I'm bored with APEC and as it turned out there was hardly any trouble and the outcome, politically, was rather good. There was the typical moaning about OTT policing but hey, if the organisers said they expected 20,000 people then the police will plan for that. If you pull a crowd of 3000 then the policing is going to look rather over the top. That said, they were out mob-handed with some pretty serious riot gear at the ready. On Friday I left work early to head for the airport, giving myself plenty of time to negotiate the 92 APEC motorcade and other movements that were to take place between 3pm when I left and 7:30pm when I intended to be ready to board. As it turned out I had a trouble free trip and arrived at the airport stupid early, but not as stupid early as a woman I was speaking with at a little after 5 who was going to fly domestically at a little after 9. On the plus side, I jumped onto an earlier flight and got to Melbourne 90minutes before my planned arrival and as I'd left work early Rumpole got an afternoon walk. So there you have it; APEC was good to me and my litte dog too. And that was Thursday done and dusted; a quick cup of tea and to bed, ready for Friday and the start of our long weekend.
Friday
I, of course, woke early. I went for a run along the Yarra river, struck a number of times by just how much it reminds me of some of my old UK haunts. I ran along southbank, which reminds me of London's southbank (Melbourne is far nicer and has been around for longer) and passed a rowing club that had me thinking about Putney, helped I am sure by the Yarra and the Thames sharing a sludgey brown colour that I rarely see in Sydney waters. I saw a few of the sights; Flinders Street station, the MCG, the Rod Laver Arena. I saw people out cycling and rowing and jogging, and despite having a poor run (not happy with how I felt) I was glad I did it; a great way to start the day. To make up for the bad running form I did 10mins on the hotel gym's rowing machine, some stretching and then went tback to the room to catch up with Sally, JCJ and Susan whose days were just beginning.
Without only a sketchy plan for the day we headed out to a very cool cafe (aren't all Melbourne cafe's very cool?) with high ceilings and shabby-chic decor before getting a tram (trams are cool) to Chapel Street (more cool) for retail therapy and to start our graffiti hunt; part of the game plan for me and JCJ was photographing Melbourne's graffiti. I was responsible for the first purchase of the day, though Susan stumped up the $2.50 for the pig ear we had been advised to buy for Rowlf. By the time the weekend was over, and if you don't count puppy and puppy stuff, I had bought for myself one book (secondhand.) My shopping restraint grows as I age. Sally and Susan showed somewhat less restraint, as can happen on Chapel Street, a shopper and coffe-drinkers paradise. The pet shop is, of course, cool. Cool too is the Chapel Street Bazaar, a large squared-horshoe shaped store of booths and cabinets each owned by a different trader. To the untrained eye it mighyt seem that the bazaar contains an incredible amount of old shit that should be on it's way to landfill, but if you look closer you will discover that it actually contains an incredible amount of old shit that should be on it's way to landfill. But there are plenty of gems and even if you don't buy anything it is a fun place to look around. Scarily enough there is a lot of retro junk that I remember from the days of my youth. I am, it seems, getting old.
Chapel Street turned out to be a resounding success on the graffiti hunt front. Banksy, my
favoutite artist partly because he is one of only two I know the name of (Pez, from Barcelona, is the other) and because I like his stuff and his book and he's from London, has some work in the area. Not only on local walls but inside Revolver, a club I visited around 10years ago while on a work visit to Melbourne. I'd spotted a Banksy on the street when a passing local told us that we should go inside the club where we could - and did - find some of his stencils now protected behind perspex because one had been nicked. The club owner-or-manager was happy for us to take a look around; there were graffiti-on-canvas (not really graffiti then, but in that style) being hung in preperation for a display and auction later that night. On a wall accessible by clambering out through a window there was a guy doing a piece on a wall; philosophical question - he was obviously allowed to do that, possibly even comissioned to do it, so is that graffiti? Regardless, Revolver has lost none of its cool and is pretty much as skanky as I remember from last century. Plenty of other graf in the area and, as we found to be true all weekend, lots of stencils and stickers. Shopping, eating and graf and that was Chapel street, box ticked.
That evening we headed out to dinner at The Flower Drum, Melbourne's best Chinese restaurant. The service was impecable and the food was as good as I imagine Chinese food can get, meaning very nice but still Chinese food. That sounds worse than it should; it was a good dinner out over which we all agreed we should do more of this weekend away stuff because we enjoyed each others company and typically we spend only snippets of time together. Stuffed, we headed back to the hotel. Friday done.
