Graffiti of the week
As our Tourism poobahs devour each other in a blame game about Sydney’s declining tourist numbers, they might do well to stop thinking about endless bread, circuses and manufactured festivals. They should, rather, meditate on this gem written on the boarded-up window of the still closed Hopetoun Hotel, itself a casualty of the City’s drive to gentrification. While the rich retired few drive Clover Moore and her elderly Councillors into a frenzy of squelching regulation, they might stop to reflect that their War on the night economy and street life is making this a very dull town in which a visitor is more likely to be ordered about by a 200kg bouncer than actually have a good time on our lifeless streets – and they go home to tell their friends about it. The squelchers might not need the jobs and the nightlife but the rest of us do.
Look to Melbourne where music lovers staged a large demonstration when onerous security regulations closed down iconic venue The Tote. The Government backtracked. Maybe Sydney has indeed lost its mojo.
-MG
