I have to admit, I really appreciate the Australians' love for a terrible pun. Which is why I was really excited when I started noticing how many small Australian businesses incorporate puns into their business names. There's something sweet and self-deprecating about it that I can't help but exploit and make fun of.Hair salons take the cake for the most pun-tastic titles. Today, for example, I'm gettin' my roots did at a place called "Headmasters," which is a one-two punch because it's hair school as well as a salon. Heading Out claims to be winner of Australian Creative Colourists of the year, which makes me think of how my mother politely describes things she thinks are fucking terrible as "creative" or "interesting". Other awesome hair salons are Hair Apparent, Fringe Benefits, Hairhouse (I assume this is playing off 'whorehouse'?) and my own personal fave, Curl Up n' Dye.
There's a certain cheesy innocence about restaurants with punny names—like, you know not to expect greatness but it will probably be entertaining, well-intentioned and slightly annoying, like mildly retarded cousins. Lord of the Fries is the greatest vegetarian hangover food Melbourne has to offer. And I've never been to Wok around the Clock but in my head when creepy '50s Chinese restaurant meets Happy Days, everyone wins. But then it all gets ruined by places like this monstrosity, Feddish, which is a restaurant in Fed Square that is undoubtedly filled with cunts.There's a bar in Fitzroy called Lambs Go Bar which doesn't translate into American so I guess I don't feel like it counts, and there's Lentil as Anything but I didn't get that one until I found out there's a band called Mental as Anything. Autobarn didn't seem like a pun to me until I heard someone say it out loud and I realized Aussies think Autobarn and the Autobahn are homonyms. Finally, the one that really, really still doesn't make any sense to me is this place Roozervelt's. Um. What?
Anyway, I'll leave you with my favorite two from the mattress category, Old King Coil and my favorite business pun of all time, Back to the Futon. I couldn't make this shit up.
