Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Constable Would Like It
I know I shouldn't complain about the cloudy wet weather in this time of tanks, grey water recycling and restrictions, but I only have a few days left in Brisbane and all I want is a bright sunny day on which to hit a beach.
Thus far being home for the holidays has involved a whole lot of relaxig around the house, a few visits to mates places, a top dinner at the Norman Hotel with some of the old school gang and a bunch of family competitions on the Wii, Buzz, Guitar Hero and Singstar. All excellent wet weather games, but still really want to get to a beach.
Labels: Brisbane
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Valley Vibe Gone?
I hope it's all in my head. I hope it's just because I haven't been out in the valley in a year or so and because I was the stone cold sober designated driver, but I reckon the valley might be losing its' cool alternative / indie vibe a bit, at least when it comes to nightlife.
We had another awesome family dinner at Oyama last night to celebrate the old man's 60th. In his usual stay young style, Dad opted to kick on afterwards. Being a fan of - and participant in - the live music scene he wanted to check out the Elephant & Wheelbarrow. Sure, ok, yeah. But first to The Met, on Eve's suggestion.
I was pretty impressed with The Met; three floors of cool with balconies over a dance floor & bar level, with a bunch of chill out booths below on a basement level. Looks like the whole place was fitted out by way of Loot though. Crowd: average dolled-up mall-dwellers. With the DJ pumping out dance & the old man wanting a live band and commenting that the audio systems were better when he was doing club sound & lighting back in the day it was time to head back to the pub. One drink and we're moving on.
The Elephant & Wheelbarrow had a cool tabletop sit-down arcade game, but the rest of the place was no different to your average suburban pub. Don't know where the valley's interesting people have gone, E&B was full of post-xmas-party pissed bogans jumping around to the cover band Stiffler's Mum. Dad was pretty disappointed having had some ripper nights at E&B in the last few years.
How to redeem this birthday pub crawl? Pool. Dooleys. Except that it's not Dooleys anymore it's Club 388. No biggy, it's still got pool tables. And someone's got Bobby Brown going on the jukebox, followed by Hammer (yeah y'all). So we hang out there with a few games of pool featuring Dad & Scotty vs Zara & Matt while a duo strums out Matchbox 20 and Third Eye Blind covers on acoustic guitar and banjo on stage. The aroma of other peoples dinners revisited is faint at the bar end of the room where we are, but intensifies as one approaches the bathrooms; seems the christmas party carnies are coming off second best again this year, though they resiliently push on regardless.
It was the ten minutes out on the Dooleys balcony watching the punters wander up & down the streets by Family, the Empire and the Press Club, as well as the walk to Dooleys and back to the car, that got me wondering what happened to the Valley. The police presence was high; pairs of 'em ticketing punters for jaywalking and a bunch escorting one bloke away from RGs. Couldn't shake the feeling that the Valley nightscene's been taken over by the piss drinking commercial pop crowd that I would have expected at Fridays or City Rowers back in the day.
Maybe - hopefully - it's just the christmas party carny season.
Labels: Brisbane
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Steely Dan. Brisbane
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Summer in the City
Sure, the seasonal shopping was trying and expensive, but on the whole the Brisbane break has been good. Highlights include:
- Days of cool wet weather providing respite from the humidity, lots of sitting around reading Hit Parade and pretty much a whole day flicking through the paper & watching Heidi Klum on the Project Runway marathon.
- Watching the Rainbow Lorikeets scamper through the trees in the front garden after the rain:
- Teaching the old man how to plot his NZ treks in Google Earth and geotag his pictures with Picasa.
- Christmas Eve drinks, pool and petanque at the sister & bro-in-law's place.
- Christmas at home with a house full of extended family, then out at Cleveland with extended family's family. Some very cool gifts exchanged; this Orikaso stuff looked pretty cool & I'm sure Dad'll get some good use out of it on his next trek (wish I'd found it).
- Geeking out with Dave & Carl in West End.
- A second viewing of Casino Royale & then coffee with Paul & Lea who were coincidently in the same session.
- Discovering the Vietnamese graffiti piece at the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, then skating through the city & valley snapping street art. Found some great stuff along Robertson St:
- Breakfast at Watt at the Powerhouse with sisters & bro-in-law, then bowling:
Friday, December 29, 2006
Wet Weather Killer
My summer holiday book this year was Hit Parade; Lawrence Block's third Keller book. I was worried about not being able to get into the right mood for a New York hit man book in sunny Queensland, but mother nature fixed that up with several cool, wet days.
Ducky's shower parted the clouds at Woodford; Keller, Dot and I parted ways last night & this morning was bright & hot here in Brisbane...
Vietnamese Graffiti
Today I went over to the new Gallery of Modern Art at Southbank & wandered through the Fifth Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. My favourite pieces were Proposal for an imaginary Vietnamese landscape #1–3 and Spray It, Don't Say It by Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn:
Proposal for an imaginary Vietnamese landscape #1–3 2006, along with the video work Spray It, Don't Say It 2006, comment on the battle currently taking place on urban walls in Vietnam between socialist murals and posters (the only official public art) and fast-proliferating capitalist advertising. Nguyễn’s works also imagine and document the insertion of graffiti into the visual mix. Commissioned paintings of specific city locales are tagged with graffiti interventions; the short video documents the artist's exploration of nascent graffiti art practices in Vietnam, as well as the realisation of the project. Since the success of Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat's graffiti-influenced paintings in the 1980s, the specific aesthetics of graffiti have been recognised within contemporary art. Most graffiti artists, however, paint not on canvas but on the skin of the city. Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn's project explores the current struggle in Vietnam's public city spaces between competing ideological and aesthetic worlds.According to the art teachers interviewed in Spray It, Don't Say It, Vietnamese graffiti crews have stood on the shoulders of the western material they've seen in films and music videos and are yet to establish a uniquely Vietnamese style. The crews themselves lament this; one artist wondered aloud why so many of his pieces featured skyscrapers when he'd never seen one with his own eyes.
Labels: Brisbane, Go, Look, Watch
Sunday, December 24, 2006
A Very Bundy Christmas
You know it's Christmas in Queensland when there's Bundy cans under the tree (rear left). This is my sister & bro-in-law's tree.
