Others move as the spirit moves them

New York Times editorial defending the term jaywalking, 1915

‘Jaywalkers’ – a truly shocking name and highly opprobrious – for people who cross city streets in the middle of blocks instead of at their ends

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9503E3D7133FE233A25751C0A9649D946496D6CF

New Zealand anti-jaywalking ad, 1950s

‘Believe it or not, they LEAP in front of moving cars. Most of them suffer from anxiety overdrive, a mania for achievement, always an urge to get their quicker. Others move as the spirit moves them…The motorist usually wins because he’s got a ton of steel behind him.’

Anti-jaywalking ad from Melbourne’s The Argus, 1950s

Crackdown on jaywalkers during Operation Halo, February 2012

The invention of jaywalking

http://m.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/1837/

In defence of jaywalking

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/transport/2009/11/in_defense_of_jaywalking.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2

Corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets, 1900-1920

Sharing the road on corner of Elizabeth and Swanston St – circa?

Blitz on jaywalkers at corner of Flinders and Swanston Street, 2012

http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/police-blitz-flinders-street-station/story-e6frfku0-1226349979563

Push-button pedestrian traffic lights at corner Flinders Lane and Spring Street, where jaywalking is the norm

Desire path

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path

Visit to the Eureka Tower and particularly its gift shop

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The conundrum that is Northcote Plaza

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Love or hate? I’m not sure, but this daggy shopping centre holds a strange fascination for me. It’s both utter nothingness and fond nostalgia. Reminiscent of the dystopian moment a time traveller from the future might return to in a movie, perhaps just at the point before hyper-capitalism ran the world into a Cormac McCarthy-type state.

I like how there are lots of old people sitting on benches or in those 90s-style shopping centre lounges, sometimes socialising with their friends, other times without apparent purpose. You just don’t see that in Northcote’s hipster cafes. Is it just that they feel it’s not their turf? Or is there a more concrete reason?

My Melbourne bike share helmet is pulling the men

At 2am last night I was on my bike waiting at traffic lights on Flinders.

A suited up group of little dandies, about my little brother’s age, strolled up.

‘Give me a dink to King Street?’ asked one of them cheekily (this request not uncommon for women riding home late on weekend nights!)

Me: ‘No.’

Him: ‘Why not?’

Me: ‘Cos King St has late night violence. Plus, I don’t dink strange men.’

Him: ‘But I’m not a man!’

Me *Laughing fit*

Him: ‘I like your helmet. It matches your hair!’

*See also helmetsarehot.net

Barber shop, Brunswick East

He’s been there since 1958, when a haircut was 50 cents. In this photo on his wall, he is both the young man (on the day it opened) and the old man. On the bottom right is his first barber chair.

He’s closing in six months. I ask why, expecting him to say he can’t afford rent anymore in a rapidly gentrifying area. He shrugs and tells me he’s 72, and getting a bit old for it. The cafe next door, La Paloma, a lovely family-run Argentinean joint with a gentle feel to it, frequented by Brunswick trendies, will take over.

To celebrate his last days, he’s plastered the salon walls with photos and clippings from the days: regular clients, his family, Ferraris and formula one, Tim Rogers and tram conductors, George Clooney, the Queen, Carlton football club. He likes that I’m interested, and encourages me to look around, chatting energetically as I take photos of his photos.

He tells me about his family (his daughter is a well-known singer, a soprano), his regular clients (he focuses on their haircuts, rather than their personal lives), and young artists who have made documentaries about his salon. He also tells me he is in the Melbourne Immigration museum.

I squint suspiciously at the picture of him and Julia Gillard. ‘Is that really you?’

‘That one’s photoshopped,’ he says blithely. ‘But I actually have met her, twice.’ I’m not sure, but I thought he said he’s got a phone number for her in Canberra. There are lots of photos of him with famous people, but in most of them it looks like he’s stuck a picture of his head onto someone else’s photo.

I want to take a photo of him but it takes some convincing; he’s more keen to take one of me. I’m using my iphone, and it takes a minute or so to teach him how to click on the screen, rather than the button. The main problem was that he needed to put his glasses on.

