There’s a really fascinating article at Wired about blogs and websites tracking down urban eccentrics. You know who I mean. In Brisbane, I can think of “Rock & Roll George”, the Marilyn Monroe woman (always impeccably groomed), the evil homeless guy who hits people with his umbrella, the plastic bag man who used to sleep outside the Anglican church in Toowong, the fake nun in the white tuxedo who pushed an empty wheelchair down the middle of New Farm streets for many years, and the cowboy whom I once overheard refusing at Rics to explain to the barwoman why he was what he was or who he was, all the while conscious of his minor celebrity.
The article doesn’t cover stalking or the right to privacy, which raises some questions. It also doesn’t really adequately get to grips with the sociological phenomenon of why we talk about such folks and what they feel about it all. Any thoughts?
Our friends at Griffith Review are holding an event in Brisbane tomorrow at the State Library of Queensland from 1 to 4pm:
The 2020 Summit was just the beginning. The more substantial and critical task is to advance the process by building consensus, by continually developing engagement and cooperation between traditionally divided streams, factions and ideologies. Join us for a free seminar featuring twenty Summit delegates who will report on their impressions from the Summit proceedings and consider pragmatic steps forward to identify and achieve Australia’s goals. Come early to enjoy lunch - your own or from Tognini’s Cafe - outside the State Library’s beautiful new building. Panellists include Julianne Schultz, Michael Wesley, Michael Good, George Williams, Matt Foley and many more.
Incidentally, my copy of the May edition just arrived in the post. It’s on Cities, and I’m looking forward to a stimulating read as always. We’re hopeful we’ll be able to announce a discount bulk subscription offer for LPers in the not too distant future.
If you’d like to see a larger image of the photos in this post, click on them then click on “full view” once you’re inside the gallery.
Once you’re out of the inner city, the vista the suburbs present to your eye from the train window is a tad undifferentiated. Sure, you can pick where weatherboard gives way to brick, as you travel through time as well as space, but if you’re not paying attention, it’s not that hard to miss your station. And in Brisbane you’re out of the inner city pretty quickly - the distance of two stations does it. Unlike Sydney and Melbourne, you’re speedily in the realm of big quarter acre blocks with old houses perched and shifting on their stilts as they hug the verdant hills, knowing that they’re interlopers. But some - landmarks is the wrong word - icons compel your eye’s focus.
No one who’s ever caught the Caboolture or Sandgate-Shorncliffe trains would ever miss Albion station. The old flour mill is too delightfully out of scale and incongruous to miss. It dwarfs its surroundings.
It’s lain vacant for six years now - as with so many other noteable Brisbane buildings, the victim of a tussle between the Council and developers, eventually to be resolved mostly in the latter’s favour - with the token addition of a modicum of public housing (which will give the new residents something to whine about) and a claim about economic renewal. The increase in the value of the surrounding real estate usually goes untouted - at least by the planning authorities, concerned ostensibly with public purposes as they are. It’s this sort of thing that led to a lot of disillusion with the Labor administrations of Jim Soorley and Tim Quinn, and probably contributed to former Labor leader David Hinchliffe almost losing his ward in the election just a few short weeks ago.
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
Oh, if you were worried about the baleful effects of public holidays on national productivity (which I most sincerely hope that you weren’t), rest easy after reading this post from Peter Martin.
Here are some piccies I took on a walk on Friday afternoon.
If you’re in Brisbane or if you’re visiting, you really should sign up for the FourThousand weekly email:
FourThousand is a weekly snapshot of Brisbane’s subculture - a Brisbane guide to film, music, design, books, art, goods and links for people who realise that the best things in life are often hard to find.
Lots of free tix, and FourThousand are aiming for 4000 subscribers. Although Kevin Rudd has now made Brisneyland famous, there’s a lot more to do around here than having a nice cup of tea and an Iced Vo-Vo.
As the glittering office and apartment towers pile ever higher on the narrow peninsula that hosts Brisbane’s CBD, news came last week about a true atrocity from a developer - the demolition of part of the Regent Theatre, and its replacement by… an office tower. The irony here is that much of Brisbane’s built heritage was destroyed in the late 70s and 80s, and this is the second “Save the Regent” campaign. Developers, the Bjelke-Petersen state government and interchangeable Labor and Liberal Council administrations marched in lockstep to knock down much of old Brisbane, and the Regent was a pioneer for the policy of partial preservation which reached its apogee under Liberal Lord Mayor Sallyanne Atkinson - where many buildings were “saved” by the retention of their facades. In the case of the Regent, in 1980, the 1929 foyer and entrance hall were preserved and some of the fittings re-used in the “Showcase cinema”. You can read about the history of the building here.
