A bustling French bistro with a cult following in South Yarra.
A riverside restaurant and bar selling high-end cocktails on the water at Southbank.
A glamorous, Italian-inspired lounge in a grungy Melbourne laneway frequented by celebrities including Drake and Gordon Ramsay.
These three iconic establishments in the heart of Melbourne are part of what makes the city so special.
But all three — France-Soir, SoHo and Bar Bambi — have been circled on a map by criminals wreaking havoc on the city in a way that we have never seen before.
In the early hours of the morning, when the city and its suburbs are still dark, individuals as young as 15 are carrying out their end of a deal with organised crime groups to set fire to venues previously never targeted.
Youths carrying machetes, jerry cans and phones to film their work take just seconds to carry out a firebombing — pour accelerant in, strike a match and run.
Unlike the tobacco wars that have become so familiar to Melburnians, the targeting of long-established venues is “puzzling” authorities and owners who say they have not been threatened or warned.
In April alone, the attacks are a near-nightly occurrence. Not all venues are refined eateries —both the Men’s Gallery and Kittens Strip Club have been hit on April 14 and 16, respectively.
But all venues have one thing in common — the sale of liquor.
As the map above shows, there is no other pattern to the offending.
On April 15, the night after the Men’s Gallery was targeted, The Albion Hotel in South Melbourne saw three separate fires lit around 3am.
A night later, about 4am, the thriving Emerson nightclub in South Yarra was set alight.
SoHo, on Southbank, was bombed by two teens, including one seen running from the venue as flames poured out. He was carrying a machete.
Bar Bambi, in ACDC Lane, a venue hugely popular with sportspeople and local celebrities — and which Drake hired out last year when he visited Melbourne — was targeted.
It would be set alight a week later.
On April 23, France-Soir — a sophisticated French bistro on Toorak Road in South Yarra — was the target of a suspected arson attempt foiled by passersby who noticed a pair of individuals loitering with a jerry can.
A distillery, 80 Proof in Keysborough, erupted in flames about 10.30pm on April 24.
And on April 26, footage emerged of the moment arsonists jumped from a vehicle and set Bar Up alight. The popular Chapel Street venue was engulfed in flames around 5am and completely destroyed.
There have been more than 20 attacks since February 4.
The theory for what’s behind the surge is simple. A message is being sent — either start stocking black market liquor or suffer the consequences.
Responding to the frequency of crime in Melbourne on Friday, 3AW host Jacqui Felgate said: “The place is a ghetto”.
“I can’t think of a time when Melbourne feels like more of a ghetto.”
Between nightly home invasions, thugs leaping from cars to assault people in the streets and machete attacks outside bustling cafes, it’s hard to disagree.
But this particular offence is something new.
As recently as Monday, police were responding to another attempted arson attack on a licensed venue at Southbank — the busy pedestrian promenade that is hugely popular with tourists and locals.
Two boys, aged 15 and 16, were seen putting on balaclavas and latex gloves outside Left Bank when police swooped in. Police found a sledgehammer and jerry cans inside a vehicle used by the pair.
Detective Inspector Chris Murray, the man in charge of Victoria’s arson and explosive squad, has had to take the extraordinary step of warning not only business owners but those who frequent night spots that it may not be safe to do so.
He said the teens are used because of their age and that they are roped in through secure messaging apps by organised crime.
“What we generally see is this: individuals are responding to what the equivalent would be of Airtasker, being Crimetasker,” he told the media.
“They go and get paid to do a task that’s offered by someone. Get paid a few hundred dollars.
“Often they don’t even know who they’re working for. That’s the business model that we see. So they’re being used.
“What we suspect is that these jobs are being tasked out to anyone, and probably the one common denominator is that there is someone sitting above who is pulling the strings.
“They’re the ones we’re interested in. These young kids are being used as cannon fodder for a few hundred dollars.
“And when they do go to prison, I can tell you now they’re not getting phone calls from the people who have put them up to it.”
Ex-detective Charlie Bezzina said there’s a clear shift away from tobacco.
“Criminal gangs are moving on from tobacco, now into alcohol; they’ve obviously seen an easy dollar to be made.
“The fact that they’re engaging possibly the junior people, the youth, to get paid a small amount to conduct the arson attacks is so worrying.”
Melbourne Lord Mayor Nick Reece said it was “old school gangsters using new school technology with online platforms — encrypted — being used to recruit people to undertake these tasks”.
Dr Marietta Martinovic, Associate Professor of Criminology and Justice at RMIT University, says gangs “actively target structurally vulnerable youth, including some from migrant and refugee groups” but “disadvantage and exclusion, not ethnicity alone, are the key risk factors”.
“Marginalised adolescents facing poverty, racism, school exclusion, family stress and prior victimisation (are being recruited),” she previously told news.com.au.
“They are groomed through friendship, material inducements, peer pressure and then coerced via debts, threats and shame.”
According to court records obtained by The Guardian, young Victorians being recruited by organised crime are answerable to individuals known to them as “Scarface” and “Sinatra”.
As for the businesses in the firing line. Well, they are confused.
Johanna Bails and her husband Jean-Paul Prunetti, who run France-Soir, say they have not been asked for money or threatened in any way.
“It’s bizarre. It’s really strange,” Ms Bails said.
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