When it was performed on the 2nd of November, 1921, The Sleeping Beauty – then playing under the title The Sleeping Princess – was understood to be, at least according to contemporary critiques and the ever-indispensible program guide, leaden down by a ‘slim, disjointed narrative’, with ‘too much dance material’.

That was 88 years ago – and it’s a shame that The Australian Ballet’s refreshing of one of ballet’s most famous works serves to only prove that maybe, just maybe, we haven’t really come that far.

For those unfamiliar with The Sleeping Beauty’s famous story, it revolves around a Princess, Aurora, who, as a newborn is made herald of spring by the season’s fairy. Her natural enemy, the winter fairy, attempts to have the young Aurora killed – and as a consequence of the resulting fracas is doomed to fall asleep on the day of her 16th birthday, thus submitting the world to an infinite, icy winter.

Only the kiss of her true love will awaken her from slumber, and one hundred years later he arrives, dispelling winter and returning the seasons to their natural order.

The story itself is the quintessential fairy tale – forces of darkness battle forces of evil, alliances are clear-cut and the journey and its characters have foreseeable and rewarding endings.

The key concern of this rendition of The Sleeping Beauty is that its principal focus is the beauty at which it’s executed rather than the execution itself.

Nevertheless, the piece amply showcases the high technical ability of the company as it rises to the formidable challenge of performing a pure Classic Ballet with fine-tuned execution – from the Soloists to the Corps de ballet.

Miwako Kubota as Aurora is technically excellent – performing the daunting Rose Adagio was convincing balance and precision. Unfortunately, her interpretation of the role lacks real expression and sincerity; ultimately the characterization suffers the same fate as the entire piece – dazzling, spectacular but tainted with a distinct artificiality.

The same could be said for Prince Florimund: while the role is confidently performed by Remi Wortmeyer, the relationship between his character and Aurora too often felt hollow, and thus never truly translated to the audience. Perhaps as a Soloist and Senior Artist it was a lack of experience that was its genesis – more of it required to develop a true and convincing portrayal of the two famous characters.

Sadly, as principal protaganists, the fairies are largely unrecognizable. Traditionally simple colour contrasts between these characters are now turned homogenous, pallid – a slip that risks damaging the ballet’s narrative arc and almost certainly affects the audience’s enjoyment of the re-staging.

Regardless of this, Reiko Hombo is a clear standout, bringing to her performance the required energy and charisma need for the Canari Fairy. However, her compatriot in Stephanie Williams – the pre-eminent Lilac Fairy – is uncomfortable, tending to lose the focus required for the character.

On sides both good and evil, Lana Jones is perfect as a convincingly cold, harsh Carabosse, and Tzu-Chao Chau excels amongst peers with excellent line, elevation and virtuosity in his performance as Prince Florestan.

Ultimately, this is The Sleeping Beauty – so the ingredients are all there. The sets are grandiose and beautiful, though still clean and uncomplicated. The lighting is also used to great effect, simultaneously highlighting the beauty of the ballerina’s bodies and portraying the story’s moods and seasons.

But with a languid third act, a story that focuses less on the rewards of dramatic structure and more on its presupposed impact, this re-staging of The Sleeping Beauty is unrewarding; a beautiful variation feels without purpose, the energy with which dancers carry themselves seems oddly benign, and the audience is left overwhelmed by the ballet’s length rather than as a dazzling spectacle.

Gabrielle Nankivell

I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood in the rain
Dancehouse
July 8 – 12, 2009

As we emerge from splintered darkness, an antiquated suitcase slides across the stage, its origin unknown, its purpose mere mystery. Soon it will be revealed as a survival kit for life – a tidy, purpose-built container that encompasses salient lessons in advance. As our lightened vessel examines its contents we hear a tauntingly happy voice against electro-pop elevator music – this is I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood in the rain: a performance playful and tragic, light and dark, but always human.

Superbly choreographed and performed by Gabrielle Nankivell, I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood in the rain is an intensely physical ode to the frailties and strength of humanities’ psychology. Nankivell shows maturity in her clarity of movement as she whisks the audience through the thin films of an inner psyche, effortlessly contrasting aggressive, explosive physicality with quieter, articulate movements. Her skill is in her expression; she expounds madness with her challenging balance of weight and gravity, before seguing into minimalist expressions that are welcomingly more concerned with conveying truth than flamboyance.

