a tourist pamphlet.

[soundczechfic]

I was really bored today so I ended up taking a bunch of photos on my way to supermarket. Yet more proof I desperately need a job. I wish I was a better photographer. I have really shaky hands, only I never noticed til like last year. 90% of my photos come out so blurry. I could use the flash I guess but I've yet to master the flash on this camera, so whenever I use it it is too bright and everything looks disgusting. Shuuji looks especially bad under a flash, it makes his fur look like a seal's. I think I'd prefer everything to be blurry.





Actually I took these when I got home from mysquishy's at like 5 o'clock this morning. Whenever I get home at bizarre hours like that the cats go mental like I'm coming home for a party. Minutes before these photos were taken Shuuji practically flew onto my shoulder and scared the shit out of me.










Akira always reminds me of this prissy little princess. A little while after I got her I started wishing I had called her Colbert, after Stephen Colbert. I can't really remember why except that sometimes she really reminds me of him. Probably if I'd got the cats a few weeks later, after my Nobuta obsession had waned slightly, they'd have ended up being called Bakanishi and Colbert. I should probably be grateful I got them when I did.




The ceiling of the basement carpark in my apartment building. altricial and thewhiteprophet find my basement really creepy, like somewhere serial killers keep their victims in Criminal Minds. I always liked it though. For one thing it is almost disgustingly massive. You could probably have fitted another four or five apartments into it. Instead we get two parking spaces. Score, I guess, though I don't drive.




Someone left this surly note above the building's recycling bins. I always wonder who it was. If one of my neighbours secretly despises us all. I don't really know any of my neighbours all the well though, you never see any body. A couple down the hall raises Possums. They're pretty awesome.




Graffiti from the bridge I walk under to get to the train station. I walked up the rocks to take a closer picture and this old lady stopped to warn me to be careful of the "derros" (derelicts. Australians shorten everything) who sleep/hang out under the bridge, right up the top in the dark. "You never know what they get up to," she said, with a sort of D face. "Judging from the smell!"

I used to sometimes realise this guy was sitting under the bridge when I was walking home at night and it would freak me out for a second the way things always do when you don't notice them right away. He never does anything though, he just sits there and drinks and sleeps.




Oh the Railway Hotel. I think it is under new management but the last time I went there with a friend everybody stopped and stared as we walked through the doors and out back to the pool table, like we were in an old Western movie. It's because all their clientele were middle aged men who seemed like alcoholics and liked sports.

Apparently Chopper Read used to drink there. And Romper Stomper was filmed there. This pub is more or less across the road from my house. My local, lol. A colourful history.




Posters on the fence outside the train station. I always really paranoid political posters, except when some started appearing around my area for some kind of white power-ish group last year not long after the Cronulla Riots. They were scary and weird. I usually only ever see socialist propaganda everywhere.








The back subway exit out of Flinders Station up into Degraves is so old and skanky, I kind of love it. The station bit itself is really dirty and falling apart but once you get beyond the ticket barriers there's this series of emo-knitterish little clothes and record shops. And a barber. I like the pink tiles on the shop section.










The first thing you see when you leave the station is a waffle cart, and then all this graffiti. Even though I really like all the graffiti and stuff in this area I never hang out around here because almost everyone who does is a complete and utter wanker. I like to walk through on nice days though, it's a better shortcut than walking along the gross Flinders end of Swanston St, which is just fast food chain after fast food chain.


















I can never figure out if all of this is encompassed in the City Lights project or just parts of it, but it's pretty cool anyway. There were so many people taking photos when I was there this afternoon; these clean young Chinese couples posing in front of dumpsters in an alley.

When you leave Degraves you cross Collins St, suddenly going from all this dingy street art to what is more or less the rich part of the city.












The Block Arcade has these beautiful mosaic floors and high, windowed ceilings and I've been inside dozens of times and never bought anything but chocolate. There is this tie store there that I'm sort of obsessed with because they have this big square display in the window with ties rolled up in aesthetically pleasing colour combinations. I wanted a photo of that but there was a big sign in the way. Uncool.

Once my mother more or less passed out on the floor of the Block Arcade. She'd just given blood and had to lie down right where she was standing. One of the waiters from a cafe came out and was really nice though. In a movie they probably would have called her a bum and called security.








I think those guys are ugly yet hilarious. On the other end of the arcade is this sort of god like figure with a harp or trumpet or something and a loin cloth. So incredibly ugly. I had a photo but I forgot to put a border on it, so it will remain forever a mystery.

This was so time consuming and probably reads like a glorified tourist brochure. I was seriously so bored today. I would have more photos except the battery on my camera died just as I tried to take pics of the Bronze men on Swanston Street. So incredibly bored.

Comments

[samenashi.livejournal.com]

Be honest; this is just so Aja realises Melbourne isn't an outback town, right?

[soundczech.livejournal.com]

I think to do that I'd just marquee the same photo of the Eureka Tower or something five times across her screen; "DO NOT SPIT ON STAIRS, WALLS, OR FLOOR" is hardly very convincing, is it.

I tried to take a photo of Dinkum Pies in the Block Arcade to please the non-Australians but the pictures kept coming out blurry.

[storyteller.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't think I've seen pictures of Akira before, or if I have, my memory is really, really embarassingly awful. :| She's so cute and pretty. My family has pretty much acknowledge that Poppy's no looker. Unless you like glaring. It's great when she does it to Amy's annoying friends.

I like all your pictures of grafitti ... if I went to go take pictures of grafitti, I would take my sister or someone with me ... someone slower than me, who would distract possible gangsters while I got away. No, really, most of the nearby grafitti is behind Krogers (uh, the grocery store, klsdjfskd maybe you have Krogers in Melbourne, id think so though ...). And it's not that pretty, unless you go deeper into Houston and that takes too much effort. Like turning on the car and driving.

