Darlinghurst Blog: Detritus: St John's Church Shortcut Closed

I was so sad when I came across this Keep Out sign on the gates of St John's Church last week. I use the churchyard shortcut between Victoria Street and Darlinghurst every day and every day I admire the garden, look fondly at the sandstone church and say hello to the little pussycat that always seems to be sitting in one of the trees. 

There was also a little note taped to the gate to explain:

''If you walk through the grounds of St John's Church, we have good news and bad news for you! 

''The bad news is  . . . that because we are landscaping the car park area of the church, pedestrian access through the church grounds will be totally closed from Monday 5th September. We have been led to believe that the building work will take four weeks to complete."

''The good news is . . . that when it's finished, the area will be attractive, safe to walk on, and reopened for people to walk through just as it was before.''

Well, I guess that's okay then. 

I guess the garden and paving was a bit shabby. I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's done and what types of plants they put in. 

Darlinghurst Blog: Detritus: Wanted Work

The owner of this Ford Festiva can't afford the $590 vehicle registration, due on October 1, so they've resourcefully used the car to hold up a work wanted sign. Clever. I wonder if anyone will call them.

Darlinghurst Blog: Detritus: One Year Anniversary

Exactly one year ago I set up a new blog called My Darling Darlinghurst and published my first post at about eight in the morning. I only know it was 8.20am because that's what the time stamp says. God knows what I was doing up at that hour.

Anyway, over the next year I became obsessed with my little blog, encouraged on by the dozens of lovely emails I received from readers throughout Australia and around the world. Okay, there were probably not dozens of people writing to me, but there were at least 12. And each little bit of correspondence I received was lovely. It is a rare thing to indulge your passion and then have people enjoy it enough to write to you, so for each and every email I am grateful. 

Some of the people that wrote to me, such as street photographer Adrian Bell and Tasmanian tunnel-lover Stephen Hickmott, also had their stories published here and continue to write to me today and I am the richer for it.

Through this blog - in a way - I was also able to meet and correspond with Larry Writer, author of Razor and all-round charming chap.  

What a blessed existence I have in this excellent neighbourhood. 

I may be too old to still be renting and have no money in the bank, but there is a daily joy in waking up in Darlinghurst and wondering what adventures I might have or what people I might meet. 

I also think my blog provides me with a good distraction to forget about the things that I don't have and simply appreciate the things that I do.

To celebrate my first year as a blogger, I have made a tiny, eensy-weensy, little eight-page zine, A Guide To The Neighbourhood, which will be distributed through my favourite shops. 

Just like my blog the zine is a labour of love, has the occasional mistake and is not perfect. But please be kind to it, because unlike my blog, you can also use it as a makeshift fan to cool you through the warm spring days. 

I began work on the zine many moons ago, but when it came to the point to draw the large map that features in its centre-spread, I gave up. It was just far beyond my technical skills. 

But then, with the first anniversary rapidly approaching, I decided to just cheat and use a photocopy of an existing map, rather than drawing it myself. The result is not that great: you can barely see the streets, so it is practically useless. 

Still, I take heart that many people who choose to use the map may become lost in the Darlinghurst backstreets and stumble upon a hidden treasure, say a beautiful piece of street art. Then, becoming lost and losing time will be so worthwhile. 

I published the zine or comic on pink paper, because when I started this blog it was initially pink (but while pink is one of my favourite colours, it's not to everybody's taste so I switched it to the present sepia shade).

The first print of the zine is an exclusive edition of 30, which features hard covers and colour printing. If you would like me to send you one, please message me with your postal address through the My Darling Darlinghurst Facebook page.

The second print has soft covers, only comes in black ink and I'll probably print as many of them as I can, to distribute in my favourite local shops, such as Strawberry Cream and Russell Wade Clothing. 

If you happen to come across one, please let me know what you think. 

If I am still around in another year, I might make another one. 

Thanks for reading and warmest wishes, Violet Tingle.

Darlinghurst Blog: Food: Wow Cow

Wowzers. How come the word wowzers is suddenly being used everywhere? I started saying it to myself a couple of weeks ago in place of say, yikes, and I wondered where on earth I picked it from. Then I saw it used by two other people on Facebook and realised it must be one of those zeitgeisty things. A bit like frozen yoghurt.
Why is this sugar-laden frozen yoghurt suddenly popular? 

Wow Cow - which should really be called Wowzers Cowzers - opened a few years ago in the heart of the Victoria Street cafe strip and specialises in what it terms Super Chilled Yoghurt (SCY) - a fancy name for frozen yoghurt. 

