The world adores matt hayward

It’s becoming patently obvious in Fitzroy that offspring are no longer the bi-product of a man and woman, they’re a fashion accessory.

Who gave these parents the right to push us, the non-reproducing masses off of the foot path with these massive prams? Besides do you think you’re really cool when your baby is screaming in the middle of Babka’s after you’ve just pushed everyone out of your path with a pram like the drinks cart on an Economy flight?

If you’ve bought designer Osh Kosh Begosh or Guess clothes for an infant, or if you’ve spent more than $2000 on a pram, you’re not a good parent, you’re an arsehole. Your insecurity about your own fashion is being taken out on your kids. You’re depriving your kids of a childhood free of branding and consumer politics. The last thing your runt little shit needs is a complex because he’s not wearing the latest toddler Nikes.

Although i’ve never had children, I was one once. Here’s some salient fucking facts from my childhood, you yuppie bastards:
- I got carted around in a STANDARD sized pram. It fitted on the bus and train and no one ever had to move off the pavement on my behalf or clear a path in a restaurant or cafe
- If my parents wanted to go somewhere cool, I went to Nanna’s and that was just fine with me. Because I didn’t want to eat tofu burgers and drink chai latte then anyway. Your kids don’t want to go where you want to go. So don’t subject them to your frivolous search for coffee shop meaning and precious, scintilating conversation
- I didn’t know what Nike runners were until the 6th grade and it therefore never worried me
- Designer labels didn’t have childrens’ wear AND WE DID JUST FINE WITHOUT IT. Unless you could get it from Target, my parent’s weren’t gonna waste money on the shit, and god bless them for it. It was only gonna be unwearable in two months anyway.
- My everyday clothes were from K-Mart and my ‘going out’ clothes were from Target
- I liked dirt and mucking about on bikes and billy carts, not iPods and bright, shiny objects. Only mysterious and dirty ones.

In the 80’s, you were lucky if you had 5-10 years before you were forced to worship, hands and knees at the temple of bright, shining objects. Sure, we had Ataris, Amigas, Nintendos and crap, but there seems no hope for the kids of the day. Back then your parents bitched and moaned about getting you stuff. Now mummy doesn’t want to been dead without a baby in trendy clothes, an iPod and a climate controlled SUV pram.

So Fitzroy parents of today, die. You sicken me.

Melbourne’s a hypervole of activity at the moment. In the alley normally only known for the eerie RAOBGAB ‘City Temple’, there’s a movie set going for the new Nicolas Cage movie ‘Ghost Rider’. They’ve taken what two weeks ago was a car park and turned it into a Yankee car lot, full of Mustangs and Chevy vans. Wasn’t Shitney always the honey pot that sucked the seppos in, keeping them out of the cooler places?

Down the street there’s the new GPO building, full of $300 metrosexual T shirt shops and a Ben Sherman boutique. And there are now 3 Starbucks I know of in the CBD. Did someone forget to inform them that Melbourne was already a coffee city and we don’t need shitty corporate maccinations unlike ‘Shitney’?

It used to be that Shitneysiders used to come to Melbourne for the shopping. Our ‘excess is everything’ uber yuppie set was restricted to Toorak and it wasn’t hard to find cool, hip stuff without traipsing through endless chain stores. After a recent sojourn to Shitney for the weekend, it’s starting to feel like a little bit of Melbourne is becoming a lot like Shitney. Especially the GPO building is starting to look a lot like a Sydney CBD block.

For those of you who don’t know, Sydney has a 48 hour patronage period. That basically means that after two days, the whole place licks balls and you’re rushing for the airport home. No alcohol could numb you to the amount of wankers and charlatins that will cross your path in the festering shithole. All the wretched chintz and glamour of their prissy little harbour can go and get fucked. Why? Because they serve disgraceful beer, have no cool bars (where people actually drink and not pop pills) and the streets and roads are crowded as. But the worst thing is that coffee and culture wise, the whole city is severely out to lunch. It’s simply Starbucks culture at its finest that you can find anywhere in the world.

Has the world become smaller or are we just loosing our identity? Definitely the latter. Shitney seems to be channeling all the best blandness of the USA into Melbourne. So please, for the love of god people, drink proper coffee from a proper bloody cafe, stop drinking Tooheys and start wearing cool stuff from local stores. Get rid of this globalised, corporate fashion shit. We are Melbourne! We were once better and as sure as VB is wretched cats’ piss, we will remain the coolest. Vive la interstate rivalry.

