Insurance scams for beginners (aka RACV bike assist)
The great thing about Melbourne is it's super flat. No hills. No mountains. No volcanos or steep inclines. If you have a bike and a functioning pair of legs it's crazy easy to get around the place - just point yourself in whichever direction you need to go and you're away.
Mind you, bikes aren't indestructible.
Fitzroy Gardens (community service announcement)
Fitzroy Gardens is undeniably one of Melbourne's daytime delights. Ice cream vans. Peaceful Falun Gong practitioners. A greenhouse and statues. I once saw people rooting there which was weird but strangely exciting because I was only about 15. Then there's the moments when frisbee meets family picnic with terrifying results.
MAX GRR!
A Melbourne-shot adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are has been postponed to be ‘lightened up' but artists have meanwhile banded together to fix Sendak enthusiasts with the wild. MAX GRR! is brought to the Melbourne International Design Festival by an architect, a choreographer and a dancer.
Rock climbing walls
You don't have to be full of steroids, speak with a moronic drawl, and share your first name with a cartoon cat to do the rock climbing thing. Beneath a section of the Monash Freeway in Richmond hide three walls just off the Main Yarra Trail, which are open to anyone who ever considered telling gravity to ‘go shove it'.
The Richmond Farmers Market
White people like Farmers Markets, and if the Richmond version is anything to go by so do people of other races as well. Shopping there on Saturday morning makes you feel like an extra in a United Colours of Benetton ad... one where people walk harmoniously down a narrow lane, squeezing fresh produce and forking out ridiculously small amounts of money for sustainable and organic goodness.
Variety Entertainers of the Century sculptures
The other thing that Waterfront City should be recognised for is the triad of terrifyingly awful statues of Australian entertainers that some misguided middle manager commissioned from a plainly unskilled local sculptor.
First, there's the statue of John Farnham that looks exactly like Lou Ferrigno, the deaf guy who played the Hulk on the original TV series.
Cuprocking, Andy Uprock
Don't you think it's hard to stay cool in an age of relentless cultural turnover? There is always some new-fangled form of music or art or something to be obsessed with and drop into buzzer bee conversation. Luckily you are reading this because the word of the day is... 'Cuprock'.
Heard of it? It's a new form of street art for us all.
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