La Ramblas, Barcelona and Kings Cross (Part Two)

After many long-winded conversations with friends about the places that should inspire change within Kings Cross I have come up with a list.

Below are the top 4 places that should enlist change within Kings Cross to diversify cultural activities and to reduce the risks of drug and alcohol fuelled violence within the area.

Number One:

Union Street, San Francisco!

Union Street, San Francisco

Union Street is notorious for its nightlife in San Francisco. It is not only  hot spot at night, but also during the day much unlike Kings Cross. The need for cultural diversity in terms of mixed-use neighborhoods is dire. Union Street features a large range of cafes, restaurants, street markets and shopping as well as night clubs and other nightlife venues – a must for Kings Cross to disperse the drunk and disorderly crowds.

Number Two:

Carnaby Street, Soho, London

Carnaby Street, London

The shopping hot spot for London has expanded into the ‘it’ place for drinks and dinner. Although the street itself is packed with shops and boutiques, there are a large amount of pubs, clubs and restaurants and bars that sit in the streets which run off the main drag. Carnaby Street has a large nightlife but the culture within the area is vastly different to the drinking culture within the Cross. Another example of how the strip can be changed due to infiltration of alternative activities into a binge-drinking hub.

Number Three:

La Ramblas, Barcelona

La Ramblas, Barcelona

As mentioned in my previous post, La Ramblas Barcelona is an all pedestrian area filled to the brim with nightlife, street markets, restaurants, shopping districts and masses of other activities. You’d think the council would get the picture by now? Kings Cross needs a change in lifestyle!

Number Four:

Manly Corso, Manly

Manly Corso, Manly

A local favourite. Not too few years ago the Corso encountered it’s problems. Manly, although similar to other examples of lively daytime activities, does present itself in a similar fashion to Kings Cross Nightlife. Recently an influx of small bars and restaurants have managed to keep the raucous activities of the drunk and disorderly to a minimum and assault and violent acts have drastically reduced due to this shift, as well as due to an increased police presence.

Should band-aid solutions be tossed out the door? We need to focus on long term solutions like a cultural shift and we need to start acting now! What are your thoughts?

What do you think?

 

And as always, feel free to leave comments!

To Press The Button.

Kings Cross must be stuck in the middle of this. And by ‘this’ I mean a social and cultural conundrum, and it needs to break free. On one hand, its wading through a plethora of relentless media scrutiny surrounding its contemporary issues of alcohol/drug fueled violence. All the while on the other, having a responsibility to maintaining a historical providence over its importance to Sydney’s east, its identity and past time.

It’s no easy task, and being caught in the middle is essentially being caught in no mans land – a cultural and social void of friction transactions of services, our virtuous vices and the like.

Recently, when the El Alamein Memorial Fountain was reopned after just under 6 months under restoration, a community gathering in July this past winter, met the water swtiched on with glee and enthusiasm, much like when it was first opened in 1961. Its signifiers of community here that doiminat the cuktural and social relevence of this precinct. perhaps its not stuck in this no mans land after all? perhaps all it needs is to rebadge and debunk the past, bring the community and the past of Kings Cross from behind the clogging of inferior copies, dust and grime and let Kings Cross History dictate a degree of diversity. It’s this kind of historical relevence of the precnintc that shouldn’t get lost around the haze of irrelevancy as blogger Violet Tingle puts it “a proliferation of kebab shops, Chinese massage places, tobacconists, hairdressers and chemists…”. It was great to read her account and documentation of the El Alamein Memorial Fountain being re-opened after its refurbishment and her accompanying time capsule stories. A grab of this in 1971 where journalist Carol Henty quoted the Fountain designer Robert Woodward,

“You can know, of course, that it’s going to work. But until you press the button you never know whether it will have that extra touch of magic.”

Prophetic for the fountain, its memorial, its eternal symbolism and perhaps even commentary of the Kings Cross conundrum. One will never know about the potential of change until you press the button. Thats the aim of this forum and blog, to spread ideas, to stimulate the malignant, to activate the benign amongst the negativity and red-taped stuffed mechanisms of government measures. To get us thinking about pressing that button, to seek that ‘extra touch of magic.’

