The benefits of hindsight

They say hindsight is the greatest virtue. So it was revealing to look back at an old election commentary posted on this blog in October 2004, just after John Howard won his fourth term. Journalists, especially those in the crystal ball game, often have to hurriedly revise their position and hope that readers don't spend too much time trawling the archives. For instance, you don't see Miranda Devine or Paul Sheehan extolling the invasion of Iraq so much these days.

Click the headline to see how the KX Times read politics and the economy back then, including some (very well written material) in the comments that I suspect was cut-and-pasted from a paid journalist by one of the KX Times' anonymous critics.

Pictured is a great stencil spotted in Katoomba.

Please, some substance amid the power spin

The Sydney Morning Herald saw fit to publish another of my letters today. While an unprecedented storm of spin defends the privatisation of power generation in terms of 'union vs government' and 'securing the future of electricity supply' (as if there is only one way to do that), I tried to bring it back to essential issues:

"I can't believe so many intelligent people are still spruiking the privatisation of an essential utility while the Government is throwing millions of taxpayers dollars at a privatised rail operation to persuade it to carry export wheat to market.

I thought privatisation was supposed to shield the public from financial risk. This is a clear case of private profit holding the public good to ransom and it convinces me that fundamentals such as power generation should remain in public hands."

Michael Gormly Woolloomooloo


I still can't work out how, if the government can't afford new power stations, the private sector can stump up $10-15 billion to buy the system and THEN pay for a power station on top of that AND make a profit out of it. Especially as the government can borrow money more cheaply than the private sector. You can't regulate away that contradiction. Either way, we will be the ones paying!

Meanwhile The Herald leads today with the smiling faces of Morris Iemma and the world's ugliest politician, Michael Costa, under the strapline: "This is a time for healing and calm, not belligerence." This is laughable after Costa was filmed screaming abuse at his own party conference on the weekend.

While the smiling faces spread reassurance, all is not well in the Labor camp. MLC Penny Sharp, for one, is committed to oppose the sale.

And as for Paul Keating spruiking privatisation in a major Herald opinion piece... I am apalled. He coyly writes:

"Critics will say that I am writing in these terms because of my association with Lazard Carnegie Wylie, a company chosen to co-advise the State Government on its privatisation proposals."

Alex Mitchell on Crikey comments:

"This declaration – more like the admission of a howling conflict of interest – should have been made at the start of the article. And Keating is being uncommonly modest when he writes of his “association” with Lazard Carnegie Wylie – he’s the International Chairman for heaven’s sake!"

If I had any respect for Keating it's now gone.

And none of this even gets to carbon emissions and climate change.

Photos by Peter Rae.

Village Centre bites the dust

The Village Centre, between Springfield Plaza and Llankelly Place, is finally being demolished (pic below). During the '60s it was the epicentre of sophisticated al fresco living and the site of the Kings Cross Waxworks. More recently it was redeveloped and roofed to house, among other shops, a supermarket and a new TAB. But around the closure of the Waxworks in 1986 the precinct declined in parallel with the declining fortunes of Kings Cross -- which now seem to be on the rise again.

Check the Audrey Hepburn outfit on the chick in black, and the groovy Bermuda Shorts on her man.

Another block of units will be built on the site. I hope the windows will be double-glazed and the eventual residents understand they will be moving into a noisy entertainment precinct, not West Pymble, and set their tolerance levels accordingly.

Blogger Panthergirl shows a raunchy matchbox pack sold as a Waxworks souvenir (pic below), and reminisces about a childhood visit there, remembering the shark attack and rack torture exhibits. I wonder if they would be allowed today?

Retro a Go-Go goes off!

Thanks to all those who came along and partied till late at Retro a Go-Go on Friday night. Apologies to the neighbours for the after-party! We got a decent crowd which would have been bigger if Council didn't spend $millions tearing down posters in their obsession with turning Sydney into a lifeless grey zone for rich old NIMBYs, but hey, that's Sydney.

We'll be doing it again!

Pictured are our fabulous dancers Sheena & Vivi whose talent and professional attitude made the night so easy and so entertaining. Lighting, pix & music by moi.

Thanks to Mark, Steph & Josie who made the whole thing work, and to David at Network Printing for the posters.

