Whatever happened to milk bar cowboys? The fascination of middle class mums and their husband’s terror back in the sixties when bodgies and widgies ruled the streets, but parents didn’t know their names.
What happened? Milk bars died and booze barns flourished. In a vain attempt to domesticate teenage radicals, booze barns came equipped with giant car parks to keep the kids off the streets, and so as the car replaced all those oily Triumphs and Nortons, so jugs of Kahlua and milk substituted for double malted lime milkshakes. An era was over.
Today’s milk bar is the coffee cafe, sucking in vast quantities of milk (more milk than coffee) to make lattes and cappuccinos by the score. Cow cockies are happy it is this way, but what of the missed opportunity to promote one of our great food products, not just to locals but to the million or so tourists who come here for a taste of the country.
Sure, we are now famous for our coffee, justifiably so as the chance of getting good coffee anywhere in the country, in Tarras and Rawene, for example, is higher here than in any other culture. Even in the hinterlands of great metropolis like Melbourne and Sydney real coffee is as rare as real beer.
But coffee, no matter how you cut it, is not of here. Milk, however, is. So why not a return to milk bars where you can get a decent milk shake, ice cream, even a savoury mince sandwich if you are hungry, and where amidst the marble, chrome and hip music milk is celebrated like never before or since.
A renaissance is needed – a job if I ever perceived one for the spin department at Fonterra. All those public relations professionals with nothing to do but justify high milk prices could instead be initiating a new culture of dairy.
A place where the milk drinking Phantom could be revived as a super hero. Hell, there are still pirates to fight out there, and in an age of gym bunnies what could be more appropriate than a hero who relies on his own physical prowess and not ‘super’ deformity to fuel his fight against evil.
And in such a world, maybe our best restaurants could offer fresh Jersey milk, or even better, cream, with that final coffee instead of the emaciated blanche that is currently standard fare. It could even be enough to make guests want to tip their waiter.
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Nice one Keith, It could just work with the current trend to retro!