abandoned drive-thru
on the western corner of the dud shops is a drive-thru menu sign showing the cost of hamburgers 20 years ago.
a hamburger, chips and diet coke for just $5.50? no wonder they went out of business.
for the duration of my maylands life, this drive-thru was attached to an indian restaurant called anokha. i always wondered why an indian restaurant was selling hamburgers and cappucinos but maybe their food is modern-indian.
i did some streetview detective work and discovered that this sign once belonged to a cafe called Maylands Alfresco which operated sometime between 2008 and 2012.
to eat "alfresco" means to eat in the open air, but the only way you can eat alfresco at Maylands Alfresco if you eat in the parking lot on the bonnet of someone's hot car.
the world is your table! unless you have a timid mind. the woman in this photo is standing right between two perfectly good tables but she has chosen to make her life miserable by eating standing up. look at the poor lady. one hand holding her bub, the other fishing round in her bag for another chip or hamburger.
this streetview capture was from 2009. i clicked to the next date in 2014 and the woman and baby were gone. i don't know what i expected, but i was hit with a sense of loss. imagine if you clicked the next date and the woman was still there and holding a five year old, and then in 2019 the kid is ten and doing ten year old things, squirting passing cars with a supersoaker or whatever, and you can see the woman is starting to age, maybe shes rubbing her back or her hair is falling out, and then its 2026 and the baby is now a rude young adult with flaired denim shorts and a backwards cap and theyre doing something on their phone and their mum is like, jayden can you help me find my keys in my bag, its somewhere amongst the chips and hamburger and the teen is rolling their eyes, ugh mum, youre always dining alfresco but not in the right way, and the mum suddenly looks at their rude teen who was once a darling baby and says, yes, i have dined alfresco in this carpark with you for your whole life and i will until the day i die and ill tell you what my darling, i wouldnt change these alfresco moments for all the fine dining in the world, and the teen rolls their eyes again but click forward to the streetview capture in 2056, the baby is now middleaged and balding and holding the bag open for their hunchbacked mother while she rummages around, the totebag now black with grease and the chips are poking through the holes and in the next year, the middleaged baby is now helping their mother off the ground, she has had a sunstroke and has collapsed and hit her head and you can see all the chips and hamburgers spilt all over the tarmac and google has censored some of the blood, and then the next year it is just the middleaged baby, now fully bald, crouching at a tombstone in the carpark and weeping, and the next year its the same scene and the same scene every year after until there are two tombstones, the mother and child resting side by side in the carpark out the front of maylands alfresco, no longer alfresco.