In the warehouse the other day I stumbled across an old lease. One detail in particular felt worth sharing. It is a scale-1:100 survey plan of Glitter Records, our home in California Lane. It’s a technical document. One drawn with clinical calm, but it holds more history than it lets on.
An Old Plan of California Lane
The plan marks our shopfront at G4. Which we see here as a compact fourteen‑square‑metre rectangle. It is hatched and slightly off to the side, defined by centre‑lines and interior wall faces. For decades, the lane functioned as a service corridor running between McLachlan Street and what is now called Lucky’s Lane. A home for deliveries, access, waste — the quiet infrastructure of Fortitude Valley’s growing economy. Long before California Lane’s boutiques arrived in 2018, the Apostolos family, who ran the well‑known California Café on the McLachlan and Brunswick Street corner, played there and worked on family projects as children.
The Valley’s Romantic Bohemian Flair
The Valley has always been full of life. There’s a wonderful book called Two to the Valley, photographed by now‑painter and former Deputy Lord Mayor of Brisbane, David Hinchliffe, that documents the store owners of a few decades ago.
For me, the Valley—past and present—has always been a place both stylish and unruly, spiritedly at odds with the conservative air of Brisbane city. Hinchliffe’s photographs capture that beautifully: a record of bohemian flair and of the small businesses that dot the Valley. The New Farm Library holds a permanent copy.
I recently came across a remark from leading Australian art dealer Philip Bacon. Most Brisbane galleries of the time were based in the city, yet he chose to open his own space on Arthur Street in the Valley in 1974. He took over an old tile dealership because it offered room to grow and the rent was affordable. Bacon — who later represented major Australian artists including Brett Whiteley, Jeffrey Smart, Ian Fairweather, Margaret Olley, and Gloria Petyarre — remembered the Valley during that time as, “pretty seedy… you couldn’t put Fortitude Valley [as your address] because that was just brothels and breweries. But later on of course, Fortitude Valley became very fashionable.”
Further back, the Valley sat on the edge of Brisbane for early European settlers — a place where looser regulations, boarding houses, and back‑room gambling thrived until the Fitzgerald Inquiry swept much of it away in 1989.
Before even then, in ancient times, long before the commercial grid, the bars, the cafés, or the record shops arrived, Turrbal and Yuggera camps and gathering places existed all across the Valley. For thousands of years, adventurous and resourceful people danced, sang, and told stories. I think often about how far the Valley’s music history reaches back.
Mapping Glitter Records at G4
In modern times, the area has offered an abundance of affordable secondary spaces. Warehouses were subdivided, marginal rooms turned into workshops, art studios, rehearsal spaces, secret stores of goods maintained safely out of view. When Brisbane City Council later encouraged lane activation in the 2010s, more of this tradition became public.
G4 sits amongst this history. Seeing it mapped so precisely makes me smile. I’ve been enjoying hand‑drawn maps of early Brisbane lately, and this tiny box has a special place in my heart. Somehow, it managed to hold the beginnings of what would become Australia’s largest independently curated record archive. The bulk of the collection now lives offsite, of course. But this humble space was where it all began.
Glitter Records from the outside.
A Neighbourhood That Adapts
I see this plan is evidence of how much can grow from a modest corner of a repurposed lane. When I had to move in after the shared office I was using for my digital magazine and e‑commerce business shut down, I didn’t know much about retail. However, the lane felt like the right place for a record store to take root. Finding this plan brings back those early days. Nearly four years ago now. It felt right to file it into the long, ongoing project of archiving Glitter Records as it unfolds.
