Glen Fredericks, of Adamstown Heights, spotted this scene at Charlestown Square.
So, is this pants-down style a hipster thing or a hip-hop thing?
Well, the mannequin doesn't have a beard. So that rules out hipsters. And those in the rap subculture do tend to wear their jeans quite low. Mind you, rappers aren't known for wearing Hawaiian shirts.
Glen said the image made him recall the wise words of civil rights activist General Larry Platt: "Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, lookin' like a fool with your pants on the ground."
General Platt released the protest song in 2010. By the way, he's not a military general. He earned his nickname during the American civil rights movement.
His pants song, however, was a different kind of protest. It expressed opposition to the males wearing trousers or jeans that sag below the waist, often revealing their underpants.
This practice of "sagging" has been taken up by many males in the US. Women do sometimes wear low-rise jeans to reveal G-string underwear, but this apparently doesn't fall under the sagging category.
It was hip-hop artists and skaters who made sagging popular. Some claim the style originated from the US prison system, where pants can sag because of belt bans and ill-fitting clothes.
In 2008, Barack Obama said on MTV that laws banning the wearing of low-slung pants showing underwear were "a waste of time".
"Having said that, brothers should pull up their pants," Obama said.
Catching The Train into Town
In response to our stories about the top of town, Nulkaba's Max Burke recalled memories of his group of friends at Cessnock High in 1954.
"We had a co-ed class," Max said.
"The girls soon organised a group of about a dozen to go to the beach on Saturday. We met on the station at Cessnock and climbed on board 'the rattler', as the Cessnock Flyer was known."
They travelled in "a carriage or the dog box", depending how much cash they had.
The boys and the girls had a deal.
"The girls took a picnic for our collective lunch. We ate this feast on top of the pavilion at Newcastle Beach as a group," he said.
"The boys part of the deal was to take the girls to the Treasury Cafe or the Brown Derby for tea. We lads pooled our available cash for this treat, but if collectively we came up short then it would be Shipmates for a sit-down open hamburger with chips and a milkshake with ice cream and maybe a fritter, deep-fried pineapple or banana with ice cream."
During the day, they'd go to the "Fruit Crush Company" - a shop on a southern corner in Hunter Street.
"I think that was the name," he said.
"Right before your very eyes, they would take a pineapple, chop it in pieces and put it into a blender. Then in went the ice and pineapple juice. Very tasty indeed."
Before they'd go for a surf, valuables were "wrapped in our towels, with two of our number guarding".
"We lost nothing to scroungers," he said.
On the train home, the guard would look them over, saying something like: "I'm watching you lot. No hanky panky".
"These trips to the beach went on after we finished school for perhaps a year, by which time some of us had a motorbike and some of the girls were away student-nursing.
"Jim Hunt's Saturday night dance at the Maitland town hall soon became the social event of the week."