Retro a go-go details

Here's the poster (below) for my latest venture into showbiz, Retro a go-go. Come along and shake your tushie to some of the greatest tracks ever recorded, including cool cheese, mod jazz, orgasmic pop, Hammond B-3, Acid Latin, TV themes, psychedelia and soul power (eg Carleen & The Groovers, pictured right). Be inspired by Sheena and Vivi who dance like mad kittens. And you've gotta come and see my new outfit which I actually BOUGHT for the night. Sheesh!




It seems blogger wants to reduce this image down a lot so here's the fine print:

Retro a Go-Go
Underground in the El Rocco
(at Bar Me, cnr Brougham & William Streets
Kings Cross) Bookings 9368 0894

Friday 4 April 08
8pm–midnight or something
$20.00

The venue is a restaurant too and does great food at reasonable prices. Drinks are relatively cheap as well. Not that we encourage 'binge drinking', you know.

See post below for some fashion and style reference, not to mention fun on YouTube!

New Mortal Sins to fill Hell?

This week the Catholic Church declared drug-taking to be a mortal sin -- even though I don't recall any of the ten commandments proscribing the practice.

They don't seem to include alcohol as a drug even though the edict was reportedly aimed at 'drugs which weaken the mind'.

Of course the new rules must have come straight from God as The Pope apparently has a hotline to the Almighty (or else he is suffering from serious delusions). So it seems that God must be on the side of ultra-conservatives and prohibitionists, and the Yanks who want to prevent harm by spraying half of Afghanistan with poison to kill the opium crops. What could possibly go wrong?

It makes me wonder, then, if God doesn't want us taking these substances, why He created cannabis, the Coca tree and the opium poppy, and made their effects so medicinal and/or pleasurable and/or addictive. Perhaps they are a divine entrapment strategy, like Adam and Eve's apple, or perhaps the numbers are dropping in Hell so it needs a bit of a boost. However this is unlikely as each soul is sentenced for eternity.

In addition, pharmacists were told they shalt not sell contraceptives (because obviously this would be worse than reducing the 60% AIDS infection rate in parts of Africa), and pedophilia by clergy had apparently been blown out of proportion by the media.

But it seems the media's continuing moral panic about drugs must be not only in-proportion but also divinely sanctioned.

Or is it just that The Church just wants to induce more people to return to religion, 'the opiate of the masses'.

Gee I'm glad we are subsidising World Youth Day so generously. And I guess that's put the 'moral' firmly back into the drugs debate.

Pictured is the atrocious el-cheapo WYD ad structure obscuring the western entrance of St Mary's Cathedral.

Shootings in Kings Cross

Click the headline for a link to today's SMH analysis of Sunday night's gunplay.

And here's a link to yesterday's report on the incidents by The Australian.

I wonder if Clover Moore is still keen on turning The Cross into a 'mother-and-child-friendly retail precinct'?

No doubt the nimbys will be calling for all criminals to install silencers on their guns.

Go-Go reference

Most of you weren't there in the '60s (and the rest don't remember it) so here's some reference for 4th April -- retro a go-go at el rocco in Kings Cross. The shot of Peggy Moffit (right) comes from a great page of girl's mod fashion. Below are YouTube amusements.

Carnaby street smorgasbord (great pics, bad sound)

Op art fashion spectacular  (Great visuals. Who did this song? Who is 'Patti'?)

Another '60s visual feast (The Birdies: Hucklebuck)

Loving Spoonful

Haschich Party A deep and meaningful exposé of love and posing in the '60s. One of my fave tracks. It must have been good haschich.

George, Teddy & The Condors

Ananda Shankar

The Cool Ones

Freestyle go-go


Le Girls

Instamatic go go

Chubby Checker twists again

Go-Go lesson

Japan 1960-70 Pt 16

Blast Off Girls

Japanese bikinis

Miami go-go

'60s dance party

Teen-age Tramp

The Avengers

The Avengers

The Lords (German beat band)

Heritage letters at ten paces

Our own local heritage expert and activist, Andrew Woodhouse, is no slouch at getting published in the Herald either, with several 'First Words' and a Heckler to his recent credit.

His latest sally, about the Historic Houses Trust, drew a spirited reply from Jill Wran, Chairman of the trust.

It is thought-provoking reading.