I had never been inside the Wowzers Cowzers but every time I walked by, the tiny little shop with its footpath seating was packed. During the day, it would be full of students from SCEGGS, Darlinghurst Public School and St Vincent's College spending their pocket money on soft-serve confections, while at night the place is choc-a-bloc with grown-ups eating SCY with strange condiments, such as mochi. What the hell is mochi?

Anyway, about a month ago, I happened to be walking by as usual when I had a sudden smoothie craving and the next thing I knew I was inside Wowzers Cowzers ordering some strange SCY dairy drink. It was ok. A bit sour. 

But, back to the zeitgeist: within a week of my virgin SCY experience, my former flatmate Myles Mapplethorpe was visiting from his new home in Perth, in Western Australia. 

He spent about one week in Sydney, ticking off the boxes of the places he missed: Una's for schnitzel, Abduls for a kebab and the Midnight Shift for a perve.

Then on his final night in Darlinghurst, he suddenly declared that he had to go to Wow Cow, despite never having been there before. Zeitgeist! So there I was at Wow Cow for the second time in a week. 

The shop is owned by US-born surfer turned entrepreneur Carl Harwin, who lives on Sydney's northern beaches with his wife Dani Behr, a UK tabloid darling who appeared in that monstrous television program, I'm a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here!
Harwin first moved into the food game in the mid-1990s - with brother Brett Harwin and surfer John Berry - opening a series of healthy fast food outlets called Kauai in South Africa. 

When he moved to Australia from California in 2006 he was surprised there were no places to buy SCY - the It dessert in the United States - and Wow Cow was born.

There were plans to expand and franchise the concept but five years down the track, Darlinghurst remains the only shop in Australia.

The shop is absolutely tiny so I suppose that's one reason why it always looks busy. It also plays really loud dance music, which gives the effect of being in a crowded nightclub. There are mirrors along one wall and cows hanging from the astro-turfed ceiling.

The SCY is administered in a soft serve, so it doesn't have that horrible frosty-ice texture of the little pots of frozen yoghurt from my childhood. It also comes in a range of flavours, which change daily or weekly and include coconut, pistachio or green tea. 

We had arrived after eating at Una's and there was no way I needed to consume any more food so I was relying on Myles to order something interesting, like say, the mochi topping. But he played it straight and simply ordered the plain yoghurt with some average crumble topping. I tried one small spoonful. It was nice and smooth, sweet but also sour; nothing exciting. After all it's just frozen yoghurt. But mochi. That is one thing I will definitely be going back to try. Ten bucks mochi is going to be the new zeitgeisty ingredient.

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Wow Cow

2/304-308 Victoria Street

Darlinghurst NSW 2010

02 9326 0400

Wow Cow Facebook Page

Across the Border: Surry Hills: Street Art: A&M Perkal Bros

For decades this terrace house (on the right) at 386 Crown Street has been home to a small family business, A&M Perkal Bros, makers of surgical and bespoke footwear. I have never had the need for any such footwear thankfully, but I always notice the building when I walk by because it is covered in old-fashioned hand-painted advertising signs. 

The wall of the building on the Albion Street side also had one which seemed to be positioned without much thought or strategy, just simply wherever the sign-painter chose to pull out his brush one day many, many years ago. It read simply: Perkal Bros, Surgical and Bespoke Bootmakers. It always made me laugh thinking about surgical footwear and what exactly that might entail.

Then a few weeks ago, maybe a month or more, a street artist hit the wall with a bright purple, pink, yellow and green stencil piece featuring a city skyline. It was genuinely impressive, but oh, so badly placed: right over the old Perkal Bros sign. Bad move, I thought as I walked by shaking my head in dismay.

Well someone else obviously felt the same way and took action. They covered the piece in white paint, as you can see in the photograph above. 

You can even see the fury they were driven by, as the white paint begins in large brush strokes and ends with the contents of the paint bucket being splashed at the wall. Take that.

So thank the archive gods for google maps street view, for here is an online record of the original Perkal Bros sign:

Anyway, if you happen to need some surgical footwear, details here:

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A&M Perkal Bros

386 Crown Street

Surry Hills NSW 2010

02 9331 3692

Across the Border: Surry Hills: Street Art: Various Laneways

Three Surry Hills laneways. Three very different graffiti pieces. The cute cow (above) was on Richards Lane, just behind the Shannon Reserve, and appears to be by the person responsible for the dalmatians that have appeared with great frequency across the 2010 postcode in the past six months.

