Smith street

White Melburnians don't like Smith street the way it is today but the past they long for never quite existed. For some reason though it's preferable to yearn for an imagined past than to enjoy the way things are right now. White Melburnians actually prefer some degree of gentrification than none at all. They would never admit this though as many of them lament the processes of gentrification even when they are the gentry. But would you prefer Smith street to return to its smack dealing heyday circa 1999 and get hassled by junkies every time you went there? No? Then you like gentrification!

But Smith street isn't completely gentrified yet because it still has plenty of boarded up shops, amateur graffiti and dive bars. It even has an empty lot overgrown with weeds! Yet this is balanced with an overabundance of salons, Japanese restaurants and Cavallero. Seriously, if you want to get your hair done and eat some udon there's no better place than Smith street. But it's a delicate balance so appreciate it now. One more salon or Japanese restaurant and it'll be a gentrified, sanitised, yuppie suburb with *gasp* late-thirties-women-in-expensive-jeans-pushing-strollers! They might even put-their-keys-and-smartphones-on-the-table-while-meeting-for-coffee! This is the white Melburnian version of hell. So enjoy Smith street today. You'll miss it when it's gone.

Postscript
I reckon Smith street is at the perfect level of gentrification right now so we have to appreciate it otherwise we will never progress as a culture. A culture can still thrive even when the stories it tells itself are retold over and over as long as these stories are adapted to the times in which they are told. So to avoid entering a Dark Age I suggest we recognise the cyclical processes of gentrification - neighbourhoods boom and bust over decades. There will always be a street like Smith street in Melbourne. It won't be exactly the same but this is okay because healthy cultures naturally change and evolve. While Smith street might end up like Acland street it won't matter because another street will rise to take its place. Even though Acland street still retains some gems and Carlisle street now has an appeal that wasn't around back in Acland's Golden Age. But white Melburnians usually do not lament the lack of affordable housing for the poor or the closure of local businesses that are typical consequences of gentrification - they're just pissed off their streets now lack the gritty charm they believe only the poor can provide. So we need a more inclusive way of talking about gentrification.

Complaining about the coffee in remote destinations

Whether you're in Coober Pedy, Tibet, Broken Hill or Bolivia, you will likely encounter a white Melburnian complaining about the coffee at a local cafe. Many claim to travel to experience foreign cultures but when the culture in question does not include expertise in espresso coffee (with Bonsoy) there will be outrage and contempt. Unwilling to accept cultural diversity when it comes to coffee, Melbourne white people want everywhere to be just like De Clieu. They refuse to imagine an alternative to drinking tiny portions of espresso coffee overwhelmed by warm milk and sugar out of disposable paper cups.

To white Melburnians, a lack of espresso coffee (with Bonsoy) remains the preferred indicator of a nation's poverty. Anything else, such as no clean water, high infant mortality rates, minimal public infrastructure spending, mass unemployment and political oppression will be accepted as givens (even exotic) and consumed as part of a search for difference. Melbourne white people will even expect coffee growing nations - some of the poorest countries on Earth, to have excellent (Italian) espresso coffee. It's sort of like expecting the nation of Ghana to be the world's main consumer of gourmet chocolate, when many Ghanians don't even get a full meal a day. But white Melburnians aren't the only ones who confuse the geographies of production with those of consumption, so why single them out? Because white Melburnians see coffee as necessary for life when in fact it's a luxury item. And because many of them are studying international development degrees.

Innovative fast food chains

Considering the fried onion only became a staple at Australian barbecues in the 21st century, you can understand the long and successful history fast food chains have enjoyed in this country. They were able to stand apart from the rest of the market by not carbonising the meat and serving condiments other than tomato sauce and tomato sauce. So ever since their takeover of airport lounges, highway off ramps, petrol stations, shopping centres, suburban thoroughfares, freeways, stadiums, schools and universities, it would be safe to assume the spread of fast food chains in our society has reached critical mass. But there is one place left for them to colonise: the graffitied laneways and cycle-friendly streets of white Melbourne.

A clustering of fast food chains can be observed at the borders of white Melbourne, like insurgents clamoring at the gates of the Green Zone. Bell Street Maccas, Pizza Hut and PizzaMaster on the corner of Smith and Victoria, the KFC on Chapel Street, Prahran. To move beyond their natural habitat (which is overrun by competing species) they've had to evolve. Innovative fast food chains are the most adaptive of their kind, characterised by a lack of drive-through, the addition of drinks and even alcohol served in very adult-like glass bottles, and semi-exotic condiments like aioli and guacamole. Their staff are allowed some flexibility in the choice of head wear instead of the standard issue cap, and they usually address all their male customers with the informal 'man' or 'dude'. Some of the stores come with literary references and apostrophes where none should exist, but their most appealing feature is a refreshing self-awareness that they're just fast food chains. Thanks to such innovations, Melbourne white people can now eat fast food without shame and in daylight hours.

