My Melbourne

Here's a draft I've been playing around with. I know that a lot of it is based on my romantic ideal of Melbourne's laneways, but the Americans don't know that. So if you want, you can take a look at it, and tell me how bad it really is, and how untrue it might be. Well, I know it's based on a lot of fiction as well as fantasy, but... enjoy. -s.

Melbourne – home of cosy coffeehouses and secret laneways and stencil art and grey Mondays and green purple Storey Hall and menacing babies at Bimbo Deluxe and melting ice-creams on St Kilda Beach and Fat Pizza and John Safran versus God and crazy rush hour during Friday afternoons on Carlisle Street and waiting for the Chadstone bus and cheap eats and the Paris End of Collins Street dahhhhling and ‘four seasons in one day’ and the algae and gold dazzle of Flinders Street Station and feeling at home wherever I am, whenever I am, even amongst the ladies of St Kilda on a Saturday night.

My Melbourne

Hidden behind the garbage bags that line Croft Alley, is a face. Not a pretty face, or one that belongs to someone I know, but a face with mournful eyes that stare out way past Collins Street and the suits that flurry by in a blurred rush to get to work and the students with the glazed look of ipod addicts and the Asian gangs that stalk the video arcades on Russell Street. The face has long green hair, whose fringe covers an eye and the left corner of her mouth. The hair swells in a billowing mass of green paint across the right wall of the lane, its tendrils curling the blue and white sign labeling its territory - "Croft Alley". The face, I find out later, is created by a stencil graffiti artist named K, whose haunting images stare out from many of Melbourne's lanes and alleyways of the CBD.

"My Melbourne", as the tourism department's slogan chimes, rests in the cracks and the puddles of these lanes. These lanes - that creep off the edge of the Melways map into some unknown jungle of garbage and back doors, entrances to bars and broken bottles and drug deals and jazz bars and fashion boutiques and, of course, the many pieces of stencil art that cry, with or without a message, from the walls - stitch the city together.

The lanes form my own daily crossword puzzle. Some lanes are dead ends that really are just the back doors of restaurants and shops - dead ends crammed with rubbish bins and guilty employees quickly finished their last cigarette before the lunch hour rush. Some lanes are of a richer vocabulary, and are of more enviable character. Their umbrellas form a canopy, and each side is lined with cafes of all cuisines and expenses, bakeries and chocolatiers and sushi boxes - holes in the wall that serve lattes and handrolls and souvlaki and noodles. Degraves, Flinders, Royal Arcade, the Block – one loses track of all the names of the alleyways and side streets that ties the city up in a packaged bundle, and keeps it safe. Safe from the arriving international conglomerates that park themselves on the main thoroughfares, seducing those too busy or too cautious or too nervous to explore the little lanes that nestle between the banks and department stores downtown.

But like a crossword answer that adds that special word to your lexis, my favourite lanes are the ones that are most difficult to find, no matter who you ask. The lanes that house cloths of all colours and textures, the boutiques that specialise in 'one-off' pieces and trinkets and jewellery and spectacles of all styles from before my time, glass cats and feathered bags and perfumes from all over the world. It is within these lanes that I lose myself for hours, days, wandering amongst these narrow cobbled streets, touching the soft fabrics of Little Collins, Albert Coat and Hosier lanes, inhaling the choking fumes of Little Bourke's Chinatown, losing time and innocence in "My Melbourne".

At night the neon lights flicker awake and people are laughing, walking arm in arm, sliding through these alleys into secret entrances, VIP bars, Altitude, St Jerome’s, Loop and Cookie, with their purple and green lights and wasabi peas and the intense chattering haze that fills these dark rooms. Around the corner, down the stairs, you might miss it if you’re not careful, it’s the blue door on the left – not the right, it’s above the pharmacy, through the narrow opening beside the police station, walk through the Chinese cinemas and then you’ll find me. Us. We, the kings and queens of Gin Palace, the Money Order Office, the Croft Institute and Double Happiness clink glasses toasting these havens of drunken conversation and muffled intimacy and eclectic furniture and locked rooms of special and secret and sshhhhh…

These lanes stitch together my Melbourne, they hold my city close, keep it alive, they breathe life into its rushed daytimes, its balmy nights, its festivals, its grunge, its kookiness, its funk, its noise, its difference - and of course, it keeps watch over the faces that stare out beyond the garbage bags.