The artist obviously likes black and white animals. I hope they move on to monkeys soon. I would love to see some monkeys on the streets. Monkeys crack me up. The cow is saying, ''I'm so glad I go well with peppercorn sauce.''

The monkey, if there ever is one, could say, ''I'm so glad I never evolved.''

This smiley face (above) didn't require the same amount of technical skill or time, but I still like it. It was in Withers Lane, a little dunny-style lane connecting Riley and Crown streets. 

I actually have no idea what this laneway is called. It is so obscure and is located somewhere near Little Riley Street in a weird maze of alleys near Foveaux and Waterloo streets. It's a very old school mural, quite complicated with all those Celtic-style tree branches, and would have taken many studious hours to create. 

Darlinghurst Blog: Food: Jazz City Diner

The things I do for this blog. The sacrifices I make. For you, dear reader, I went to the 50s themed Jazz City Diner on Crown Street and ordered possibly the most fattening concoction I have ever consumed. The things we do for love. 

It was an ominous evening: the night when school student Madeleine Pulver, from Mosman, in Sydney's north, had a fake bomb clamped to her neck. 

I was desperate for news and spent most of the evening checking Twitter for updates to see if the NSW Police bomb disposal unit had managed to remove the suspected explosive device. 

Sitting with me in the booth at the shiny laminex-topped table were my old chum, Ruby Molteno, writer Peter Pigeon and a filmmaker who I like to call Double-O-7.

They were talking film, I was checking my Twitter account, and at some point I ordered the craziest thing on the menu.

The Jazz City Diner opened earlier this year and is just like a set from that old American TV show, Happy Days. Except there was no Fonz. There's just chefs in 50s style peaked caps and waitresses in pink diner-dresses with cutesy aprons and name badges. 

The room is kitted out with chrome trimmed tables and chairs and Cab Calloway's 1947 film track, Hi-De-Ho, was streamed through speakers and broadcast on small, retro-looking screens mounted on the walls. 

The menu is as American as apple pie, except there is no apple pie. Instead there is Banana Cream Pie with caramel drizzle ($12) or Pecan Pie with butter pecan ice cream ($10). 

On the savoury side are burgers, such as The Ultimate Texas Chili Cheese Burger with Texas-style spicy beef chili, guacamole, jalapeno, fried tortilla chips and cumin cream ($20) or Specialties, including Seafood Jambalaya, a spicy rice dish with an assortment of seafood, New Orleans andouille sausage and a sauce piquant ($28). 

The menu also has a Soups, Salads and Sides section that features Macaroni and Cheese ($12) and a Fried Green Tomato Salad with mixed greens and herbs and the choice of a buttermilk, green goddess or blue cheese dressing ($16). 

I would have loved to order a beer, but the diner isn't licensed, so I could only have an A&W-brand root beer ($5), while Ruby had a Jarritos-brand lime soda ($4.50). There are also milkshakes for a whopping $10 and ice cream sodas or spiders for $8. 

Double-O-7's meal was the first to come out of the kitchen and didn't look all that healthy. He only ordered the Jamaican Jerk Chicken Wings with onion rings and a citrus dipping sauce ($20; below) because he is obsessed with James Bond, and author Ian Fleming had a home in Jamaica called GoldenEye, which Double-O-7 made a pilgrimage to last year.

The dipping sauce for the wings came in a weird little toothpaste-style tube:

Ruby and Pigeon both ordered burgers ($15-$20), which they were very happy with. The burgers came with sweet potato fries, which was one of the few nods to healthy eating on the menu. Although I don't think they are that healthy, but possibly better for you than regular potato chips. Ruby's burger had a ground beef patty as well as Swiss brown mushrooms sauteed with caramelised onions and a ''blue cheese foam''.

But what you really want to know is what I ate. 

I had the Chicken and Waffles dish, which included a Belgian waffle, southern fried chicken pieces, spinach, chicken stock reduction and maple syrup ($18; below). 

It was quite bizarre and I wasn't really convinced about eating mouthfuls of chicken and waffle, so instead ate it as if it were two meals. First course: savoury chicken. Second course: sweet waffles. In that sense, it was quite well priced because I didn't have to bother with dessert. I don't recall the chicken stock reduction at all and the ''spinach'' was just the tiniest mound:

It's not something I would ever eat again, but I thought you, dear reader, would want to see what such a dish looked like - as I did. As for Madeleine Pulver, the bomb was declared a fake around midnight.

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Jazz City Diner

238 Crown Street

Darlinghurst NSW 2010

02 9332 2903

www.jazzcitydiner.com