SATURDAY BREAKFASTS #24 AND #25: ST. GEORGES ROAD

I have hesitated over posting this Piece because I’ve found it so hard to identify something useful to say.  With our usual Saturday Breakfast I find a hook on which to hang some point of interest: I rarely dwell on the breakfast itself or the café.   But as the years go by the destinations are typically less “exciting” as the better-known streets are ticked off, and with many locations I conclude that there’s nothing I want to write about.   [Incidentally, the very next Saturday breakfast will be our 250^th.  Who would imagine that there are 250-plus different neighbourhoods to explore in Melbourne?]  With St. Georges Road the premises and businesses were so depressing that any Piece was likely to be too downbeat to bother, and even when I combined consecutive Saturdays the situation improved little.  Then when I found a hook (tattooing) I was out of my zone of experience and into a big subject.  But I have kept going…….you need not!

ST. GEORGES ROAD, THORNBURY

Visited 14 July, 2012

Melbourne and its surrounds has hundreds of kilometres of bike trails; and, a few days earlier, our weekly bike ride with a group under the auspices of a local Neighbourhood Centre had taken Annie and me along a route that showed promise for a subsequent Saturday breakfast excursion.  Our Tuesday cycling group tries so far as possible to ride only on  “dedicated” trails.  These trails are usually shared between cyclists and walkers, but they’re off-road, and automobile hazard is minimal………..which is just as well for grey-heads with little cycling experience, or getting back on their bikes after years of estrangement.

We gathered near the corner of the Yarra Boulevard and the Chandler Highway, and travelled along the Yarra Trail to Fitzroy North where we joined the St. Georges Road Path.

St. Georges Road is the result of a farsighted piece of surveying.  For the five kilometres stretch north from Fitzroy North it is what we used to call a three chain road, that is thrice 22 yards wide – think of three cricket pitch equivalents end on end – and equal in width to Royal Parade or St. Kilda Road.  The inbound and outbound thoroughfares are separated by a wide garden plantation through which runs a double tram track, and the bike path.

On its way north the path slopes gently upwards from Fitzroy North, through Northcote, Thornbury and Preston; and you can continue to Reservoir and beyond.   On that Tuesday we exited near the Preston Market, had reviving coffee, then returned the way we’d come.  As I said earlier, I noticed some shopping strips, and determined to return with son Dan for our Saturday excursion.

We explored the group of shops at Thornbury:  these are on the western side of the road only.   There is a small run-down supermarket; a laundromat that’s temporarily closed; a gymnasium that seems to be operating happily; and someone who offers “business advice and tax,” but whose window neglects to mention membership of any accounting or financial planning professional body, or that the proprietor holds any licence to prepare tax returns.  The pavement is narrow, and the ugly concrete light poles are set well in from the kerb, dangerously impeding pedestrian traffic.  There’s a ladies’ hairdresser in a premises with a remodelled frontage, but this little bit of urban renewal does not compensate for several unsafe-looking verandahs - including one whose wooden posts have rotted at ground level, and have been “maintained” with star pickets driven into the ground and simply fastened to the sound wood higher up the post.  There is a harbinger of a property springtime, however: one shop premises have been levelled, and work is about to commence on a three-storey block of apartments.  A few more of these and there might be some revival of retailing.

Not surprisingly, there is no place to have breakfast, so we retreated south to the Northcote section of St. Georges Road.  We didn’t have time to explore the nearby streetscape, but found the Breakfast Club Café at number 206. The Breakfast Club Café has retro décor, and a pleasantly cluttered feel.  It is very small: nine seats at tables, six window stools, and ten chairs on the footpath at four tables - and no takers on the day, because of the cold.  But, also because of the cold, knitted knee-rugs were folded over the backs of the outdoor chairs, expectant but unused 

The two staff were young, female, vivacious and efficient.  In addition to attending to customers they were making scones.  The coffee was to die for.  The muesli was wholegrain, a little unusual, but mixed with cranberries and nuts, shredded apple on top and a glob of yoghurt.  Very fine……..but then, on leaving, we noticed the chalkboard, and the special of orange blossom porridge, with a glut of toppings.  Yes, the porridge would still be on next week, so we made a date to return.