The current proposal would preserve what is there, but fundamentally change the character of the building by alienating its purpose as public space - and as a cinema - and giving us yet another 38 story office block. The developers defend their project with the unoriginal claim that “the redevelopment of the Regent would see it given a new purpose.” Well, to be sure. But the lavish entrance hall will no doubt be protected by security guards and the only people who’ll enjoy its charm will be the suits who work there. It’s a nonsense to suggest that this sort of vandalism is in any way protecting the heritage of the cinema. Just as with the demolition of Festival Hall on Albert Street a while back, what will also be demolished is the material embodiment of many memories. To treat the Regent like this is to eviscerate its history and present design - as a theatre.
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
I’ve got the flu, so not much to report for me. But I did take a constitutional this afternoon - the weather in Brisbane is just beautiful at the moment - so different from the putrid and stinky Februaries of the last decade or so. And I took some photos for a mini-architectural tour of my ‘hood.
If you’d like to see a larger image of the photos, click on them then click on “full view” once you’re inside the gallery.
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
I had some fun yesterday - through the auspices of the Centre for Policy Development, I was asked to go and do a live to air interview on higher education funding on community radio 4zzz fm’s Brisbane Line show. I used to be in the zzz collective around 20 years ago - I got into radio through the anti-Joh and land rights activism that was such a vibrant feature of mid to late 80s Brisvegas. So I was chuffed to be on air - the contribution the Zeds has made to community radio, music and politics is really inestimable - it was the first fm community licence in Australia approved in the dying days of the Whitlam government, and its roots go back even further - to the 60s civil liberties movement in Brisbane. A few years ago, there was talk of a drama based on the station’s history being in development for SBS, but it may have fallen victim to John Howard style political incorrectness police.
The building zzz is in now is also a significant site in the alternative history of Brisbane. First located at the UQ union in St Lucia, the station was spectacularly evicted by a National Party led student administration in 1989 - I was there when it happened, and really should write something about it sometime. After a short stay at Toowong, the Communist Party when it wound up in 1991 offered zzz the use of its building on Barry Parade in the Valley. I was interested to see that the paint has been stripped back on the door and you can see a visible trace of that building’s history - “the People’s bookshop” which Brisbane radicals of an older vintage than me would remember well.
This piece struck a chord with me regarding some of the frequent epithets hurled at “lefties” on this very blog:
why have conservatives frequently insulted the type of food (sushi-eating), type of coffee (latte-drinking), or type of alcoholic beverages (wine and / or microbrews) that many progressives consume? It seems to me that they consider an individual’s divergence from their habits to somehow be an insult to them, rather than the outlandish possibility that different people just prefer different kinds of food and drinks. Does their intolerance know no bounds? And if they really like the food, coffee and alcoholic beverages they consume, why does it bother them so much that other people have different preferences? That strikes me as a shockingly high level of personal insecurity concerning one’s cultural preferences.
This literal distaste for pluralism, coupled with whining over something as petty as personal eating habits, is demonstrative of what has always struck me as the extreme insecurity among conservatives in the cultural realm. That someone even cares what someone else eats is absolutely pathetic. The inability to just live and let live reveals how the conservative cultural supremacist message is based in the highest levels of personal insecurity that one can think of. The fear of gays, of Mexicans, of Muslims, and even of food is infantile in the extreme. Does Boehner need to someone to scare away the unpronouncable words and diverse menu options under his bed at night, too? What else can conservatives fear and hate? Are they going to start holding news conferences about progressives hanging toilet paper the wrong way, too?
Don’t expect an outbreak of peace and love in the streets of Sydney from this one. At least the NSW Government has stood up to the right ogres (the AHA lobby) but for the wrong reasons.
Someone who is remaining byline-less Adam Shand thinks it will all end in tears. (only just found the byline - geez their formatting sucks).
Cross-posted at LP in Exile, where you can comment while LP waits for an end to its server woes!
Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
On Tuesday, I developed a summer cold which quickly became the summer cold from hell. So I’ve been sleeping lots, reading lots, drinking lots of juice and watching lots of Torchwood. And writing about the election of course. As I’ve started to feel better, I’ve been getting in a few hour long walks by the river - though that’s not as pleasant as it sounds with the sort of humidity we’re getting at the moment in Brisbane… Nothing much else really though I did take the scenic way to the shops this arvo and took some photos along the way.
If you’d like to see a larger image of the photos, click on them then click on “full view” once you’re inside the gallery.
I was out at Ipswich the other day, to do an interview with Geraldine Doogue for a show she’ll be broadcasting on the pivotal Queensland seat of Blair. We sat down to have a chat at Murphy’s pub, next to T. J. Ryan House, the home of the Ipswich Workers Club and the Trades and Labor Council. Ipswich isn’t the big union and working class town it once was, because it was hit hard by the globalisation of the Australian economy in the late 80s and early 90s. The coal ran out, and the Goss government shut down the railway workshops which had been a large local employer. The Hanson phenomenon is better explained by economic changes than some sort of purely Quinceland racial redneckism in many ways.