The sober facts about booze

While the temperance union (now including Kevin Rudd) wallows in moral panic about binge drinking, the Australian Bureau of Statistics tells a more sober story:









There's lies, damned lies, and then there's statistics. Beware tabloid hysteria. Meanwhile the Government, at the stroke of a pen, can appear to be 'doing something' without spending a dollar.

Our grog debate hits the SMH

My letter on the subject was given the 'First Word' pole position in the Herald Letters on Saturday.

One Lynette Robinson got a reply published today citing the usual 'ugly boring streets full of people being harassed' view but of course none of my arguments are actually addressed. My pic shows a typical Cross crowd. No-one is being 'harassed'.

I have sent off a reply but I doubt they'll keep flogging that horse. I'll copy it below:

"Lynette Robinson's defense of the 'more venues = more violence' argument (Letters, February 25) fails to address any of the points I raised previously (February 23). Melbourne statistics about youth seeking treatment for alcohol problems have little to do with Kings Cross and might have many causes other than the large number of venues in Melbourne. If the youth involved are under 18, I would suggest they are not getting much of their grog from licensed premises in any case.

"The argument suffers from the very common post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy which assumes causality simply because two sets of figures have similar trends. This is not necessarily so, and my suggestion that the police focus on illicit drugs and sniffer dog deployment is actually worsening the problem shows there may be causes other than the raw number of venues.

"The argument also assumes that the demand for alcohol is infinitely elastic. I personally am not drinking any more than I did even though there are more venues, and I suspect that 'over-saturation' of venues in any precinct will make itself evident when some of them start failing for lack of patrons.

"I agree there is an ugly element in the crowds that visit our city on weekends and I can remember it always being so. But they are only a noisy minority and I think our younger generation, on the whole, are pretty impressive. Meanwhile young people will make mistakes and most learn from them, just like my generation did. Nannying them into silence is an error. And if I find a bit of vomit on the street on a Sunday morning I don't get into a tizz – I just walk around it."

Alternative headline dept

The Council press release was joyously headed 'Residents win court battle against Darlinghurst night club'.

A different spinner could have written 'The last nail in the coffin of Oxford Street'. This episode is another example of Council's doublespeak. On the one hand they want to revitalise Oxford Street as an entertainment precinct. On the other hand they appear to have closed down the T2 night- and day-club at Taylor Square because residents don't like the fallout.

A recent letters thread in the Sydney Star Observer neatly summarised the issue. One guy living in the art deco apartment block directly opposite T2 and Kinselas had written in complaining about the Saturday morning noise, complete with a photo of a police car attending an incident or complaint. 'See what I have to put up with' was the indignant message. The next week another guy replied, saying simply, 'You wanted to move close to the action, you deal with it'.

All councillors however pander exclusively to the NIMBYs on this one and killing the action is their solution. Tough luck for the late-shift workers who used to have a club to go to and tough luck for Oxford Street. The gentrifiers continue to turn Sydney into a dead boring city. But, you know, quiet evenings sitting separately in little boxes consuming mass media and going to bed after The Bill is the only right and proper cultural norm. Pip pip, tally ho!

The extent of Council's ignorance of inner city culture was highlighted by a recent pathetic attempt at 'revitalising' Taylor Square. The first draft of the oppressive busking policy banned buskers from selling their cds everywhere except the Square which is not known for its busking anyway. That idiocy was killed off but it's still illegal for an artist to sell paintings, and even silent performers must stop by midnight. Not to mention having to pay to get a license in the first place.

Their next assault on counter-cultures will be the new street poster policy. More on that later.

Pic: A late-night partygoer recovers on a Saturday morning in Taylor Square. Tut tut. I mean, you just can't HAVE this sort of thing, can you?

The ugly Australian

It's Australia Day and unfortunately I can't celebrate. The Australian flag-over-the-shoulder look has come to represent jingoism, racism and ignorance.

A few minutes ago a female friend was in Kings Cross waiting to cross the road where she saw an Aboriginal friend of hers, who greeted her. A young Aussie suburban guy, drunk, flag draped over his shoulders, cut in with: 'What did that black bastard say to you?"

My friend gave him what for, pointing out that the 'black bastard's' ancestors had been in the country a lot longer than his. The young guy made as if to punch the black, but was warned off by my friend.

Nearby a five-year-old asked his mother: 'What is that lady saying to that man?'

'She's giving him what he deserves,' was the reply.

