rainbowtatt

I think most inner-westies know about the Olympia Milk Bar. It’s on Parramatta Road, Stanmore and hasn’t changed in the last 40+ years.

Seriously.

It’s famous for the retro decor (and all the old posters and boxes of old chocolates and soft drinks), but also famous for the scary guy who owns the joint. He’s got the nickname Mr Death and even though I’d never been in the shop before, I was already scared of him.

Dan went in YEARS ago (as in, 10+ years ago) and ordered a milkshake. He got yelled at by “Mr Death” because he dared to ask for more milk in his milkshake. And he didn’t go back… until last weekend.

You don’t go to the Olympia Milk Bar for fast service. It took a while, but eventually we were able to order two milkshakes ($2.80 each) and enjoy the interior while we waited.

I’ve done some googling and you can get coffee and tea here. But no cappuccino. He doesn’t “do” that fancy stuff.

Fair enough!

The milkshake turns up in a banged up metal/aluminium/whatever glass and while not the most flavoursome milkshake, it’s well worth it for the nostalgia.

Like Dan remembered from ten years ago, the glass was only about half full, but I managed to stop him from going up  to ask for more milk ;)

To be honest, I don’t know why people are scared of this old guy running the shop. He was polite enough to us and even smiled at one point!

Didn’t stop me from freaking out when I realised he saw that I was taking photos!!

Olympia Milk Bar 190 Parramatta Road, Stanmore

On Saturday we went to our first gallery exhibition opening.

I have quite an arty group of friends and future in-laws, but have never been to such a shindig before.

It was fun! There were cupcakes and glasses of champagne and Van’s jewellery to admire:

I’m a tad biased about Van’s work, though. Not only is she a future in-law, but she created my engagement ring, and is designing our wedding bands on Wednesday night.

Wednesday night!

But I’m really writing to show you this:

Yup, that’s a donut.

A half-eaten one.

And it’s made of concrete.

It’s by Will Coles, a guy whose art we’re VERY familiar with. We find his stuff around our neighbourhood.

We found another exhibition, right near Van’s, and it happened to be Will. WOO!

His stuff is what I suppose you’d call contemporary? Maybe one of my artist friends can help me…

We’re more familiar with Will’s concrete TVs, remote controls and mobile phones that get bolted to telegraph poles and footpaths… but we saw the donut and bought it on the spot. Our first real piece of art.

(Who said we’re supposed to save our pennies for the wedding?)

The gallery curator suggested we use it as a paperweight, but surely there are other uses that we haven’t thought of?

If nothing else, we can use it as a dust collector ;)

This is my (long-winded) bit for this week’s My Place & Yours :)

The big tree in our backyard drops seeds this time of year.

It’s worse this year because of the Lorikeets.

I’m not sure what the tree’s called, I thought it was a nightshade tree, but Google doesn’t agree with me. It flowers early summer, big white trumpet-y flowers that bloom at night, and drop before breakfast time.

Either way, it looks like its snowing in our backyard right now:

Twilight in my backyard is crazy busy:

The local Rainbow Lorikeets LOVE the big tree in our backyard. I usually hate the tree because at this time of year it drops so many seeds that it looks like snow in my backyard. If it’s not dropping seeds, it’s dropping horrible flowers or blocking our sewerage pipes.

But now that I’ve realised that I’ve got native birds in my backyard (and not just sparrows), I’m taking the time to stop and watch the lorikeets hang out and have their dinner.

Lorikeets are noisy buggers, always yacking while they make it snow.

Pretty impressive for my concrete backyard!

My SD card is chockas with blurry lorikeet photos! Think I need to get me a monopod….

This is why I love living in Sydney’s inner-west:

So the sprayers have repainted a wall so they have a blank canvas. But they haven’t had time to come back to finish the job.

Promise to show you the finished product (whenever that may happen!).

x

A few nights ago the back lanes of Enmore were all a-flurry with excitement:

A film crew!

Admittedly, they were filming a short film that just happened to be set in a laneway, but it got me wondering what Enmore – The Movie would be like…

Opening scenes: Morning commuters patiently wait for buses to come up along Enmore Road. Customers walk into the Methadone Clinic to make an appointment. People with parcel pick-up cards hassle the Post Office staff before they actually open for the day. Cafes fill up with coffee-needing customers. Residents hose their footpaths to remove the pee from the night before.

Drama!: Another Thai restaurant opens up and the 20 other Thai restaurants get the shits. The police are called for another complaint about a “local businessman” and his inappropriate behaviour. People double-park illegally while they pick up their fruit and vege from Alfalfa House. There’s a gig on at the Enmore Theatre and/or at Notes Live and parking becomes a thousand times worse than usual (and it’s the locals who get the parking fines). The bottle-o gets robbed and/or the front window shatters all over the footpath (again).

