Up and About ‘Art & About’

The Golden Mile? Think again, one of Sydney’s ‘Art & About’ installations.

Sydney’s cultural fringe got active recently with the successful running of the Sydney ‘Art & About’ festival, a public art festival, utilizing the public spaces of Sydney as Artist canvas. During the exhibitions citywide, public domains, streets, laneways, parks and gardens served as gallery spaces, installations, impromptu performance spaces and wall hangings.

It was a unique lens to witness the beauty of Sydney through, and exhibits the cities willingness and appetite for artistic and cultural initiatives and innovations. The City of Sydney was the principal partner of the festival and further reinforces the notion that the City of villages is on board, along with Lord Mayor Clover Moore in broadening the arts and cultural avenues by which to promote the city in tourism and iconography.

Strangely noted however, was the distinct lack of events, exhibitions or public installations around the Potts Point Kings Cross precinct. One would draw the conclusion, that from observing the utilisation of other Sydney icons adorned in pop up art galleries and installations, Kings Cross would feature to some extent. However you would be remiss, as no actual public art found its way to the precinct. Strangely, the work of  Caroline Rothwell and her bronzed sculpture installation of hooded youth (seemingly linking to the social welfare of teens, an occasioned sight in the Kings Cross precinct) was installed down the annals of Martin Place instead of the steps of the El Alamein memorial fountain.

It’s an interesting case to consider, as the cultural tendencies and planning of these events would not have been easy, and no doubt they were exercising the CBD as defined by city, as the principal (and as evidenced) canvas to be used in the installations. Nonetheless, there is growth in this initiative spreading to other, inner-city spaces that also make up the city of villages that is Sydney. Kings Cross should easily be able to sustain its own ‘Art & About’ within its own laneways and streets.
Just a matter of time?

Link

The Cross: then & now

This is a cool function I found on the SMH website which allows you to slide between then and now pictures of Kings Cross.

Interesting to note the amount of people in picture 4 of the Kings Cross Fountain. Once a daytime social outing, now quite empty in the day and a place for drunken visitors to make a fool of themselves at night.

Do you think much has changed between the photos and the attitudes surrounding Kings Cross?

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!

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.

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.

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

Answer the question

You’ve heard what we think. Now we wanna know what you think.

Do you think closing all venues in The Cross at or before 1am will help in solving the alcohol fuelled violence issue?

Real Heroes Walk Away campaign

Usually all News Ltd is good for is the occasional free mini cookbook, but for today and tomorrow, all of their major newspapers are launching the Real Heroes Walk Away campaign to end senseless violence on the streets and in pubs and clubs around Australia. The campaign has been launched in response to the tragic death of Thomas Kelly. I can’t help but feel it’s a little late. Why didn’t they get on this bandwagon months ago? We here at Bringing Potential To Kings Cross have been all over this issue for months now and all News Ltd. has brought to the table has been the occasional news article. Its only now that News Ltd. come out with this campaign…. I guess it’s better late than never.
The aim is to make’ violence abhorred in Australian society and to examine the effectiveness of state laws dealing with offenders’ (Perth Now).

Perhaps I’ll have to grit my teeth and buy a Sunday Telegraph tomorrow just to see how they are running this campaign. It’s going to be very interesting indeed. I really really hope they don’t over sensationalise the whole thing as they have a tendency to do.

However despite my cynicism, it really is about time we did something to change our drinking and violent culture.

We are so lucky to live in such a wonderful, beautiful,  free country, why do we have to lower ourselves to this level every Friday and Saturday night? We can do so much better!

Please feel free to let us know what you think about this campaign. And please, tell us what you think are some ways to help curb these problems.

Let’s Eat (part 2)

So how does all this talk of food trucks add to the conversation we’re having here at Bringing Potential to Kings Cross? Well firstly, food is a damn good step in the right direction to curbing alcohol fuelled violence issues. If these portable food outlets can park and sell high quality food at affordable prices to punters on Friday and Saturday nights, the streets may just become a nicer place. Fill people’s stomachs and soak up that alcohol before things get out of hand, I say!

The presence of these food trucks has also added to the diversification of Sydney nightlife. Take well established American food trucks like Kogi BBQ, for example that have a cult following. People go out at night-time to especially to sample their delights and they bring all their friends making it a ‘thing’. Consequently the streets become more vibrant. If any of you have been to the US or Mexico you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s so much fun to sit out on the streets on a balmy night eating tacos or Korean BBQ meats and watching the world go by, an atmosphere that lacks in enclosed restaurants.

Street food Mexican style

Unfortunately food trucks are still bound by strict regulations. Being a trial period and all I guess it’s inevitable for a while. But in the US food trucks are pretty much free to go wherever they please. In Sydney the trucks are only allowed to set up in council approved locations at council approved times and generally finish trading at around 1am. They are also not allowed within 200m of other food outlets. So far the trucks haven’t received approval to trade in the Cross. But Kings Cross is where they are needed most. When the trucks are allowed to trade in more locations they can make dead spaces like alley ways and car parks for example, more inviting and vibrant.

With these trucks also come street events that the trucks put on. A wonderful example of this is Eat Art Truck’s monthly live art installations of which they have had 2 since they have been on the road. Different graffiti artists each month (the past two have been Phibs and Ears) create a masterpiece live on the side of the truck during trading hours. So customers can feast on the famed pulled pork bun or spicy chicken wings while watching a masterpiece come to life. The artwork is then later removed and sold at an auction at the end of the year.

The latest art installation event for Eat Art Truck

What you’ll see roaming the streets of Sydney

Phibs’ work from last month

Hopefully we can solve Sydney’s late night issues one pulled pork bun at a time!

(Be sure to check out Eat Art Truck’s Facebook page and website for details of their trading schedule and upcoming events)