Nankivell successfully purports that matter and makeup in reeling tragedy is simultaneously miraculous and terrifying. Luke Smiles’ soundscape, a testament to this, deals competently with the mundane, the epic and the tragic, without ever feeling overpowering. Much of I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood on the rain‘s tone, however, is conveyed through voice-over, that while often lyrical and beautiful, tends to veer distractedly into a tangled hyper-metaphor.

Indeed, during much of the performance the audience will find themselves in the dark, with a voice as their sole company. This is initially effective but does eventually become a touch exhausting; however, as soon as Nankivell reappears, these qualms are soon forgotten. It’s as though her dance is a personal catharsis – she talks of being ‘great, but not exceptional’ – but then demonstrates its fallacy in each of her well-executed movements.

This is humanity stripped bare: a catalogue of fears, hopes, dreams – and dreams-crushed – are made temporarily ethereal before vanishing in darkness.

Ultimately, I left my shoes on warm concrete and stood in the rain is another impressive contribution to contemporary dance, and further evidence that Dancehouse’s unique residency program is hugely invaluable to Melbourne’s increasingly reputable dance scene.

Perennial and enduring, Tattersalls Lane has long been an icon of Melbourne cool: conflicted, cultured – east meets west. A shabby-looking scion that shoots off the busy Little Bourke St, it’s set right in the heart of Chinatown’s cluttered, messy furore. A sharp, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it left turn leads the unwary into typical, high-bricked walls lined with smatterings of old event posters.

Gaylord’s restaurant is the first thing you’ll notice – if not for the eye-catching name, then the bizarre photo terrace foyer – and works as an apt indication that, as an Indian restaurant in the heart of China Town, Tattersalls Lane is one that doesn’t care much for convention. Further north is underdog restaurant Shanghai Noodle House, tired and vacant from playing second fiddle to the maddening, loud genius of its main competition, Shanghai Dumpling.

Most Melburnians are all too aware of Shanghai Dumpling’s charm and allure – it’s evidenced clearly by the snaking queues on Friday and Saturday nights. The place is lit like a Kmart, the service is terrible (don’t take it personally), but the food is fantastic. It’s cheap, too: the frugal diner often walks out well-fed for a fiver (sans beer, of course).

But it’s the little things that make Shanghai Dumpling worth it: the over-zealous doorman Jimmy – whose vocabulary extends only to numbers and his volume set only to ‘bracingly loud’; the awful covers of forgotten 90s popular music, or worse, butchered classics; and, of course, the offensively loud, conversation-disturbing ‘happy birthday’ song – so annoyingly hilarious that it always prompts diners to dob their friends in. Shanghai Dumpling is an institution, really, and one that, to its credit, refuses to change albeit its popularity. Here’s hoping it never does.

Tattersalls Lane’s next surprise is Section 8. A renovated car park, it’s a corrugated, rusty and effortlessly cool iron jungle, right down to the mesh fence, the mess of steel girders and the bar – a hacked, painted shipping container. All this is softened with clever oriental touches, as statues, parasols and lanterns sit, spring and hang around the wooden pallet seats. These are sprinkled with cushions and make for a surprisingly comfortable, unique Melbourne bar experience. Like neighbour Shanghai Dumpling, it too may be a victim of its own popularity; if you intend to make it your bar on a Friday or Saturday night, get there early.

Pass over Stevenson Lane – there a few interesting pieces of street art, but ultimately, its focus is waste disposal – walk up through the evergreen walls and suddenly you’re at Lonsdale St, a world away from where you just were: a little avenue of contradiction, juxtaposition and a reminder of what it is, after all, what makes Melbourne great.

Reviewed: May 2009

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Australians love an argument. Walk into any local pub and you’ll find someone squabbling about something, somewhere. A healthy debate is part of our heritage – certainly not uniquely Australian, but nevertheless a comfortable past-time: akin, for some people, to exercise. And there’s one favourite that’s held our attention indefinitely, eternally – and we’re speaking about in pubs, right now.

‘Which city’s better: Melbourne versus Sydney?’ is Australia’s very own civil war, liable to incite verbal violence and sully otherwise sensible occasions.

As a Melburnian I’ve tried to understand it myself. Of course Melbourne is better than Sydney – but why? Naturally, the enemy pins itself on its environmental beauty – spectacular crystalline harbour waters joust with the picture-perfect white sands of Bondi within postcard stands – but we’re not bad-looking, too. Indeed, when Mark Twain travelled through Australia he summarized our rivals perfectly: ‘God made the Harbor … but Satan made Sydney’.

