THE NAKED CITY with Coffin Ed, Miss Death & Jay Katz

PUTTING SOME SHINE IN SIN CITY

Much has been written, romanticised and eulogised about the halcyon days of Kings Cross, be it the bohemian era of the 40s and 50s or the days of laissez faire crime in the 70s and 80s. The Cross has always moved in cycles, from the neon lit positive to the “lights out” sadly depressing. Currently it is very much down in the dumps.

The Bourbon has closed, the Swans Club is gone, the New York Café has served its last chicken soup and now Fatty O’Barrell’s fun police have shut down the Eye Bar as part of a so called blitz on drugs and drunkenness on the Darlo Road strip. A few of the old favourites manage to cling on, like the Piccolo Bar and the Fountain Café, but the Kings Cross of today has almost nothing remaining to evoke the nostalgia of previous decades. Even the cartoonish Underbelly series was forced to recreate the golden days of Darlinghurst Road in the unlikely setting of ultra gentrified Lane Cove.

Perhaps the worst ever civic policy foisted on the Cross was the “naughty but nice” concept, a tolerance of strip clubs and the few remaining streetwalkers accompanied by a cosmetic makeover designed to breathe new life into the precinct. Between 2003 and 2004 the Sydney City Council spent millions widening footpaths, upgrading public areas and doting the area with commerative plaques celebrating its colourful history and characters.

Here at the Naked City we would love to see an annual Back To Kings Cross Festival whereby the City Council sponsored a week long recreation of everything that was sinfully good and enjoyably bad about the Cross during the last four or five decades, It would give the younger generation a chance to see what the Cross was once really like and the remaining bohemia a chance to wallow in a now bygone era.

If Underbelly can recreate a faux cardboard replica of the Darlinghurst Road in somewhere as ridiculous as Lane Cove then surely some Council and Events NSW dollars can transform the Cross into a pastiche of its former glory, albeit for just a temporary seven days. We would even welcome the early release of Bill Bayeh, who would make a wonderful artistic director.

If Vivid style projections can transform the Opera House and the CBD, then they could certainly do the same for the Cross. Imagine walking through the Golden Mile in 2011 and seeing Sweethearts, the Pink Pussy Cat, the Cosmopolitan Coffee Shop, the Manzil Room, the Yummy Yummy Food Bar, the Carousel, the Persian Room, Barons and the original Goldfish Bowl. Sure it would all be a façade but what a change it would make from the Injecting Room, the Two Dollar Shop, the Vegas and those endless backpacker travel agents.

Okay it’s all just wishful thinking and it ain’t going to happen. But can the City Council at least give those historical brass plaques a good scrub and a shine. The old Kings Cross may be long gone but at least its history deserves a coat of brasso!