One Street I

I have been thinking I might have a crack at the One Street idea (although I suspect any attempts at poetry would be labelled as deeply pretentious so I might stay off that path unless particularly inspired). This entry is long winded enough without my adding extraneous material to it.

For the last nine years I've lived in Sydney's inner-west suburb of Newtown, at a time when it has been undergoing rapid change. So I thought perhaps King Street, the backbone of the suburb, would be a good choice for this project.

From the 1960s Newtown was (as I was sneeringly told by someone, and I'm paraphrasing here) the haunt of 'bearded hippies, weirdos, uni students, gays and freaks' and when goths emerged on the scene, they moved in, put their feet under the table and felt right at home. And so Newtown was a little niche where multi-national fast-food outlets were chased out of town with pitchforks (I take great pleasure in pointing out that it is one of the few areas where a McDonalds had to close through lack of business) and there were more alternative and culturally diverse shops than you could poke a stick at.

When I moved here, I felt no compunction if, (for example) having run out of milk, I walked up King Street in my pyjamas and tyrannosaurus slippers that growled as I walked and roared when I hopped. Believe me, nobody would have even blinked because -unless you were a big corporation or franchise chain (see above point about pitchforks) - in true hippy style, everybody was accepted as they were. Nobody cared what you wore, how you looked or what you did.

The process of gentrification, however, has nibbled away at this eclectic community over recent years - the architecture, the kinds of shops, the cuisine, the people - you name it, it's changed. The uni students and budget-conscious have been increasingly edged out by young professional couples pushing massive 4 wheel-drive prams down the road to get their morning soy latte. This process is not yet complete, and at present there is a combination of both new and old demographics. There is a 'chic' end and a 'shabby' end of Newtown, although the southern shabby, cheaper end is slowly being 'revitalised.'

It's a quarter past midnight, and this is probably stating the obvious, but I'm down the shabby end of King Street and the corner pub has just closed. If I was a decent human being I would have at least photographed it during the day, but I'm still wide awake so you've got a night shot with the yellow cast of the streetlights.*

There's been a Botany View Hotel here since the 1850s - before that it was the Hero of Waterloo. The present incarnation is the result of a cosmetic upgrading of the pub's facade in the late 1930s - not that you can see much given it's past midnight and the pub owner decided to paint the exterior charcoal. (There's a photo of the pub with its previous colour scheme here.)

It has the reputation of being the one of the most frequently burgled hotels in the area. For a long time I was (unfairly) pinning this on the owner; I have recently discovered, however, that it has a long and glorious tradition of being done over on a regular basis. And in the 1870s and 1880s the City Coroner held inquests at the pub - I'm not going to gross you out with some of the details about the cases covered. Suffice to say they weren't pretty and a lot of them involved children.

These days it prides itself as being at the forefront when it comes to the highlight of Australia's cultural calendar: its Australia Day celebrations are centred around meat pie-eating and thong-throwing** competitions. I can't wait (not).
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* Besides, if I took a daytime photo it would show exactly how grubby the buildings are....

** As in throwing of flip-flops (footwear), not throwing of small items of undergarments.