Padstow Star Cinema/Civic Video – Padstow, NSW
These days, we know it as Civic Video (or just Civic, if you go by the shopfront sign. I bet they’re dying to be able to remove the word ‘video’ from the rest of their signs, despite how cost ineffective that would be), but prior to 1984 this was the Padstow Star Cinema:
Padstow Star Cinema, 1964. Image courtesy Joe Simiana.
Built in 1952 as the sister cinema to the not-too-distant Panania Star, the Padstow Star was one of many suburban cinemas of old. It’s a concept you can barely imagine now, unless you live in Beverly Hills. In 1985 the cinema closed, with Caravan of Courage: An Ewok Adventure being its last screening. See, Ewoks do ruin everything.
Ever since, it’s been a house of movies in a very different way:
The interior has been refurbished, but it’s still quite easy to see what it originally was. The screen is a dead giveaway:
The projection booth remains as well, and is now the manager’s office judging by the angry, managerial eyes staring out at me when I tried to take a picture of it. Given the impending death of video shops, it’ll be interesting to see if this building gets yet another lease on life in Civic’s wake, or whether the residents of Padstow will have to start drinking for entertainment on a Friday night, like the rest of us.
Pizza Hut/Network Video – Petersham, NSW
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Don’t let the graffiti, overgrown weeds and the video shop sign fool you – this location is still in operation as a video shop. But it’s a video shop…WITH A SECRET.
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Despite being bright purple, you don’t look too out of place, Network Video. You’ve got a disabled ramp there, a big carpark…strange roof you’ve got there, though. Looks like you, uh, added on the part of the building to the right of this picture much later. You know, the part without that…funny looking roof… Anyway, you mind if I have a look around the back?
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Gee, that’s a hell of a thing. Your wall there, Network Video…it’s taller than your roof. Now why would you design it like that? And you don’t look so purple back there. It’s brick… Ah, it’s probably nothing. Just my mind playing tricks. Maybe you were a house once, that wouldn’t be so special. Okay, thanks for your time, I’ll get outta your hair. Take it easy.
…
Oh, just one more thing. Can I have a look around the other side, between the building and the fence?
Image by Andrew Martyn.
Aha.
Niche Menswear/Scandals Direct – Dulwich Hill, NSW
The failure of Niche Menswear proves that targeting a niche never works out financially. Scandals Direct have chosen to ignore that lesson, catering to the 1% of the public who demanded the middleman be cut out of their scandals. Niche work if you can get it.
SCANDALOUS UPDATE: According to eagle-eyed and fashion conscious reader Vanessa, it was actually called NICHOLAS Menswear once upon a time. Luckily, if you read my writeup and imagine it says Nicholas instead of Niche, it still works. In this case though, shouldn’t they have called it Manswear?
Thanks, Vanessa!
Kiwi International Airlines/DJ School – Sydney, NSW
Someone get that annoying track-like structure in the foreground out of the way.
Ewan Wilson was just an ordinary guy when he founded Kiwi International Airlines in 1994. By April 1995, he was just an ordinary CEO of an ordinary small budget airline, providing cheap airfares for trans-Tasman flights and battling with rival Freedom Air. In late 1995, Wilson was just an ordinary moronic fraudster, making false claims about his personal financial situation as he applied for a loan for Kiwi Air. This led to Wilson becoming an ordinary stupid prisoner for the next three months for having acted ‘without moral regard’. Funnily enough, Kiwi Air never got that loan, and in September 1996 became just another airline going into voluntary liquidation, leaving hundreds of passengers stranded on either side of the Tasman. Around the same time, this building ceased to be Kiwi Airlines’ Sydney office, but didn’t cease to look like it.
These days, Ewan Wilson is just your ordinary disgraced former businessman, current Hamilton city councillor, and cancer patient.
Meanwhile, DJ School and DJ Gear have gone into business as liquidators. I had no idea the DJ game was so tough.
Coles Variety/Fossey’s/Bag A Bargain/Stokland – Hurstville, NSW
The Hurstville building currently featuring Stokland Furniture Depot is a bit like your old fridge covered in magnets that vary wildly in their level of ancientness. The site has put up with a variety of variety shops (sorry) since 1914.
While it’s currently Stokland Furniture Depot (at last, furniture shopping without the c—s), in a previous life the building played host to…
…Bag A Bargain, and that Escher-esque door to nowhere – a sight so crazy it’s clearly driven the Bag A Bargain mascot downright nutty. Earlier still, the building was…
…Coles Variety store (later Fossey’s), which acted as a thoroughfare to Forest Road. I hope the equivalent sign at the front of the building on Forest Road warned thoroughfare users of the doozy of a step waiting for them on the other side of the door.
UPDATE: Thanks to this Leader article from December 1989, we can finally know what caused Coles Variety to pack up and leave. Spoiler: it was Westfield.
The Leader, December 5 1989
Even if we choose to accept K-Mart as the spiritual successor to Coles Variety – which I don’t – can its champions boast that it has an ice cream parlour at the front of the store? I didn’t think so.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 