Our first full day in Sydney was Saturday, May 3. That was also the date of an "author event" at Abbey's Bookshop in downtown Sydney, which was one reason we scheduled our visit then. The reading and signing were set for afternoon, so in the morning we woke early and breakfasted at a chocolate shop in an arcade nearby.
Arcades are a feature of downtown areas in Australia's cities, particularly in Sydney and Adelaide. Basically they're what an American would call a shopping mall, built into the ground floor of a downtown building, usually a big structure that fills a whole block or at least a large part of one. The arcade thus serves as an indoor passage between streets, a popular feature during the fierce Australian summer. The size of an Australian downtown arcade isn't really big enough for the "big box" stores popular in American malls, so the ones I saw tended to have numerous small shops and restaurants.
I'm kind of surprised there aren't more Australian-style arcades in American cities. Some big skyscrapers do have shopping space on the lower floors, but typically the businesses are intended to cater to the people who work or live in the building — convenience stores, coffeeshops, barbershops or hairdressers, and maybe a fitness club. I suspect that a mix of city block size, zoning regulations about minimum size for various businesses, and economies of scale are responsible for the difference.
But enough amateur urbanist blather.
We spent Saturday morning at the Australian Museum, a big old history and natural history museum not far from the bookstore where I was to appear later. They had a very charming exhibit called "100 Treasures" which is the hundred items in the Museum's collection which are most iconic or significant. In short, it was an exhibit of museum exhibits, and consequently also chronicled the history and growth of the museum, the changing role of museums over the course of a century, and the history of the British Empire from the founding of New South Wales until its disintegration. Unlike so many self-examining museum exhibits, this one paid attention to context and changing goals, rather than just indulging in a lot of self-congratulation about how enlightened we are now.
We lunched at the Victoria Arcade, a gorgeous old Victorian-era (of course) market building complete with a very stern-looking statue of Victoria R herself. It's full of very posh stores and some restaurants. We positively inhaled lunch at a conveyor-belt sushi place in the basement. There's something about visiting a museum that makes one hungry and tired.
The event at Abbey's went off pretty well. I read from The Miranda Conspiracy, signed some books brought by listeners, signed all the store copies, and shook hands with the store staff and management. They managed the whole affair with consumnate professionalism.
After that the two of us walked to the harbor area, exploring the old original settlement section on the west side of the harbor, known as "The Rocks." We found an open-air market where various local crafters were showing off their wares. It's a nice old part of town, although sadly it is bisected and overshadowed by the southern approaches to the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Dinner that night was at a ramen restaurant near our hotel. The food was good, except that a bit of eel bone lodged in one of my molars, setting the stage for dramatic events a few days later.
On Sunday May 4th we spent the morning exploring the "Chippendale" neighborhood south of Chinatown, an odd and interesting part of town featuring, among other things, the old Mortuary Train Station, where funeral trains departed for cemeteries outside of the city. We toured the White Rabbit Gallery, an establishment halfway between a museum and an art dealer's, devoted to works by Chinese dissident artists. Ai Weiwei was probably the most famous, along with many others. In the signage I noticed a new bit of art-world jargon. Works now "interrogate" things — totalitarianism, consumerism, sex roles, you name it. I think this is a terrible term, almost a translation error. Interrogation is when you ask questions of someone (or something). If a work asks questions about a subject, that's not the same at all. How can one "interrogate" consumerism, anyway? How can it answer?
Then we got all duded up and took the train back downtown for our big fancy luncheon at a restaurant called Bennelong, located inside the famous Sydney Opera House building. The meal was definitely a ten out of ten. The first course was smoked pork belly with homemade koji noodles and black garlic; followed by a lovely little rack of lamb with pureed herbs; all accompanied by a cabernet franc from Clare Valley.
As it was Sunday afternoon there were lots of families in the place, many with adorably well-behaved kids. I was one of exactly three paying customers wearing a tie — the others being a paterfamilias hosting what looked like a wedding rehearsal brunch, and a well-scrubbed lad of about 10 in short pants.
Feeling well-fed we strolled back through the Botanical Garden to the Victoria Arcade and boarded a train back to our hotel.
In the evening we explored the neighborhood a bit more, including a Japanese-language used book store, and a park where a festival in honor of the birthday of the Buddha was wrapping up. We had no appetite for dinner and were too tired for nightlife, so back to bed under the benevolent gaze of the Monkey Lamp.
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