Please Sydney, die. You’re wrecking my town.

Brands are an ever pervasive means these days of polishing a turd into something more palatable. Basically you want a car within your means, but you still have desires. You want to express something about yourself in your lethargic 5 door econohatch. So if you’re the manufacturer, why make a better car when you can make a better badge? Enter Chevrolet UK, and it’s not what you’d expect.

Chev’s UK range (as of Feb ‘O5) are rebadged Daewoos, that have been selling in the UK for some time now. They’ve sold in moderate volumes in the land of the rising Turnip, but not well enough to keep Daewoo afloat. Given that ‘The General’ had invested so many green backs into the Korean being a global success, it had to do something. Being American, naturally making a quality product didn’t appeal to them (Ask an American about their normal cars, you’ll find out what I mean). So maybe giving it a more aspiration brand instead would work? Dang! The General’s done it again!

In North America, Chevy means 2 1/2 tonne powerful, luxurious SUVs like the Tahoe and the Suburban. Vehicles that are so ridiculously only viable in the US and wouldn’t sell in volumes anywhere else in the world. With trucks like that, Chevy is about nothing more than overt, conspicuous consumption and that all important power. In the UK, Chevy now means tarted up Daewoo compacts with a cute bow tie on the front.

Is Chevy, like many corporations, becoming too audacious? Andy Carroll, Chevrolet UK’s Managing Director beckons “We are proud to be introducing a global brand with such heritage and strength to the UK market. We have been encouraged by the awareness that people in the UK already have of Chevrolet”. Introducing?! INTRODUCING?! What have they been watching Coronation Street on repeat for 50 years? I think we all know the Chevy brand from every US TV show and movie that’s entered the zeitgeist. Remember the war? A lot of American steel has been hitting Europe since then, but none of them compact little rebadged Korean hatches. At least amongst us blokes, Chevy is a household name for big, heavy stuff. So in my humble opinion they’re going to dilute their brand not sell more compacts.

Chevy only have to look in their own backyard to know that it’s an embarrasment to drive a non-SUV, ‘domestic’ car in the states. Looking at the US Chev web site, their lot’s improving, but only after decades of embarrasment forcing seppos into Carmys and Accords. So when our English chums notice the distinct lack of these compact Chevs on all those chart topping cop shows (CSI and all that crap), aren’t they going to smell a rat? GM had the intelligence not to do the same here and Daewoo all but disappeared for the now.

Now what about compact 4WDs? There’s even more dirt to dig on Chev’s parent company General Motors. If you’ve been reading a car mag in Australia in the past 12 months, you’d know about GM’s Saabaru venture. Perhaps the most wretched hybrid of WRX moxy and Saab designer shoe sense to ever slap you in the face. As WRX owner and precision driver Kevin Flynn attests, “the Subaru is a well built, but noisy vehicle. Even brand new, compared to my old Audi it was rattly and noisy.”

So what does the General do? Put Saab sheet metal on it and try and pass it off as the perfect boulevard-to-chalet cruiser. Basically, take all the sensibility and comfort out of the Saab that appeals to all those Apple Macintosh user types and make them whine as their Evian shakes in the cup holder and their Radiohead CD won’t cover up the engine note. Two niche brands coming together doesn’t make a right. Have a look at the picture of the Saab 92-x judge for yourself. Another branding ‘truimph’ to balance the books. I think it’s probably done nothing but boost Subaru WRX sales stateside.

Less tragically, the Subaru Forrester has been marketed in India and Asia as the Chevrolet Forrester.

On the flip side, it’s amazing to see how an enduring brand can be adopted on a totally unsuspecting populous. A visit to www.holden.co.jp (site in Japanese) shows an independent operation where the Japanese are buying HSV Maloo and SS utes to Tokyo. Perhaps they’re more realistic than corporate America. See American cars do sell in Japan. But no one is offering a sporty, rear wheel drive pick up - well ute. Enter the Holden.

When I asked my Japanese mate Tetsuji Yamamoto about the site, he said “that’s pick up track with sporty body. that’s not in Japanese sense. very interesting car”.

Surely it’s better to introduce a brand with an offering of something fresh and unique than serving the same shit in a different wrapper. But the fact remains, you can’t fool all the people all the time. And the English don’t like collectively taking the piss. Here’s hoping their faces fall flat in their apple pie with Chevy UK. Maybe one day people will wake up to global branding and corporations will have to think about the consequences to their core ‘brand values’ before emptying their bowels on yet another suspecting market.