Immigrants

On Tuesday night, four shots were fired into the front of a Wetherill Park home. Inside a woman and her two children were sleeping. This incident was the ninth shooting to take place in Sydney in eight days. NSW Police have not laid any charges and have voiced their frustration, blaming the “wall of silence” in the community.

On Saturday, 25 May 2002, a man shot and wounded seven people including a child attending a wedding at a restaurant in Cabramatta. There were 140 witnesses in the New World Restaurant but no one was able, or willing, to give a clear description of the gun man.

It seems the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Continue reading "The great wall of Cabramatta" »

Sailor’s Lounge caters to the hard-bittenest drinkers in the deep south coastal town of Mobile, Alabama. There’s a woman, maybe 80, who wears her dress unbuttoned to reveal her entire cleavage. Her steady eye contact is unnerving.

Another woman, sitting at the bar, tells the story of how her pretty mother, who worked as a Bunny waitress in a Mississippi club, was found dead under a building from a suspected hot shot. That was decades ago.

And there’s the woman called Mama, who owns the bar. She’s about 70. She came to Mobile five decades ago from Turkey. She worked on a cruise ship where she was also required to double as the ship’s resident belly dancer.

Continue reading "Sweet home Alabama is only sweet for some" »