What are festivals coming to in this city? The Swedish Fair at the Swedish Church is what you might call a good festival, and the festivals out in the sticks which are genuine community celebrations by Buddhists, Hindus, Tibetans and Whathaveyous are beaut. But so many festivals are just so crud: the Lygon St Fiesta, the Antipodes Festival, and to a lesser extent, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival which was on yesterday. A festival is not a row of shops allowed to sell their things at outside tables, a stage with a band, and an Ikea van with some vaguely pan-Asian decorated kitchen. Am I being too harsh? Mine was a short visit. What do other people think? Continue reading “Victoria St Vietnamese Lunar New Year Festival”
Stickyrice gave Victoria St pho the thumbs up
Noodlepie‘s is a beautiful blog (just check out the detail in “The Vietnamese pate mystery“), but it’s Saigonese (and its author seems to live now in Toulouse which is going to make it hard for him). My interests lie more with Hanoi. Sticky Rice covers the food of Hanoi excellently, and in trying to find anything of interest about the Footscray Vietnamese Market in English on the web just now, I came across evidence that Mr or Mrs Rice came to Melbourne in May. The Ricester sampled our pho and declared it to be Saigonese in style and damned good too. It’s his photo — yes, I’m lazy.
Shooter of cyclist on Merri Creek bike path fined $6,000 & ordered to do 100 hours’ community work
I have earlier reported the shooting of Melinda Zygarlicki, noting with amazement the fact that she thought she had been struck by a tennis ball, and continued riding home. This is a crime with a quicker than usual denouement — I read in the paper just a day or two ago of the sentencing of one of the characters who carved up one bloke with a sword after a fight over a girl in July 2002 and chased two others, instilling such fear into them that they jumped into the Yarra and drowned — no doubt because Andrew Pernell turned himself into police and then pleaded guilty to firearms offences. ABC Online reported: Continue reading “Shooter of cyclist on Merri Creek bike path fined $6,000 & ordered to do 100 hours’ community work”