Griffiths was a longstanding institution in Geelong until suffering the fate of so many bookshops in the digital age. The space has been empty for the past few years. The building next door was the administrative section of the original (livestock) Sale Yards (long since moved elsewhere).
I live in Geelong, a Victorian regional city in southeastern Australia. Golf and photography are my main interests, and together account for most of my...
What a great architectural scene! It looks like something out of our 'old west' with the long row of low brick buildings. You've processed the photo perfectly to bring out the details of the structures. I also like your POV, the way the building serves as a leading line into the frame. And wow -- what great clouds!
How sad that such a great building should be disused! You have captured it beautifully - great pov! Love that sky! I always loved browsing in bookshops - such a wonderful smell of new books! Fav from me!
@ceilidh@pamknowler Many thanks to both of you. I completely agree. Griffiths had one resurrection when Collins Books went broke (went from independent of part of the chain), but just couldn't compete with online. Apart from anything else, this shop is now in the wrong part of town. Mind you, Borders also went under. Browsing's out of fashion I'm afraid.
What a magnificent building and so sad to see that it is disused. Hope they find something to do with it soon. All the old buildings in Newcastle have been given a new lease of life in some form or other which is really lovely to see.
I love bookshops, so hate when they close down. This is such a lovely old building, so I hope they find a good use for it before the developers move in.
This is fab. I want to follow along Taffy's group. My mentor is @vignouse and he has really helped but it is fun to see what others are doing. Hope that is all right. This is a great architectural shot.
@onewing You're right Babs, it is a lovely old building but it's not in 'the right' part of town nowadays. Sooner or later someone/something will move into the space - I hope.
@dibzgreasley That's interesting Debs, how big is your local town? Geelong is around 200,000 in the city and suburbs. We've so far escaped 'orrible concrete towers, but I guess they'll come along sometime to blight the horizon.
@ninaganci Many thanks Nina, there's quite a lot of lovely old buildings along there, but the two malls a couple of streets away seem to attract most of the shoppers. We've only got one large bookshop still operating in town now.
@golftragic Let's hope they don't come! My town is even smaller about 70,000 excluding university students. We've got some ugly buildings from the 70s, lots of blocks of flats for the students mixed in with the pretty buildings. And as it is Africa, we also unfortunately have many shacks too.
@dibzgreasley I'd like to think not, but I reckon within 10 years we'll have some of those excrescences too. Geelong is a very mixed city which was: 1. Victoria's original port of landing (early 1800s); 2. major player in the wool industry with lots of wool stores and associated businesses (to c1950s/60s); 3. manufacturing (which has diminished hugely in the past ten years or so. Some of the town is incredibly ugly and has a serious crime problem, some of it is solid boring middle-class i.e. like us, and a smallish portion is wannabes and now made its. Australia in general has a massive housing boom (bubble) in the capital cities and prices are astronomical, and here's one of Geelong's major strengths/weaknesses, depending on where you stand. We're only 75Km from Melbourne with a freeway and train line to/from - and relatively cheap house prices!! You can join the dots, I'm sure. Oh, there is also a regional university in Geelong so there's a significant cluster of academics (and ex-academics) and general staff, the former of whom tend to mix mainly with colleagues or friends of colleagues. I'm sure you know that syndrome.
@golftragic My mentor is @vignouse and I recommended him to Kt8ird who is now with us. If he has any others I don't know. So we haven't been working as a group though I would love to work with Kate on similar assignments because I am loving seeing your different interpretations of an assignment. I know one thing before mentoring I had never made even tp and now with mentoring I had 3 pictures go pp in one week. But as an old lady he needs to repeat the same message to me several times sometimes. Like don't post because you can post. How do you like mentoring. I love @taffy and follow her faithfully. Try to pick up some hints as I go.
opps @Kt8bird that is. Richard will have his hands full with the two of us we both have a wicked sense of humor. And Richard is always so serious - not.
@joansmor I'm really enjoying the group interaction, everyone has different ideas which is great for learning new things, and everyone is so supportive and constructive. Taffy is a wonderful leader and is doing a fab job.
Love your work, in awe of the mentoring groups, sad about this environs being deserted. As a child, one of my favourite and exciting outings in cities was bookshops. I read this week that we use different parts of our brain for linear reading versus screen. Extrapolate - hand writing and reading books will one day be obsolete?!?
September 23rd, 2014
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pity the book shop is closed. I still love my books in paper format