Melbourne’s Laneways – A Love Story

While Alli is off exploring the wilds of the Barossa Valley in South Australia (translation: visiting lots of wineries and eating too much cheese), her brother Dave is stepping in this week. Dave is a writer, a blogger and an excellent parallel parker. You can harass him at his own website or on Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/thedavesinclair or on his website at www.davesinclair.com.au.

Years ago I was flying around Canada and picked up Air Canada’s inflight magazine. In it, their travel writer was talking about Melbourne.  He said the first time he visited the city, in his words, he hated it.  Sure, there were pretty bits but it seemed to be ‘just another city’.  It was bereft of attractions like Sydney, or weather of Brisbane and frankly, soulless.

Years later, he reluctantly went back and was shown around by locals.  It was as if he’d been shown a completely different city.  He finally ‘got it’.  He fell in love with the city that day.

Melbourne may be many things – obvious isn’t one of them.

If you ask a Melbournian what makes their city unique and you’ll often get the same answer – our laneways.  For the uninitiated, this is an odd response, until you experience them yourself.  The centre of Melbourne city is a labyrinth.  Sure, it has lovely wide tree lined streets, but once you step off the main path it’s a whole new world.  Down the kaleidoscope coloured graffiti walls is an endless supply of the unexpected.

Every few days, a new bar opens behind an unmarked door.  Brilliant culinary delights can be hidden around the next corner.  You just have to know where to look.  The only constant is that there will be something new and exciting just waiting to be discovered.

The fact that the laneway culture was created organically, with no final agenda, was conceived and supported by grass root Melbournian’s only makes it more special.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve shown someone the city and I’m sure they thought they were just about to be rolled.  Walking past the stinking bins, piss stained walls and puddle laden cobblestones, I’m surprised none of them turned around and shrieked, ‘Just take my wallet, please don’t hurt me!’

Melbourne’s laneways can be considered art galleries (Hosier Lane), host music festivals (St Jerome’s Laneway Festival), fashion shows (here) or be renamed after local eminent local ‘dignitaries’ (AC/DC Lane, Dame Edna Place).

The art of the laneways is impressive and ever changing.  Tourists from all over the world are stunned by volume of brilliant graffiti that adorn walls throughout our laneways.  And due to its very nature, it is forever transforming.  Even Banksy pieces have been painted over.  There’s nothing permanent about Melbourne art.

Robert Doyle, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne (and borderline crackpot, but that’s another post) was pictured in The Age newspaper under a stencil of himself in Hosier Lane praising its street art as a ''legitimate expression of artistic intent''.  Not many cities have their civic leaders supporting graffiti (here).   The same article quotes another official saying “This is my laneway and a tourist attraction bringing in up to a thousand people a day because of the street art”.

But not everything about laneways is positive.  A recent decision by the state government sold off Elliot Lane, and part Merriman Lane to developers to make way for a huge apartment complex. This has rightly stirred the ire of many.  This short sighted and almighty dollar focussed decision flies in face of what the laneways represent.

Selling part of what makes the city unique is tantamount to cutting off a part of our own body.  It can never be replaced, and it makes us less whole.  Keep it up and we may very well end up like the first impression of our Canadian cousin – soulless.

All images from - http://postglobalurbanism.wordpress.com/2011/02/

Off The Beaten Track: Hammett, Bogart, and Me

Our contributor this week is Dave Sinclair. He writes detective noir set in 1920s Melbourne, Australia, and has an uncanny knack for trivia about Hollywood movies from the '30s and '40s. He also has his own blog that he sometimes remembers to post on - http://www.idiotsview.blogspot.com/

As I sat there eating my superb medium rare steak I couldn’t help smiling like a loon. History positively seeped from the mahogany walls. I tried to tell myself this was just any old restaurant. That this was just a room. But it wasn’t. This place had history. This place had cred. I knew that in this small San Francisco bistro Dashiell Hammett wrote The Maltese Falcon. I could be sitting at the very table Bogart lit a cigarette and cracked wise. This was no ordinary place to strap on a feed bag.

John’s Grill on Ellis Street, downtown San Francisco, certainly looks the part. The dimly lit interior with its dark wooden walls hasn't changed since Hammett sat at the bar waiting for his "chops, baked potato and sliced tomato". Well, I’m taking a stab that’s what he ate, as it’s aptly described as Sam Spade's grub of choice in The Maltese Falcon.

Hammett, like John’s Grill, may not have been the first to do what he did, but damn, he was certainly one of the best.

It’s generally agreed that Edgar Allen Poe was the grandfather of detective fiction who wrote The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841 (here). Australia, and Melbourne in particular, played a part in spreading the detective novel’s appeal – in 1898 Francis Hume wrote The Mystery Of The Hansom Cab, wholly set in Melbourne. It was hugely popular in its day, selling 375,000 copies in its first year of release.

But it was Hammett that dragged the genre kicking and screaming out of the mire of pulps and penny dreadfuls. Like Chandler, Hammett created realistic detective and stories. His lean writing style, cynical characters and complex plots brought a new energy to the stagnant detective novel and in the process, created a new beast – Hard Boiled Fiction. His tough heroes confront violence with full knowledge of its corrupting potential. In his novels Hammett painted a mean picture of American society, where greed, brutality, and treachery are the major driving forces behind human actions. His plots rocketed along often taking new, and brutal, turns. He set the bar, and it is debatable if it has ever been reached since.

It is little wonder then that Hammett chose John’s Grill as his hang out of choice. Despite the fact that today the restaurant is replete in crisp white table cloths, excellent service and sumptuous gourmet food, you can still feel that in its darker corners the place has a much seedier history. Character is a word that springs to mind, though without the trappings of a high class eatery, menace is probably more apt.

Ironically, it now houses a real life mystery – about the low down rat bastard that stole the Maltese Falcon statue used in the film, as well as various Hammett first editions (here).

John's Grill is a place of mystery, gourmet food, literary history and jazz on a foggy night. The echoes of the characters created between the walls still resonate – Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man) and Continental Op (The Red Harvest and The Dain Curse). So, if it’s alright with you, I’ll continue to grin like a loon.

The Novel Adventurers will be dedicating a week to books and movies with international settings very soon. Stay tuned!