the end of an era

Two of the busiest art galleries in PE are currently holding their final exhibitions, before closing. The delightful Cuyler Street Gallery, owned by Tossie Theron, has been doing great things for PE artists for the past 13 years. Tossie is taking a well earned rest, and has sold the gallery to the owners of the Ron Belling Gallery, who apparently plan to keep it as a gallery, and open a coffee shop there too. On the other side of town,…

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Entrepreneur?

One does not begrudge any entrepreneur the chance of making a living, but the way this sign has been scrawled on this wall, in Bird Street, seems to indicate this is also another contribution to the urban decay we see in so many parts of Central.

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Keeping the Parks clean….

Even in winter, the Kikuyu grass in Richmond Park, and many others around the city, remains green and needs mowing, although it is certainly not as rampant as it is in summer. The Municipality has outsourced the mowing of the parks to private companies run, according to the latest PC Speak, by PDs, as part of its BEE initiative. I could write a book about how irritating I find acronyms, and when you get into the international realm of blogland,…

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Men at Work

The other morning there was a sudden racket outside our front windows, and investigation revealed that the edge of the park was being dug up. Later on, I saw the orange pipes being dragged along, which confirmed my theory.... this is our turn in part of a huge operation to lay an entire new network of telephone lines throughout the country, for Neotel. Our telephone system was always government owned, but in 1991 it was partly privatised (the state still…

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Car Wash

Near the bottom of Russell Road, opposite the historic graveyard, is a car wash. We have noticed that whatever the time of day, they always seem to be busy. They handwash the cars, and do a very thorough and reasonably priced job, which probably explains their popularity. An enterprising gentleman, clearly an immigrant from the North, has set up a coffee shop in the top room over the waiting room, to serve those waiting for their cars to be done.…

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Street Traders

A group of street traders at the beach front selling ther wares. Most of these traders have travelled down a large part of the continent and immigrated to South Africa in recent years looking for a better life. They are very enterprising and always have a good range of stock.

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I love Africa #2

Since we are on the subject of our interesting 1st world/3rd world blend, here's another sight we commonly see around here. There are all sorts of controversies surrounding the care of the donkies and the threat to motorists on busy roads, but they do provide a living to enterprising people who would have no other way to survive, and they are certainly are picturesque! Here they are in the upmarket suburb of Walmer.

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