Saturday trendies transform Paddo

Press, 28 August 1984, Page 8

Saturday trendies transform Paddo

Paddington is Sydney’s best known suburb of “lace” trimmed, restored terrace houses. Now, Shona Martyn reports, its main street shops are a mecca for aspiring trend-setters.

A new sport is being practised on Saturday afternoons in the Sydney suburb of Paddington. It’s called cafe crawling — the leisurely pursuit of those who don’t indulge in the league of traditional Aussie sports. But the only folk getting a kick out of this new game are the trendy retailers and cafe owners. For cafe crawling, along with boutique browsing and market meandering has — in less than a decade — transformed a shopping strip rather like Auckland’s Panmure into the hottest retailing phenomenon in the city. Shops on the “main drag” of Oxford Street, Paddington, are now changing hands as quickly as their clientele change hairstyles. With shop rentals now pushing ?Austlooo a week, many traditional “nuts and bolts” retailers are moving out as their leases expire. Paddo, as locals affectionately call the suburb, is the oh so trendy, inner-city suburb of’ restored, • twostorey terraces, bedecked with white wrought iron. A postcard on sale around Sydney describes it as “the home of writers and artists.” In reality, only those who had hit the financial big-time could afford to live there.

weekly bazaar run by the Village Uniting Church in the middle of the shopping centre. In those days of hippie euphoria, the 16 or so stallholders offered plaited leather headbands and pottery wine goblets. Houses in the suburb were still (just) affordable and Oxford Street was flanked by butchers, bakers and ladies’ clothing stores selling sensible “cardies.” Now, come summer or winter, more than 300 stalls are crammed into every nook and cranny surrounding the church and more than 10,000 people a Saturday descend on the market to rifle through the latest in young designer fashion and just - retrived - from - the - attick examples of Fifties kitsch lamps and vases (art deco is too expensive these days). Shopkeepers in Oxford Street estimate that the bazaar brings them ?Aust4 million worth of trade a year. Apart from the market, the major factor that clinched Paddington’s reputation as a high turnover shopping centre was that until earlier this month it was one of the few shopping centres in Sydney able to open after 12 noon on Saturdays. Now other New South Wales shopping centres also have permission to open. Paddington retailers aren’t worried. “We’ve established ourselves and attracted a very distinct clientele,” said one. “Our customers don’t

want department stores. They come here because it’s a place to go and bump into friends. Buying is often incidental.” In the shopping area young designers who have graduated from the market vie for space with those catering for the interior decorator, the art lover, gour-

Nowadays Paddington is the home of that influential, although cliched breed, of Yuppies. The Young Urban Professionals have high disposable incomes, and a penchant for Porsches, croissants, bouquets of birds of paradise flowers, health clubs, and Rolex watches. On Saturdays Paddo is witness to a seven-hour migration by those in the city who are not so much trendy as trendsetters. The art students, remnant punks, nightclub frequenters, fashion designers, and musicians come out to see and be seen. One quick stroll down Oxford Street reveals to the astute just what is happening and what has happened in the fickle world of street fashion. It can reveal that the wearing of scarves around the head, like a washerwoman, is passe. For even schoolgirls are doing it. It can confirm that donning an American sailor’s cap is still considered interestingly innovative, but fluorescent socks are fading fast as mass market fashion merchandisers jump on the band wagon. Paddington trendies are careful to avoid looking like office workers — even if that is what they are in “real” weekday life. “You have to dress up to go into some shops,” confided one Saturday regular. “Otherwise they look down their noses at you.” Shopping at Paddington took off 12 years ago from a

met cook, or chocolate addict. The mushrooming of cafes along Oxford Street began four years ago, when a bookshop owner, Mr William de Winton, converted a grocery store next to his high-class bookshop and called it the New Edition Tea Rooms.

Offering capuccino coffees and ham-filled croissants, its continuing popularity still makes it difficult to get a table on Saturday afternoons when a duo of piano accordion player and a guitarist perform ditties in a window overlooking the street. Understandably, the New Edition Tea Rooms has an ever-increasing range of rivals. Some, like the Cha Cha Lounge, haven’t lasted long. But perhaps that was because the city’s eating out bible, “Cheap Eats in Sydney,” described it as “Fifties kitsch for Paddo’s plastic people,” commenting on the “plastic flowers in the owner’s bodgie hairstyle.” Competition for the eating out dollar is at a premium. Each cafe has tried to adopt a distinctive style to lure in pre, post, and mid-purchase shoppers who want to linger over the magazines provided free for browsing, munch witty little salads incorporating artichoke hearts and smoked salmon, and gorge themselves on 10-centimetre high slices of lemon meringue pie. At the city end of the centre there is La Passion du Fruit Salon du The, where the staff speak French with each other, the walls are painted a colour nicknamed “Paddington Pink” for its prevalence in the area, and giant Melanesian masks loom over comfy cushioned benches. Crayons and colouring books are provided for cafe-

trained youngsters whose, parents want to mull over the state of the world, or at least the next season’s fashions.

The right to linger is sacrosanct in Paddington cafe society. Cafe owners would rather turn away potential customers than hurry those already there. Keeping the customers inside it what counts, even if it’s only for yet another capuccino. Those turned away will try again another day, presumably after being dazzled by the popularity of the place. At least lingering does make a cafe visit seem slightly more like value for money. Cafe crawling is not a cheap hobby. A modest snack of French bread stuffed with hot Italian salami, marinated mushrooms and eggplant (fried in grape oil) accompanied by a pawpaw, vanilla and lime milkshake adds up to around $lO. A piece of banana cake, albeit with free whipped cream, costs a hefty ?Aust3.so. Most elegant of the cafes, so far, is Miss Betty's which proudly boasts of establishment in 1985;. It has a soothing decor of dusky green, a few whtie grecian pillars, outdoor conservatory for summer snacking, and fine classical background music. Most hyped-up is Zorba the Buddha’s, run by devotees of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh whose picture adorns the wall. A note on the menu describes the venture as a marriage between spirituality and commercialism. Staff here wear pink and purple uniforms, and hug each other frequently as they ferry around concoctions of vine leaves, hommous and tabouleh to the blare of rock music from a giant juke box. The manager of Rajneesh Services, Mr Deva Sudeep.

recently admitted that this cafe is not one for lingering. “The energy level is too high,” he told the “Sydney Morning Herald.” The half kilometre stretch of Oxford Street between the Paddington Town Hall and Centennial Park also boasts four health food cafes, one of which is inappropriately named Sloane Rangers after a stereotype of Britain’s upper crust Newest entrant to the scene is the Hot Gossip Cafe, a converted milk bar, which doubled its turnover within a few weeks of opening. But the picture is not so rosy for the old-school Paddington retailers. Russell Storch recently closed his hardware store in the main street because of a 400 per cent rent rise. He feels sorry for Paddington residents who need to buy tap washers as well as sea salt grinders. An Oxford Street fruit shop recently sold for sAust36o,ooo and another store for $250,000.