Do you remember the places we used to hang out in Adelaide in the 1980s and 1990s?
If you remember the smoky haze of The Coffee Pot or sifting through vintage wares at Bizarre Bazaar, enjoy this journey back to the places we used to hang out in the ‘80s and ‘90s.
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Back in the day, before social media and online gaming, teenagers participated in a ritual known as ‘hanging out’. These were some of Adelaide’s favourite places to do pretty much nothing at all.
THE COFFEE POT
Once you made your way up the dark and dusty staircase you’d be hit by a layer of stale cigarette smoke hanging low in the air, the tunes of PJ Harvey and, if you could nab the window booth, a view down into Rundle Mall. We’d hang there on Friday afternoons scooping big blobs of that whipped cream that just sat out on the bench all day into coffee while talking about life, love and the future with friends. This little lounge on James Place was one of Adelaide’s original coffee shops in the ’80s and ’90s and a prominent meeting place. You’d often spot kids in various school uniforms hiding out there smoking a naughty cigarette on Friday afternoons (although given you could smoke at 16 back then they might have been legally allowed). It shut in 2001 and the building was left vacant for years. In November 2013 the venue was approved as a small lounge with entertainment that – when it was reopened by Cassandra Tombs and Bryan Lynagh of the Tuxedo Cat – retained its retro decor, had $5 tinnies and hosted Kate Bush Wednesdays. But alas, it’s no longer operating and so all we have are those hazy memories of whipped cream and good conversation as we lounged in the maroon leather seats in our Doc Martens and flannel.
THE SLANG AND SAYINGS ONLY SOUTH AUSSIES WILL UNDERSTAND - PART 1
THE SLANG AND SAYINGS ONLY SOUTH AUSSIES WILL UNDERSTAND - PART 2
THE ELEPHANT WALK
This little dessert bar on Melbourne street was famous for its dark nooks, rattan and bamboo furniture and the big wooden elephants that stood sentry as you entered. The Adelaide dessert bar scene had a big moment in the mid-2000s and you can now find them all over. But back in the ‘80s and ‘90, dessert lovers looking to indulge their sweet tooth would be found here at the Elephant Walk Cafe in North Adelaide, or Spats Cafe on King William Rd. Opening in 1988, the Elephant Walk offered waffles, French crepes and hot chocolates. But it was the decor that added to the sugar coma vibe – choc full of trinkets from India, Thailand, Indonesia and Africa mixed with low lights with red filters of cellophane. It always felt a little like walking into a heady dream or a British Raj bordello. Couples loved it, as did small groups of friends on what was then dubbed a “recovery night” out.
THE ICE ARENA
It was just like the jingle, when this joint – which had an Olympic-size ice rink, a speed track, Freddy The Penguin and a coffee shop with hots chips and cinnamon doughnuts – opened in Thebarton in 1981: Come to The Ice Arena so nice to see ya, so good to be doing so well, skating, skating. Unless, of course, you happened to be a “regular” from the rival rink at Payneham. Then you received a frosty reception. The icy stares went both ways. Which is why everyone was in a spin when Payneham closed in the late ‘80s and its cool kids migrated to Thebby. It didn’t take long for everyone to chill out and play nice on the ice, be it limbo, crazy trios or couple skating, when we all thought we were Torvill and Dean. But then the speed track was replaced with an artificial (obviously!) indoor ski slope with skiing and tobogganing ... and some reckon it all kind of went downhill from there.
MALLS BALLS
This was the place to be after school on Friday afternoons in the 1980s. Or rather, meet up, after dumping your school bag out the front of the then Sportsgirl store, along with hundreds of others, back before security was a thing. After a lap or two of the Mall, we would make our way to Max’s to check out the hotties, er hot chips ... We had it in the bag. Until the afternoon we returned to collect our bags and they were nowhere to be seen. Luckily for us, we quickly discovered they had been collected for safekeeping. Lesson learnt.
In this day of mobile phones and text messaging the uniquely Adelaide saying of, “Meet you at the Malls Balls” is now, sadly, a thing of the past.
MAX’S
If you’re old enough to remember John Martin’s aka Johnnies in Rundle Mall (“You’ve got more front than John Martin’s”) you will also know its neighbour, The Gallerie shopping arcade. Mum might have taken you to Oscar’s Coffee Shop, which was based on London’s Cafe Royal, in the mezzanine where sweet treats included Knickerbocker Glory ice cream sundaes. But, when you were with your mates, Max’s – on the lower-ground level – was the only place to be. Well, one of a few places to be: others being the restaurant right at the back of the Sportsgirl store which served super healthy salads, and where you could sneak in a smoke, while in your school uniform, without getting caught. That said, Max’s house specialty – spicy seasoned hot chips – was much more to our teenage tastebuds.
