My mother wanted her hair cut last week, so I accompanied her on the bus to Footscray, to attend the Vietnamese hairdresser in the Footscray Market.
Footscray has changed a lot since I was a kid, so I did a bit of reminiscing whilst I waited for her.
Describing Footscray to outsiders might help make it seem more intriguing, so perhaps more people might come and visit.
Leeds Street was the first part of Footscray to turn Vietnamese, in 1981. There were two Vietnamese jewellery shops which opened up – one in the Footscray Market on the Leeds street frontage, and one on the other side of the street. The one in the Market is still there, although I am not sure as to when it is open as I have never seen it thus in recent years. The other one has since closed. Quickly after that, the rest of Leeds Street was filled up with other Vietnamese shops and then, by the late 1980s, Vietnamese restaurants replaced the moribund Italian cafes (apparently hives of the newly booming heroin trade) in Hopkins Street opposite the market. The only remnant of the former Italian presence is Cavallaro, the cake shop which has been there for almost 70 years.
There are a lot of Vietnamese restaurants still there in Hopkins Street, although Hy Hy, the first generation restaurant I used to enjoy visiting 25 years ago, has been gone for at least 15 years, replaced by fancier next gen establishments which might be more swish, but seem less yummy to me (sorry folks, I like sizzling beef with plum sauce and I hate that I can’t get it anymore).
I would say when looking at Footscray Shopping Centre now that the Vietnamese precinct is more or less restricted to Leeds Street and Hopkins. A lot of businesses have apparently moved further west, to Sunshine or St Albans. (I rarely visit St Albans anymore – I don’t have family there these days, and I don’t currently have any friends in Sunshine, so I can’t really comment at great length on those suburbs.)
The rest of the main shopping area, Nicholson Street and Barkly Street, and the non-medical part of Paisley Street, is now an African precinct, although it is peppered with hipster bars and abundant kebab shops. At one point, about 14 years ago when I was at the height of my mania for Ethiopian food, I has tried just about each and every Ethiopian restaurant in Footscray, and knew the owners of several by name.
Some are still there, and some new ones have opened, but the ones I enjoyed most are now long gone. I miss them, but I do have an Ethiopian restaurant a little more accessible to me in Maribyrnong Road which I can frequent more easily.
A lot of the pubs of Footscray are gone, or going, or replaced with hipster bars. Between the Plough (early convert to gastro pub) on the Geelong Road corner, and the Footscray Hotel (whose days, I suspect are very limited) just after the newly converted Moon Dog Brewery (a giant rodeo beer barn), there are a huge number of bars along Barkly Street – Slough, Josephine, Little Foot, Cheeky Pint, just off the top of my head. But I miss some of the pubs – the Barkly and the Royal are redeveloped facades. The Bayview was flattened almost 40 years ago, as was more recently the Belgravia on the corner of Nicholson and Buckley. The Courthouse is business as usual, poker machines and pub TAB, much as it has been for the past 30 years, at the south end of what used to be the bottom half of the original mall area.
When I meet my friends to eat these days, it is either opposite the Town Hall at the Station Hotel, which has a good steak house, or for yum cha at Golden Horse, at the Leeds and Barkly Street corner of the Market.
There are still lots of worthwhile places in Footscray to visit, although I mostly will avoid the problem area which is Nicholson Street, and you will not catch me there after dark any longer than it will take for me to find a taxi.
Lost For Words! 