I fear tonight's going to be an ugly one up the Cross. How did this nation become so deeply ignorant?

Farrelly takes aim at Oxford Street

The credibility gap between Council and on-the-street reality got a good workout from Elizabeth Farrelly in the SMH today.

Even as Kings Cross is hinting at a partial retail resurgence, Oxford Street remains bleak.

Several blocks on the north side of the street are owned by Council, and there has been friction with many of their tenants -- the small, independent unique ones on the whole, whose turnover was slashed while the uniform granite and Smartpoles 'upgrade' was installed at public expense.

But Council has a vision for the street. Unfortunately it is controlled by their property department who differ from the white shoe brigade only in that they are not risking any of their own money. They love the expensive places and the franchises, seeing it all in terms of dollars per square metre. Words like unique, local, creative and affordable are absent from their vocabulary.

As Elizabeth Farrelly put it, they are 'still seeing revitalisation as a means of precluding rent reduction, rather than a response to it.'

This cultural dissonance exists within some other Council departments as well, and no Councillor seems to comprehend it (except, I suspect, John McInerney). Placing the issue into public dialogue is not easy. Congratulations to EF for doing so.

Prohibition takes four more lives

People always have and always will take drugs, it seems. But only under prohibition does it cause wholesale death and destruction.

On Thursday morning I couldn't get out of my street into William Street because the police were there taping off a crime scene around a body on the pavement.

The young man's body was lying flat on its back, toes spread outwards, hands placed neatly on its abdomen.

While police remained tight-lipped, word on the street is that the man is one of four who died locally after injecting a new batch of drug available on the illicit and unregulated street market. The drugs are probably either unusually strong or cut with a deadly substance, and alarm has spread quickly amongst users.*

Heartless people will say 'serve them right,' but others will understand that each of these victims has family and friends who will now be grieving. Each had made mistakes -- like all of us -- but each has now been robbed of a chance at redemption. And each would probably still be alive if they had been able to access their drugs legally from a regulated system.

The world-wide carnage caused by prohibition is increasing (see stories 6, 7 and 8 at the link embedded in the headline). It's well past time to change our approach.

* 22 March: More reliable sources now say there were only two actual deaths in the area and that it was more likely that the overdoses were caused by mixing the legal pharmaceutical Xanax (like Valium but stronger) with the rather low quality heroin that's generally around lately. Also the beat up about Afghani Brown heroin seems to be largely in the media's imagination.

Doggy doo as class leveller

'Who d'ya think's gonna clean that lot up, eh?' came ringing from the street in the broad western suburbs accent so detested by the local gentry. 'Who's job d'ya think it is!'

The harangue continued and I couldn't resist opening the door to have a look. There was a guy bearing the marks of rough trade berating a leggy blonde attached to an ornamental white dog. She had just popped out of the rear garage entrance of her block of million-dollar Brougham Street apartments on a Saturday morning to let her pet relieve itself steamingly on the pavement. Her head was down, eyes averted in that sheepish manner typical of such litterers as she scurried back into the garage which was sprinkled with Porsches and a Rolls Royce.

He followed her towards the slowly closing rolladoor, emphasising his point with a few expletives.

I couldn't help laughing at this reversal of the usual social hierarchy and congratulated the guy as he walked past, telling him that I didn't have a dog because I didn't want to spend half my life picking up warm dog-poop.

'The trouble is, neither do they,' he rejoined.

Council heavies quash Barons action

An informal public action protesting the demolition of the Barons Building was shut down by Council heavies but not until it had made its point and a small crowd had enjoyed a bit of afternoon fun in the Roslyn Street park.

One resident had complained because he could hear music, apparently preferring a year or so of full-on construction noise opposite his flat.

Even the Police had come by and decided the volume was too low to merit interference.

The action was opened by Jill McKay, bar manager on Baron's first night ever (pictured below). She railed against the insensitivity of indiscriminate development and urged people to get others active, before being interviewed on community radio.

A revolving line-up of musicians then presented an impromptu concert featuring improvised songs about life before the Barons demolition, some soaring violin from Peter and a crunchy rock 'n' Roll set from Paul, with yours truly on percussion.

Since Council has decided to approve the demolition nothing short of mass public action is seen to have any chance of stopping it, and in these days of self-interested indifference there is little chance of that.

Also pictured are Peter, Chris Dussledorp and Vashti Hughes serenading the street.