Melbourne’s a different town; we have no Opera House, no Harbour Bridge, but something different, something intangible and pulsing – a palpable energy you can’t see or touch, but feel.

In the midst of fierce debate we Melburnians attempt to quantify this intangibility, blustering over beers and spluttering over the indefinables as we defend the city we love.

In the end, it comes down to a word: culture.

This word is inevitably ineffective – the argument is perpetual, obviously – so we nobly try and realise the unrealisable and do what any stoic-city-defender would do: look for evidence.

****

“Street art isn’t for anyone. It’s for everyone,” is low-budget documentary Melbourne INK‘s official credo – doubly serving as an apt summation of the film. It’s an easily accessible, briskly edited short that invites us to spend some time with artists have played their part in constructing Melbourne’s street art culture.

I’ll confess that aside from walking past it almost every other day, I pay little attention to street art. It’s not that I’m ignoring it specifically, it’s just that I’ve grown accustomed to seeing a piece of graffiti inscribed on a wall on my way to catch a train or grab a bite to eat.

Melbourne INK‘s genuine strength is in how this world – unknown to me – seems quickly real. Within seconds you understand that the individuals frantically scrawling on walls by moonlight are real people – not fictitious fly-by-night ‘artistes’. They demand from their surroundings a space to create – a place where art can breathe and reach an audience. The walls we walk past everyday are the ultimate canvas.

These artists are an eclectic group, too. It’s the first time many of them have shown their faces on film, but the payoff is immediate. We see the expressions of the different creators and understand the breadth of the film’s characters: some serious, some playful, some enjoying the infamy.

Essentially a collection of interviews – intercut with some timelapse ‘creation’ scenes – Melbourne INK ‘s twenty minute running time surprisingly doesn’t feel long; in fact, as the credits roll, there’s almost a need to know more – perhaps to understand the artists’ motivations, or their current undertakings. As a short documentary it’s made well - but it could have so easily failed. What’s missing is narrative; there’s nothing that binds these colourful characters beyond their need to create, no genuine external force that impedes their progress, no event that umbrellas the film as a whole.

What it is a snapshot: this is what street art in Melbourne is now – but not where it’s going. Focus to this end would have helped avoid the contradictions that lay between the interviewees; points of view collide without reaching a resolution, especially when they talk about the perceived relevancy of street art to galleries.

There are some interesting snippets on the city’s reaction to all of this. If it’s marketable it’ll be marketed – obviously – but the council’s position on the movement is entirely paradoxical. On the one hand the artists are outlaws, on the other, a major tourist attraction.

This illegality, too, is treated with both gravitas and a wry smile. For some, it’s constrictive and limiting, for others the urgency at which to create means slap-dash passion. And, in one of the more entertaining interview snippets, it means talented artist Ha Ha is the modern equivalent of Ned Kelly: a fiery, law-defying bushranger working for the greater good. It’s confusing, historically-mangled, mixed-metaphor stuff, but the bravado at which it’s delivered is genuinely appealing.

Ultimately, these are people indulging in what humans have done for centuries: drawn on walls. Sure, the surfaces are smoother and the tools more sophisticated, but the need to splash an image on a wall – cave or building – is universal and everlasting. And Melbourne, by its very design, is the perfect place for this controversial art form to grow and evolve.

Our celebrated system of laneways are indeed, the ideal studio - hidden away from the authorities at night, but bustling enough during the day for the work to find an audience. As creators converge on our city for this very reason, Melbourne’s vibrant arts community builds, strengthens and advances – and so the culture cycle continues.

****

So I’m still blustering with beers and defining the indefinables. But my words are sharply realised: I’ve found an element of physical evidence of that one word that may just help settle that great debate. Street art is part of Melbourne’s culture; ingrained in and fostered on the very walls that comprise it.

From its dignified bluestone pavement to its antiquated nineteenth century buildings, Bank Pl is perhaps Melbourne’s most handsome laneway. In fact, it’s so impressive, so beautiful, that’d you be forgiven for thinking you’ve just rounded the corner into Europe.

There’s the lamp posts – standing in a neat row, forged from elegant iron and entwined with peeling gold laurels – the beautiful Charter House – its title engraved carefully above the majestic building’s entrance – and plenty of places to sit underneath whispering plane trees as you watch the business crowd pour in for after-work drinks.

Undoubtedly, Bank Pl’s most spectacular feature is its pub – the Mitre Tavern. Situated on Mitre La – one of Bank Pl’s many cul-de-sacs – it’s a tidy, double-story, English-style drinking hole that sits underneath the looming resplendence of Collins Street’s prominent buildings.

