The blanding of St Kilda, once the sleazy, dangerous and vital epicentre of Melbourne underground culture and now safely homogeneous chrome-plated playground of the affluent, continues apace; now local independent record shop Raoul Records is closing down at the end of the month. Which means one fewer reason to venture south of the Yarra. I guess the Porsche-owners of the new St Kilda don't care much for weird little post-punk/garage-rock/psychobilly/country-and-Preston bands.

Posted by: steve | http:// | Mon Jun 13 14:33:42 2005

having lived in st kilda for the last few years this doesn't surprise me. sadly i suspect the changing demography of the area is unlikely to yield the clientele to support a specialised music shop in that vein.

Posted by: datakid | http:// | Mon Jun 13 14:47:40 2005

Fitzroy's going mouldy in the back of the fridge too...while Northcote may be blossoming, I say it's time we took back Armadale, Hawthorn, Toorak and Caufield...it will have to be a long, slow attrition...painful, rude, annoying and insulting...may loud music and permanent unemployment reign supreme....

Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Mon Jun 13 15:36:46 2005

Fitzroy didn't seem so bad a few weeks ago when I was there. It has gone halfway towards being Chapel St., though still has some soul.

Hasn't Hawthorn been half-taken-back, thanks to all the Swinburne student sharehouses in the area? Also, what's the status of Thornbury (home to a lot of musicians, bohemians and creative dole scum, last time I checked)? What about Coburg? Footscray?

Posted by: Graham | http://grudnuk.com/ | Tue Jun 14 02:52:41 2005

The weird thing is, even though I barrack for Hawthorn, I've never set foot in the actual suburb. Kew, yes, Richmond almost up to the Yarra, yes, Hawthorn itself, no. And even they're moving most of the club facilities out to Waverley.

There's still a few reasons to go to Fitzroy.

The status of Footscray and environs as the snaggletoothed weirdo suburbs seems to have been taken over by the Preston/Reservoir area, so it might well be up for indification...

Posted by: datakid | http:// | Tue Jun 14 04:50:54 2005

oh, we could look at those suburbs acb (thornbury, footscray) but I'm not a big believer in bemoaning the loss of our cultural stamping grounds, if only to look to new pastures in the old working class suburbs and displacing them out to Dandenong or Cranbourne....

On the other hand, I love the idea of 1. displacing rich idiots, snobs and, yes, even nice rich people who are not snobs and give most of their money to feel good charities. May they all rot. 2. I like the idea of not just displacing them, but making them feel uncomfortable, lost, vunerable and endangered.

So i'm a nasty one. I'm not a big violence fan, but as I watched Somersault (bleh! dont bother. The soundtrack is the only part worth mentioning) last night I noted to my girlf - I do like watching rapists getting thrashed. And rich people squirm.

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