While buzzing around Courte­nay Place recent­ly, I noticed that the Sports Café was closed for ren­o­va­tions. A sign said some­thing like “Don’t wor­ry” (and I did­n’t) “we’ll be back with a new bar soon”. My anten­nae perked up at that: could this promi­nent cor­ner soon be home to some­thing new, some­thing shiny, some­thing (not to put too fine a point on it) that’s not the Sports Café?

Then I spot­ted an email address on the sign, one that end­ed in “saints.co.nz”. That’s the web­site for the local Saints bas­ket­ball team, so some sort of sports-relat­ed bar seemed like­ly. What’s more, the Saints are offi­cial­ly “The Cen­tu­ry City Saints”, since they are spon­sored by Cen­tu­ry City Devel­op­ments. That com­pa­ny is owned by a cer­tain Mr Serepisos, who also hap­pens to have owned the first bar on this site: and what a many-splen­doured thing Ecsta­sy Plus was, back when I was just a lar­va.

So, gen­tle read­ers, what do you know about this place? Will it be a bas­ket­ball-themed bar? A return to the glitzara­ma of the ear­ly 90s? Or some unholy com­bi­na­tion of the two?