Where Are They Now? 2015 Edition
As the sun sets on another wonderful year of staring longingly back into the past and more often than not wondering “why?”, it’s time to turn our attention to some of the places previously featured on PLOTNF. In the twilight of 2015, this terrible trio (or terrific trio, if you work there :D) are of interest entirely because they’ve all lost reason for being interesting.
Yes, if they’d have made these changes from day one, we might never have known the surprisingly philanthropic tale of Australian Plastic Fabricators…
THEN
We were attracted by its charitable red nose, and certainly not by its colour scheme. Perhaps sensing this, the APF crew sent around a collection jar of their own and coughed up for a new coat of paint.
NOW
They’re really married to that colour pairing, aren’t they? I wonder how it went down as they rediscovered the red nose during the painting. Did someone recognise it? Was there anyone left from 1995’s management team to say “Oh, that bloody thing’s still up there”? Did anyone make a joke about the boss having a redder nose than the building? Only the building knows for sure, and walls can’t talk – especially when they’re covered in a new coat of paint.
We might never have gone from A to…A with A Helen and her Pavalova Palalice…
THEN
Helen bought too many vowels.
NOW
For reasons we may never know, although perhaps tied to some kind of customer service trouble, Helen has decided to call it a day. Well, actually, if Helen was calling it, it’d be A A Day, wouldn’t it? Or A Aday. Or Daay. Hee hee, I could milk this all daay.
Props to you for finally showing some restraint, Helen, but alas, it’s too little too laate.
And perhaps saddest of all, we may never have known the story of the suburban movie house that became a…suburban movie house.
THEN
Formerly the Padstow Star, a cinema dating back to the early 1950s, Civic Padstow and its team of minimum wage teens serviced the entertainment needs of the area for over 30 years before finally shutting its doors last month.
NOW
The closing down sale was so drastic that even the shelves were cleared out.
Seeing this sad, empty lobby makes you wonder about the thousands of people who would have made their way up those steps over the decades, eagerly anticipating a few hours lost in a celluloid world of fun and excitement. And now that feeling will never exist there again.
Put your hand up if you’re the reason they had to add those disclaimers down the bottom. C’mon, you know who you are. Oh yes? You? Congratulations, you’re an idiot.
The light’s off, the plug’s been pulled, the register’s empty and overdue fees will be waived.
Goodbye 2015, hello 2016 and all the wondrous stories of past livin’ ahead of us. Happy new year, folks.
Australian Plastic Fabricators – Silverwater, NSW
Now, before any employees of Australian Plastic Fabricators read this and panic – this place is still in business. But for once we’re not interested in the business itself.
For those of you no longer in primary school, it may surprise you to learn that the SIDS and Kids organisation’s Red Nose Day event is still going. A major fundraising initiative to help the fight against sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), Red Nose Day involves (at least, it did when I was in primary school) buying a plastic red clown-like nose to wear all day, with the money going to SIDS and Kids. Even as a kid, I had a hard time marrying up the concepts of SIDS research and wearing a red nose. I get the idea of being “silly for a serious cause”, but why a red nose? Wouldn’t a rainbow or comically oversized nose be even sillier? Personally, I was always disappointed that the noses didn’t honk. Maybe that was the deluxe model.
During my school years it became a phenomenon akin to the Starlight Christmas ornament scramble. On the last Friday of every June kids went wild for these red noses, and anyone who missed out was for the rest of the day shunned nearly as badly as the kids who dared to wear their red nose the following Monday. I don’t know that many of us actually understood that there was a charity behind the clowning – I suspect had they known they might not have been as enthusiastic.
But for the first ten years or so of its existence, Red Nose Day exploded into the national psyche. You’d see newsreaders, politicians, shopkeepers, anyone who wanted to be seen to be doing some good (or anyone who’d be laughed at anyway) would don the red nose…and always, always Red Symons.
These REALLY should have honked.
It took off to the extent that SIDS and Kids started producing red noses for cars. For that one wacky day you could surrender your car’s dignity for a good cause, and many, many people did. So ubiquitous was Red Nose Day in my youth, yet so sudden was its disappearance once I reached high school that I was kind of amazed to learn it was still going. Certainly at this Silverwater factory, it’s been Red Nose Day every day for years.
At the height of Red Nose Day mania, SIDS and Kids took the bold step of producing red noses for buildings. This was a risky move: SIDS and Kids had to be sure that the recognition factor of the event was so high that people would know what the hell they were looking at when they saw a giant red dome on the side of any building zany enough to go with it. Maybe this was the case in 1996, but these days, the fading red growth attached to Australian Plastic Fabricators of Silverwater (a suburb no stranger to red noses) doesn’t even give cause for a double take.
That said, I’m sure there are some babies out there who owe their lives to AusPlasFab’s brave choice years ago to look the fool amongst the hardened plastic fabrication industry. By the aged look of this nose, those kids are probably old enough to work here now.
SIDS and Kids’ Red Nose Day will be held again this year (its 25th anniversary) on the last Friday in June. Do your bit and make sure that the only red noses attached to cars this year aren’t those obnoxious Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer ones.
Past/Lives of the Near Future 