ST. GEORGES ROAD, NORTHCOTE

Visited 21 July, 2012

The business premises in the Northcote section of St. Georges Road are more extensive than at Thornbury, on both sides of the road, but also mostly run down.  Although there are a couple of places that seem to be prospering - a florist, also stocking knick-knacks and a range of gourmet preserves; a hairdresser; a shared premises of “natural health therapists”; and a licenced grocer that’s presumably solvent - most businesses are dead and don’t know it:  a Foodworks supermarket, on a corner location, the windows on both its frontages having roller shutters as protection against some threat real or perceived; an Indian grocery no more prepossessing; a dry cleaner and a laundromat, both of dubious cleanliness; and a second-hand furniture and bric-a-brac shop whose stock lines even the Salvos would reject.  There are several empty premises, including the substantial Windsor Smith footwear factory at the edge of the strip whose business has relocated.  Furthermore, there is a significant infestation of graffiti on the shopfronts, a sure indication of the lack of resilience in the shopkeepers and the property owners.

Strangely, despite the absence of soul, there is plenty of attention offered to body:  in this cluster of maybe 40 premises there is the aforementioned natural therapies group, medical rooms, a healthcare business, an osteopath, and a naturopath etc. practising under the Urban Sense badge.  And there is a tattooist – indeed occupying double premises, and Health Department approved!

I expect that tattooing is today rather more popular than it used to be say a generation ago, and that it’s rather more “in your face”, with extensive body coverage being more the vogue than the one-time modestly-sized forearm image. 

The word tattoo derives from the Tahitian word tatau, and its usage in Britain - and elsewhere by extension - dates from the time when Captain Cook brought a tattooed Tahitian native to London.  The practice was widespread in Tahiti, and a number of Cook’s men had succumbed.  This was the introduction of the word into Britain, but not the introduction of tattooing per se: it is thought that Anglo-Saxon kings of England had been tattooed.   In Cook’s time though (the late 1770s) the practice was no longer widespread; but because of Cook it became something of a high society phenomenon.  In the last 200 years or so tattooing has spread by a sort of osmosis down from the aristocracy and up from the seafarers.  Peer pressure has been very influential, and not only with sailors, prison inmates and bikies (the peer pressure on whom is doubtless extreme).

Notwithstanding its ubiquity, and despite its growing acceptance, tattooing remains a subject of never-ending debate.  Recently the Herald Sun ran a survey – with spectacular bias implicit in the question - on whether persons with visible tattoos should be barred from nightclub venues.  The question was clearly underpinned by the presumption that those with tattoos, and visible ones what’s more, are likely to be troublemakers, whereas those with no tatts or with tatts hidden from view, are less likely to be troublemakers.  Inevitably the poll would have produced the result that the paper had sought.  I wonder whether those who voted “anti tattoo” would be surprised to learn that Churchill had a tattoo, as did Roosevelt, George V, and Edison, and as do Beckham, Jolie, Depp, Gaga, Urban and Spears, indeed a huge number of present-day entertainment celebrities.   Does it really matter?  Who gives a rat’s?  Is tattooing just another of those issues the discussion of which generates more heat than light?

Not surprisingly, tattooing blips the radar screens of some parts of the world of religion.  At an objective level it’s hard to see how a tattoo – short of one that’s blasphemous or generally offensive – could raise religious ire, but in some communities it would.    There is a range of views in the Jewish community, with Orthodox Jews prohibiting the practice on the authority of a passage in Leviticus, but most Jewish groups having a non-prescriptive stance.  The majority of Sunni Muslims hold that, under Islamic Law, tattoos are forbidden because tattooing is mutilation of the human form that God has already perfected.   There is no Christian orthodoxy.  Adherents who disapprove of tattooing are able to cite a number of Biblical references (in addition to Leviticus) that seem to put the kibosh; others, with no particular position, don’t have the need to ferret out Biblical authority either way.  The Catholics, ever practical, have no prohibition - so long as the tattoo is not contrary to religious sentiment.  Indeed, history records an incident where a Christian with a tattoo described as being “for the sake of God” – meaning a cross, or an image of Christ or a saint – was commended as praiseworthy by a Catholic council.  The fact that this happened in the year 786 CE makes it quite a long-standing precedent.

By the way, the orange blossom porridge served at the Breakfast Club Café was not quite as good as its tantalising description, although we left none on our plates.  The poached fruit on the top – mainly figs, but also peach and some dried fruits - all sprinkled with shavings of nuts, was excellent.  There were no regrets about this visit to our only ever two-time Saturday breakfast venue.

Gary Andrews