Closing scenes: The guy who carries his pet snake on his shoulders is walking home. The old greek guys outside that mysterious unnamed shopfront have another smoko. Customers pick up some last-minute groceries from IGA (but not Food Works). There’s smoke billowing out of the Sultan’s Table because they don’t have sufficient exhaust fans in their kitchen. Locals stand around and watch a street artist create another mural on a vertical surface.

What quintessential Enmore scenes have I missed?

I was driving down our street tonight looking for a parking spot – something that sucks as a general rule because we’ve chosen to live in a congested area of Sydney’s inner west. Tonight there are workmen blocking off empty parking spaces with witches hats. There were parking spots as far as the eye could see, but they were all blocked off by damned witches hats

Turns out they’re doing line marking. Because the kerb isn’t enough of an indicator on where to park, apparently.

I try to park in a spot anyway and get waved away by one of the overall-clad blokes and decide to suss out WTF is going on

Me: So where do I park if I actually live here?

Him: Yih, moite thir is sum spots up an’ ’round in (names street 3 blocks away)

Me: *blank stare*

Him: Yih, I fink they done a letterbox drop an’ that

Me: Well, they never made it to my letterbox

Him: Awww shoite!

Me: So this is Marrickville Council’s doing, yeah?

Him: Yih!!

Me: Well, at least I’ll know who to send the memo to if I get mugged!

We both chortled* and he continued blocking available parking spots with witches hats while I drove off to the next suburb to find somewhere to park my car.

Mental note: wear walking shoes in the morning.

* I can’t believe I actually said typed the word “chortle”. I am getting old.

You’re not going to believe the difference in the “before” and “after” shots of The Water Feature:

Here’s the before shot of the outside:

And after?

So they patched the crack (insert immature laughter here) and painted it baby poo green/brown. But they thoughtfully made sure the crack is still visible for all and sundry to see.

And now, here’ s the inside view close up (before):

And a full view, featuring the new drawers we bought on the weekend:

It’s a bit hard to tell because I wanted to get the new drawers (Ikea!) in the shot as well as the Sleepy Bear on the Red Chair, which is apparently more comfortable with a bit of Ikea-box on top.

Anyways THE INSIDE IS EXACTLY THE SAME. The cracks, swollen plaster, even the little spider up in the corner… still there.

Turns out the main problem was in the roof and the owners of our place didn’t want to spend the money on “non-essential” repairs. Yeah, I know.

So we have the best of both worlds, I guess. We get to stay dry and we get a constant visual reminder of the 709 days that our loungeroom wall leaked.

BECAUSE I REALLY NEED THE VISUAL.

The Water Feature has been FIXED! My loungeroom doesn’t leak anymore! It only took 709 days to fix it!

Here are the before shots of the leaking wall – internal and external views:

Check back tomorrow to see the *amazing* transformation!

Update: see the amazing transformation here!

Lately there’s been a lot of talk about graffiti in Sydney. Now that I’m 30 and listen to AM radio, I’ve heard a a lot of talkback on the topic.

I’ve gotten so close to ringing the radio (oh my god, I really am turning into my mother) because the close-minded opinion that graffiti artists just do it to piss people off was, well, pissing me off.

The word graffiti is being used far too broadly—graffiti really is moreso about illegal artworks and “tagging” (I hate tagging). Street art refers to those beautifully thought-out and executed pieces where most-often the artists have gained permission of the owners to decorate their vertical real estate.

Me? I’m a fan of street art. If I had that kind of talent with a spray can, I’d be going for it, too. And I really do hate tagging – it’s thoughtless and it’s a spray-can equivalent of a dog taking a whizz on every blade of grass in the neighbourhood.

Our garage wall had been covered in graffiti – meaningless tags and spray drips that made it look more like a training ground for junior street artists. Then late last year we saw a group of guys working on a wall near us that ended up looking like this:

We got to talking to the group of guys and offered them our tacky garage wall as a canvas. Turns out that most street artists get the permission of the property owners (or in our case, renter) and go as far as getting contact details of the property owners so that they have a fallback position if the cops start asking questions. Cause they know that doing it without permission is, you know, illegal.

The guys we met over the course of a few weeks while they worked on this wall as well as hours, we found them all to be intelligent, articulate and most of them had day jobs and this was just their creative outlet after hours.

I like that.

And I have since had greater respect for the street art I see around Enmore, Newtown, St Peter’s and other places around Sydney.Yes, I know there are some bad apples around, but aren’t there always in social groupings?

I’m making it my mission to educate everyone around me that there’s a difference between graffiti and street art and that there is a hell of a lot of street art-talent out there.

And for the record, ever since our garage wall has been done up, there has been NO MORE TAGGING on our roller door. Kinda goes to show that there is a level of respect for each other’s talent in the street art world.

I wrote about the blue monkey here.