And now Gertrude St is glossy fashion mag gush geyser

The Age’s oddly named (Melbourne) Magazine got all gooey about Gertrude St on Friday, with a big glossy article by Stephanie Wood about ‘the hottest strip in Melbourne’. I ride Gertrude twice a day, favour takeaway from Tandoori Times, and am a general enthusiast. Things are moving fast down there, too fast for my liking. My barber man at Dr Follicles was a bit sniffy on Saturday that his place was not new and hip enough to get featured (he told me that Alia’s been renovated and changed hands, and again commended Little Rebel Bar to me). Radio Bar looks most promising — intelligence please.
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Salta rally

Melbourne Leader has shown me up as being asleep at the wheel, ignorant of a major incident of civil unrest by inner suburban insurgents: a rally of 100 burghers outside Richard Wynne’s office on Saturday. Although the paper does not say so, I can only presume that the rally was against an application by Salta to build a 10 storey commercial and residential development around Victoria and Burnley Streets. Salta’s website says:

“Salta has made a significant mark as a major retail developer with the $170 million Victoria Gardens development in Richmond. In addition to the shopping centre development, this project will absorb a further $300 million on additional retail, residential and commercial development at the former MFB training college, which backs on to the Yarra River.”

Houses

According to a spreadsheet clickable from this part of The Age yesterday, the median price of Abbotford houses for the March 2006 quarter was $434,000, up 4.6% on the December quarter. Collingwood is up 0.9%, Richmond up 2.5%, Kew 5.5%, but Clifton Hill is down 4.1%, and Fitzroy down 3.8% (while North Fitzroy is up 13.2%: go figure). Only Kew and Richmond had at least 30 sales which seems to be a measure of statistical reliability. Prices in Docklands plummeted, hehe. The photo is of a house I loved when I visited Jeparit recently, where there was a 76% rise in property values over one year. Jeparit’s booming, baby!