Cruelly, the attempts of a fairly enlightened city council in the late 90s and early 2000s to reinvent Ipswich as something of an information and creative economy hub on the back of the 1998 opening of a local campus of UQ were probably stymied by the rep Pauline gave the place. It’s a pity in more ways than one, because it’s a nice town. Rather like Newcastle, a lot of the economic life of the city has been sucked towards the metropolis as it’s increasingly become a dormitory suburb for Brisbane, as have the new houses along the Warrego Highway, also in Blair. So the CBD is a bit of a ghost town during the day. But interestingly orange shirted Rights at Work campaigners were out and about in the searing heat, and on the way back to Brissie I saw quite a few of them near a shopping centre along the Ipswich motorway planning their doornocking.
As I noted in a previous post about the Greens’ campaign, residents of Brisbane Central vote in a by-election tomorrow called as a result of Peter Beattie’s retirement from the Queensland Parliament. I’ve had a fair few bits of propaganda in my mailbox from both Labor’s Grace Grace and the Greens’ Anne Boccabella. But, even though a campaign such as this tends to focus much more on local issues than a state wide or a commonwealth election, the basics of the campaign process are similar. There are few opportunities to meet the candidates, and fewer for citizens to put them under pressure with probing questions - which may relate to issues the parties have not chosen to highlight (and perhaps don’t want to highlight). The New Farm Neighbourhood Centre organised a Politics in the Pub session at the Brunswick Hotel on Tuesday night which did provide such opportunities. But most in attendance were friends, family and supporters of the candidates.
Gone are the days when candidates would address lively public meetings full of engaged citizens, and press coverage of the campaign is sketchy at best. While the potential of video and YouTube to capture “Macaca moments” and unforced errors is something that’s been widely discussed, it also has a much more informative and democratising potential through citizen journalism, something already seen in the federal election campaign with Youdecide2007. So, as a modest contribution to that process, I’m posting videos of the addresses by Grace Grace and Anne Boccabella, and segments of the questions from the audience which I captured on Tuesday night and which I’ve uploaded to Google video. My hope is that this will allow aspects of Tuesday night’s proceedings to reach a wider audience than those who were present, and with any luck, perhaps there’s also the potential for undecided Brisbane Central voters to use this as part of their decision making process.
So, since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
It’s Jacaranda time in Brisneyland, and the livin’s easy. My peregrinations on Friday night have already been Facebooked, and Saturday really was a lazy day. But we’re dealing with 30+ days in Brisneyland at the moment (gloriously relieved tonight by the first summer spring storm), and I was a bit wary of wandering down to the Powerhouse for the free Sunday arvo LiveSpark gig. But we’re inured to the weather, we Brisvegans, and so I thought I’d do a bit of a photo essay, as part of my visual/urban sociology project, to document how we enjoy hot afternoons in my neck of the woods. I’ll post all the photos over the fold, but for best results, click through and then click again on the photo or on the full view link for the larger version.
The full set of pics can be viewed @ Facebook. I tend to reserve the deviantart gallery for the ones I like most/think are actually half way decent photos.
The bands playing were the excellent Do the Robot, whom I’ve blogged previously, surely Brisvegas’ premier indie rock glockenspiel band, and Iron On. I’ll be uploading some vids overnight, so watch this space or check out their myspaces (follow the band name hyperlinks) for a taste of what I listened to this arvo. Anyway, I hope everyone had a glorious weekend. I’m kicking back tonight with a six pack of James Squire amber ale and some cashews!
With apologies to Simon and Garfunkel (who incidentally I saw live back in the 80s at Lang Park)… But who would have thought that the James Street home of the inner city nouveaux riche and very self consciously fabulous would have contained so much political graffiti? A sign of the times? Who knows?
Larvatus Prodeo is an Australian group blog which discusses politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Recent comments
Robert Merkel, joe2, Kim, joe2, Brett, Kim [...]
charles, Robert Merkel, Katz, Kim, Emma in grade 12 english class, Craig Mc [...]
GregM, Emma in grade 12 english class, Adrien, Kim, Adrien, Kim [...]
Ziggy, Kim, Ziggy, Mark, Brian, David [...]
Megan, Adrien, Kim, Laura, laura, Megan [...]
Adrien, alister, Adrien, Adrien, Nick, carbonsink [...]
professor rat, Robert Merkel, clarencegirl, Tyro Rex, Darryl Rosin, Shaun [...]
daggett, Evan, SJ, Tom Round, Bernice, joe2 [...]
Bingo Bango Boingo, Kim, Emma in grade 12 english class, Bingo Bango Boingo, Alastair, Angharad [...]
Andyc, Ambigulous, shiftaling, Pavlov's Cat, Cerveza de Baca, laura [...]
Anthony Peterson, Adam, David, Adam, derrida derider, Chris (a different one) [...]
Peter Wood, dk.au, FDB, Roger Jones, Roger Jones, FDB [...]