Gormly exhibits himself again

It's true. The kind folks at Gallery 26 in Milsons Point have given me a whole wall to exhibit works. It's a new gallery, run by a collective of artists. Several rooms over two floors are now full of a superb variety of paintings, stained glass, photography, sculpture (both metal and wood), etchings and dioramas.

I am featuring some new work, notably three from a new series Steel on steel which comprise large black-and-white prints on metallic Kodak stock and mounted on galvanised steel sheet.

There is also one piece from another series I am working on -- the Fractal Coast series which I plan to show in its own exhibition when I find the time and the right venue, and ANOTHER series, Gothic Sydney, which feature Sydney's famous fruit bats.

The images here show Corrugations from Steel on steel and Honeycomb dream from Fractal coast. The two others from Steel on steel have a Kings Cross connection. Resurrection in the lightwell of the Carousel refers to the still-missing Juanita Neilson, and The roof of the Bourbon with Darling Point in the distance shows a surprising perspective on this local landmark. 

There are also several smaller pieces from my neo-surrealist collection as seen on myphotoart.com.au.

The grand opening is this evening, 11 December 2007 at 26 Alfred Street Milsons Point (from the pedestrian or bike ramps off the Bridge, head down towards Luna Park)

Closing date for the exhibition is not set. 

Another late-night booze fest

Kings Cross IS going to the dogs with new clubs opening up on every corner. Tut tut. It looks to me as if the Cross is simply Sydney's premier club precinct and locals who don't like that will just have to live with it. Meanwhile sights like this Campari launch at Favelas in Kellett Way on a random Wednesday night provide some compensation. This is not the sort of thing one sees in Pymble. Shame the Barons Building opposite is about to be demolished. There goes the neighbourhood.

Crown Street building bites the dust

Last night the upstairs tenants and patrons of the Indian Chilli Restaurant on Crown Street near Foveaux heard ominous cracking sounds and called police, who evacuated several buildings and closed the street.

The whole building, next door to the construction site for Council's new Surry Hills Community Centre, had started listing, a large crack appearing between it and the next terrace.

Today a large wrecking crane tore the building apart, levering most of it into the excavation next door in a cloud of dust damped down by several fire hoses.

Speculating spectators surmised that the large hole council had dug next to it was behind the disaster but Council is not admitting any liability and dodged reporters' questions about compensation for the Restaurant.

The cost of the Surry Hills Community Centre had already blown out massively before it even commenced. It is billed on its designer hoardings (pictured below) as 'A benchmark in environmental design' with silhouettes of cute guys holding hands and glowing messages from Clover Moore. Part of the hoarding came down with the demolished building.

Environmental experts also challenge the 'environmental benchmark' label as there are several other comparable buildings in Sydney that are far more self-sufficient.

Still, it looks good in Clover Moore's newsletters and that's what counts. Here's the Sydney Morning Herald account.

I wonder why Sydney is turning to drink

It's almost amusing watching the public panic about rising alcohol consumption and associated social problems. Almost.

Here's a theory. All but the terminally naïve now know they can't bring happy, nonviolent drugs like cannabis or MDMA on a night out because there are too many sniffer dogs. The only alternatives are Friday night TV, meditation, stamp-collecting or alcohol.

Surprise surprise, liquor venues are opening everywhere, drinking is on the rise, the demographics of Oxford Street are going downhill fast. People are not stamp-collecting but drinking more, drinking stuff like a certain Australian rum about which it is said 'there's a bushfire and a bashing in every bottle.' What an un-fun city Sydney is becoming. 

The only allowable solutions are repressive -- from more police to residents pushing councils to restrict venues. Anything but address root causes.

I know regulated legal supply of more socially benign drugs won't be happening anytime soon but I can't help documenting the insanity of the conservative establishment.

Here's a story about MDMA we won't be seeing repeated in Australia.

The pictures below tell a story too, I think. Let's caption them 'Police exacerbating a problem that can't be properly policed because there aren't enough police'.

UK heroin trial makes life easier for everyone else

A trial in the UK of three supervised injecting centres which supplied heroin and methodone clearly shows that regulated supply removes most of the problems of addiction and slashes the fallout and drug-related crime suffered by the wider community.

