Stunning Flowers/Dog and Cat Beauty Salon – Kogarah, NSW
Kogarah’s dogs and cats are that much more beautiful thanks to the offputting hubris of Stunning Flowers. No one likes a braggart, least of all flower customers.
Chinese Restaurant/Hyang Won Korean Restaurant/For Lease – Strathfield, NSW
By leaving the previous tenant’s neon ‘Chinese Restaurant’ sign up, this Korean restaurant hoped to bank on an underlying current of the ‘they all look alike’ mentality to put bums on seats. Perhaps it’s a good thing then that they’re no longer in business? In reality it looks like this restaurant was part of the ‘by the people, for the people’ trend that saw Chinese restaurants originally established to appeal to the more adventurous members of white Australian communities replaced with Korean restaurants designed to cater to the area’s blossoming Korean community…and it closed because apparently, the food sucked. Japanese next time?
E. Way & Co/Pandora – Pitt Street, Sydney NSW
At the dawn of the retail era, several big names were standing out amongst the dross in Sydney. Pitt Street was quickly becoming the place to be for all department stores, and David Jones was king. One of the apparent heirs to the throne was E. Way & Company. Originally a drapery claiming to the be the cheapest in Sydney (on Pitt Street? Yeah, right), E. Way was established as a department store in 1891. E. Way was acquired in 1955 by Farmers, which itself was acquired in 1961 by the Myer juggernaut.
E. Way & Co, 1944. Image courtesy State Library NSW.
These days, jewellery store Pandora occupies the tiny building that once featured a grand display to rival DJ’s. Look at how small (yet grand) the building is in comparison to the monstrous Westfield, and you get a sense of how easily satisfied shoppers were back then. It’s sad to think about how quickly these kinds of acquisitions and mergers can absolutely eliminate a brand, and E. Way is just another victim ‘honoured’ with an unreachable, leftover facade. It’s more a case of ‘it’s not worth bothering to take it down’ than ‘leave it up for history’s sake’. Isn’t it always the Way?
BP/Belfield Plaza/Nature’s Best – Belfield, NSW
According to the Canterbury Council website, the small suburb of Belfield (previously visited here, here and here) “experienced a small increase in population between 1996-2001 due to new dwellings being added”. I’m guessing that population increases are like blog hits to local council, because they’ve given the go-ahead to plenty more dwellings and sacrificed one of Belfield’s most iconic structures in the process.
Belfield Plaza, 1991. Courtesy City of Canterbury Local History Photograph Collection.
It may not look like much, but this is Belfield Plaza. It replaced a BP petrol station (extant only through the site’s driveways) but kept the initials. The servo itself replaced a series of houses, and the cycle gives a great insight into the changing needs of society over the last century or so. I’m not entirely sure when the plaza was built, but if I had to guess I’d say mid 80s.
Belfield Plaza, 1994. Note the video shop on the left. Courtesy City of Canterbury Local History Photograph Collection.
Shopping arcades are a mixed bag for kids. If there’s not a newsagent (for cards and comics), a milk bar (for junk food, video games and ice cream) or even a mixed business (for the best of both worlds), there’ll be tears before bedtime. My grandparents lived in Belfield, so I spent a lot of time here as a kid, and I can honestly say that Belfield Plaza’s offerings didn’t interest me one bit…until the video shop moved in. Time for an anecdote…
This video shop (the suburb’s third!) was an independent one, and for a kid it seemed huge. It was how (along with granny’s membership card) I was able to discover favourites like Aliens, Batman and, memorably, The Terminator (I’m a dude – deal with it). I’d seen T2 on TV and was keen to see the original, so I barreled into the video shop and asked the guy, “Do you have Terminator?”
He stared back, blankly. “Schwarzenegger?” he replied.
It was my turn to stare blankly. What other Terminator was there? “Terminator…” I repeated, suddenly unsure if I’d gotten the title correct.
“Schwarzenegger…?” he asked, experiencing the same dilemma. “Hadoken!” yelled the nearby Super Street Fighter II machine, breaking the awkward silence of the standoff. It seemed to break his trance, too. “Action’s up the back.” I ran towards the back of the shop as he called out “Excellent film, too,” as if going for the hard sell was necessary. Thanks, video shop guy. If you ever read this, know you did some good in this world.
Belfield Plaza paint shop, March 2012.
The video shop moved out around 1996 and was replaced with a paint store. Who makes these decisions? As with the rest of Belfield, the plaza continued to decline throughout the 90s and into the 2000s, where it felt like a relic. Belfield Plaza’s one success story was Mancini’s, a wood fire pizza restaurant which moved from the plaza to the adjacent corner of Downes Street, itself a former video shop. Mancini’s now has the ultimate vantage point from which to watch as the plaza which nurtured it through the tough early days is pulled down and replaced by a generic retail/residential combo.
Belfield Plaza, early 2012. Image courtesy Strathfield Partners Real Estate.
Belfield Plaza, July 2012.
Yes, I realise that once upon a time someone might have felt the same way about the BP as I do about B. P., and that these were considered generic once upon a time. But Belfield Plaza, and in particular that video shop, I’ll never forget. The hours drained playing Street Fighter, the many movies discovered and rehired over and over, the woodfired pizzas on a Saturday evening after a day in the pool…it all happened here, and now it can never happen again.
NATURAL UPDATE:
Looks like Clancy’s finally has some competition…
From Belfield’s worst to Nature’s Best. I wonder if Belfieldians are starting to wish it had just stayed a BP?
Grapevine Cellars/For Lease – Belfield, NSW
In yet another sign of the times, a unit block will replace this former Liquorland bottle shop, which is heading to virtual pastures, having moved online on May…1th?
1th?
How could they make a mistake like this? Didn’t anyone spot the error when they were painting the sign on in hot pink? Does May the 1th fall right after Smarch? Was this a leap-100-million-years and we just don’t realise that a May 1th hasn’t occurred since a stegosaurus got laughed at by his unlearned friends for painting May 1th on his soon-to-be-moving bottle-o?
You know what? Good. I’m glad they’re moving. That way I don’t have to pay twenty dollarth for a bottle of wine.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 