After a while I make my excuses and go to join my friend, who’s patiently reading the paper at an outdoor table at La Paloma. He comes out with me and chats with us for a while, before going inside La Paloma to chat with people there. At one stage he comes back out to show us a picture of a sculpture in the Good Weekend. ‘It’s a nice sculpture, isn’t it,’ he says. We murmur in agreement.

‘That man could talk the leg off an iron horse,’ I say to my friend, partly to alleviate my guilt for leaving her alone a bit too long.

‘It was a nice sculpture,’ she muses.

These things don’t go unnoticed Melbourne CBD

Fountains people write on in leaves. Glowing red reeds that clatter satisfyingly when you push ‘em together. Office building design that sinks your spirits. Cheerful manicured flowerbeds photographed by sandalled German tourists. Fountains illuminated at night. A woman on a park bench scoffing potato chips in front of a crowd. No frills busker musicians drawing unexpected crowds to listen to music when they really should be shopping.* Horsies that need retirin’. Blinding bright advertising. The delightfully welcoming window pictures at Metlink.

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*Although, Melbourne’s buskers are often endearingly horrible. Apparently they’re making them audition now although perhaps that’s just a concession to keep Doyle happy; so far they’ve all passed and I bet the other judges don’t take it serious. The other night me and my friend saw a busker in a gorilla suit with bagpipes bring a little girl to tears. He did look a bit macabre.

We’re much more highbrow than that, love!

Today Tonight

I spot people filming in the gardens so move in to watch.

The presenter is a Silver Fox who looks like a cross between an 80s game show host and a slimy car salesman. His eyes catch mine and he looks a bit uncomfortable under my gaze.*

I only catch the last few words. In his flashy newsreader on steroids voice, Silver Fox is talking about some Cassanova.** ‘Slippery Sal isn’t after their hearts, he’s after their money.’ His exaggerated cadences hint at parody.

At the end he has freeze looking earnestly at the cameras for a few moments, I can’t remember what the technical reason for it is but it’s a little bit awkward. Then he turns straight to me: ‘How was that?’

The whole crew turn around to look at me.

‘Oh, I didn’t get most of it,’ I say, with deliberate breeziness. ‘But it seems like you’re from Today Tonight or something?’

‘No, we’re from Current Affair,’ the man says indignantly, in a tone which on the face of it, implies a collegiate mutual joke, but is really thinly veiled disdain.

‘They’re pretty much the same though aren’t they?’ I say nonchalantly.

‘No, we’re much more highbrow than that, love!’ the man says with ironic, patronising smarminess.

‘Really?’ I say in my innocent stupid little girl tone.

The whole crew laughs.

I found their story on the internet afterwards.

*I sometimes do watch if I stumble upon a press conference; it’s fascinating to watch their process. But they don’t like it. I don’t know, is it a bit off?

**I later realised they were actually calling him Cashanova, which is just brilliant.

Casual intimacy

My friend and I are on a lunch break and start watching an Asian couple sitting under that big gorgeous tree in the Fitzroy Gardens. I don’t know anything about tree names; but it’s one of those trees with branches that droop down like a fountain of leaves, apple green leaves that glow with the sunlight, making a haven of shade for its inhabitants.

I make the argument to my friend that the couple are structurally adorable, simply because they’re having a romantic moment under a beautiful tree. Maybe it helps that they’re Asian too.

But then we notice there is something about the way the couple are sitting together, smiling, heads close, looking at something on their iphones, his hand resting casually behind her back, her hand brushing his knee. They look perfectly happy in that moment. ‘Do you see that kind casual intimacy very often?’ my friend asks me.

Sleeping

It is a well known fart the word Melbourne

Chinglish is sometimes uncannily spot on, isn’t it?

Hot or not? The Casino fire torches

Got a shock at Southbank on Monday night when the Casino’s fire torches flared up, roaring and blasting heat onto my face. It was already a stinking hot night and from what I understand, Melbourne was under a total fire ban. The Casino must have had a permit, as the New Year’s fireworks did. The torches are an odd symbol in a state beset by bushfires and trying to cut down on its carbon emissions. Apparently they’ve been around for over a decade. What do you think? Hot or not?

