My dad's electrical appliance store stands on Barkly Street in Footscray, Melbourne. It's the same street where Romper Stomper, the 1992 neo-Nazi drama starring Russell Crowe, was filmed — something my Asian dad is proud of.
I grew up on this street but never ran into a single skinhead.
Instead, while I worked as a sales assistant during the school holidays, old ladies would often ask me, "Can you get me an Australian salesman?", and I'd run to find Giuseppe or Jakov.
Even though my dad owned the business, Jakov, a tall and stately Macedonian George Clooney, acted as our store manager.
It was easier that way.
After all, what would a South-East Asian refugee know about electrical appliances, especially one who had been deprived of all forms of modern technology for almost half a decade in Pol Pot's Killing Fields?
My father knew how to read and write in five languages, but he also understood the importance of humility, of laying low.
Too many people like posturing as big shots, he'd say, when the most important thing was to run a good business.
Once I saw him calmly listen to an apoplectic customer rant for 20 minutes. He was unfazed, even when the man picked up the Yellow Pages and threw it at him.
"Don't get so angry," dad told him, "you don't want to have a stroke".
As a four-year-old, Granny introduced me to nougat from the Italian pizzeria. As a 14-year-old, my friend Betty and I visited Café D-Afrique because she had a crush on the manager's son.
In Footscray library, I was handed my first love letter by a young man who eventually joined the army to get away from these streets.
Dad's appliance shop was the centre of my world, and this world was diverse in an unassuming way.
For every racist old lady, there would be one who'd pat me on the hand and praise me for helping out the family. Once, one came back and handed me a chocolate box.
"You are a good girl," she said, "and your people know how to look after their elders. You don't just abandon them to aged-care homes."
I got my first marriage proposal at 18 from the bloke who lived across the road at the Barkly Hotel, after I sold him a portable fan. I also connected women up with the first early model Nokia phones so that their stalking partners could not find them.
When we closed up one summer evening, it was still light outside. In the car park, a man was sprawled out on the ground like a starfish, unmoving.
"Oh no," I said, "let's go see what's wrong with him."
"No!" dad commanded, "Get in the car." So I did and he drove away. "Now you can call 000."
After I called the ambulance, my father said the guy had probably overdosed and that we should not approach him in case rival gang members thought we were his allies and tried to beat us up.
Dad knew all about these sorts – often, pairs would sneak into the dark sound lounges of his store to do their special deals, passing on small plastic packets of white powder with a secret handshake.
But I knew a little bit about them too.
They were not all faceless thugs slumped in alleyways. Their faces smiled at me from small photo frames on a makeshift shrine my friend Richard Treager had made in his small office.
Richard was an outreach youth worker who supplied school textbooks to disadvantaged students, and he kept photos of each teenager he knew and loved, but who didn't make it.
"Not addicts, but people with a drug dependency," he gently corrected me.
As property prices soared over the last few years, we have realised that gentrification is not always a bad thing. The new young apartment owners are respectful and generous.
"They don't bargain you down to your last cent," my dad marvels. "They don't resent you because you own a business."
Dad no longer has to pretend that someone else – someone vaguely white – is the store manager.
To these middle-class hipsters, an Asian owning a store is not a cause for resentment.
Their small and cozy bars have transformed our town in a way that no amount of local council policy could – they've made us feel safer at night.
This bustling street has survived the recession, the drug trade, and the pandemic and is still going strong.
It includes a European shoe seller who has been in business for over 60 years, a cannoli maker for over 50 and an appliance store for close to 40. And it still allows burgeoning businesses to grow.
Nearly 30 years later, Russell Crowe really needs to return to see what miracles have happened to his old stomping ground.
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