Down Nicholson Street Mall, past the pho and noodle shops, Cheap n’ Chic is closing down. A FOR LEASE sign has been plastered across its windows. The walls, once crammed with goods, are now bared white. Only a few bags hang off the hooks. \nI browse while the Vietnamese community radio airs a saxophone’s mournful solo. People take their finds to the till. The woman behind the counter thanks them. She drops their money into a takeaway container. One by one, the coins smack against the plastic, ringing like gunshots.<\/p>\n
This is how things roll in Footscray. Immigrants staying at the old Maribyrnong Migrant Hotel have always been attracted to the region’s cheap housing and proximity to manufacturing industries, and the central business district gets a makeover with each migration wave.<\/p>\n
In the years after the Second World War, it belonged to the Europeans until refugees from Central and South America, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia took over. During my childhood and adolescence, Footscray was a Western-suburb frontier where people ‘speak no Engrish’, especially the Fresh-Off-the-Boat mums who dangled their half-naked toddlers over the gutter, the stench of piss overriding that of rotten apples.<\/p>\n
My parents took me with them on their shopping trips, introducing me to other Footscray idiosyncrasies: durian, eight-dollar haircuts, Made-in-Japan audiovisual fetishes, Forges, Chinese Chess, and frontyard karaoke. While Ma bought the essentials, Ba would babysit me. We’d window-shop at the books and records stores around Dennis Street: Lang Van, Khai Tri, and Nguyen Ha. Ba bought the latest Paris By Night, while I picked up gyrating dance moves from Lynda Trang Dai.<\/p>\n