No, this is not, as you may expect a post about the recent Brisbane Writers Festival. They deserve a few brickbats in my opinion, for always scheduling the event just before the uni break at the very time when folks associated with universities find it very hard to find any time for extra-curricular stuff. A couple of weeks later, and they could instantly solve that “getting teh yoof” to attend thing and magic themselves up a crowd of uni students. Maybe some marketing wiz is reading this – if so, please take note!
What I actually wanted to share was a writing experience I really enjoyed. I was auditioning – as it were – providing a writing sample on demand – for a gig (which I got, and which I’ll talk about later on when I can link to the finished product). The brief was to write about something in Brisbane in a hundred words – a restaurant, a bar, a street, whatever. It’s really quite a neat exercise to try, particularly because what you are attempting to do is convey something of your own city, and something about the bits of it you love, to people who might have varying levels of knowledge and perhaps varying preconceptions.
So here’s my 98 words about The Alibi Room. I haven’t gone back and edited the passage, as I will be doing for the rest of what I’m writing for this project.
You might no longer hear Italian casually spoken in the deli, and the artists and students might have been priced out of the real estate market, but Brisbane’s rapidly gentrifying inner city suburb of New Farm still hosts the neighbourhood bar of all the musos, tattooed and pierced folks, street press writers and burlesque performers. Whether you’re looking for a Tiki Bar, or the chance to play a Brady Bunch board game, The Alibi Room is pop culture, Brisbane style. Twirling a cocktail umbrella, you can ponder the eternal question – just how ironic is the Vegas in Brisvegas?
And to illustrate further, some photos of the said bar. Incidentally, Alibi is a very web 2.0 savvy drinking hole. Not only does it have a website, it’s also on MySpace. And it has its own YouTube promo, and has inspired some YouTube vids, particularly of the spiffy practice that we now know and love in our fine town of going outside for a ciggie.
Click through on the image then click “full view” once inside the gallery for a higher res and larger version.
Alibi Room by *phenomenologist on deviantART
Alibi Room II by *phenomenologist on deviantART
Attn: that hypothetical marketting wiz Mark conjures up – he’s right. The sessions I went to were, how can I put it, geriatric, audience wise. So am I, but if I want to see wall to wall grey, I’ll stay in the nursing home.
Mark: do you know what that building has been in it’s previous lives?
Do you have a straightforward pool hall bar, with lots of tables, there in New Farm?
Shock, horror, The Pavilion here in West End closed last weekend.
So, Mark, level with us — your new gig is as Lonely Planet’s most highly-qualified writer?
No, Merc, it’s not Lonely Planet, but that’s on the right track…
Danny, yep, I was in West End on Sunday, and thinking of having a beer at the Pav… and … wtf?
I don’t know what that building was in its previous lives btw. Is there a story?
Ummmm…Getaway’s new presenter
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Lots of folks were aghast at the pav’s demise, what with expecting a top possie for the the wheelchair parade and races on Sunday.
It’s a genuine question re: the alibi’s previous lives: a priori all old buildings have stories, mais non?
In that regard: A few of us old-timers, in the face of the gentrification tsunami here, are working up a quiz nite based on folks’ knowledges of our local buildings’/sites’ histories. We figure it will be good way of banking the neighbourhood’s social capital riches, currently languishing as variously vague, largley undocumented, memories. It’s probably too late for New Farm, but we still have a chance. 10,000 people, new arterial roads and major bridge links are being foisted upon us, so it’s now or never.
We’ll use slide shows on the night as referents/ aides de memoire: (what used to be here?), a goodish use of google’s street view , what?
Hopefully we’ll be able to bring to light on the night lots of resident photo-robilia from out of their dusty shoebox repositories.
I reckon such a night, and such a neighbourhood, may very well be worth someone writing up, proper-like, turning into, I dunno, a book, a DVD?.
D’y'know anyone writerly type whose ouevre it would be right up the alley of? Helen Abrahams will be enthusiastic, maybe the hard word being put on in terms of a bit of funding for getting, y’know, a real writer, possibly an academic, on board, to do it right, might come up trumps. As for Anna, well we can only ask. She knows a PR opportunity when she sees it, and she’s going very close to having to go to preferences these days.
Any ideas from youse other folks about us writing up our suburb, from this source material/event, will be gratefully received.
I’m thinking Souths (Magpies RLFC*, coming up to its centenary) for the actual night. Didja know Johnny O’Keefe played there? Now it’s home to a bijou saturday morning market, excellent providoring, if you like that sort of thing.
*who BTW, after a drought since 1985, this year took out the premiership.
I am against the demise of anything called the Pav.
Mark: nice. With any luck it will develop into an full-on alternative to academic slavery.
“I am against the demise of anything called the Pav.”
As am I PC, as am I.
Although I’ll bet you’re okay with a certain Pav moving to a different Port.
Mark – Maybe some marketing wiz is reading this – if so, please take note!
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This is typical of you ivory tower French theory loving types really it is. I’m sorry but if you knew anything about “The Industry” then you would never have written this bilge.
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PR Nerds? Read? Give me a break. If PR Nerds could read they could probably write as well and then I’d have to get a job.
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Who wants University students at a writer’s festival anyway. We’re trying to sell some books here. Not get them stolen.
Dr Cat @ 7 – fingers crossed! Not a bad gig this travel writing thang.