RECORD STORES
When the spunk you had just met at a Blue Light Disco, Seniors or Princeton dance said, “I hang out at CC Records on a Friday night after school” it was music to your ears. CC Records in Rundle Mall was the perfect place to accidentally bump into one another and then share a sundae at nearby McDonald’s, where, if you were lucky, you would get a table on the balcony. In the 1980s and 1990s, we had CC Records, Allans, Muses, Seeing Ears, Sanity and the Virgin Megastore – all in the mall precinct – and Central Station, Big Star, B Sharp and Verandah in Rundle Street. With their music crankin’, they were like nightclubs for teenagers who hung out in them to listen to and buy records, cassettes and cassingles(!), CDs, band tees and posters - and pick up a free copy of SAFM’s real music chart. While the Mall stores were welcoming palaces of pop, the Rundle Street stores tended to be a little more intimidating, with High Fidelity-types manning the counter, ready to pass quiet judgment on your latest purchase. Browsing Spotify will never match this.
SHOPPING MALLS
You know how cafe owners get annoyed by customers who sit on one coffee for hours? Well imagine how franchisees in food courts must have felt when teenagers took over the tables for what must have seemed like an eternity. We mall rats – munching on Maccas – would pretty much take up residence in the Marion shopping centre’s food court during the school holidays. And, of course, there was the aforementioned Rundle Mall and its balls. But what about the Myer Centre in the 1990s? After you were done with Dazzleland, featuring the world’s tamest rollercoaster, you could then hang out around the columns at the front entrance which inexplicably became a popular youth haunt.
SIZZLER
Be honest. You thought Sizzler was the height of sophistication when it opened its first Adelaide eatery at Parkside in the late 1980s. Suddenly Pizza Hut seemed so passe, and all we wanted was Sizzler and its all-you-can-eat smorgasbord with seafood (mix) salad and a sneezeguard. So much so, that there were queues of up to 1000 (No joke! This was on Mother’s Day in 1990) waiting to get in. We can be forgiven because it was in the days before we were lining up to get into Heaven and Planet nightclubs, and Sizzler did have that cheese bread. And, again, be honest, you wanted to know how to make Sizzler’s cheese bread way more than you craved Colonel Sanders’ secret “original recipe”, locked away to this day in a vault in KFC’s Louisville headquarters. While you couldn’t really hangout at Sizzler, Parkside, in its heyday – it was more of a load your plate up like Homer Simpson, repeat and make way for the next round of diners – the Sizzler at Darlington was a different story. Close to Flinders University, it became somewhat of an extension of the uni refectory.
THE VINTAGE TRAIL: BIZARRE BAZAAR, LITTLE HOUSE OF TREASURES AND MIDWEST TRADER
The ‘90s in Adelaide was also a time when vintage clothing was all the rage. In 1992, sisters Briar Petersen and Trenna Oelsnik opened Bizarre Bazaar. Down the road in a little basement you’d barely know was there from Rundle Street was Little House of Treasures and around the corner in Ebenezer Place was Midwest Trader. Opened by Jarrad and Kate when they were just 19, this store is still there almost three decades later – still stocking vintage and new clothing. All were meeting places for those looking to kick off shopping trips or coffee catch-ups with a trawl through the racks of old op-shop clothing on the hunt for perfect vintage flannie or worn-in work boots. In 1996, vintage Bizarre Bazaar transitioned to Irving Baby!, adding local designers to their offering. It closed in 2015. Little House of Treasures closed its doors in the late ‘90s but was reborn in recent years as the fabulous Fox on the Run Vintage, run by owner Meg Fox.
GLENELG JETTY
Brighton was great and Henley was fine, but it was Glenelg Jetty that took the cake in the teenage hang stakes. We’d jump on a Red Rattler tram in the city with our bathers stashed in your hessian backpack (decorated with the names of our favourite bands) and head for the South Australian version of Bondi. And while Bondi might have surf, it doesn’t have a jetty where young blokes in tight black jeans can impress the girls with backflips, sueys, bombers and horsemeats. Occasionally an older fellow, having spent the afternoon at a pub on Mosley Square, would thrill everyone with a perfectly executed belly flop, and once a year the art of foolishly leaping from piers was formally celebrated with the Birdman Rally. Good times.
DOWNTOWN AND MAGIC MOUNTAIN
The Big Two when it came to eighties and nineties teen hangouts, Downtown was a Hindley Street games arcade and Magic Mountain was ... well a giant dog poo with water slides, more or less. Both felt a little bad and edgy were both were buckets of fun. Highlights of Downtown, beyond the Space Invaders and PacMan machines, were a rolling skating rink and a light-powered shooting gallery where you could make a cowboy play the piano by shooting him in the butt. Magic Mountain had bumper boats, a bunch of slides and stacks of arcade games that you could play in your dripping bathers while eating a bucket of hot chips. The Beach House, unfortunately, is just a shadow of Magic Mountain.
ZZZZZZ...... SCHOOL
Are we that boring? Was school really one of our favourite haunts? No way back in the day. But you would think it was the way we can’t seem to get enough of it these days. Meet anyone else who’s from Adelaide – who you don’t already know, that is, because, let’s face it, there’s pretty much one degree of separation here – and you can guarantee one of you will not be able to resist asking the other the question. Whether they are a supermarket checkout operator or supermodel, rocker or rocket scientist, there is only one thing we really want to know about our new acquaintance. And that’s: “Where did you go to school?” Every. Single. Time.
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