Free entertainment in your suburb isn’t a particularly vexing task. There’s a few fail-safe spectacles around my suburb which never fail to amuse…
Watching angry customers teeter on the edge of sanity, as they wait for service at notoriously slow local cafes
When you’re a local, you grow to learn which cafes are unbearably slow. They can usually be identified by a wistful feeling that you’re on the wrong side of a black hole’s event horizon as you wait for your coffee.
The true value here is watching unsuspecting customers with INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT AND BUSY LIVES writhing around angrily and craning their necks in attempt to get some table service. People with dogs always seem particularly frazzled, mostly they want to move along to…
Dog owners desperately trying to flirt with each other
When you’re straight and can’t rely on a gay sauna for obtuse flirtation, it seems the thing to do is get a dog and haunt the local park. It’s an incredible meat market around our suburb, although the body language of the dog walkers indicates there’s some seriously stilted conversation going on. I imagine there’s been many a person around there desperately scrambling for a conversational segueway from dogs to sex.
Kiteboarders trying to look tough, then stacking
There’s an awful lot of tough-guy kiteboarding going on at our local beach. As far as I can gather, the process involves strapping a board to your feet, an oversized kite to your back, then using the sheer will of your own heaving ego to propel you into the air. More than once I’ve seen these kiteboarders turn to the assembled crowds on the beach and flex their biceps mid-air, as if they’re on some sort of Pepsi Max commercial, only to satisfyingly slap their face into the water upon landing.
Watching tourists inevitably topple over while precariously attempting to purchase a ticket on the tram
I’ll never tire of this, and the beauty is that it works all throughout Melbourne’s entire tram network. Any local resident has the insider’s knowledge that if you’re using a ticket machine on Melbourne’s trams, you’d better hold onto something while you’re doing so. Although the tram’s probably stationary when you embark and purchase your ticket, you’re probably in for an unexpected 20 metre journey down the tram carriage when it takes off if you’re not grabbing onto a pole.
My favourite variant is the desperate grab towards nearby passengers’ torsos as makeshift deadweights. Always a favourite.
Sure, these forms of entertainment are rather cruel, but the price tag fits today’s financial climate…
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In my neighbourhood I can manage 3 out of 4 simultaneously – cafe at a dog-friendly beach on a windy day. Unfortunately there are no trams, but you can’t have it all…
I remain unaffected by the lurching of trams! I can only assume it’s because I spent the first year or so of my life on a houseboat, and have built in sea-legs.
Or I’m just awesome.
Or (and this is the most likely) I’m so desperate to be considered a local when I’m in Melbourne that I make a conscious effort to lower my centre of gravity and counter-balance the movement of the tram, while simultaneously looking nonchalant and relaxed. Wait – this comment started out as a brag…how did I come out the other side looking like a wanker? Dammit.
Not just tourists. One of the first things people start to forget as they become old is to hold on while buying a ticket.
I have intense dislike of most spectator sports, but came to love a new sub-genre of sport during the Commonwealth games. It was called “Watch the tourists fall over and laugh”.
Seeing them on our trams always led to feelings of annoyance, dread and elation.
Annoyance because they don’t know The Rules when it comes to where to stand on the tram.
Dread becasue there was a chance their fat arse could land in your lap when they inevitably fell.
And elation when they began to wobble, caught themselves, the went flying into some other suckah..
Got to make you fun when you can…