Setting the Wheels in Motion

Finally, some change is coming to Kings Cross, a massive three months after the death of Thomas Kelly, when drastic change was first called.

As of Friday 28September 10 additional late night, weekend bus services will operate in the Cross. These include six additional bus services from Kings Cross to Central and four from Kings Cross to Town Hall. The main objective of these bus services is to get people out of Kings Cross during the hours of 1am-5am when public transport options were previously non existent.

The routes are as follows:

• Route 999 to Central – Operate express every 15 minutes between 1am and 5am.

•  Route N100 Town Hall express – This express service will operate in one direction from Kings Cross to Town Hall and then to Central every 30 minutes between 1.15am and 4.45am.

• Route N100 Bondi Junction and Central- Route N100 will run every 30 minutes between 1am and 5am in both directions between Bondi Junction and Central.

More info about the bus service can be found at the NSW transport website

 It’s great to hear that there will also be a new and improved taxi rank as of the 12^th of October in the Cross.

Hopefully these are a step in the right direction to bringing some much needed change to the Kings Cross area. However, as good as these changes are, a lot more needs to be done and hopefully the government starts looking to more permanent, long term solutions that will bring about the social change we are after.

Did you see or use the new bus service this weekend? Let us know your thoughts.

Contextualizing the Cross – Libertarian Discourse? Vol.2

At the end of my last post, we looked at the mediated conundrum that arose from Fairfax Digital’s implications through a simple online Poll. In their simple canvassing of public opinion, it  was in turn asking a complex paradigm, inferring a social or liberal rights agenda behind imposing measures against Alcohol fueled Violence in Kings Cross.

We can understand this violation of personal liberties in the context of asking whether or not I-D readers and scanner should be installed, as it approaches a discourse of Big brother, Orwellian fears and CCTV anxiety. In an over secure world and increasingly monitered as a result, there is no doubt a case for a personal liberties discourse, however in Kings Cross, that case would cover twofold. In the need to counter alcohol fueled violence and provide secure vision for the full force of the law to proceed in defecne or accusation, it is also required to surveil the vices of our virtues. With entrenched rumour and innuendo surrounding the precinct around organized crime, it’s hard to argue with the presence of CCTV and other monitoring technology. I-D scanner are merely the first and only form of CCTV monitoring the patron that the community of Kings Cross has come in contact with.

Infringing on peoples liberties – is a general concern but in King Cross this is hardly the point-break of civil or personal liberty infringement – it should be quite the opposite in its potential. It shuld break from the shackles of overtly sensitive restricitions and shackles of mediated trouble and acqurire its sage advice, its historical cntext should be regained once more as a beacon in Sydney’s, let alone Australia’a iconography. Perhaps this is alittle self-serving, but Kings Cross has never been anything else but.

 

Contextualizing the Cross – Libertarian Discourse? Vol.1

It’s important to understand the cultural and social significance of this precinct as an ico of sorts. The historical footprint of this area is dichotomized into a well publicized saga of notoriety, of gangs, speakeasies, vices of virtues and scrawling criminality, and in the other vein, a world famous strip of fluid excess of celebration, cultural vibrancy and well oiled businesses. This dichotomy, while in a contemporary frame, has blurred, the distinctions, should remain as signifiers of Kings Cross.

Paul Kelly wrote abut it in his songs, so why is it when initiatives and measures, mediated or legislated become open to a poll, open to public opinion, a cast of great and inconsequential frameworks are brought into question.

In the SMH article revealing the O’Farrel Govt.’s new measues for Kings Cross, the Fairfax digital presence accompanied a poll and asked a question of its viewers. In a simple Yes/No question, its justifiably engaging, but when the simple and almost innoucous Yes/No can lead to a conundrum, what hope does the issue have of gaining a better understanding?