The Block Arcade looks very posh. I like the narrow walkway and the little boutiques.

QUESTION: do many people live without cars/driving in Melbourne? That concept seems so strange to me, but then, Houston has next to no public transport.

[soundczech.livejournal.com]

I don't really associate graffiti with gangsters anymore, though I did more when I lived in the suburbs. This is more or less mostly state sanctioned street art, but they're pretty lenient about graffiti in general. They tried to bring in this zero tolerance policy about it when we held the Commonwealth Games last year but nobody was particularly impressed and I've never seen it being enforced. There's a lot of stencil art around Melbourne, I enjoy that.

Well most people can drive here (though none of my good friends do, but that's because we're lazy) but there isn't much point driving in the city in Melbourne. My family and friends who can drive still don't, particularly, unless they are going into the suburbs. I live about a fifteen minute walk from the CBD/five minutes by train, so it's easier to catch public transport into the centre. Once you're actually in the city and inner suburbs parking is really expensive. And we have trams (A bit like the street cars in San Francisco, I guess?) that run all through the city and inner suburbs, it is easier to take those, or walk. They make driving a pain in the ass, too, because people have to make these stupid hook turns that everyone is terrified of to avoid them. They try to discourage people driving in the city as much as possible. The city itself isn't all that huge even though there are a lot of people, and everything is in this grid formation, so it's really easy to get around just by walking. This has been a very long answer when I guess I could have just said that public transport is plentiful though often infuriating. It's only like this in Melbourne, if you go to Sydney, where they don't have trams, the traffic is insane.

[eleveninches.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, Melbourne looks cool.

[soundczech.livejournal.com]

Melbourne would like to think it is cool, like a tryhard at a party. It's pretty fly for a white guy. I still enjoy it though.

[austere.livejournal.com]

Melbourne seems wonderful. I'm a little sad after reading this entry, because I get so emotional about people and their cities. I was reading my city's incredibly stupid (http://community.livejournal.com/winnipeg/2946534.html) LJ community the other night and suddenly felt so heartbroken that I'm going to leave. Not sad enough to stay and rot away here, but still sad. I can tell I'm going to have a hard time adjusting when I move. I have this intense need to connect with my city and know the history and rumours and politics and haunted houses. Plus nothing can replace my favouritest cafe and the music venue I work at. :(

Also, the graffiti in Melbourne looks awesome. I should do a post like this once the snow melts.

[soundczech.livejournal.com]

I enjoy Melbourne immensely because it's just really easy for me to live here, I guess. We have an incredibly stupid lj comm too, people are always asking really stupid questions / getting annoyed about people asking stupid questions on it.

How long until you move? When I left my childhood home in Ringwood I was really angsty (it's about half an hour from here, still in Melbourne so it's not like the move was that drastic. But my house :() but I would never ever go back now. If you tried to get me to live there again I'd be so depressed.

I love finding out random things about Melbourne history. I took a class last semester about Australian spaces, I was really surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

You should! In my head this was going to be like a day in the life thing but then my battery died before I even got to Melbourne Central, let alone the supermarket. All the interesting stuff is in the first half of the journey though, I guess. The rest is pretty generic.

[austere.livejournal.com]

Our cities are incredible (http://community.livejournal.com/melbournemaniac/1499433.html?thread=15793193).

I'm planning to move in about six months. Coming home will be a rarity, too, because I live in the middle of the prairies. The nearest "big" city is 500 km away and it has fewer than 200,000 people. Canada sucks.

[altricial.livejournal.com]

Take pics of your neighbour's cat

[soundczech.livejournal.com]

Do you think I go over there every day for afternoon tea or something.

(I will if I ever get the chance. So pretty.)

[cherprudence.livejournal.com]

T_____T so awesome.

[soundczech.livejournal.com]

♥

[nanapearls.livejournal.com]

Please, Ish, take more photos. Please. It's not boring, it's interesting, and it's educational ;)

[soundczech.livejournal.com]

Next time I somewhere vaguely interesting I will take some more photos for you. Even though you've been here. Not much has changed.

[galen75.livejournal.com]

wow great photos :) You and Aja should compare stories on creepy basement garages :) She used to have one at her old apartment. Sadly the photo of the bin operation reminded me of the recycling website we are working on as well cause sadly they have stuff on that dumbness factor I feel at times. Melbourne seems very cool much bigger than Bloomington.

[soundczech.livejournal.com]

Melbourne's like a small large city I guess? Or a medium medium city? It feels small to me because I don't venture very far out of the CBD unless I really have to.

The recycling website sounds torturous :( I remember the gifs. The horrifying yet hilarious gifs.

[soundczech.livejournal.com]

I had to google 'Gog and Magog' to find out what you were talking about, that's how knoweldgable I am about this city, despite having lived here all my life. "Those terrifying ugly guys" is more or less how I've always thought of them.

[font.livejournal.com]

SO I seriously toyed with just friending you and being nervously silent, because that is my most natural state. AND THEN I typed out that sentence and stared at it for 2 minutes or so while no followup came to mind. AT THAT POINT I decided that I should stop trying to think of a clever transition and instead just jump to the end, WHICH IS THIS: Hi, Fitz, I'm Jenny; can we be friends?

[soundczech.livejournal.com]

The idea of anyone being nervous about friending me is pretty, you know, "lololol". I feel like we are five years old and you just approached me nervously in the playground and now you're standing there bawling and waiting for me to push you in the mud, but instead I'm just like "lol let's play hopscotch!!!!" This comment doesn't make any sense. I just added you.

[font.livejournal.com]

AWESOME. :D