Head to Head

Welcome to Peter Whitehead, writer, actor and prehabilitator who heads up this week’s Talking Heads, now renamed Head to Head for the happy new year.

This week’s topic:

‘That ‘street clutter’ in Sydney is a blight which should be eliminated’

Peter Whitehead:

Yeah, let’s eliminate all blights, let’s string ’em up as a warning to all those aspirational would-be clutterers out there. All we need is some righteous dudes to get a posse together and ‘ what’s that’ You there, the hairy guy up the back, what are you saying’ ‘Let he who is without clutter cast the first stone”

Ok, so clutter does tend to be a pejorative term for stuff you want me to get out of here yesterday ‘ or at least it was the last time my wife was referring to the precious memorabilia gathered in, on and around my desk ‘ and the nub of this problem is that one person’s ‘street clutter’ is another’s fascinating patina of inner-city cultural vitality.

There are some at Town Hall dead against advertising posters wrapped around telegraph poles or slapped up on walls: clutter, or an informative collage reminding us what’s on and that we are not living in Pymble’

There is a lot that could be considered ‘street clutter’: all those late night random people rampaging round the streets full of bootleg pharmaceuticals; the bedding and personal effects under the railway line in Woolloomooloo; Darling Harbour.

Who’s to be the judge’ Should we have clutter monitors dressed up like the floral Daleks that appeared on our streets around Council election time’

Who is competent to control clutter’ Not the brainiac who placed the PREPARE TO STOP sign on a pole underneath traffic lights in Market Street.

Next time you’re out and about take note of the signs and sign posts and smart poles jostling for attention in our city and sing along with The Five Man Electrical Band ‘ Signs, signs, everywhere there’s signs/ Messin’ up the scenery, breakin’ my mind.

Which reminds me of the aural street clutter of others’ conversations overgrown with the lantana of the F word and its friends. Can we ban the clutter of too-free speech’

Or is it time to ignore the specks of clutter in our streets and set about eliminating the burdensome log of officious interference from our fair city of Sydney’

Andrew Woodhouse:

Who owns our streets and footpaths’ Sydney Council rents them to boost profits for global media giants and their ugly wire newspaper stands, while little local papers like the one you’re holding now are elbowed out of the way.

Nightclub queues corral footpaths with chrome poles forcing pedestrians into the gutter and into oncoming cars, and café owners obliterate expensive, in-ground heritage signage in Roslyn Street, Kings Cross, with tables and chairs.

Our footpaths are now platforms for spruiking credit cards and for council’s own tatty poster pillars, which some say are illegal any way. They’re purloined for self-serving sandwich boards, with one William Street gym caught recently actually stealing a street seat by chaining an ad-laden pushbike to it to maximise exposure.

If these shops have any more exposure they’ll be arrested.

And Springfield Plaza, Kings Cross, which locals fought to save as open space, is now leased for outdoor pub/club drinking after an expensive, rate-payer-funded upgrade.
This isn’t footpath use, its footpath abuse.

So, with the little room that’s left, our clunky, square-headed City of Sydney rolls out laminex-logic seating benches squatting on plinths of cold, Melbourne-grey granite footpaths that absorb heat in summer and fry feet underfoot.

Toss in council’s flag fetish, with synthetic signs fluttering in the wind like lost butterflies endlessly repeating events like New Years Eve, which all the world already knows about, and forests of sterile, meccano-style but so-called ‘smart’ street poles, and one thing is clear: we’re being force-fed a city of pillages rather than a city of villages.

My future worst-case scenario is street-clutter banners: ‘Welcome to the Village of ”.
It’s death by signage.

I want to walk fetter-free on my streets. I don’t need streets to turn a buck or be over-sown with street clutter.

A city is its people, not a bunch of bureaucrats, so let’s get creative. I say: let’s have street musicians instead of tacky ads, more flower stalls and better drinking fountains.

After all the public domain is the public’s domain and sometimes less is more: less Clover Moore that is.