I’m not sure why the torches offended me. Maybe because they seem to represent what I hate about the casino: its aggressive promise of glitz, glamour and excitement, and the deliberately contrived atmosphere: safe, sterile and airless; designed to get your head into a space where problem gambling addictions can breed uninterrupted by pesky thoughts about how you’ve just spent beyond your means, or that your family’s worrying about you, or that you’re not, in truth, having that much fun.

Obviously not all Casino experiences are like that, and some people actually enjoy themselves.

Suburbia bashing and righteousness

A friend pointed out, in a potentially confronting but affectionate reality check, that I’m the prototype of the inner city dweller who looks down on the suburban way of life. You know, that snobby latte sipper who’s said to rain on the parade of everyday Australian suburbanites whenever powerful interests groups want to build a freeway on behalf of said suburbanites?

My friend’s comment was probably justified by a car trip in which me and another friend pulled the shit out of the Glenwaverly to Keysborough stretch of Springvale Road: a tavern advertising Manpower’s imminent visit, homogenous brick houses, ridiculous numbers of chain takeway joints, caravan sale depots, and the Lighthouse Christian church (nothing wrong with religion, just the name – so cheesy).

Anyway, I ended up sheepishly admitting that I suffered from under an unexamined and patronising delusion: life in the city is better than in the suburbs, and if people in the suburbs think they’re happy, then they’re living under some kind of false consciousness. Based on the assumption that everyone likes everything I like, and if they don’t, they should.

Things that I like:

• walking around and seeing different types of landscapes, like crowded strip shop areas with lots of local shops and different types of buildings or houses
• green spaces and rivers
• sharing space with others on public transport (so I can people watch and read my book)
• the physicality and street-life observations of riding a bike
• not having to drive a car, which makes me feel like an automaton

Assumption:

• No outer suburbs have the characteristics listed above.

(but what about, for example, Eltham and Sunbury? I could probably tell you others, if I didn’t know so little about the suburbs that I so joyfully write off).

Logical conclusion to my patronising assumptions: if inner city living was more affordable, most people would move from the suburbs; that if public transport was more accessible, comfortable and convenient, most people would catch public transport.

Reality: I’m not sure. Some aspects of ‘liveability’ and ‘amenity’* are no doubt universal – not having to travel too far to work, or having a park to walk around in. Maybe some of the other things I like are too. If there’s any research out there about it, I’d love to see it. I just don’t have time to find it…

But I’m sure some people don’t want to live right next to other people; they want to have a big backyard for their kids to play in, to build that verandah. Some people actually like driving. Maybe they like the privacy. I hate the privacy. I feel like we have too much privacy. The lack of social interaction and diverse external stimuli is bland and uninspiring.

I’m starting to hate cars, but in a mundanely righteous sort of way. I don’t like their noise, and because I’m often riding my bike, I really see them as a danger. Sometimes I judge car drivers, if they have an easily available option to walk or catch public transport and choose to drive instead.

I’m going to try to stop doing this, because it’s completely stupid. One of my criteria for judgement is environmental, but I do all sorts of things that I know are un-environmental, like sometimes going on two overseas trips a year. I really only ride my bike because it’s easy and I like doing it better. But that’s why people drive their cars too.

A few other things:

Turns out there’s a whole Wikipedia entry on suburbia bashing, ‘a negative discourse about Australia suburbia that is relatively prominent in Australia’.

My friends started the Suburbanauts, a blog about exploring life in the Melbourne’s suburbs, specifically, shopping strips (i.e. not malls, but little shop clusters). They are the kind of people who have lots of interesting ideas but don’t share them with enough people.

*Ironically both words purport to describe a state which most people want, yet are bureaucratic or academic jargon to people who are not bureaucrats or academics. Could this be a problem with government and policy more generally when they seek to ‘engage’ the ‘stakeholders’?