The date of its construction is unclear, though it was at least prior to 1850, apparently. Officially, the pub was coined ‘The Mitre Tavern’ in 1867, and has been serving beer and food ever since. According to its menu, it’s the oldest building in Melbourne – which makes drinking in the large beer garden a reflective affair, as one imagines what the pub has seen as Melbourne rose from the ground around it.

Up the lane, there’re some apartments (the residents of which have decorated the steel stairs appended with splashes of green plants), an underground bar called Marakech, and a decent café on the corner that’s worth it just for the chance to have a coffee in the lane outside.

For true Melbourne grandeur, nothing beats Bank Pl.

Reviewed: December 2008.

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Gone are the disjointed, eccentric facades that typify so many of Melbourne’s alleys – this is Equitable Pl: sleek, modern, and alluring.

Situated near the corner of Collins and Elizabeth, the laneway is sandwiched between two corporate monoliths. Its entrance has been refashioned to smother its incongruity, and, as such, you’d be forgiven for presuming this alley was now the foyer into the large headquarters that surround it.

Once you pass through the corridor – windows into Henry Bucks and other upscale stores – you’ll notice how much you feel you’re in the city. The Commonwealth Bank building looms ahead of you, you’re surrounded by coats and scarves – it’s as though you’re walking through the pipeline of Melbourne’s corporate machine. Equitable Pl is a laneway that means business.

The proliferation of functional alleys can’t really bad a bad thing, however, as business has paved the way (literally) for a laneway that does host some surprises.

There are a dozen shops – boutiques, eateries, and more – that cater to mixed clientele. Equitable Pl thrives on its lunch business, proving a tempting distraction to businessmen and women that descend from above Melbourne’s skyline. Cheap eats are surprisingly easy to come across, however, and the cuisine varied.

There’s Monster Burger – as advertised by the hapless costumed pamphlet-bearing employee on Elizabeth’s corner; and Spudbar – the healthy baked potato dispenser growing a good reputation.

As surrounded as you are by formalist aesthetics – Equitable Pl’s dignified lines are smooth but not extravagant – there’s comfort in that mismatched flight of fire escape stairs that climb the buildings above, and reassurance in the littered blind alley that your eye isn’t supposed to see. You can sanitize a Melbourne laneway all you like, but you can’t completely extinguish its charm.

Equitable Pl is, at its core, an enjoyable exercise in measured interference.

Reviewed: September 2008

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Rock n Roll Nerd
Melbourne International Film Festival (full coverage here)
July 27, July 30 and August 8, 2008

His face is made-up. His voice primed. Eyes lined. Hair: wild and flailing. The shirt, unbuttoned. But unbuttoned perfectly.

He is Tim Minchin, hero of Rhian Skirving’s feature documentary Rock n Roll Nerd.

This colourful film follows his rags-to-riches journey – from struggling in cabaret clubs in front of a handful of guests to his transformation into softly spoken, strangely dressed musical-comedy revelation.

Rock n Roll Nerd opens with said metamorphosis – the payoff immediate and profound. Minchin loses the curls in favour of chemically straightened hair, an idea that rests on a shaky ethos that “people pay more attention to weirdos”.

Of course, the experiment works. Accompanied by a new wardrobe and his wife’s loving support, Minchin polishes the act, and embarks on what becomes his last, best hope at making it big. In this case, he starts small – a vacant stage on the outskirts of Melbourne’s Internal Comedy Festival.

He’s noticed by an experienced producer-manager, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Meanwhile, this propulsion is documented by his close friend Rhian Skirving. She is restrained and sensitive, and Minchin is evidently comfortable with her presence; there are moments when it feels as though we’re chatting with an old friend. This level of access is what makes the documentary a success: we laugh as Minchin purports that his naiveté is a method of extracting information, we cry as we learn his wife has miscarried, and we’re on the edge of our seats as he confronts a 300-seat Edinburgh stage for the first time.

The film is interspersed with clips of Minchin’s act, providing much needed context; we realise that even as events shift his life in new directions, there’s a crowd at a sold-out show completely oblivious.

Fundamentally, Rock n Roll Nerd is an interesting portrait of a man – idiosyncratic, naturally smart, occasionally self-centred – who is forced to deal with his own success.

