Last weekend the Man and I spent our once yearly weekend in the city, staying in a nice hotel, getting frocked up, and going to a speeches-and-dinner event all thanks to his employers.
We spent Saturday afternoon wandering around the streets without purpose, just being stickynoses and having cuppas. Of course, before dinner we did what all couples do when they have dumped the kids with the Grandparents and have a king-sized bed and a hotel room to themselves. We went back to the room and had a nap. Oh yeah, we’re living on the edge… 😀
wall monster
One thing I do like to look at while we are in the city is the street art. I hate graffiti and tagging but I love the amazing pieces of art that people can create.
Melbourne is internationally famous for its street art and you can even go on walking tours to see the best of it.*
When I looked up some of the details on our street art I was very interested to find that it is controlled by a permit system.
After seeing these guys at work in a laneway off the Bourke Street Mall I shouldn’t have really been surprised that it is heavily regulated. After all, they had orange warning cones out….
*According to EllaDee Sydney is no slouch when it comes to street art though!
Buried words and Bushwa. 
But all done on the hop up there, certainly no warning cones! I wonder if allowing/encouraging it in certian places has meant that unwanted graffiti has disappeared?
Some of it is certainly in amazingly precarious places. I bet the ones done by hanging off rooftops weren’t approved. 🙂
I think that controlling unwanted rubbish is the plan. I guess they expect that covering the most tempting walls in art means the taggers will leave them alone.
The city and councils seem to be doing a lot to discourage graffiti, if it is reported they send people out to get rid of it immediately so as not to give the idiots the satisfaction of it being seen.
Ahhh! I’m going to be in Melbourne for a few months next year – it’ll be very interesting to see it all again. Last time I was there the ‘movement’ was just in its infancy!
The laneway culture is alive and well in Melbourne now, art, eateries and coffee shops. It is getting trendier every year. Of course you might need a large budget if you wish to partake of even a single coffee… 😉
An afternoon nap -what decadence! I’m jealous
It was a real treat. Not one person came in and said “Mum, are you awake? Can I have a (insert foodstuff of choice here). Oh, sorry, I didn’t know you were asleep.” 😀
I just love good street art (focus on ‘good’). Can do wonders for a city, methinks.
I agree with the focus on good. Some of it is completely amazing and can enliven a dreary wall or lane way, changing the entire mood of a street. The ones who just mindlessly tag though, I think they should have their arms chopped off.
(Just one of the new rules for when I become Supreme Leader… 😀 )
😀
I have seen similar walls in Salford right alongside the Manchester Ship Canal and I thought it was very brazen of them to be doing it out in public, until someone told me they were allowed.
I do find a lot of street art beautiful, although much prefer the work of Bansky with his mystery and clean images with a political/social message… than a crammed graffiti wall with tags.
And I am disappointed with your hotel king-sized bed antics… I feel you’ve both let the side down as we all expected better!!!
🙂
I really like the kind of art that Banksy does, it is so simple but brilliant. Some of the gigantic pieces on walls with surreal monsters and amazing detail are so expectedly beautiful though. I often wonder if these talents do smaller pieces and sell them or if they only do street art. The taggers though. Grrrr… As I said to sciencelens above, I have very strong views on the punishments they should be dealt. 😉
I’m sorry to disappoint you in not exercising our rights to the the king sized bed, but getting an uninterrupted afternoon nap was the stuff of dreams! That, and a shower without one single person bursting into the bathroom saying “Mum, I can’t find any socks/shirt/shoes/my homework”. Aaahhh, heaven… 😀
Ah, a weekend in Melbourne, lovely. I’m all for as many naps wherever and whenever you can get them but the Man is more fortunate than the G.O. as when we are in Melbourne my mantra is “you can sleep when you’re at home… let’s go…”
Thanks for the mention. I haven’t been out much but I do have a post to go up shortly, once I get my Telstra data sorted that got all used up setting up and updating my new laptop…
I do love Melbourne’s street art, sanctioned or not. Except for tags tagging, anything is better than a bland wall, and good on the powers that be for making a tourist attraction of it. I LOVE the wall monster 🙂
Well, we had to have a break, I don’t do the slow stroll, I’m walking to the places I want to see. The Man’s poor legs were walked off by the end of the afternoon.
New laptop? Nice 🙂 Data dramas? Bad… 😦 I couldn’t resist putting a link to you as you have spotted lots of great street art in your travels.
