KC Beauty Centre/Cut and Comb Hairdressing – Hurstville, NSW
Hurstville’s KC Beauty Centre is one of those places where you walk in an ug-mo and walk out a glamour. Pity they aren’t so concerned about their building’s appearance…but not a pity for Past/Lives. Look up (below)!
Before KC appeared on the scene, this place was home to the rather no-frills Cut and Comb Hairdressing. Did they call it that so as not to give people the wrong idea? Would the Shear and Shave sound too working class? The Crimp and Coif too hoity-toity? There’s a similarly named Cut & Comb Hairdressing at Penshurst now, so either this place moved or there’s a huge market for no-frills. I’m going with the latter; just ask KC – they didn’t even bother to invite the Sunshine Band.
Arnold’s Stationery & Balloons/Leased – Hurstville, NSW
The closure of balloon shops are so commonplace, almost everyone has been touched by a tragedy like this. But there’s still that attitude amongst balloon shop proprietors that ‘it’ll never happen to them’. Well guess what, Arnold? It did. The over-inflated Hurstville party store market suddenly burst like a…well, you know, and Arnold was left holding the bag. His inventory vanished like air from a deflating…well, you know, and before he knew it, Arnold’s stationery venture was stationary.
Unlike Arnold himself, who’s moved on, allowing a new tenant to breathe new life into the vacant shop like air into a…well, you know.
Hamburgers & BBQ Chicken/Restaurant & Take Away – Strathfield, NSW
The changing face of take-away in Strathfield. If you look closely, you can see the fading sign advertising hamburgers and BBQ chicken above the A/Cs. If you look even closer, you can see that this new shop sells ‘Mr. Dduckbocki and Miss Kkochi’. It’s not really all that different: dduckbocki is a kind of hot and spicy rice cake, while kkochi is skewered chicken. Whether or not you can get dduckbocki ‘with the lot’ is unknown, but what is clear is that Mr. Dduckbocki and Miss Kkochi clearly qualify as suicide food.
Shoe Store/Newsagent – Enfield, NSW
You may be shocked, as I was, to learn that this address has been a newsagent since at least 1951, when a Mr. C. G. Sternbeck was appointed a ‘new newsagent’ for the Burwood area. To put this into perspective, his phone number had a letter in it. In 1947, this place was vacated by a fruit and vegetable store, so I’d put its period as a shoe store between 1947 and 1951, unless it predates the greengrocer and that’s the world’s hardiest paint. Jury’s out until the sample comes back from the lab, it seems.
Enfield RSL Club/IJK Computers – Enfield, NSW
IJK Computers have the right idea. By replacing Enfield RSL with a computer shop, they’ve guaranteed that oldsters looking for the former establishment won’t dare to come inside. It’s like replacing McDonald’s with a gym. Confusing matters is the Christian City Church, which also resides inside (or C3 to their friends, as per their mind-blowing website).
In what seems like surefire talkback radio fodder, even the memorial fountain outside has been removed, and the old RSL sign repurposed as a canvas for IJK’s striking logo. How did Alan Jones not stop this crime against Australia? As wars are fought less frequently and pokies tighten their stranglehold on clubs and pubs, we have to face the reality of a diminishing need for RSL clubs. Who knows, one day IJK may have replaced RSL as a familiar acronym.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 