Halifax • 2025-06-13 • Staff
The day before the first anniversary of Rumours HFX, we sat down with Gerald McCowan while his business and romantic partner José Chiu tended bar a couple of metres away.
Rumours is having a party this evening to celebrate: details below.
So, what have the last 12 months been like?
It's been a learning experience! It's been... learning how to run a bar, how to do marketing , accounting, every aspect. We learned the right way to do it from some people - and the wrong way to do it from others. Early on we made some mistakes: we were spending way too much money on shows, for instance.
We've learned everything now. The bar needs to be run by us, decisions need to be made by us.
My PTSD means I can't run the bar -- I can run the supplies chain, I can clean the kitchen. Our bar manager Ian is amazing, that part of the relationship is perfect.
You seem pretty proud of the fact that the Wayves interview I did with you a year ago has gotten (as of today) 16,920 reads.
It's absolutely amazing, it just shows that many people want the bar here, 100% - Wayves proved it, it was pretty cool.
I was surprised that your emphasis on safety would have so much resonance with our readers, but it did. How did you guess that would be important?
It was just the way the world's going today. For example, José and I were in another Halifax bar a couple months ago, and this guy repeatedly bumps against me and I was like, "Excuse me give me some space," but he kept doing it. Later this other guy came up to me and said the first one was harassing me because I was gay. We've heard about several incidents in the last year at various bars and on the streets. We need safe spaces.
In the last year, I've never seen the Halifax Police in here once. We get Alcohol and Gaming regular visits of course. I would welcome the Halifax cops dropping in to see how things are. At the end of the day they're the police, they're here for us.
How has this space on Lower Water street worked out for you?
It's great. It's a direct entry and wheelchair accessible. People remember it from the Mother Tucker days, and unfortunately from the Yacht Club Social days. We face the water, we can see the harbour, it's beautiful. For our community, Gottingen Street was great in its time, but we need to be out on a main street, we need to be out of a basement.
You have a lot of products from lesbian-owned JD Shore products. Their Rum Cream is my favourite JD Shore offering - what's yours?
All of their products are amazing, but the Rum Cream is also my favourite. We started putting that in our coffees.
The bar is extremely quiet early in the evenings. Do you have a plan to change that?
Yeah - we're bringing back karaoke -- third time's a charm. We'll be doing it with an in-house karaoke DJ. We're planning a dart league, and a piano player. We'll be doing DJ music less and the DJ will be in-house. Other things: bingo and "Sip 'n' Paint" -- everyone comes in and they paint, watercolours, oils, whatever their medium is, and have a beer and they paint.
Do you miss the stability and predictability of when you were in the military?
Absolutely not. I did 17 years in the army, and I'm done. I love my life now -- it's actually pretty stable now. I live just a few minutes away, it's pretty awesome.
So what's your business model at the moment?
We're open five days a week, Wednesday to Sunday - until business picks up. Right now we're categorized as a lounge, and we need to stay that way. We've got darts, we've got games, and need to sell a certain amount of food. We have the vending machine here, and I am thinking of a hot dog machine too.
The business cash flow is very seasonal: December, January and February, we were only open 2½ days a week - the business was not there. We made as much money in one week in August, as we did in all of November.
The new physical additions you see: there are TV screens now all over the place - facing outside, one in the lobby, six more around the space. We'll be selling advertising on the TVs - lube, condoms, things like that. We've cut back on all of our expenses.
One big change is to have hourly staff doing things like cleaning and security, instead of paying for that. Our fourteen staff will be cross-trained for all of that - and for example, karaoke. Our new security guy, our first gay security guy, will also be our bingo guy, and running the popcorn machine! Do you have any idea how hard it is to hire a gay security guy? But we did it. Ian, our bar manager, will also be doing karaoke. Having our gay employees doing more means that we are supporting the community more.
This is an expensive space, we need to have it busy a lot of the time. And, I've mopped the floor more than a few times.
Also, in terms of the business model, the door now makes a significant amount of money -- it has to pay for the security and DJ.
For drag shows, the performers get the door charge for those nights -- they need to get paid. We usually have another event at the same time to keep people here after the drag show.
Do you have a regular night for drag shows?
Not a regular night. We generally don't do them Saturday nights, or probably now not on Friday nights either.
The biggest thing for me is community support. If there's anything that the community wants, we are flexible and can run things that people want.
I notice that José has stepped up to be behind the bar quite often - is he enjoying that?
He loves being there. He needs to be doing things himself in order to manage the rest of the staff. He'd never worked in a bar before, but now he's doing everything, he's a one-man show, bussing, mixing drinks, the works.
I've also noticed a few people bringing food in to eat at the bar - often from the fine Chinese Canadian restaurant you back onto, The Great Wall. Is bringing in one's own food totally OK?
That is absolutely a thing. I'm looking for someone to make something in house - sandwiches maybe.
So what do you have planned for the next year? And the next five years?
There is some more room in this building. The landlord has asked us if we would like to expand to the other side. We might keep Rumours on this side, and have totally separate businesses on the other side; they are all set up to have a disco in one space, and a speakeasy with a really classy atmosphere, with a superior experience.
What do you have planned during the Pride Festival?
We already have one party planned called RUSH, run by ARIS & RAFA. There'll be more.
And, what about tomorrow, Friday the 13th, your birthday party?
DJ Drew, DJ RAFA & Dynamo. There'll also be door prizes. Show up... about 8 - 9 - 10pm for cake.
Rumours HFX is located at 1668 Lower Water Street - right across the street from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic.
