The Milk Bar challenge continued

Never content to sit on my laurels I remembered this gorgeous building not far from home that I'd been itching for a reason to put up here for some reason or another. It's a huge building, and quite possibly the best in it's class. To this day I still haven't haven't anything nearly as rich as this one. It must have been a local hub as it's sitting next to the old circle line that's been converted into a lovely walking/cycling park thoroughfare throughout Northcote, Fitzroy and Carlton.

There are actually quite a few buildings like this in the area that hint at ghosts of Melbourne's past, where you can map out minor suburban nodes that disappeared once the car became more common place. Maybe the same thing is happening to the glass fronted milk bar. The gluttony of petrol stations and no name convenience stores (in the city at least) seem to have been slowly pushing out smaller milk bars. Who doesn't remember going to the local milk bar, having scrounged together as much loose change as possible, getting on your bike or walking down there to get a bag of mixed lollies, maybe some tarax drink, or if you were rich, a pack of trading cards. I still have my incomplete sets of Batman 1 and 2, the Ninja Turtles movie as well as the cartoon and Dick Smith; no idea where my Garbage Pail kids stickers went. Anyone know if kids still do this? I remember getting Tazos in chip packets in year 9, but by that point we were getting them from the local servo. Either too grown up for the humble milk bar, or their cultural significance had begun to disappear from the individual and collective consciousness.

I'm sure this goes way above and beyond the call of duty for milk bar vernacular. It doesn't have the crappy charm of vinyl signs, but thank god. Maybe the humble vinyl coke - sponsored sign is also going out of fashion. Being replaced by the garish noise of posters for cheap international phone cards, the spread of a more connected globalised world edging out even the most blandest signage. It seems that Bushells fulfilled the same purpose decades ago. Instead of the coke signage, all of these surviving sites seem to have the australian tea company painted as big as can be on the wall. While not always limited to Bushells, it hints at the historical landscape, when there was always a billy to boil not far off and plenty of dry twigs to light one. While it hints at Australia's colonial past - the British fondness for tea carried on for several generations - it too has been edged out by the espresso.

But surely, the renaissance will come. In the same way that these buildings have been preserved, maybe the humble milk bar will make a comeback. There a few po-mo examples the milk bar aesthetic and name. Jerry's cafe in Elwood is one such example. On the site of an old milk bar, it has kept the painted signage (or the owners have done a fine example of giving that impression) and even sells bags of mixed lollies to have with your latte and the morning paper. Just as trendy couples opt out of the city, have a greenchange and move to the country to start up a farm, maybe as the suburbs become a wasteland couples will open up milk bars instead, catering to those who yearn for their childhood memories.