Editorial: We’ve got a fancy new office!

If you have no idea where the old Craccum offices were, I don’t blame you – we were literally inside an old broom closet. We had to put a sign up in front of our door to stop people putting trash in front of it, because old editors used to get accidentally locked up inside. It was a nightmare.

The new space is big and fresh and new. It’s what used to be Queerspace, with Queerspace now taking up the former AUSA student-space.

And it’s honestly really nice! It’s a nice space, with a lot of natural light, and really nice glass partitions dividing up the space.

Part of the pleasure for me, admittedly, has been the product of being allowed to rip down and destroy a bunch of stuff in an otherwise public space. For example – we’ve got these beautiful old cork boards, that have been covered in purple cloth and a layer of cotton, and then stapled directly to the wood for good measure. I’ve been allowed to hack away at them with a rusty old knife, because that’s the most effective way to get them off. It’s probably incredibly dangerous, but it’s also great.

It’s also nice to have a chance to get down and dirty and blow the rest of our alcohol budget for the year going absolutely nuts on interior design. Now, I love shopping in general, but

I do just want to frame this in advance: a lot of people have gotten really mad at me in the past when I tell them that I’ve never been to Kmart before.

Now, as editor of this magazine, I’m a public intellectual, and as such I am very used to people disagreeing with things that I have to say. But I do want to take a second to talk about why liking Kmart is fucked up and wrong.

This is because, firstly, I think that if we have any nationalistic obligation to a discount retailer it should be to The Warehouse – they had a kiwi as their mascot for a long time, they’ve put in the hard yards, you can’t argue with me on this one, I’m sorry.

But also, secondly: I’d never even seen a Kmart until fairly recently? A lot of my friends make fun of me for living my life in an extremely narrow window – I’ve only been to the North Shore once, and I absolutely hated it – but it’s not like I live legitimately underground. I’ve seen probably like, ten to fifteen different Pak’n’Saves in my time?

I’m just trying to make the point that I have to be skeptical that they’ve somehow been commonplace for the last two decades and I just haven’t noticed.

Anyway – I liked it! It is basically the Warehouse, but nicer? We got some nice desks. It was great.