Thursday, November 25, 2010

Verbose Addresses

Melbourne white people have a fixation with postcodes that is almost Brightonian (which gives them a weird private school vibe). So if you're at a white Melburnian party the first discussions you'll have upon introductions will relate to where you live. They do this to determine if the conversation is worth continuing. If you don't live Northside be ready to look for someone else to talk too.

But since all white Melburnians live Northside, there has to be a way for the most devout ones to demonstrate their superiority. One of the ways they do this is through verbose addresses. The most dedicated white Melburnians will always live down an alleyway, in a warehouse or above a shop, which makes their addresses longer than other Melburnians. If someone has an address like 2/331b Smith street it just means they are better than you. It also means that when they text you their address you should prepare for directions like this: "You have to go down the alleyway behind the Birmingham. On Johnston. Then up some stairs. Give me a call if you can't find it." If you need Google Maps to find the place, white Melburnians will want to live there.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Coopers

Coopers has been around since 1862 (almost pre-dating white people in the Melbourne area!) yet it is considered the beer of choice for white Melburnians because we've been drinking it since about 2004. The acceptability of Coopers has evolved to the point where it is now uncool to talk openly about your love for it, but if you're in a bar and Coopers is not on tap it's okay to make a comment.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Hipster angst

Nobody talked about hipsters a few years ago. Back then yuppies ruined the good neighbourhoods. But now most white Melburnians love talking about how they hate hipsters - even if they are hipsters themselves! This level of self-denial has not been observable amongst white Melburnians since they lamented the influx of tourists at Ko Phi Phi.

Despite being a tiny minority of Melbourne's population, hipsters generate huge levels of loathing and anger, making them kind of like boat people for white Melburnians. But you won't hear Melbourne white people calling for the assimilation of hipsters into white Melburnian culture, as white Melburnians prefer to assimilate themselves into hipster culture. But more hipsters can only be a good thing for Melbourne. Who else is going to make our coffee?

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Preston market

The best thing about the Preston Market is that it's in Preston. It doesn't matter that it's just a market and Melbourne is full of those. It's in Preston! While merely acknowledging the existence of the suburb of Preston is your ticket to white Melburnian acceptance, knowing about a market in Preston puts you near the top of the social order amongst Melbourne white people. This is because many white Melburnians are too young to remember the Punters club.

You might be wondering why Preston market is so popular now, given that it's been around since 1970. This is because in 1970 all white Melburnians were at a sausage sizzle.

Melbourne white people know it's absurd to claim they discovered a market that has been around for forty years, yet they absolutely want you to think they did. Listen carefully the next time you hear the Preston market being discussed. Nobody will state outright they discovered it, yet discovery is clearly implied. They imply the shit out of it! Hang around white Melburnians for long enough, and you'll start believing Preston was a terra nullius before they came along.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Fixed gear bicycles

White Melburnians will put shiny rims on their bikes while sneering at anybody who puts shiny rims on their cars. Fixed gear bicycles (fixies) are popular with White Melburnians because of all the bike-friendly streets in Northside such as Lygon, Nicholson and Sydney road! The popularity of fixies is facilitated by the generally flat topography in the northern suburbs. One exception is Northcote, where the most direct route is via a steep hill up Queens parade and High street. But that is just the earth's way of telling us Northcote is not worth the trouble!

Melbourne white people obsess over fixies in the hope it distracts them from noticing how their lifestyles are based around cars and long-haul flights. The irregularity of services on the Upfield and Epping lines, the lack of train stations in Carlton North and Brunswick East, plus twin obsessions with New York and Berlin mean that White Melburnians are heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

But Melbourne white people are smart enough to know even a short domestic flight will send their ecological footprints soaring past two and a half earths. It doesn't matter how many times we ride our bikes and refrain from eating meat and dairy. We are going to have to plant a proxy Amazon stretching from Ipswich to Monkey Mia to have any chance of sequestering all that carbon. Hence the need for distraction.

Now please excuse me, Dan Murphy's is closing and I need to drive down there and get some Sapporo. I've been hooked on it ever since that Halloween party in Tokyo last year.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Procrastinating

The only thing White Melburnians love more than procrastinating is talking about procrastinating. This phenomenon begins during VCE but reaches maturity during the university exam periods. The transcript below describes a typical conversation between university students waiting for the exam room to open. While taking certain creative liberties, it nevertheless demonstrates how the hyperbole escalates from first to third year.

First Year: "I studied a bit. I should be okay."
Second Year: "I hardly studied. I might fail." *nervous laughter*
Third Year: *maniacal laughter* "HAHAHA! I didn't study AT ALL! I spent last night on the couch drinking whisky and watching Friends! I'm still drunk heeeheeee zzzzzz aarrrgh!"

After university procrastinating is used to mask a darkly competitive streak as White Melburnians believe that by hiding their ambitions they are more likely to achieve them. But there is also another reason for this secrecy.

As White Melburnian culture is a subset of Australian culture it struggles to fit its celebration of excellence into a broader Australian culture that reveres mediocrity. The result is that White Melburnians feel ashamed of their ambitions. But why is the pursuit of excellence frowned up in Australian culture? Are we really that conservative?

Even professional sportspeople, who only pull crowds because Australians want to see gifted athletes performing at the peak of their ability, can be criticised for "showing off". But who would pay to watch some mildly talented people behaving modestly?

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Maggie Gyllenhaal

While Jake Gyllenhaal is set to lose White Melburnian credibility with the release of Prince of Persia, Maggie has maintained a high level of popularity amongst Melbourne white people at least since Secretary (2002).

White Melburnians love her because she's not a ravishing beauty but still totally hot, and also because she's not Katie Holmes. When Maggie Gyllenhaal replaced Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes in The Dark Knight, she achieved a Marieke Hardy-esque level of pan-White Melburnian acceptance.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Ironic anything

White Melburnians are smart enough to know that being stuck in a traffic jam when you're already late is not ironic. It might be if you were the head of VicRoads driving to a meeting where you were to give a presentation called: "The Myth of Congestion: why Melbourne's roads are always empty".

Overusing irony is dangerous because it can detract from the richness of our experiences by forcing everything to be engaged with in only one way - through the prism of irony. Irony also requires an emotional detachment that further limits the range of possible reactions to our experiences.

But Melbourne white people are not going to confuse simple bad luck with irony because they discovered irony way back in 1991, during Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit video. The camera panned across a group of cheerleaders who had anarchy symbols on their uniforms. Ever since then, irony has played a pivotal role in white Melburnian culture. As white Melburnians are generally poor at sports, it leaves them only one way through which to demonstrate alpha status - via intelligence. By flaunting their grasp of an abstract notion such as irony Melbourne white people assert their position at the top of the social order. In fact, white Melburnians love irony so much they are quite happy to settle for garden-variety sarcasm, making irony an ironically easy concept for everyone to employ.