wrong or right a person is as long as they respect the people around them. So I'm not all bitter and twisted and I'm not being ripped off. We've created something a little unpredictable I think... and that's exactly what you need once that initial 'wow' has faded." What Green has achieved with his Erte art deco prints (formerly owned by comedian Michael Barrymore) and a job lot of objets d'art that once graced Flora McKenzie's Ring Terrace brothel, has won him the admiration of Auckland's more formal bar operators. Luke Dallow may have opened the massive Sale St venue just up the road, but he doesn't begrudge his competitor's success. "They've got their formula just right for what they're after, such fantastic decor, it's got a lovely feel. But then Russel is such an extraordinary character, he's character-plus, the way he flits around like he hasn't got a care, but you know the care is there. Always. It's a delicate balance for them, if you go too niche, too characterful, you won't survive. The audience for that sort of thing is very finickity, you only need a small change in economics or trends and you're gone. But then if I know anything about bars, Russel knows triple the amount and I know he's not in it just for the money, even if he smokes it all away. He's a great smoker." "Oh, I'm more of an exuberant trainwreck," says Green. "It's easy to get burned-out doing this, especially the way some people treat me. There are some who see me picking up glasses and they get this idea I'm this stupid old person who's failed in life, but I'm doing what I love. If I'm feeling flat I have the night off, that's better for everyone, but we'll keep going till we drop. "There's nothing else I want to do, I love the energy and I love the people, even when they're telling me all their problems. If they can then go away having had a lovely time, well that's a wonderful feeling." By Alan Perrott | Email Alan http://www.nzherald.co.nz/lifestyle/news/article.cfm?c_id=6&objectid=10549329