King Street Newtown is just a couple of blocks from where I live, and it is usually described as vibrant! It certainly has lots of wildlife, and is never dull. The shops and restaurants come and go, some quickly, others stay for a long time. We watch it with interest. Whenever anything new comes along we somehow completely forget what was there before.
The latest up-and-coming cuisine looks like it might be Mexican. For a while there, Thai and Indian ruled the strip, but now there are two new Mexican ones. We've been wanting to try Guzman y Gomez for a while, but since we eat out mainly at lunch on weekdays, and they aren't open for lunch on weekdays, we haven't tried it yet. Yesterday we spotted a new one - BBNT for Burgers, Burritos, Nachos and Tacos. What a terrible website THAT one is! It doesn't list the Newtown restaurant, each button opens a new window which can only be closed, bumping you right back to the very front page. Ridiculous. The food, however, was good. They were slow, just getting their act together, I'd say, and they were just (proudly) filling their largest order ever. We didn't mind waiting, watching the passers-by on King Street. I ate two tacos, one chicken, one beef. Not the usual mushy mince meat fillings, but chunky and savoury grilled meats with spicy overtones. Very good.
After our eats my mother and I strolled down South King Street to poke around the vintage stuff, the quirky boutiques and weirdo places. Two of my very favourite shops are down there. The button shop - All Buttons Great and Small - and the ribbon and braid shop - Aviamentos. STOP! What's this? Oh No! Aviamentos is GONE, empty. It was a treasure trove of ribbons, cords, braids, rickrack, tassels, all kinds of wondrous things. I am so sad to see it go. Bollywood Braid & Trim, a little further down, has some fabulous things, but Aviamentos will be very much missed.
The last time we were in Aviamentos the man said that he was closing because one of his main suppliers, a factory in Milan, was closing and he just couldn’t be bothered having to source most of his stock from somewhere else. That was his story anyway.
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