Today's Melbourne Age has an article on milk bars and their demise, and the survival of a few that have expanded into other businesses such as cafe food. Included is a photo gallery of some of the same milk bar ghost signs that I've snapped and put on this site:
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/melbournes-milk-bars-defying-their-useby-date-20120616-20h26.html.
This harkens back to the excellent online documentary and thesis produced by Dr Craig Bellamy in 2003, on the subject of milk bars in Fitzroy and the changes in society and community their stories embody:
http://www.craigbellamy.net/2010/10/01/milkbar/
The original site (milk bar.com.au) no longer exists unfortunately but the link above to Craig's site has a summary.
On related matters, a test web site for the Lewis and Skinner signwriting material is now up and being played with and improved. All the job sheets are currently being scanned by a young man who contacted us about doing work experience at our Aspergers tech club (www.the lab.org.au) and who we're now employing on this and other projects. So full steam ahead. The web system we're using is Omeka, an open source system for archivists, galleries and museums. A big thanks to Kirsten from the Victoria University archives (which I visited the other day and has some fascinating stuff) for putting us onto Omeka.
