Trying too hard

Yesterday's daily newspaper contained the monthly glossy mag known as the (sydney) magazine, which in turn contained the following advertisement for a well-known German car company:


It's just one of those things: if you're trying to sound like a local, make sure you get it right, or you just sound like a prat. For non-inner-city-ites, if you drive your beemer through Erskineville you can stop at the Erko Bowling Club for a drink and a meal; you can watch the Newtown Jets play rugby league at Erko Oval; you can see the kids in the playground at Erko Public School or stop at one of the trendy cafes near Erko town hall. But if you do happen to go to any of these places and ask people if they've heard of a suburb called "Ersko" they will give you one of those looks, and quickly turn away...

Also, if the advertisers are trying to imply that people who live in Erskineville might drive their luxury cars, they ought to think again. The vehicle of choice in Erko these days is often a gigantic 4WD: there are always at least three of the beasts double-parked on the street outside my favourite cafe (even though there are plenty of parking spots just tens of metres down the road). As His Dagginess points out, these urban assault vehicles are eminently suitedto the road conditions in the suburb. After all, Erskineville was the suburb where a firefighter was almost charged with neg. driving for wiping out some wing mirrors with a fire engine on its way to a house fire -- when he realised the truck wasn't going to fit down the narrow street, his Station Officer gave the order to proceed anyway, fortunately for the people trapped in the burning house. It was only when someone pointed out to the police and insurance assessors that, if they were trapped in a burning house, they would probably be glad that a few wing mirrors were sacrificed in the interests of their safety -- rather than having the fire engine park at the end of the street and the firefighters running back and forth with buckets -- that the charges were dropped.