OLD PERTH # 6

A Cautionary Tale

Once upon a time there was a city called Perth, it was the remotest city in the whole wide wide world and in this city there were a group of old buildings that were a sight to behold. People used to get all dressed up and go into these buildings where they would laugh and smile and enjoy a thing called live theatre. It made people very happy and the city was very content. One of these theatres was called the Ambassadors Theatre and it was on Hay St.

The Ambassadors Theatre

Ambassadors Theatre on Hay st

Ambassadors Theatre Interior

Slowly but surely live theatre had to compete with something new, it was called a movie, people loved movies. Then one day an evil developer came into the city telling everyone of this wonderful new thing called the Cinema Complex. It was all the rage in a far away land of bountiful opportunity, that people admired it and wanted to be just like it, it was called America. At these Cinema Complexes you could watch a number of different movies on very big screens with things called Sensurround. People loved the movies and they loved Sensurround and slowly but surely nobody went to the theatres much anymore. This is what the evil developer wanted to happen and he bought up all of the old theatres and knocked them all down to the ground....

Ambassadors Theatre Demolition

Ambassadors Theatre Demolished

Sunlight bursts through the roof of the Ambassadors Theatre

....so that he could build his big post modernist Cinema Complexes with really attractive carpets. The people of Perth flocked to these cinema complexes and everyone was happy again. One of these cinemas was called the Hoyts Cinema Complex which was built on top of the grave and bones of the old and now demolished Ambassador Theatre.

They showed films at this complex with strange names like Star Wars and California Suite and Cheap Detective....

Then in the 1990's people suddenly stopped going to the city based cinema complexes, they now had their own home theatre systems and DVD's and they preferred to group at suburban cinema complexes where there was easy parking and really bad tasting food venues attached. So the city cinemas all went broke and they started to tear them all down and now the people of Perth began to wonder why they tore down the beautiful old theatres for such a short term fad of less than 20 years. They wondered why their city had no life in it after 6pm and wished they had a heap of old theatres in the city. That would bring it back to life they thought because they enjoyed live theatre in the 21st century as they had become more sophisticated as their little city became less and less isolated in the Internet super highway world. Then everyone had a big laugh because they realised that all of the 1980's evil developers had either gone broke or gone to jail or died in their 50's. The people of Perth thought this was funny and ironic and then they realised that as funny and ironic as it was they probably should have stopped the evil developers from tearing the soul out of their city.

The End