Ten percent of drug addicts commit three-quarters of acquisitive crime, reports The Independent. They are caught between irresistible cravings and a prohibited drug market that charges prohibitive prices. Crime is the solution for that ten percent, and the rest of us suffer.

Addicts in the trial received either methodone or pharmaceutical grade heroin under strict conditions, going a step further than the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Kings Cross. The drugs were injected on-site under supervision with no takeaways allowed.

Meanwhile back home we see Don Weatherburn, director of BOCSAR, saying 'If we want to get the most out of demand reduction... we have to inflict some harm.' (SMH 26 10 07). I'm sure the latest victim of a heroin-related mugging or home break-in would be pleased, especially after reading the UK story. I would love to debate Mr Weatherburn on on his belief that inflicting harm reduces harm. Prohibition brings many harms to the community, persecutes those who use drugs other than alcohol, diverts police from solving real crime and costs the taxpayer by locking up large sections of the population.

Prohibitionists continue to assert that regulated supply would not undermine and shrink the criminal drug supply chain but this UK trial (and common sense) indicates they are wrong. And re-directing drug addicts from the rebellion and glamour of an underground economy into a medically supervised environment removes the 'heroin chic' element from the culture while limiting the ability of existing users to initiate new users.

That refutes another prohibitionist argument -- that regulated supply will encourage more users -- and counters Mr Weatherburn's belief that inflicting harm is necessary to reduce demand.

Now watch the christian right ignore these facts and continue their hysterical and oppressive dogma. 

It's raining furniture at the top of the Cross

Yesterday morning the vase pictured on the kerb, along with a beer bottle, electronic equipment and a large glass tabletop, were thrown out of an apartment five or six floors above the Coke sign onto Darlinghurst Road, injuring two guys. The vase smashed through the rear window of this car. There is a baby seat installed and a bystander told me there was a baby in it at the time but I didn't see it.
A Pure Blonde beer bottle was thrown right across the intersection, landing on the footpath in William Street outside the small Kings Bar still operating beneath the Kings Cross Hotel, now under renovation.
Police, the Riot Squad, an ambulance and a fire engine attended.

'Silencing Dissent' – APEC photo exhibition in Kings Cross

With our new Riot Squad kitted out like a cross between Robocop and the Sopranos, Sydney life imitates a B-grade movie while the arms and security industry makes a financial killing out of protecting their own dealmakers during APEC.

As conservative forces continue to militarise the world, removing civil rights in the name of 'The war on terror', this exhibition marks a turning point in our history.

See 40+ black-and-white prints from APEC week, now showing at Bugden's Bookshop, 220 William St (near McElhone St, two streets below the Coke sign).

Silence-seekers get a blasting

Silence-seekers moving to a small town in France have been told to put up or shut up (click headline for link).

It relates to the same issue in Kings Cross where some residents create a lot of noise complaining about noise because they do not accept that they have moved into a red-light district and a world-wide destination.

Apart from extreme instances, the problem of course is really in their own minds. People with that mindset will complain about any noise anywhere, and not only in rural towns in France. There have been similar examples here in Sydney -- Oxford Falls residents complaining about people riding horses down a dirt road, West Pymble residents complaining about Koels starting their songs in the forest at 3am and Circular Quay residents complaining about trains sounding their horns as they enter tunnels (a primary safety practice).

As well as free dog-training lessons, Council might save itself a lot of grief by offering these people free relaxation lessons that include simple differentiation between external stimuli and and subjective reactions, and how we control the latter.

Even the most basic lessons in Buddhist technique teach that.

My letter published in the Wentworth Courier 080807

Well they published the letter pasted into the previous blog entry.

On Saturday night we noticed the sniffer dog patrol was out, trawling the queue outside Ladylux nightclub in their campaign to keep people out of Kings Cross. Interesting that the local whingers contributed to that club losing its development approval partly by claiming that the queuing blocked the footpath (shock, horror!). Yet there seemed to be plenty of room for the dog patrol...

To the advantages of entertainment saturation listed in my letter I wanted to add: That the incoming crowds create a 'critical mass' that is a party in itself. I LOVE the endless variety of people you see and meet around here when it's pumping. Of course the old bores don't even register this. It's all 'impact' and 'adverse amenity' to them.

The suggestion made by one local that entertainment venues should be spaced 100 metres apart would of course kill this critical mass while spreading Kings Cross alone over about a 20km radius. Smart.

