March 13

Day 8: Melbourne

Morning

We’re each wearing the last of our clean clothing, so there’s no avoiding it now: we gotta do laundry. Unfortunately, this particular Airbnb doesn’t have any laundry facilities. So we look up he closest launderette, which is a place a 10-minute walk away called “The Soapranos.” (Yes, the Aussies sure do love their puns!)

But, priorities, man! Breakfast first. I lobby hard for heading back to Breakfast Thieves, as I was intrigued by a smoked fish dish that was on their weekend-only menu. And what I’d had there on Friday was just too damn delicious.

So back to Breakfast Thieves we go and this time is is PACKED. Oh yeah, brunchtime. It’s easy to forget the normal flow of things when on vacation. Good thing there’s only a 10-minute wait for an outdoor table, which gives me time to look at the menu and decide… to get the same damn thing I did the last time I was here. But it’s only partly because Mike is getting the smoked fish and eggs special, so I can sample his.

I again make a mess of things trying to eat my poached eggs, chiseling the whites out of the shells to which they are stuck, sending bits of eggshell everywhere. Worth it!

Now for a walk back to the flat for our laundry bag and a good deal of down time. On the walk to the launderette, we make our way through a quieter, more residential part of the neighborhood we hadn’t yet explored.

First, we meet this little charmer:

According to the heart-shaped tag on his collar, his name is “Lazer the Amazer” and he’s a super-sweetheart, running right up when we crouch down and make “c’mere kitty” noises. This is the first cat we’ve yet encountered in our travels, and I’m missing my own cats quite a bit, and Mike is just as much in need of a kitty fix. So the friendly Mr. Amazer gets an epic amount of head-scratching and petting from the both of us.

Kitty eventually gets a bit restless and we have (ugh) laundry to do anyway, so we continue down the street. There is some pretty cool street art:

As well as the, ahem, evidence of some of its creation:

And posters for a show we’d totally check out were we still in town on that date:

Arriving at The Soapranos, we find the interior decor to very much match the theme. There is a large TV mounted above the machines on which — you guessed it — episodes of The Sopranos are playing. And the logo on the sign swaps the gun for a spray bottle.

We’re the only people in there, so we get about our business then mess around on the Internet (Mike) and do some writing (me) while waiting for our clothes to be done. We also note some verrrry sketchy flyers posted on the wall calling for female nude models, plus another for an “art project” of, uh, questionable taste. Stay classy, Melbourne.

Afternoon

By the time we’re done, we determine we really only have time to pick one neighborhood in which to shop, even though the Digging Melbourne map has many more pockets of record stores in different parts of the city. The Brunswick neighborhood had two of the better ones (based on their descriptions), so we head off to the first one, at 15 Union Street.

Hopping on a tram, we make our way downtown, then back north on a different line. Tracking our position in Google Maps this whole time, we hop off at our appointed stop, walk over to 15 Union and… see that it’s an empty alley? We walk down the alley. Yeah, it’s empty. WTF???

I check the record store map in the Digging Melbourne guide. Oh no. Shit. We were at the wrong Union Street! And the other one is… not nearby. Though at least we ended up heading in kind of the right direction. But now Google is telling us to hightail it over to a train station a 15-minute walk away to hop a train to our actual destination. Okay!

We get a move on, even though we’re both kind of tired from the heat and the sun and having to schlep even further than planned. But, with some concerted speed-walking (and not a little anxiety), we make it to our platform with 2 minutes to spare. Woo!

On the train, we have our Myki travel cards checked to ensure we paid the fare (yes, obv), then we witness another dude go through the same check, except he didn’t pay. After a long but polite back and forth with the fare-checker, he gets whisked away.

Off the train, it’s another 15-minute or so walk to the first record store, and by this point we’re reconsidering our decision to forgo sunscreen and searching for a convenience store to buy some water.

But we make it to Round & Round Records before we can hydrate. And damn, do they have good records. Good enough so that we endure the air condition-less interior and try not to sweat on the records as we pull them out. There is a ton of local stuff, which is just what we are most in search of.

My top find, though at top price, is a rare Twerps mini-LP (edition of 350). I also dig out an early Chapter Music label 7″ that I am unfamiliar with, but which sounds good when I sample it on the in-store turntable. To those, add a couple of other Aussie 7″es and the best-priced copy I’d found yet of the Beaches LP I’d been eyeing.

Again, we have a really nice conversation with the friendly clerk. He even gives us free, store-branded carrier bags with our purchases. Good on ya, mate!

The next store is another 15-minute walk and boy, are we getting our workout today, now with vinyl in tow. I still can’t find any damn water, but the records, they are calling!