His ruminations surrounding the subject are humourous, often insightful, and sometimes heartbreaking. This is the voice of a man whose ambition is largely fulfilled, yet he yearns for balance between the purity of his art and that of his increasingly commercial nature.

All the while are the reviews and reviewers – faceless writers who control Minchin’s destiny. The good ones are treated with restrained elation; the bad ones precede borderline depression.

These implosions are absorbed by his loving wife, Sarah – whip-smart, self-effacing and completely devoted. Although she supports Minchin throughout his humble cabaret days, her true value is in her ability to halt his self-destruction and to ground his self-absorption. Theirs is a relationship in documentary against which there are few equals – and is so refreshingly frank in its portrayal that without it, the film may have fallen short.

Ultimately, comedy prevails, as Minchin tackles larger spectacles and more risqué content. His is a unique voice; insular, self-deprecative and disarmingly intelligent. Yet he learns how far he can go within his act, forging boundaries that perhaps never existed within the realm of musical-comedy. It is these experiences that help us gain insight into a comedian’s thought process – and prove to be some of the film’s most interesting moments.

Rock n Roll Nerd suffers from third act issues, however, relying on the usually effective baby-to-be-born climax. Oddly, this rightfully momentous event feels a little hollow; perhaps an overly sentimental finale for a man known for his brutal, eloquent truths.

These qualms are minor, though, as Rock n Roll Nerd remains an hilarious, moving and insightful tribute to the performer and the pursuance of a dream. And from Minchin’s humble beginnings to his ultimate personal success, his story is one that makes us ponder our own lives and marvel at the courage of a man whose success is self-made, gratifying, and ultimately, inspiring.

Click here for Laneway’s full coverage of the Melbourne International Film Festival.

It’s weird, darkly funny, and intensely personal. Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg is a curious beast; a twisted cacophony of documentary, narrative and travelogue.

The film follows Maddin’s attempted extrication from his hometown, a place now so embroiled in his psyche that it’s reached a boiling point: either he goes or his mind does.

This separation – so clinically impossible, purportedly – is the film’s impetus for what becomes an enthusiastically unconventional journey throughout Winnipeg’s, and thus Maddin’s, history. He decides, in a dreamy, half-sleep daze, that the only way to truly escape the snow-clad burg is to ‘film his way out of it’.

Maddin assembles a troupe of actors to play his family – an impressively daring experiment that fails, mostly. Forcing them to recap important events in his life, and demanding of himself an intense catharsis, Maddin paints a wonderful black and white picture of his youth, his town, and his problems. It’s assemblage is genuinely startling – a true collage of the filmmakers mind. It’s splintered, fractured, great stuff.

My Winnipeg coalesces fact and fiction in search of reasons for the town’s ‘magnetic pull’; a throughline represented by the tumult of a hurtling train that traverses Maddin’s history. It’s a journey that asks questions of a town that is losing its idiosyncrasies in a misguided attempt to appear modern. What is the cost? What is a town without its history? What is a town without its people?

Maddin asks these questions so wistfully, so subjectively, and so sardonically that he creates his own mythos; a town pared from reality just enough to embody another man’s memories.

It’s an entertaining ride, hyperactively structured and darkly comic, calling to mind more investigative excursions like Bowling for Columbine and Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden? There is, of course, one major disparagement: only half of it’s real.

It’s a unique blend of fantasy and reality: Yes, Winnipeg was once re-named Himmlerstadt for an elaborately staged Nazi invasion, No, Winnipeg doesn’t have ‘ten times the sleep-walking rate of any other city in the world’. These mistruths are played so beautifully that it’s rare not to crack a smile as the absurdity escalates.

All the while, we’re becoming increasingly aware, as Maddin is, to the one thing that defines a town: its memories. As an old store is demolished, it’s ‘murder’. A hockey stadium makes an ironic stand against its pending destruction. Winnipeg doesn’t want to change – it’s being forced to.

Shot like a silent film, My Winnipeg is disjointed, jarring and beautiful. The visuals are inherently expressionist – flickering, grainy shots, camp interstitials, glaring faux-subliminal messages. At times the editing is so brisk it’s almost offensive, as rising rag-time music plays to some the film’s more spectacular sequences.

Ultimately, though, it’s Maddin himself that is most impressive. His droll, rhythmic narration provides for the film a foundation on which his cinema is free to play. It’s like listening to a freshly written play. It’s razor sharp, acerbic and always entertaining.

My Winnipeg, for all its bravado, is not a perfect film. As the film follows several tangents it’s naturally prone to getting a little distracted – and while some of these distractions are entertaining, some aren’t. The fragrant repetition of phrases can get a little irritating, and some sequence are too dizzyingly concocted.

