Fat Pizza/For Sale – Chullora, NSW
Given the success of his new comedy series Housos (with a movie, Housos vs. Authority, released earlier this month), Sydney filmmaker Paul Fenech probably doesn’t spend much time thinking about this place anymore. In 2000, Fenech launched Pizza, a sitcom set in the world of pizza delivery in southwest Sydney.
The Pizza crew.
A big hit at a time when Australian television comedy was in dire straits, Pizza acted as a kind of modern Acropolis Now, and its unique approach of challenging ethnic stereotypes through very black comedy was able to sustain a five series run which ended in 2007, and its own movie, Fat Pizza, in 2003.
Located along the Hume Highway at Chullora, this low-key pizza restaurant provided the backdrop to the mayhem of the show. Since Pizza ended, the shop has sat dormant, although for much of the period between 2000 and about 2009 it operated as an actual pizzeria, reopening earlier this year after a long period of disuse…before closing again soon after. During its last era, the walls were adorned with Pizza memorabilia, making it a kind of Planet Hollywood for southwest Sydney. It’s likely it was an operating restaurant before Fenech and the Pizza crew made it their filming location – the row of shops it’s a part of is absolutely ancient.
The shop was recently purchased after having been on the market for some time. The interior’s been gutted, making the likelihood of any kind of Pizza revival here pretty unlikely. But who knows, perhaps it’s being prepared for a sixth series? It’s unknown whether Fenech’s team owned the restaurant during Pizza‘s run, but either way, they wouldn’t own it anymore. For a long time, it seemed that this little pizzeria in Chullora was as far west of Sydney Australian television was willing to go, but the success of Pizza made it possible for shows like Fenech’s Housos to further highlight the ‘inconvenient frontier’ that is western Sydney.
Ever get the feeling you’re being…watched?
Speaking of which, if you’re starting a security company, a surefire way to NOT intimidate anyone would be to name it the Australian Watching Co. The AWC protects the block Fat Pizza is located on (or it did a hundred years ago). Uh-oh…I think we’re being WATCHED! Here’s an interesting aside completely unrelated to Pizza: the Australian Watching Company was formed shortly after the First World War (I knew it), and in 1992 was acquired by Chubb. Now it goes under the name Southern Cross Protection – but clearly not South Western Cross Protection.
OK Restaurant/Master Kwon’s Pro Tae Kwon Do Academy – Enfield, NSW
The owners of Enfield’s OK Chinese Restaurant mustn’t have had much self confidence. C’mon guys, you could wine and dine there…surely it was better than just OK?
In a place like Enfield, where the competition ranges from good to great, being merely okay didn’t help the restaurant stay afloat. These days, all that remain are the neon signs which, in years gone by, would unintentionally act as the OK’s own private lighthouse, warning off hungry passers-by with the promise of an average eating experience.
There’s a silver lining, however: the businesses occupying OK’s space today have all learned the most important lesson of the OK saga. We have Mr. Viscontini Fine Italian Food, Master Kwon’s Pro Tae Kwon Do Academy and Big Clean cleaning supplies, all of which sound unusually empowered and boastful. If not for the OK’s sacrifice, we might today be looking at Viscontini Not Bad Italian Food, Master Kwon’s Intermediate Tae Kwon Do Academy and the Moderate Clean Supplies outlet.
L.J. Hooker/Mortdale Massage Clinic – Mortdale, NSW
The sign says massage clinic, but the subtle (and deliberate) placement of the previous tenant’s extant signage quietly confesses “massage clinic”…
La Bettola Italian Seafood Restaurant/For Lease – Rozelle, NSW
Rozelle’s an area renowned for several reasons: it’s the gateway to Balmain, there are plenty of former mental patients roaming the streets, and it plays host each weekend to fantastic markets. Darling Street is peppered with great restaurants and op shops, but since the suburb isn’t as working class as it once was, not all of these are able to stay afloat. Case in point: La Bettola, an Italian seafood restaurant. The place gets big points for having that big fish mounted above the building, and I’d like to think he fell off on the day they closed their doors for good. Why did it close?
Gee, that fellow at the top wasn’t very happy, was he? Perhaps they closed in November 2008 and he just didn’t realise.
Prior to its life as La Bettola, this was a pub dating back to the 1920s. Rozelle’s pub scene dwindled once the area became less industrial – with a lack of workers needing to quench their thirst at the end of a hard day, the business dried up, so to speak. One other interesting footnote from the life of this building: in 1944, a time when lotto winner addresses were still made public much to the delight of extortionists everywhere, Mrs. P. Nolan and her aptly named “Lucky Last” lottery syndicate won fourth prize in the week’s lotto draw.
Barrier Miner, Mon 29 May, 1944
With foresight like that, you think she would have done better.
Bank/G. V. Hull Surveyors – Revesby, NSW
I love it when they do my job for me.
Of course, what the sign doesn’t say is that between being the old bank and a surveyor with a strong track record of customer satisfaction, it was a video shop. A video shop filled with Street Fighter II Champion Edition arcade machines. Are you telling me there wasn’t room in the above space to paint that bit of history in too?
MANIC UPDATE: Reader Robbo insists that the video shop was a Videomania, whose ilk we’ve encountered before.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 