Newtown is the gift that keeps on giving. You could be graduating tomorrow and still feel like you haven’t seen all it has to offer. You think you’ve turned all the stones when new ones appear out of thin air. It’s a place that prides itself on newness, where it feels a bit weird if it’s too calm.
Less noticed: the relentless store turnovers. Their draw is increasingly built on openings and closings so fast they’re sometimes within the year. While shaping university experiences, our memories in these places have become as fleeting as their existence; despite nostalgia we’re all looking out for the new and cheap. Rarely do you experience something that lets you glimpse through the cracks of novelty at the foundations it was built upon. This happened to me a few weeks ago.
With its sparse and older shops, nothing much seems to be happening at the quieter end of Newtown between campus and Marly. So, when I pass that building with the yellow facade and cluttered interior that’s always dark, I’ve long stopped wondering why it hadn’t been bulldozed and renovated already. But on August 15, its lights turned on for the first time in three years.
The old print shop was the last place I thought an arts and crafts sale promoted by USyd’s Architecture faculty would take me to. At dusk, its big windows were flooded with fluorescent white light, beneath which stacks of stationery scraped the ceiling. A sign that stood outside read “SALE – ONE DAY ONLY”, and what looked like an ancient printing press squatted next to the door.
I wandered endlessly through the maze of envelopes, timber sticks, ribbons, and paper of all patterns and sizes that wound towards the back of the store. Occasionally, I caught sight of other students browsing, quickly disappearing into the forest of stock.
Paper has always been such a soulful medium to me, needing to be touched, measured, written on, creased, cut, glued, sent, bound, repulped. To see each purpose-made sheet sitting and getting dusty on a shelf here makes me wonder why this crafty haven reopened for only one day, and why it had closed in the first place.
Today, few people remember or even know of Newtown Print. But before it had been closed due to the pandemic and passing of Spanish owner Agustin Perez, it had legendary status among USyd Architecture students. Recent Master of Architecture graduate and tutor Constantinos Kollias recalls that Agustin was “the go to guy if you wanted to choose your paper and do some good last-minute printing.” Constantinos was also one of several alumni involved in planning a paper exhibition as well as pop-up workshops as tribute to Agustin in USyd’s Wilkinson building this March.
“I remember joining the crowds of students at his store and then staying until very late, with my peers helping the first years set up their files to export,” Constantinos adds . “And then back the next morning, not knowing whether our work would be printed in time.”
As I chat with her in the shop, Agustin’s widow and current owner of Newtown Print Chalee also remembers this vividly.
“In the old days, we’ll stay back until 2, 3am. My husband was always yelling, because 10 of them didn’t bring the right file.” She gestures widely to the entrance wall. “They would line up right there. You think I’m joking, but it was the whole class, 50, 60 students. By number 40, it was already midnight.
“But in the end, everyone’s smiling when we’ve perfectly done their portfolio. They go home, they have a sleep, they have something to hand to the teacher tomorrow morning.” Chalee sighs contentedly, her eyes bright,, with tears. “We were so tired, but we were so happy.”
After their 2021 closure, the habits of USyd Architecture students had changed quickly. Constantinos reflects that “everything seems to boil down to paper in architecture school – drawing, printing panels, models, books and portfolios,” but this seems to be a dying sentiment among current students, where they are made to learn 3D software and submit digital portfolios. It was quite crushing to tell Chalee that even if you needed to print something now, most people just do it in the Architecture building, or in Officeworks.
“When you do your portfolio on the screen, how do they see the detail, how it feels on the skin, or the exact outlook of the color?” Chalee pinches the air as she asks. “I don’t know how to explain it, because every time when we print it out, we see the little, little details, and we are so impressed.”
Looking around again, it’s strange to think that this now-worn store held snapshots of a time when people engaged deeply with their community and physical objects. This was where students spent sleepless nights shedding sweat and tears over their portfolios, where the next day they would bring the wine-loving Agustin a bottle to celebrate.
As one of the students who visited him often, Constantinos found it hard to pinpoint one reason why. “Ultimately, I think [it’s] because I found a bit of who I wanted to be in him: I wanted to learn how to do stuff for others. And I could sense that he wanted to just talk about things – about the past, about his culture, about mine, about Newtown back in the day.”
From Chalee and daughter Paloma’s recounting, Agustin would cook paella, play Spanish guitar, sell paper, bind books and collect art, dreaming of making this place a gallery for students and artists alike. From when he founded it in 1985, the store’s bright yellow facade remains identical today while everything around it grew and died and was reborn. Now, with new prospects on the horizon, there was a palpable timeline that stretched out before and after them.
Per Agustin’s wishes and the immediate challenges of the shop, it was hard to contain the excitement of what this place could turn into, especially for Paloma and a few of us university students there. Due to the building’s age and trade, there was a comedic irony in the store not being able to install water sprinklers. The huge amount of paper and little help also means the shop is now trying to get rid of as much as possible, holding weekly sales on Thursday.
But in whispers of excitement we discussed a gallery, co-working space, garden, artist residency, and creative space, where people could come be involved in food, art and music and be together – a remedy of lost community and a celebration of history.
When the customers and owner are lost from a store, forgetting happens alarmingly quickly. Typically, the next one quickly rises to fill the gap, and it’s hard to remember what had been there just a few weeks before. Like the cars that stream past day and night on Princes Highway, many events, people, things, and places leave little trace of having ever been here, save for what we remember of them. But there is a little old print store in Newtown that reminds us something wonderful can rise from the dust once it’s settled.
While most people may know the store as Newtown Print, Agustin’s original name for it was El Faro: The Lighthouse in Spanish. So when you take your next Newtown stroll fearing the closing of your favourite shops, look out for the yellow facade.