Record Paradise Garage is a huge space that yeah, was probably an auto garage before it became a store. There is a big seating area where bands probably do in-stores, and the first really big selection of cassettes we’ve yet seen. I know it’s easy to rag on tapes for their crappy sound quality (among other sins), but the fact is that a lot of small bands and labels, including a lot in Australia, are releasing music in that format.

And we do each find cassettes to buy: a Cinnamon Records comp for me, and another small local label comp for Mike. This is also the first store where I see a copy of Melbourne band Ciggie Witch’s latest (and excellent) LP, so I grab that. As with the Beaches LP, I find a right-priced copy of a record I’d seen in multiple stores: the new Newsletters 7″. Here it’s AUS$10 instead of up to $16 elsewhere.

Mike also claims a Hideous Towns 7″ before I realize what it is as we flip through the singles bin (noooo… I like them too!). But then I spy another copy up on the display wall — yes!

You may have noticed some of the prices I’ve mentioned, or that you’ve spied on the price stickers in photos, are high by U.S. standards. Yup. Kit had mentioned that there is only one vinyl pressing plant left in all of Australia. And of course prices seem a bit higher due to the lower value of the Australian dollar relative to the U.S. one. Telling yourself you’re getting a 25% discount every time you make a purchase does help. Anyway, this is another reason why we’re mostly avoiding non-local purchases, as the extra markup (new or used) for something we can generally get for cheaper at some doesn’t make any sense for us.

Now it is most definitely hydration time, and we manage to find a bottle shop (liquor store) with a selection of non-alcoholic beverages. I have a local Bundaberg ginger beer, which, despite my thirst, I can appreciate as a quality beverage and not just an H2O-delivery mechanism. Mike has a Lemmy lemonade, which had nothing to to with Motörhead but does have a cute cartoon lemon on the front.

There is one more stop we need to make before calling it a shopping day: the huge Savers (Australian Value Village) thrift store we passed earlier. It is weird how much it resembles Value Village in the U.S., down to the plastic-bagged collections of miscellaneous crap for sale hung on the walls.

Records first. There is a tiny vinyl selection, but I nab another Moog music LP of 60s instrumentals. Then CDs (nothing). Then the search for cool/weird/local-reference-laden t-shirts. I get a shirt with abstract elephants on it, plus a tri-color skirt. There’s actually a really good selection of relatively hip clothing here, but the store is about to close so we need to head out. At the register, the clerk, noticing my American credit card, mentions that he is American too — originally from Hawaii. Random.

Evening

Since the store closed shockingly late for Australia (7pm!), we are now starving. I vote for takeout food and crashing back at the flat with our Australian beer and complimentary bottle of wine we still have yet to drink. The motion is approved.

On the tram ride back to Collingwood, we scope out a mutually-agreeable food option: Thai. Placing the order on my phone, it’s ready for pickup when we hop off the tram.

Pad see yew and an Australian beer in the air-conditioned splendor of our flat, aw yeah. Then we drink red wine and watch cartoons on my iPad until we realize we need to get up early the next morning for our flight and call it a (slightly tipsy) night.

Tomorrow: Sydney (again)!

March 12

Day 7: Melbourne

Morning

The first big decision of the day is always: where to get breakfast? This is our first weekend day (Saturday), and I had noticed a special weekend menu when at Cibi, the Japanese cafe, the first day we arrived. They offer a Japanese breakfast on weekends that I really wanted to try.

I visited Japan (Sapporo and Sendai) for work in 2013 and loved the savory breakfasts there, with rice, pickles and fish. So since Mike was game, we decided to check it out.

Looking at the menu, I see that pickles are not included as part of the standard breakfast. But they are part of the deluxe version — yay! However, also in the deluxe breakfast is natto, which I usually cite as one of the few foods that I don’t eat. It’s a fermented beam dish that, taste-wise, I don’t have a problem with. But as part of the fermentation process, the beans turn… sticky. Mucilaginous, really. Texturally, not my thing.

I order the deluxe anyway, figuring I’d at least check out the natto. Mike gets the regular, so between us we can share the pickles. And when the plate of food and pickle platter arrives, does it look good:

The deluxe side platter has some strips of nori along with the tiny bowl of natto, salted plum, and cucumber pickles. So I make a couple of tiny nori rolls with my omelette and salmon and rice. And yes, I try the natto. It’s actually pretty mild and not terribly sticky, though I do have to untether each bite, attached via spiderweb-like strands, from the bowl. Overall, a very different and delicious breakfast, a version of which I’ll need to track down closer to home.

Afternoon

What follows is another blur of record, book and thrift shopping, again mainly in the Collingwood area. One store of note is Vinyl Space, about a 15-minute walk from our flat. I find another a 7″ w/poster sleeve of my favorite Split Enz song and a Dick Diver 7″ + CD.