Toto's Africa

Originally I was going to write about how white Melburnians have an ironic appreciation of this song. I was then going to mention how the absurdity of the line about 'blessing the rains down in Africa' somehow makes the ironic sing-a-longs more enjoyable, because surely Melbourne white people would never sing a song just for the fun of it. But have you noticed how the loud cheering it receives at house parties is kind of real? And have you ever noticed how good it feels to sing the chorus out loud? It's the white Melburnian equivalent of Livin' on a Prayer! So the truth is white Melburnians love Toto's Africa because it's an awesome song.

Meeting at Melbourne Central instead of Flinders Street

Melbourne white people gave up on Flinders Street Station in 2004 when Transport opened at Federation Square. They will never go back. The goths and punks, the evangelical Christians (every Friday night), the overwhelming police presence, the short skirts and muscle tops, the lack of bike parking areas, the "Metro Safety Announcements", the cold, the alienating architectural form and the proximity to Crown Casino, make Flinders Street the station for the wrong types of white Melburnians.

Melbourne Central Station (hereafter MCS) is a lot better. It's inside so you don't have to worry about the cold, and it's close to the state library so you can update your status about how you're studying at the library. There's even a giant clock so white Melburnians can still meet under one and not feel like they are betraying the spirit of their city.

But what the preference of MCS over Flinders Street demonstrates is the alternative geographies white Melburnians use when navigating their city. In the white Melburnian mind, the southern border of the city is Bourke Street, its western perimeter is Elizabeth Street\Royal Parade, its eastern side ends at Punt Road, and it's bounded by Alexandra Parade in the north. Imagining the city of Melbourne in this way incorporates Fitzroy and Carlton into the CBD, relegating Flinders Street to the status of a suburban train station and eliminating King Street from the discussion. White Melburnians are trying to recreate Melbourne in their own image.

Quirky lists

One of the best ways to judge a person's character in the internet age is by reading the lists they write in online profiles. For those of you who are new to the international network ('internet', for short), this was not always so. In the nineties, getting-to-know-you question-and-answer lists circulating via electronic mail ('e-mail') on the intra-planetary lattice, or 'worldwide web', were mostly concerned with whether or not you ate the stems of broccoli. Hence their ability to convey to the reader the character of the person responding to the questions was quite limited. Because of social networking sites and web logs ('blogs'), more accurate assessments of character, such as delineating between wrong and right types of white Melburnians, are now possible. The wrong type of white Melburnian takes the act of list writing literally. To them it is just a list, not a work of art. Lists of interests displayed on the web profiles of the wrong types normally look something like this:

Hot showers
Watching movies
Going fishing with my Dad
Sleeping in
Sickies
Catching up with friends

There's nothing wrong with this list of interests except that it's just a list of interests. Therefore it could not have been written by the right type of Melbourne white person, whose list of interests look more like this:

The donuts at Footscray station
Karaoke
Making lists
Frankston savers
Breakfast burritos
Marieke Hardy
World's End Press
Palindromes
Going off on tangents
Schadenfreude
Bad puns

White Melburnians believe a list of interests should be used to reflect intellect, cleverness, self-deprecation, humour, worldliness and competence. If you are about to write your own list of interests, remember that one of the most important features to convey is cleverness, but done in a cautious way so as not to totally overwhelm the reader with how clever you are. This is best accomplished by inserting into the list something self-referential like 'awesome alliterations'. The trick of list writing is to make the whole construction of the list appear effortless but expend a great deal of effort to accomplish this - which is a central feature of white Melburnian culture.

Seven Seeds

The practice of mounting heads of large animals to the walls of drinking barns has been done in both the American West and southern Africa to convey the wildness of the environment and the mastery of humans over nature. White Melburnians have conquered nature with the fixie, which is why several of them are mounted to the walls of Seven Seeds. You can even park your bike inside. Seven Seeds could not be more Melbourne if you built the entire cafe out of sections of the MCG's Southern Stand. Inside there are communal tables allowing strangers to sit together that would enable lively group discussions in other countries. But at Seven Seeds they are used so white Melburnians can indulge in one of their favourite activities - observing one another in silence.

In Melbourne, cafe owners go to great lengths to make it appear as if their cafes were outfitted by the Salvation Army. Empty metal bookcases with visible signs of rust are highly prized, while menus built into the unsold books from garage sales are considered very sophisticated. At Seven Seeds the lack of a proper ceiling and the use of exposed brick gives the impression the building was constructed out of scrap materials. Thus cafes in Melbourne favour a design style that has historically been used by societies in decline.

Such aesthetics might explain why the coffee at Seven Seeds only comes in one size - small. This would not be out of place in a state-controlled economy like communist Russia where the government considers a large cappuccino to be either a bourgeoisie extravagance or grossly inefficient. But in a flourishing market economy like Australia, where it is believed consumer choice creates competition and thus prosperity, it might seem a little odd. Yet it totally adheres to the theme of imminent societal collapse.