Here’s a guy I used to have breakfast with every morning, when he had a mobile job fixing servers. He’s been owned now for some time though, and I very rarely get to hang out anymore so Stevey and I hooked up for dinner last night.
Plan was to smash a Chicken Jaeger at Una’s but in the end we decided to drop in to Kelly’s in Bondi for ribs (I always think I’m going to run into friends Alan and Carmen when I go to Bondi! hehe). Kelly’s were on fire, ribs were crazy juicy and we were served by Christina’s favorite waiter, Orlando Bloom, who’s cut his hair, and is now wearing glasses so he doesn’t quite look like Orlando Bloom anymore, but it’s still service with a smile! The guy is a champ!
I failed to finish a small serving (so much meat on the bone!) and Stevey failed to finish a regular. He’s a hurricanes man, but I think he enjoyed the ribs at Kelly’s. I bet any money he’ll call me up in a month or so with a craving for ribs at Kelly’s.
Carpark outside is off the main road, quite private and can fit 100 cars or so.
The front of the warehouse, gotta love that old skool brick!
Looking in, what a blank canvas. There’s a garage door at the back too (2 street frontage).
Looking back to the front.
Upstairs office space.
So yesterday I hooked up with the g2s guys to check out “the space”. I’m in love, really. Retail space, office space, community space, gallery space… I’m in, let’s do this!
The nappy poo game! Christina had been busy in the kitchen microwave melting chocolate bars beyond recognition and packaging them into nappies.
They also had a custom singlet making activity by the looks of it. This is Suga’s one (I love it!).
And the rest of them.
Late afternoon I picked Christina up, many of the ladies had gone home but I snapped this shot of the few guests that were still around. That’s Jamie with her eyes shut.
My sister Jamie had her baby shower today. Christina helped to organise the day and threw in some fun games – guessing the diameter of Jamie’s belly by cutting a length of string, as well as pouring 10 melted chocolate bars into nappies and having guests eat and guess what chocolates were what!
Richie and I were there early on to help set up, but once the women started pouring in we hit the eject button and made a dash for the pub!
They printed out the national anthem for all, 2nd verse was on the other side. We sung it twice, once with a recording which sounded like the first ever recording of the anthem, lovely, almost as if it was playing on a gramophone.
Where’s Richie.
Richie picking up his certificate from the mayor.
Hey, nice stock! Congratulations mate :)
Each new Australian was given a native in a pot plant, nice touch I thought.
Richie & Jamie.
Last night Mum and I went to Richie’s citizenship ceremony at Randwick town hall. There were a lot of Aboriginal flags decorating the hall, and it was nice to hear the mayor welcome the new Aussies to land which belongs to the Aboriginal people past and present.
It was a slow start, felt a little like being at school again but once it got going I was surprised at how quickly and easily it all went. The crowd was split up with Aussies at the back, and soon to be Aussie’s up the front. They were all told to rise, swear a short oath and that was it!
Archibald was great this year, so much more technical than previous years I thought.
Great stuff at the AGNSW right now. Lower floors, go, go now.
Got wood?
Falling leaves at Botanical Gardens.
I’d never seen the succulent garden before in the park, so so so good!
Lunch at Otto (very nice!).
Drinks at The Opera Bar. Vivid Sydney is on right now, despite the cold there were heaps of snappers out and about to check out the crazy projections. We’re sure Vivid is just going to get better and better every year.
Skateboarding culture and graphics (especially graphics from the 80’s) are things that I still love and respect to this day.
My first memory of skateboarding: I was in art class and a mate of mine David Birtles was looking through a skateboard magazine (Thrasher). I remember only one page form that magazine. It was an advertisement for a skate shop and the entire page was covered in all the different boards they sold. The board graphics that stood out on the page, and burnt an impression in my memory were the Vision Psycho Stick (which I now have on my wall) and also the Gator board.
80’s Vert Demo at the Opera House. Tony Hawk, Christian Hosoi, they were my idols. Skating was everything and yeah I was into Poison (the band) too haha.
Skateboarding exploded when the US pro skateboarders toured Australia in the late 80’s. There were quite a lot of skaters around before they came, but after they came everyone jumped on the bandwagon.