Under the No, the proviso exists, “No, It will infringe on people’s liberties”. How on earth has a libertarian agenda been inserted into what is an issue of diminishing alcohol fueled violence in a mediated hotspot you ask? One could argue it is a social issue, of personal choice, accessing personal liberties etc, however this is more or digressing from Fairfax Digital’s aim, or is it? Does this conundrum lead to a deeper, more theoretical discourse?

Making It Stop? (Part Two)

The issue of alcohol-fuelled violence has been saturating the media as of late. SBS had an amazing episode of Insight at the end of August called Punch Drunk where they interviewed not only parents of people who had been attacked but husbands and wives whose partners had been attacked, and the victims themselves. It was a powerful albeit hard to watch episode. A member of the audience John Crozier who is a trauma surgeon summed up the problem using the analogy of fire:

“To start a fire you need fuel, oxygen and something to ignite it. Common to what we’ve heard here, it’s been a pretty minor trigger. You have to ask, well, what has fuelled all of this? And as Chris was describing, drinking 12 stubies of beer, I was thinking there is no way I could still be standing if I drank that amount of beer. That’s 36 standard drinks of alcohol. And we know, we know that 12 to 17-year-old boys in Victoria are drinking on average a 20-standard drink session at least once a month”.

Andrew Macready-Bryan, whose son was needlessly bashed on his 20^th birthday, gave a chilling account of the ordeal his family go through on a daily basis. When asked what his son’s quality of life is like today this is how he answered:

“He has none. He is fed through a tube. He has got no control. He can’t speak. He is blind. Limited hearing. Can’t move a muscle in his body. He is constantly in pain. He is incontinent. No life.”

 Maybe we need to look to the parents or maybe we need to look to their parents’ parents. Or maybe, as Macready-Bryan said we need to look at the society as a whole that has bred this type of culture. Macready-Bryan bravely spoke about his feelings towards his son’s attacker saying that

“He was the victim of violence himself and so I can’t really blame him as a person. But I really do blame our society for creating people like that. I just hope that Daniel – if you’re listening that you can turn your life around and realise that it’s not too late. You can make a fresh start to try and make up for some of this”.

It was a simply heartbreaking episode and I encourage all who are interested in this topic to try and watch it if you can.

What we are arguing for here is social change. On Friday and Saturday nights there isn’t really anything open except venues that advocate drinking and a lot of the time it’s heavy drinking. We want to see more constructive night spaces that give people more options for late night activities. These include later opening hours for galleries, cafes and restaurants, late night film and play viewings, late night shopping, creative workshops and night markets to name but a few. Obviously, change wont happen over night but eventually people, especially youth, wont see drinking alcohol as their only option for weekend entertainment and maybe, just maybe we will see social change.

Are we being too optimistic? Let us know what you think.

Planning Marks the X

With the potential of Urban renewal and gentrification of the Kings Cross precinct, its important to note I’m not calling for a complete about face to go from black to white, but to fade to grey, to call for and encourage the potentials that already exist in this culturally rich locality.

Clover Moore recently said in regards to State Government reforms for the area;

“what we really need is an overall Kings Cross management plan and reform of licensing and planning laws…Current planning laws mean the City can’t refuse a development application for a new venue on the grounds of there being too many already“.

Moore is right about planning for the area, reform needs to cater for diversity in licensed premises against current licensed venues already there. Clover Moore is advocating an approach taking into account the need for cultural and urban gentrification as we should be calling for new economies of late night and day time business. So called ‘beer-barns’ are core to the old and issue conducive problems and challenges that face the precinct.

Planning reforms should come in the form of better classifications of proposals and applications rather than a simple dichotomy of licensed and unlicensed premises. This would a viable route to encourage diversity in proposal and city planning, to grade cultural and creative initiatives higher against a licensed or unlicensed proposal, to expediate the planning process and community canvassing involved with development proposals of ephemeral applications, such as pop-up stores, cafes, galleries, street markets or cultural festivals. The short term and ephemeral pageantry and diversity will only add to the potential cultural cultural textures that exist in the Cross.

Reforming planning laws into simple segregations while potentially complex, could ultimately lead into a cultural shift for the area and its community. That’s something to be talking about.

The potential exists in planning a better Kings Cross.

