Poor Old Brunswick Street

Sebastian came over last night and went out for dinner with Shane. When they came back, Sebastian wanted coffee.

"Please tell me you have coffee?" Sebastian said to me.

"Because I'm out," said Shane.

Oh really? You call that preground, freeze dried rubbish that you buy, coffee? "Sure I have," I said.

So Sebastian gets hold of my coffee pot and immediately turns his nose up. "Have you ever washed this thing?"

Shrug. "Do you want coffee, or not?" I said. So, my coffee pot is a little used and it just looks like what it is, a well used coffee pot. I rinse it out before I use it, but no I don't spend time scrubbing it, why? What is the point?

"Use mine," said Shane. "Use mine."

"And your seal is gone too," exclaims Sebastian with more than a hint of disgust.

"Oh, I've been meaning to get a seal all week. I went to the local coffee shop yesterday but they didn't sell them any more. It's okay though, it hisses a bit, but it still works."

"Oh, I'm not using that," said Sebastian. "You need a new one." He pulled it out of the coffee pot and flung it in the bin."

"Use mine, use mine," said Shane... like a demented cockatoo.

So, Sebastian left mine now unusable on the bench, as Shane ground my coffee beans and made coffee without offering me or Sam any coffee, not that Sam would have wanted any, but I might have.

Do you think that Sebastian thought he was being helpful? Do you think? Really? That is helpful, is it? Oh?

So, first thing this morning I had to go to Brunswick Street to get a new coffee pot seal, before I could do anything else. Yes, thank you for that Sebastian, lots of help. Really.

It was a lovely sunny morning, I am not denying that. I needed a new coffee pot seal, I'm not denying that either. I guess, in my most generous spirit around this, Sebastian did me a favour and maybe Sam is right and I just like to whine... but really, friends can be such a help some times, don't you think?

Poor old Brunswick Street, where it used to be alternative and edgy it is now just fat and middle aged and turning beige like all the other strip shops. Like the tired old actress she's succumbed to plastic surgery, complete with trout pout and all, and now she just resembles her sisters, Ms' Lygon, Chapel, Bridge and Clarendon. Where she used to be the younger more interesting sister, she's now fat and old and peroxide blonde with all the same fillers and procedures as the other old tarts, desperately trying to hold it together in face of the opposition.

Set up for the “suburban tourists”, now a nice place to visit on the weekend, homogenised and pasteurised with nothing too scary so the “other” suburbanites can come and enjoy the shopping experience, which is familiar and known to them. What they don't get, what they don't know and what they probably don't care about is that they are viewing a corpse, the corpse of what interesting and alternative used to look like.

We used to be allowed to be eccentric, now we are allowed to be normal. We used to relish, encouraged the circus, the sideshow, life as an event, now it is serious business, all pared down to family values that get the votes.

We're all too beige, even the younger Y Gens inhabitants. Actually, the Y Gens are probably as bad as any; their entire life they have had the "fear factor" government brain washing, big business conform work credentials, mass media marketed hysteria, industry fodder surf wannabes. Sadly the half strength version they now see they think is new and exciting.

Now, I guess, "they" think a tiled bench seat is avant garde.

Fitzroy used to be alternative and funky now it is rapidly morphing into passé, just another suburb just like the rest. I remember when I first moved here every shop was different and exciting, shops you wouldn't see anywhere else in Melbourne. Now they are alarmingly similar to any other place. We might as well hang a "nothing to see here" sign at the end of Brunswick Street now a days.

I don't know if it makes me feel old, or bored?

You know, I think it was the beginning of the end when they allowed the 7 11 on the corner and the video shop further along, how many years ago was that?

Now, we all cry "too busy too busy too busy" as if it is an excused not to be interesting. We're all too caught up in career and wealth... what happened to art?