Or, rather, I should say we find the Dick a Diver single, as Mike and I grab for it at the same time. Uh oh! There is a good-natured, 2-second tug-of-war before I broker a compromise: I keep the vinyl, he keeps the CD, and we share both. Deal!

After hitting another op shop on the same block, I need a coffee and we both realize we need food. We’re both also tired because it’s gotten quite hot, and we’re not used to the sun and 80-something degree weather.

An espresso place a couple of blocks away has food, so we take a seat. We both zero in on a menu item featuring another delicious foodstuff that is not frequently found in the U.S. but is everywhere here: halloumi cheese. Shoving our grilled halloumi cheese sandwiches in our mouths, we vow to eat more of this when back in Seattle.

It’s already after 4pm, so now we need to worry about record stores starting to close once more. There is one very interesting-sounding store that I want to check out but it’s waaay out in the suburbs so it would require an expensive round-trip cab ride. But the store recently posted on their Facebook page about getting copies of the first two Clean singles in stock — even though I have both already, if that isn’t a mark of quality, what is?

So we call a car to take us to Vicious Sloth, which is a store that is on a leafy block with hardly any retail. It is really is in he middle of nowhere. But they have a very nice selection of very carefully cared-for and researched records, as reflected in the prices. If I were an Australian looking for UK post punk classics without having to travel abroad, I’d have been overjoyed. But these were records I’d seen time and again in the U.S. and on trips to London over my 25+ years of record shopping, and I had already long ago bought the ones that interested me. The record by the Young Snakes (early Aimee Mann band) on the wall was pretty interesting, though. Hadn’t seen that one since I lived in Boston.

However, I did find a Chook Race single and also ended up buying a reissue LP by early 80s Aussie post-punk band the Sunday Painters, a band brought to my attention by a recent Facebook post by a fellow WHRB radio station alum. Perhaps not worth the trip, but I always would’ve wondered about the store with the Clean records if I hadn’t checked it out.

Evening

By the time we get back to the flat, it’s getting late and we’ve got another show tonight (5th night of live music in a row!). We try another couple of Australian beers before taking the tram to The Toff for night #2 of Robert Forster and a different local band as opener.

We get there at around 8:15 but see that the first band goes on at 8:30, and we are both hungry again and haven’t had dinner. Time for desperate measures: specifically, the 7-Eleven at the corner where we grab granola bars plus an egg salad sandwich for me and a cooked tuna sushi roll for Mike. We sit on a bench on the street and wolf down our gourmet dinners. (I actually don’t mind the egg salad — it’s been my convenience store dinner of choice in at least three different countries.)

Running back upstairs to The Toff, we enter the club for what I assume is the first song by opener Scott & Charlene’s Wedding. They’re really good! Rollicking garage pop with shouty boy/girl vocals and songs about awkwardly dancing like a crab and hanging out with kangaroos in the bush.

Near the end of their set, the lead singer thanks his hero and inspiration Robert Forster for having them play that night. Aw!

We both want to buy something when the band is done, as they have a merch table, but no one is manning it. After lurking by there for a good 10-15 minutes, and with the club filling up, we move to stake out spots close to the front of the stage once more.

This is where things get kind of weird, as patrons and people from the venue start dragging chairs and tables from the back bar onto the main floor by the stage. Mike and I are now just standing there next to this line of seating, all by ourselves. But our view is still good, so who cares.

Then the Scott & Charlene’s Wedding folks appear at their table, so Mike heads over to grab us some CDs and a cassette that we’d earlier scoped out. Oh, and I ask him to ask the band what their favorite record store in town is. Research!

Mike returns with the goods just in time, as the curtain is about to open for Robert Forster and his band. And there he is, trousers and button-down shirt and electric guitar.

They begin with the same two or three new tunes before deviating slightly in the set list. There is less variation in the songs played than I may have expected, but I had no issues whatsoever with being able to hear the same wonderful songs played by Mr. Forster and his crack band once again.

The song changeups were also largely like-for-like: instead of quiet Go-Betweens classic “Clouds” (from 16 Lovers Lane), quiet Go-Betweens classic “Part Company” (from Spring Hill Fair); “Spring Rain” instead of “Draining the Pool For You.”

The crowd demanded not one, but two encores (yes!), and Forster once again closed with his mesmerizing version of “Danger in the Past,” before the red curtain closed on the stage for the last time.

So I’m grinning and sad at the same time as we head to the tram stop, hoping Forster (with that band!) will make his way back to the U.S. someday. A girl can dream, though I’m not sure that I do that night as my head hits the pillow. But I’m looking forward to a lazy Sunday and an early, show-less night the next day as Mike and I continue to explore the city.