I guess you had to be there...

We have about eight or so large shopping centres in Canberra. You know, both major supermarkets are there and also probably an ALDI, as well as a ring of secondary standards and lesser independents. 

I'm always curious to see what these lesser independents will be. For years Kippax had the best one—an army disposal (slash) models and supplies (slash) second-hand bookshop that was never going to survive. Which is somewhat ironic because when the shit lands (aliens / ELE / rapture etc.) a store like that would be a good thing to have in order to deal with the forever-altered (slash)  last days. 

We went to two of these centres today. At the first one of the speciality shops was a non-chain-store music (slash) DVD place. The owner had added a personal touch to the art on the walls outside his shop with a collage of photos of him with various celebrities. He'd not added the year the photos were taken, but the age could be roughly eye-balled given the type of film stock and the fashions within but he did make sure to clearly label who the main celebrity in the photo was, even if it was obvious—there's no one that quite else looks like Mick Jagger, for example. Some photos were group scenes with the store owner just in shot. Some were a two-shot of him side-by-side with said celeb, with those celebs often pulling a face even as the store owner maintained the exact same expression that he had in all the photos of him on the wall.

The photo I liked most was for The Party Boys, an '80s Australian band I know nothing about, though I did have a quick look at the wiki. It tickles me that there's a section titled 'The Swanee years'.

So the photo of The Party Boys is on the wall. It was probably taken in the early '80s given the  film stock used and the clothes worn by those within. Behind the band was a massive poster shouting out in letters two feet high;

  

THE PARTY BOYS. 

And on the top of the photo, at the right hand side, was the photo's caption.

It also read THE PARTY BOYS.

You know, just in case there was some confusion.