Is Frank Sartor still kicking heads in Kings Cross?

Given the lockstep between Council and the Police in the war on Kings Cross, I was wondering where the state government push was coming from.

I got a clue from the Autumn 2002 edition of City News in which then Mayor Frank Sartor enthuses about 'civilising' Kings Cross using the zero tolerance techniques applied in New York.

'I was particularly interested in the use of multi-agency teams of police, fire inspectors, health inspectors and building safety experts to target issues ranging from prostitution to unauthorised signage,' said Frank, laying out his vision to 'civilise' the Cross.

Sound familiar?

'A key to the success of cleaning up key precincts has been the unrelenting attention of authorities to forcing out undesirable elements, backed up by major improvements in urban amenity,' he goes on.

Five years later the issues are identical but the Cross is suffering a stalemate between the social forces that create it and the relentless dead hand of Council regulation, the de-funding of the local arts community, raids on the adult shops, and police street searches and sniffer dog patrols which do little except scare people away from the place.

Far from 'civilising' the place -- as if a bully like Frank Sartor would even know what the word meant -- it's just the old story of middle class arrogance which always thinks it knows better than the rest of us how we should lead our lives. These types cannot bear to see one small precinct thumbing its nose at their suburban cultural cringe which worships moneyed, respectable sterility as the only good. Planning Minister Sartor and the supporters of the war are no more than tidy-town NIMBYs, albeit powerful ones.

In the same publication Frank outlined his vision for the extended Cross City Tunnel and the 'greening' of William Street. He claimed increasing the cost from $273 million to $410 million for the longer tunnel would be offset by 'extra toll revenue from additional patronage'. He was very, very wrong about that, too.

Reading about the late night trading issue in the Wentworth Courier, I felt inspired to fire off the following letter:

-------------------------------------------

While we all support the idea of more Melbourne-style venues in soulless old Sydney, all the backslapping about 'curbing the late night booze festivals' in Kings Cross amounts to little more than a few old bores primping and fussing about young people having a good time.

Their mantra of 'over-saturation' is meaningless when applied to the Cross which has been 'over-saturated' with entertainment outlets for many decades. That's why it's popular. It's partly why I and all my local friends moved here.

The killjoys willfully ignore the many advantages of this 'over-saturation': punters can arrive by public transport and travel on foot among many different venues, making the roads safer than if they drove; Police response is famously fast as they need only a small area to cover; and enforcement of venue management standards becomes easier.

The Cross also acts as a centre for dispossessed and marginalised people, concentrating them where the services and outreach teams are while at the same time providing a safer environment than if they were pushed out to the suburbs.

Authorities have now spent millions and several years trying to kill the Cross but the issues have not changed. The war on Kings Cross is not working and if it does it will merely displace the problems to other suburbs less well-placed to deal with them. This is the shame of all NIMBYs.

Instead, we need to take off the regulatory screws, continue managing the problems and seek positive, arts-led solutions to changing the people mix and the daytime retail slump.

And if you can't stand the heat...


Michael Gormly, Kings Cross

The rationale for the War on Kings Cross?

I've drawn an interesting line between current events. Call me cynical.

1. Council anti-cluster rules applied to KX sex industry

2. Police raid KX adult shops, confiscating X-rated material (presumably their staple stock-in-trade. If any go broke they can't be replaced by another sex - oriented premises because of 1.) Note: 'Child pornography' used to justify the raids but none found, yet undercover cops maintain the campaign.

3. Many of these shops are linked to brothels so if they go broke so may the brothels (who employ many drug addicts, thereby reducing drug-related crime by shifting users to another suburb).

3. A new condition on the four-year continuation of the 'trial' of the injecting centre is that if its usage rate declines to 75% it will be 'reviewed'.

4. A central reason for the location of the MSIC is its proximity to the sex industry.

5. Intended result: Kill the red light district, close the MSIC and all the drug addicts disappear into other areas and become less visible, less detectable and with less support. Problems of Kings Cross displaced to other suburbs. Social fallout and drug-related crime might rise but it will be further underground and less visible politically.

6. Kings Cross real estate prices rise. Developers and NIMBYs rejoice.

Items 1 to 4 are simply factual. Items 5 and 6 are my conclusions. I can't think of any plausible alternative explanations. If I am correct, there needs to be a debate between having a visible red light district or having those activities spread around other suburbs. It's between diversity and uniformity, as there would be less difference between Kings Cross and other suburbs. This in turn will only accelerate the exodus of all the interesting people from our increasingly boring city.