Saturday
Not one for sleeping in, this morning I crept out to the gym, sweated, showered and went on a coffee hunt. A stroke of good luck had me walk in a direction that took me past only one open coffee emporium that I went into, decided I did not like the look of and left. Southbank, thought I. I headed over the Yarra and wandered past a lot of closed eateries. Amazed at my inability to 
find a coffee in Melbourne I decided to head back over the river towards Flinders Street station because there is always coffee to be found, often of dubious quality but I cared not, near a large train station. And it was once near the station that my luck hit home. I wandered along a dodgy alley that was anything but. Narrow, and lined with small cafes this reminded me of any one of a number of European cities, Paris or Barcelona to pick a couple of heavyweights of cafe culture. I found some graffiti, stencils and stickers (click click click), got a large cap to go and walked on. At the end of the alley was a small cross street and on the opposite side there was an similar alley. Yet more graffiti on the poster-covered pillars between the cool stores and then, at the end of the main alley another alley that dead ended, housed a few wheelie bins and contained the motherload of graffii. Layer upon layer of the stuff, and because I had not grabbed the camera I had only my phone to try and grab some shots with in the iffy morning light. Sal called at around 9 to remind me that it was nealy time to leave the hotel for St Kilda and a meeting with Mark, a fellow ex-pat who now lived in Melbourne with wife and dogs. I headed off but I knew I'd be coming back with the camera and JCJ; he was going to love this.
Sal knew that we needed to catch tram 112 to St Kilda. Unfortunately she'd not paid attention to which direction we needed to be heading and we got to Fitzroy before turning around and arriving at St Kilda Sea Baths cafe at 10:15, a mere 15mins late. Mark was already there, looking chilled out in the warm morning sun, Port Philip Bay behind him and the good people of Melbourne all around. I really like Melbourne. We chatted non-stop for a couople of hours. I'd not seen Mark since his wedding and there was a lot of ground to cover before we had to head back to the City and he had to head back home. Strange; I'd not seen him for 5years and it felt as if I'd not seem him for maybe 5days. That's a friendship. Please indulge me as I get all reminiscy (sp?) Mark and I worked together in London and when the opportunity presented itself he transferred to Melbourne. In London we had run around Battersea Park in our lunch break and when I stayed with him while on a work trip to Melbourne we left drinks on tables one evening and ran a few yards along the beach at St Kilda - we'd said in London that we'd run together in Australia. Enough of that, back to the future.
Sal and I met JCJ and Susan in the theatre district; the girls were off to see Phantom of the Opera and the boys were off to find more graffiti; JCJ and I headed back to Brunswick Street in Fitzroy. The walls were every bit as good as those around Chapel Street and plenty of pictures were taken. We wandered into a small garage and chatted to a guy working on and the owner of an old Datsun 260Z, we walked into a gallery and chatted to the owner about the artists she was displaying (link needed!) and we waqlked into a shop dedicated to the creation of bonkers-style chopper pushbikes. I was accosted by the owner who mistook my passing interest for a keen interest as he told me about his current rides, his myspace site and all things very-silly-bike. We wandered back towards the tram stop, stopping to take some pictures of an old terrace of houses and in attracting the attention of a passing police patrol who were probably bored so quizzed us a bit, seemd satisfied that we were harmless enough and let us go on our way. And our way was back to the alley I had discovered that morning, only this time I had a proper camera.
I am sure I mentioned it before, but I really like Melbourne. The locals seem more open and friendly than Sydneysiders. Example; while standing in a road, taking a picture of a graffiti strewn wall, two cars stopped and waited for me to finish. In Sydney two cars would have stopped so the occupants could get out and beat me to a pulp. Sydney is a brash, arrogant place (if a place can be arrogant?) while Melbourne is more self assured (if a place can be self assured.) Architecturally and culturally Sydney does not try too hard. It sort of shouts "we've got the Harbour! We've got the Opera house! We've got the Bridge! Fuck, YEAH!" and promptly rests upon it laurels . Melbourne has no big hitter. Sure, Flinders Street station is very easy on the eye and Port Philip Bay is lovely, but they're not big-league. So Melbourne compensates with lots of other things done well. There is art all over the place, sculptures dotted al over the city; the graffiti is better (far less mindless tagging or far more quality to counter balance it - not sure). The cafes are nicer and run by people who genuinely seem to want to run cafes, not by people waiting for something better to magically happen to them.
Melbourne has a better vibe than Sydney. In Melbourne you can get a liquor license quite easily and cheaply and lots of cafes do and lots of cafes sell beer and wine and you can go out and relax and all is well with the world. As I understand it, you can get a liquor license quite easily in New South Wales as long as you pay through the arse for it. So cafes cannot afford them and pubs have to sell a lot of grog and get a lot of revenue from gaming machines in order to make having the licence economically viable. So Sydney's drinking scene is big and brash - a bit like English inner cities, sad to say. Even if you go to a smaller, more relaxed pub you'll still find a room of poker machines. It gets worse. Throughout New South Wales there has been a consolidation of drinking establishments, of a sort. Smaller pubs can sell their gaming licenses - and there are only so many in existence - and when they hit hard times they do. To the highest bidder. Usually big beer-barn places. So smaller places go bust - often in rural areas - and the cities fill up with huge soulless barns, all laminate floor and loud music and a younger crown hitting it hard.
