The Sandwich Shop/nothing – Enfield, NSW
This shop is straight up creepy. The ye-olde Englishe font, the extreme dilapidation, the offputting warning of ‘NO TOYS’ graffiti’d on the shopfront…
I’ve not seen this place open once in 20 years. Creepy. It has that weird grassy patch next to it. Creepy. That chilling dull red bin? CREEPY. This guy:
"SAMMIDGES, BURGERS, PIES AND DRIIIIIINKS"
Mildly unsettling.
Spice Corner/nothing – Hurstville, NSW
It takes balls to turn a corner shop into something as specific as a SPICE CORNER, but that’s exactly what the proprietors of this ‘All Asian Condiments’ shop did.
It’s nearly impossible to read without actually being there, but the shop was indeed the Spice Corner. Even Trove can’t save this one – someone once sold a German piano out of this address. Amazing, right?
The clearest and most visually appealing evidence of its former glory lies here, on the side of the shop.
Trinder’s Produce Store/Frontier Signs/Mixed Business/Nothing – Hurstville, NSW
Along the long and lonely Kimberley Road, Hurstville sit numerous husks of shops. A quick search on the amazing Trove reveals that today’s entry on Past Lives was once ‘Trinder’s Produce Store’, and was used as a voting location from 1930 to 1948.
Image from Sydney Morning Herald, 24 Oct 1930/Trove.
Built in 1926, no evidence remains of Trinder’s Produce Store. The shopfronts appear to have been out of business for years.
The awning reads ‘Frontier Signs’, but the sign itself has been fractured.
Oddly, there’s a very faint but still visible company name beneath Frontier Signs. It’s hard to read, but it certainly doesn’t say ‘Frontier Signs’. You’d think a sign company letting something like that happen would be like Dulux selling paint in Berger cans.
Corner shop/nothing – Belmore, NSW
Great, the time machine worked.
Quick! It’s 1953 and I’ve forgotten my kid’s birthday! Where will I be able to get her a…gift…maybe something…I dunno, popular…at the last minute?!
Yung thugz take note, this is how graffiti tags looked a hundred years ago.
Thank goodness! Call off the search!
Corner shop/nothing – Earlwood, NSW
On a surprisingly busy intersection in the backstreets of Earlwood sits this former corner shop.
It’s impossible to say why it closed, but the fact that I was shouted at by passing motorists twice while I took these photos suggests that the proprietor may have decided that the rude residents didn’t deserve a convenience mart.
Peters Ice Cream seems to have had an iron grip on this place in its heyday – closer inspection reveals even older Peters signage beneath what’s visible. Peters used ‘The health food of a nation’ as a slogan from 1923 through to the 1970s, after which time health food shops stopped carrying Drumsticks. Ice cream companies couldn’t get away with a slogan like that these days, that’s for sure.
The signage the shop sports today doesn’t exactly scream ‘C’mon in and get your bread and milk.’ The back of the shop appeared to be a residence, so the shopfront is as good a deterrent as any for burglars or Streets fans.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 