I am told they succeeded in doing this in New York, killing 42nd Street. Now all the same stuff goes on via Blackberry and email networks.

I know if I had a 15-year-old daughter gone off the rails I'd rather have her hitting the Cross to be picked up by the ubiquitous street outreach teams than locked in a suburban room being sold via Blackberry.

Oxford Street a casualty of the ‘War on Kings Cross’?

A claimed rise in homophobic assaults along Oxford Street has triggered a safety strategy from Council.

At the same time a story by Kim Shaw in the Wentworth Courier (27/6/2007) reports:
‘Locals had complained to the council that the demographic of Oxford Street had changed, bringing in more “straight outer-suburbs” visitors to the area in recent times.’

Is it possible that the police raids and pressure on adult shops in Kings Cross, preventing them from selling X-rated non-violent erotica, are displacing “straight outer-suburbs visitors” to the nearest sex shops -- in Oxford Street?

There was plenty of anecdotal evidence of the displacement of street people and drug users from the Cross to Darlinghurst a few years ago when Police and Council started their ongoing ‘clean up the Cross’ campaign.

Indeed, if you spend much time in both places you will see many of the same street people.

This observation challenges the vocal few who continue to attack the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre, claiming it attracts people who are the sole cause of the retail slump along the Kings Cross strip -- a chicken-and-egg argument at best. The truth is there are many reasons street people come to the area and shifting the MSIC, or closing it, will not improve anything.

It also illustrates the idea that any oppressive action by authorities merely displaces the ‘problem’ rather than solving it.

In the case of Kings Cross, all the might of the Police, Council, NIMBY residents and the sycophantic Kings Cross Partnership is pitched against the whole set of social forces that creates red light districts in the first place.

The only achievement of this ‘War on Kings Cross’ is to create an uneasy stalemate. On the one hand the Cross is prevented from fully being 'itself' -- the raucous, lurid neon-lit home of extreme diversity that we so love. But on the other hand the strength of the social forces which create the Cross will prevent it ever becoming the ‘mother-and-child retail centre’ that the KX Partnership, Council and property developers explicitly fantasise about.

Like all such prohibition-style campaigns, the only result is a lot of pain and expense as ‘problems’ are shifted from one place to another. Seen in this light, Council and the Police are creating the very problems they are trying to solve.

Picture: Oxford Street or Kings Cross? Street people in front of a closed shop in Oxford Street doing nobody any harm.

Woman cured of 'unwelcome orgasms'

The case of a woman who suffered from involuntary feelings indistinguishable from orgasms headed this morning's segment by Adam Spencer and Dr Karl Kruszelnicki on 702 radio.

The woman went to doctors when the phenomenon started interfering with her life. No bus trip was safe for her with the 'orgasms' lasting up to two minutes. On one occasion she actually passed out.

Doctors discovered an epileptic centre in her brain which was triggering these events, and were able to cure her.

Spencer asked Kruszelnicki if there was a difference between having a real orgasm and an imaginary one, using as a parallel the example of referred pain which could be seen as not 'real' because there was no actual stimulus at the site of the pain.

Dr Karl replied with the question 'Is anything real -- am I imagining this conversation with you?'

I would have asked whether the same thing could happen to males, given the usual physiological symptoms that accompany the event. So if the guy sitting next to you in the bus seems a bit stunned and asks 'excuse me, do you have a tissue?' this could be the explanation.

Picture: Some bus passengers may not be as bored as they appear.

Landslide in McElhone Street

This landslide in McElhone Street Woolloomooloo fell on Friday night. Police at the site say no cars were parked underneath -- very lucky as this street, close to Kings Cross, is usually parked out on weekend nights. The hole above is within the grounds of a four storey block of flats fronting Brougham Street, approximately 1950s vintage. The cliff beneath is the site of one of Sydney's original sandstone quarries, dating back to the mid-1800s.

Then on Sunday a cyclist and a small white van collided in the same street -- it looked as if the car, facing the roadblock in front of the landslide, had turned right towards a driveway intending to turn around -- just as the cyclist was overtaking. The cyclist was standing as police attended -- although bleeding from the head. He was taken away by ambulance.