Newcastle: A Wild and Crazy Sorta Town
First of all, I just have to say it: Newcastle, NSW Australia is a bizarre little place. It's 'hip and happenin' venues, pubs, restaurants, etc. are generally packed into tiny stretches of streets here and there, leaving most of the city looking like a ghost town even on Friday and Saturday nights. I can't remember how many times we walked around saying, "Um....where IS everybody??? It is Friday/Saturday night, isn't it?"
The people that turned out for the student media/writing/music/art (or, not art) festivals were as mind-boggling as Newcastle itself. Never have I seen such a diverse selection of dread-locks and bohemian-punked out peeps all in one place. I tried to pay attention to the discussion panelists, but with so much hot pink hair glowing nearby, it was all a bit distracting. Even more distracting were some of the questions people were asking. ;-)
All in all, it was a fun weekend. We had some really great panels and some really shocking ones. Highlights included "DIY TV" with Santo Cilauro, Courtney Gibson and Jennifer Collins, a hilarious kick-ass presentation by Tom Frank ("One Market Under God"), and panels on advertising and music journalism including Andrew Maloney and Craig New (respectively) and I'm not just sucking up because the last 2 guys are my friends. ;-) I'm too lazy to write about any more panels, so I'm sticking with that.
Other highlights included going to the Art Gallery to see this creepily cool collection of technology/media presentations. My favourite would have to be the one that let us take pictures of ourselves then transform our faces into weird/scary/alien-like mugs. It's called '
Personal Eugenics.' We also went to this musical extravaganza at the Cambridge Hotel. Much like Newcastle and the entire festival weekend, it was bizarre. There was some amazing electronic things happening in one room, while some terrible chick was ruining "Private Dancer" in another room. Different artists rotated throughout the night in the various rooms, but I'm so glad to we opted to try the last room (where all the good stuff was), if only to escape the freaky people in the middle room. You can only take so much of weird self-indulgent people in leather/latex/corsets taking turns 'dancing' and 'singing' to programmed beats. The tension of whether or not this one girl's bosoms were going to fall out of her corset was just too much. I definitely didn't want to see that. So, we moved, and we found some very cool stuff.
If anyone who currently lives in Newcastle or has lived in Newcastle happens to be reading this (though I can't imagine how you'd ever find my blog), I'm dying to know what is going on with Newcastle cabbies!
First off: All the cabbies we actually had were incredibly sweet! This one gentleman was so careful and considerate. Shay and I had to squeeze into the front seat as there was an empty baby seat in the back and first he asked Shay if the air-conditioning was fine for him, then he asked me if I was okay with it. What a champ!
So while the cabbies we had were lovely, the cabbies we
didn't have were puzzling and we
didn't have a lot more cabbies than we
did have. Confused? Okay, on Sunday night we had something like 4 or 5 cabs head towards us. We waved madly to hail the cabs. And what did the drivers do? Did they pull over and pick us up because they were empty and their light was on? No. Not only did they not stop to pick us up - they pulled a U-turn and turned around and high-tailed it the hell out of there, speeding down the street in the opposite direction. WTF??? Maybe in Newcastle it's un-hip to earn $ as a cab driver?
In any case, Newcastle remained very mysterious to us. There were lots of really lovely places - great little/big pubs, cafes, restaurants etc, but no one was in most of them! What was going on? Maybe a lot of Newcastlelites left town for the weekend? I don't know...but I do have to point out that one of the most disturbing things I've ever seen at a pub occured @ the Great Northern Hotel. Now, the GNH has a ton of potential as far as I'm concerned. Lots of comfy seats, nice layout, great dance floor, but all was not right with this world! The DJ was in the section of the pub with the main bar - which is totally no where near the actual dance floor. I know I tortured poor Sal, Shay, and Fidelma who had to listen to me jabber on repeatedly about this. "WHAT? But he's not even in the same room as the dancers! How can you DJ to people you can't even see?" The dude would sometimes speak into the mic @ the dancers, but it was very "man behin the curtain" a la Wizard of Oz since no one dancing could actually see him.
We had a super breakfast on Sunday at this cool cafe with overly-nosy but plenty-cute waiters, and I took a picture of Shay's plate, which I will post here soon, but my most notable meal of the weekend would have to be my chip-sandwich. How have I been here so long without ever hearing of this? I thought the gang was joking when they mentioned making chip sandwiches, but nope. They bought a loaf of bread, we ordered a HUGE portion of french fries with chicken salt and piled the chips between the bread with our sauce of choice (tomato, bbq, or gravy.) Pretty yummy!
We had a freaky thing happen during our McDonald's pit stop on the way back to Sydney tonight. Fidelma asked for some tomato sauce for her chips and they gave her green ketchup. Is this big in the States now?? In any case, it looked SO weird to see her putting this foresty green goo all over the french fries. Looked like a science experiment gone wrong. ESPECIALLY when the green sauce made it to the hamburger...but I was intrigued and asked for a pack of green sauce for my french fries. The sauce tastes the same, if not sweeter, but stupid me didn't open up my pack quite enough and when I squeezed, most of the packet shot out, splurting an impressive arc over the table and onto the floor. The Klutz strikes again!
Anyway, it was a very fun weekend. Our hotel rocked! (Thanks, Fidelma!) It was great to get out of Sydney for a while, but boy was it nice to drive back into Sydney and see the beautiful sky-line and other signs of civilisation. And as Shay pointed out, it was comforting to see pubs packed with people! Thanks to Shay for his superb driving and thanks to Sal for exchanging stories about difficult clients with me. Oh! And thanks to Shay for teaching me some fun card games, but don't think you're getting out of learning 'golf,' mister! ;-)