La Ramblas, Barcelona and Kings Cross (Part One)

La Ramblas, Barcelona, Spain

Last night I went for dinner in Surry Hills (about 10 minutes from Kings Cross) and sat with a friend talking about what kind of changes need to happen in Kings Cross in order to diversify the area, reducing the risk of drug and alcohol fuelled violence.  We started talking about what kinds of places would have similar issues and what their solutions have been. One place in particular came to mind. La Ramblas, Barcelona in Spain.

So many similarities exist between to two, aside from the two both having large fountains used commonly for meeting points, the main similarity is that they are both central hubs for entertainment and nightlife.

Here at Bringing Potential to Kings Cross, we are trying to enlist a change of culture and attitude towards the Cross. Making it, ultimately, a safer place to travel to, but also creating a diverse range of public space so that travellers into the area are not simply doing so to annihilate themselves on the booze.

What does La Ramblas in Barcelona have to offer Kings Cross? It is exactly what is needed for the area: a range of cultural activities throughout the day and night that are not just for partygoers. La Ramblas is home to a vast range of activities such as live performance, human statue art, artists and caricaturists, market stalls and flower sellers as well as established attractions such as the Wax Museum, the Erotica Museum, the Modernist Boqueria Market and other monuments and attractions.

After a few trips down memory lane at dinner, I was keen to find out what kind of cultural experiences people have had in other areas around the world that could benefit the Cross on its way to becoming a hub for cultural diversity and known for its exciting lifestyle both night and day – not just for its drunk and violent nature.  So I’m off to talk to a few people and find out more inspirational places – leave a comment and let me know your experience.

Until part two…

Making It Stop? (Part One)

I’m not so sure about the name of the Sunday Telegraph’s article in Sunday’s paper addressing the News Ltd. Campaign against senseless violence. Are they really making it stop? It sounds all too similar to the ridiculous Stop The Trolls campaign the Telegraph launched some time last week.

The article made these young men out to be ‘monsters and violent thugs who hide in dark corners like trapdoor spiders, striking out and killing innocent people for no reason’. Really? Really?! I’m in NO way saying that these young men (and occasionally women) who incite violence are misunderstood angels, but as the article contradictorily states earlier in the piece, these young men and women a lot of the time don’t mean to cause the devastation they do. Sure, there is no denying that a small percentage of these violent attacks are caused by cruel, sick individuals but the majority of these attacks are caused by young men between the ages of 18-23 between the hours of midnight and 4am on Saturday and Sunday mornings (LINK). Must I spell it out? It’s A.L.C.O.H.O.L. These young men are still rapidly developing their neural pathways and by consuming copious amounts of alcohol their moral compasses go right out the window and their testosterone and fists unfortunately do most of the talking.

We need to take a closer look at the society that is breeding this type of violet culture. I agree with the former attorney general of Western Australia, Jim McGinty in saying that we need to “educate a whole generation”. We need to work together to change this culture of drinking and drinking to dangerous levels. We need to stop the culture of heavy alcohol consumption in and around sporting clubs. I know from first hand experience that a lot of sporting clubs in country areas of Australia reward good efforts form players with slabs of alcohol. ‘ Mate, if you play a good game the slab’s yours’.

The Morning Show on channel 7 had Luke McIlveen , web editor of News.com.au  to talk about the Real Heroes Walk Away campaign and he linked the sharp rise in violent attacks among young men in Australia to football. I find this hard to swallow. I believe that if you take away football the violence will still exist. With contact sport comes a culture of drinking and with this culture of drinking comes a culture of violence but there is a big difference between correlation and causation and I think we need to be very careful not to confuse the two, as I believe McIlveen has.

We are not alone in this battle. Every state in Australia has this problem as does many other countries around the world like the UK and South Korea. As an article from the Daily Mail shows how alcohol around the world turns our young, innocent and even ‘high flying students’ into ‘barbarians’.

To be continued… but as always leave your thoughts about the Real Heroes Walk Away campaign or join the discussion on Twitter– #heroeswalkaway #kingsxchange