Fitzroy – Page 6 – Abbotsford Blog

9 November, 200612 November, 2006

The Renown Tavern; The Louisiana Shakers

On Monday it was my special holiday. Miss K was at work. Just enough colleagues were as well that I could relish the schadenfreude so essential for a successful random day off. I ambled up to eat baked eggs at Birdman Eating, coffee at Gertrude St Enoteca (sorry Dr Java), and get my mop chopped at Dr Follicles. Folly was closed and so was Birdy. That was a blow. Shaggy haired and hardened by hunger, the coffee at Gert’s no longer appealed. I tried Dante’s, but Maria wasn’t there. No one new me. The place was empty. I popped across the road to the Renown Tavern, one of the least blinged-up pubs in the inner city. A former manager who left in “very bitter circumstances” had gaily advertised the unrenovated air of the place in chalk on the side of the building, and I thought any place in Fitzroy that advertised its lack of renovation warranted a visit in order to stave off renovation any longer. Continue reading “The Renown Tavern; The Louisiana Shakers”

5 November, 2006

Royal Terrace, Nicholson & Gertrude St corners

The Sketchbook also tells of the Royal Terrace, pictured here in 1966, probably completed in 1858 despite the 1854 engraved in its stone. So it is two years shy of 150 years old. The Sketchbook says: Continue reading “Royal Terrace, Nicholson & Gertrude St corners”

5 November, 20065 November, 2006

The Tote tunnels myth turns out to be common Aussie pub lore

I journeyed out of the ‘wood today to North Carlton, and bought from Alice’s Bookshop two books which will stand this blog in good stead. My uncle had an Alice’s Bookshop addiction for a long time. Its owner is an old Cambridge man, a fact noted on his website, a bookseller for 20 years. The first was Bill Brodie and Brian McKinlay’s Collingwood and Fitzroy Sketchbook, published in 1978 when the Convent was still inhabited by nuns and the Eastern Freeway was just opened. It is a lovely hardback and has taught me some fascinating tidbits which I will feed you with over time. It is one of a series of 175 published in Adelaide as the Rigby Sketchbooks which also include Old Melbourne Hotels Sketchbook, River Yarra Sketchbook, and Richmond and East Melbourne Sketchbook.

The other was J.M. Freeland’s The Australian Pub; An Illustrated History of the Development of the Australian Pub from the 1790s to the Present one of the more interesting books to come off Melbourne University Press’s Presses. I declared to those I met for coffee at the Paragon Cafe that I was hitherto an amateur pubologist. The book was last owned by Thomas Hazell from 11 April 2005. Google suggests he is a Melbourne University fine arts academic and one-time president of the Dante-Aligheri Society.

And so I learned from Mr Freeland that the myth which I have come to know relatively recently about secret tunnels under The Tote is one of frequent occurrence: Continue reading “The Tote tunnels myth turns out to be common Aussie pub lore”