All in all though, My Winnipeg is interesting, exciting filmmaking. Maddin invites you into his white world that brims with a universal curiosity; who are we, where did we come from, and why are we the way we are?

Click here for Laneway’s full coverage of the Melbourne International Film Festival.

It’s unassuming, bedraggled, and the purest form of cul-de-sac. Carson Pl is one of Melbourne’s more barren alleys, and, to an extent, rightfully overlooked. But like most of Melbourne’s labyrinthine laneways, you can’t define them by their contents alone, and Carson Pl is more than the sum of its parts.

Situated just off Little Collins St, and surrounded by more luminary gallerias like Howey Pl, Carson Pl is relatively innocuous. There’re a few rubbish skips, a collection of colourful milk crates that double as chairs, and the usual assortment of pigeons and rats. The handful of shops that choose to make their home in Carson Pl are so discreetly hidden that almost don’t want to be found; only one, Donuts Deluxe, really bothers attract customers.

Ben, the co-proprietor, has recently opened the shop – a garage-sized roller door compartment that brings to mind those on Degraves – to satisfy the need of Melbourne’s burgeoning independent street-skate industry. His store, previously tenanted by a failed cufflink trader, doubles as a place of business and design studio, cobbled together with a relaxed philosophy of anti-exclusivity.

Next to him is an old barber, with whom Ben and the Donut boys have a good rapport; a loading bay; and the smallest of thoroughfares into the anomalous, commercial resplendence of Australia on Collins. A run of windows from an upscale clothes store play light against the wall as the city winds down, allowing Carson Pl the briefest of moment of romance before the shop closes for the night.

While the littered, graffiti-riddled degeneracy of Carson Pl is a daily reality, it’s as though Donuts Deluxe is leading its artistic revival; supposedly in its heyday the alley played host to several publications that lived above the lockers we see today.

Perhaps we can look forward to further artistic upswings as Melbourne’s laneway explosion rockets forth, but for now, at least, drop into Donuts Deluxe for a chat, or grab a haircut – but it remains a lane to watch.

Reviewed: July 2008

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From its offshoot byway Howey Place, Presgrave Place is little more than a hook shaped alley, littered with rubbish skips. It’s conspicuous in its very nature – if you don’t take the time to look, you won’t be rewarded.

Off the steely, handsome revere of Howey, Presgrave is like walking through the very border of Melbourne’s increasingly widespread social-cataclysm. Pigeons peck at your feet as you look to admire the unusual street art – photo frames that hang fragmentarily alongside the laneway’s left wall. According to local workers, they were affixed one night without any explanation.

Presgrave is all pallid greys splashed with colour; a speck of bright orange here, a slither of green there. An unusual staircase feels oddly fastened to the right wall, perhaps a consequence of an afterthought. It’s uncovered, dangerous and slippery, but has an innate slap-dash charm.

Presgrave’s major highlight is Pushka, a cafe/bar so small it can only be spotted by a few 50s-style deco steel chairs that, on winter days, reel against a cold breeze. Inside, Pushka is cramped yet comfortable. The friendly staff are always in the mood for a chat, and the music is neither too loud nor straight-laced. It’s the kind of place that thrives on its regulars – if you frequent the cafe enough you’ll begin to have your orders pre-empted with a wry, knowing smile. These guys enjoy their job.

Most importantly: their coffee is delicious. Pushka has pride in its cup-o-joe; you’re not getting a rushed on-the-clock franchisee with an eye on the handbook here.

The only setback is in procuring a table – with its floor space it’s not hard to see why – though half the fun is donning your coat and scarf and drinking a coffee outside.

The place turns into a cheery bar at night, where, if you’re lucky, you’ll witness a stream of underagers crying with protest as they’re helplessly ejected from the Hi-Fi Bar’s backdoor. Currently, their license extends to 11pm, though things are set to change with new (but understanding) management. It’s in safe hands – Jerome (of St. Jerome’s, Sister Bella fame) has charged himself with the task of improving Pushka without damaging its cutesy-cluttered spirit.

Presgrave is a welcome retreat from the city’s intoxicating hubbub. Within a stones throw of Swanston St – its energy driving and palpable – you’re in quiet sanctuary: the only reminder of the city’s pace is the occasional clutter of dishes in adjacent kitchens.

Reviewed: July 2008

Photo © Al Wilson, 2008

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