Lance Mountain Future Primitive deck.
I had to have a board. I had no money and I begged my Dad to buy me one, which he did eventually. I got my first board from Surf Dive and Ski on George street in the city. There was a guy that worked there, Thrash was his name (he was rad). I picked out a Powell Peralta Lance Mountain future primitive board. It was a complete. I bought some rails and a tailbone, nose bone too and I totally killed the board using my Dad’s power drill getting the stuff on. I remember crying because I screwed up the board with the drill.
I got bitten by the bug pretty bad thanks to a group of skaters at school. Every single day I’d get home and skate in my backyard until the sun went down. It was all about learning how to ollie back then, then from there it was all about how high could you ollie (I ended up being able to ollie over 6 boards).
I soon realised that the board I had was way too big for me so I went out and bought a new “mini” deck.
Check the stupid board shape, which got destroyed in flip trick attempts. So cool though in retrospect.
Some other decks I’ve owned:
Note the melting Salvador Dali like clocks (I was into Dali’s work much later).
Chris Miller G&S.
Dad bought me this back from one of his many Hong Kong trips. On the phone he said it was a black board. I was so hoping it was going to be Tony Hawk’s last deck for Powell. A limited edition all black board with a Tony Hawk logo on it. When I got this ugly thing my heart sank (haha).
I continued to skate every day after school and in the city on the weekends. We watched Animal Chin, a legendary skate video which changed the way we skated. The Bones Brigade in the video were looking for Animal Chin, it’s a “journey is the destination” kinda message and we took that on big time. IE: Constantly skating through the city and the suburbs “chin searching” – looking for cool skate spots.
At some point the Australian public got sick to death of skateboarders. They tried to shut us down and riding a skateboard became illegal. Kids were having their boards confiscated by police. A lot of skate parks were built in an attempt to get kids to stop skating on the streets but street skating was way more fun than skating ramps (in my opinion). Despite the loud “skateboarding is not a crime” stickers we wore with pride police continued to confiscate boards and skaters (myself) disappeared.
I tried my hand at vert (ramp) skating. I got OK at it, but it just never felt the same as “Chin searching”. I gave up. I got back into skating a little bit during university, with a mate who also gave up for similar reasons in high school and during the early years of work I hooked up with Ash Bolland from Umeric who was into skating but I’ve never truly gotten back into it.
I’ve bought a couple of the new school paddle pop style boards. I’m not into them. Too thin and I hate the tiny wheels (I’ve always had massive T-Bone wheels on my boards).
My workhorses. The old Hosoi Hammerhead with T-bone wheels, Bones swiss bearings (first set I bought from my first skateboard purchase ever, still going strong!) and tracker trucks.
Over the years I’ve always bought boards though, as art. I’ve got them up on my lounge room wall (the stairs going up into the house).
I’ve heard that there are a few old school skaters, who are also creatives by day, and they’re starting a crew and hitting the parks. I want in on this action so I’ll be building up a couple of boards soon. Can’t wait :)
We were outside, the door was shut. We were just about to head off, but in that instant my mate Ben came up to the car. Was a surprise to see him there (he knew another photographer displaying work in the show).
Remember those cool rulers you had as a kid, when you tilted them the image would animate? This artwork did just that, very cool. Can’t wait to do my own interactive/animating artwork!
Slammed Merc in Newtown.
We ended buying the Mothers some lovely and very detailed Turkish homewares from Farah. The details on this bowl are all raised, very nice.
Hell on Wheels was next door so I dropped in to say G’day to Tom. Check the crazy good artwork on the walls.
All stickered up. Toms’s man cave had so much rad stuff in it my eyes failed to settle on any one thing!
Spotted this sex spec VW showcar outside.
We dropped into the Maltese cafe for some food. Still as great as I remembered it back in the day (on Crown St.). The pastizzi’s were 40cents back then (they’re $2 now).
Christina and I spent the day in Newtown yesterday to do a spot of Mothers Day shopping. I figure that if we get something from the mall, the Mothers are going to know exactly where we got the goodies from, but the Mothers are very rarely (if ever) in Newtown. Newtown is still full of lovely crafty things too (IE: less commercial goods).
%20$79.99.jpg)