That fantastic wall monster really caught my eye, they must have used a crane to get up there! Of course the idiots that tagged across the bottom of it must have been standing on someone’s car to contribute their bits of rubbish. 😦
I didn’t take my good camera with me and I really regretted it as there were a few pieces that the little point-and-click that I had with me just couldn’t take decent pictures of. Hmmmm, maybe another trip just to take pictures would be worthwhile!
I would love a weekend in Melbourne (but no so much that I haven’t avoided a wedding dress shopping trip with my sister next month) to just wander around. I’d like to see the wall monster. Dad is going for the trip which also encompasses meeting my other sister’s in-laws, so I suggested he escape to the NGV at least for the shopping part. At the moment I’m not even getting out and about much in Sydney…
Happy with the new laptop but Telstra, well… they send me a warning if I’ve used all the data on my phone but not the wireless broadband, and who knew it would use almost 4 gb on uploads and updates to set up the new laptop… To make it worse I reinstalled back to the original operating system last night thinking the slow data was due to a dodgy update… anyway I now have another 8 gb to play with and it only cost me $10…
I hope to get to Melbourne sometime this year, and will let you know when/if we do… but I know it’s a bit of a trip.
Oh, a wedding dress shopping trip? They could be shopping right next door to my house and I would still find some way to avoid that.
Lucky you aren’t coming to Melbourne this weekend, with this weather you and your shopping would get blown away! Maybe when you come down we can prise Meeks out of Warrandyte and all have lunch. 🙂
Not letting you know you have used your wireless data is a bit rough. They let me know, but not too speedily so I can be well on the way to using the lot before I have noticed that I am halfway through it.
I would love to have a walk through Melbourne with someone who knew all the little secrets, maybe I should do a walking tour one day, although I like to do my own thing, going with a group isn’t my idea of happiness…
I prefer to do my own thing too. I did a DIY walking tour of Perth with my cousin (with a map from the tourist office) and it was great. Maybe Melbourne has such a thing also.
Melbourne is bound to have a self walking tour of the street art. Like you Metan, I love this art, and hate the tagging. I have been fascinated to see street art arrive in other suburbs as well. There are murals in Brunswick on all the boxes that control the traffic lights.
The other day I was travelling home on Sunday night, the day before Term 3 resumed at school. As I passed houses I imagined all the conversations –“Mum where is my shoe/sock/school bag?”; “I don’t want to go back to school tomorrow. Can’t I have one more day?”; and my favourite, that applied so often to me as a kid “What do you mean you haven’t done your homework? You’ve had 2 weeks to get it done!!!”
I bet there were a lot of mums racing about checking that all the appropriate bits of uniform were clean and dry for the next day too. I always find that on the last evening before they go back I have a sudden feeling that every single piece of uniform is still in the laundry waiting to be washed. Eeek!
There probably is a self walking tour for the street art, I should just be more organized next time we go in there. We don’t have any street art in our little town. The only time anything like that appears is around a long weekend like Easter. Suddenly every bus stop has the same tag scrawled hugely on it and we just know it is some bored teenager who has been dragged away on holiday with its family.
Apart from that we are suprisingly (and happily) graffiti free. I wouldn’t mind a bit of interesting art appearing though. Does it tell you something about the local towns when things are more likely to be yarn bombed than painted…. 😀
I love yarn bombing. How nice to live in a community that does that rather than graffitis!
Yarn bombing always puts a smile on my face. One of the large trees along the river in Warburton had a yarn wrap made for a high limb. When I spotted it I wondered at the determination of the bomber climbing waaaay up there, I imagined a tree lopper in full regalia clambering up there in the dead of night!
WP wouldn’t let me comment first thing this morning – I guess it had Friday-itis too. If I could have commented though, I would have told you about my Dad and his days as a -cough- famous -cough- busker.
Not sure if this street art still exists, but it’s there on Flickr :
Dad is the little old man playing the violin. 🙂
How could I not love street art?
There have been a few weird things going on with the commenting lately, a few of the comments above had to be fished out of the spam folder!
Thank you for the link. Really, your dad? Wow! Where was that wall? Having him immortalized in street art like that is fantastic. 😀
The wall is somewhere in the city, but I doubt that portrait is still there as I believe they get painted over fairly regularly. Whoever did it was a real artist because he captured Dad so well – the post, the posture, the concentration.
One of these days I’ll do a post about the amazing life Dad had, both before and during the busking. I think he’d like that.
Some pretty serious street art from down under. Cool!
If only I had bought a decent camera with me pictures of street art would be all you will see out of me for a week! 🙂