Spotted the Chrysler PT Cruiser Police Car in Collins Street yesterday. Some kind of initiative to help the police reach out to youth. Despite my joking on seeing it (“That’ll get the glue-sniffers and vandals’ attention! Hey kids! Stop spraypainting and check out our cool car!”) hopefully it does have a positive effect. It is ... [More]
Category: Melbourne
Melbourne stuff
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Today in the city
Today in the city I encountered a lost tourist looking for Flinders Street Station (“it’s that big building with the dome”), a Korean student looking for the Block Arcade (“follow me, I’m walking right past it”), and unless I’m much mistaken I passed Katy “Jo Grant” Manning in Degraves Street.
The marks on the road were a rather obvious reminder of last night’s apparently spectacular tram mishap outside Glenhuntly Station. Two scores in the road, about ooh 4 foot 8 and a half inches apart, veering away from the tracks at the catch points, across most of the railway crossing, then back onto the tracks. ... [More]
The artworks on display seem to change every few weeks. A little while ago it was words created out of bread: “GREED” for example. This week it’s spinning black circles showing little animations through the gaps, like something from a Victorian-era side show. And live music today. Sometimes it’s a woman with a cello. Today ... [More]
Yesterday at the tram stop at lunchtime was a woman with the most incredible hair. It went straight up, about 20cm off her scalp, and was dark red. A kind of big burgundy mohawk. She looked about 60, and was pushing a pram with (I assume) her grandson in it. As she walked along the ... [More]
Clearly I made a couple of bad decisions. I chose the wrong time to bail out of Doug’s 2004 Australian Tour drinkies at the Fed Square wine bar. And I chose not to bother to get my umbrella out and doing its umbrella-thing when walking the half-block to the station. After all, how wet could ... [More]
Saturday’s trip to the National Gallery wasn’t just a learning experience in art. We went along with X. X has cerebral palsy, meaning she is physically disabled. She’s either confined to a wheelchair, or can use crutches, but at a snail’s pace. Okay I’ve wheeled around kids in my time, so I have some of ... [More]
Turned on my phone at 7am. Beep beep, beep beep. 9:01 train cancelled. Connex apologises for any inconvenience. (Is it really a sincere apology if it was typed by a programmer into the automated alerts system, and it’s just the computer repeating it ad nauseum ever after?) So it was no surprise when I got ... [More]
Laura was her name. It said so on her folder. She was on the train. Writing on her folder. In a very decorative script. Letter by letter. Surreptitiously, another guy and I looked on. As a sentence revealed itself. “I’d kill myself to make everybody pay.” Oh. Dark nails, dark eye makeup, dark clothes. Bag ... [More]
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Toilet trauma
Around the city, mostly in parks, automated public toilets have been popping up in the last few years. Unlike the loos of old, they have self-cleaning mechanisms, so in theory they should be clean — or at least minimally unpleasant. But distrust of the automatic door (and its ten minute timeout) is rife among users, ... [More]
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Safeway 10 minutes ago
“I’ll see you out in the street!” he shouted. Us shoppers and the checkout chicks and blokes looked on. The man had a huge gash on his head — dried — a dishevelled appearance and a dog chain in his hand. He repeated his threat to an unknown person in the liquor department, as Safeway ... [More]
Tonight it’s the Deb Conway gig at Tony & Rae’s house. Saturday the Belle & Sebastian concert. S’gonna be a very musical weekend. But on a completely topic, down at Southbank, by the same people who did the Doctor Who drawings, are the good Doctor’s 6-7pm ABC stablemates… The colours might be a little skewed ... [More]