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PATRONS at the popular Civic entertainment venue Smith’s Alternative Bookshop will get a shock tonight when, at the weekly Canberra Musicians’ Club gig, owner and director Domenic Mico will tell them that Smith’s is closing up shop from Saturday.

Mico has told “CityNews” that in the wake of cuts to the public service by the Abbott Government, the business’s income had fallen by around 50 per cent in the last two months.

“We are playing to full houses, but people have no spare money,” he said, commenting that patrons who were nervous about their own jobs often paid for just the cover charge and perhaps one glass of wine or a cup of coffee, so it was impossible to turn a profit.

Mico said he could no longer keep on at the bookshop/cafe which over the past two and a half years has become one of Canberra’s liveliest music and small theatre venues, as well as a place for Canberra artistic and intellectual to meet.

Although Smith’s Alternative already had a long tradition of occasional folk, and jazz performances when he bought it, under the watch of Mico and his former business partner, Jorian Gardner, it had become a leading venue for music.

Mico now faces the unpleasant task of informing artists booked in after Saturday that there’ll be nowhere for them to perform. He said he had been told that the receivers might be able to find a buyer for the business as it presently stands, but that he had no personal financial resources to continue at the venue.

As for his own future, the national award winning artist, theatre director, director of the National Multicultural Festival and Tuggeranong Art Centres often called “the Godfather of Canberra arts,” was at a loss – “there is no plan,” he said.