First Week of Classes and the Weekend

First off, I've posted some more photos on this blog entry, but when your done you should cruise over to my new photo bucket page if you want to see more pictures.

http://s629.photobucket.com/albums/uu15/Nathan_DP/


Classes have been pretty good. Modernism is interesting, although so far it has been a little too theory driven, but I'm assuming were going to start analyzing more images starting next week (week 3). Starting next week we'll be looking at specific schools week by week, like Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, Cubism, Expressionism, etc. My renaissance art class is a bit boring, but I think it will get better. Overall, theres isn't a whole lot of time spent in class, compared to America, but there is a lot of readings, and I'll start having to write papers and stuff. Even so, I seems like I'll have plenty of free time. I met a kid in my philosophy class who skates. We might skate this weekend if it doesn't rain (I don't have class tommorow so I was planning on going to this huge rad new skatepark an hour and a half outside of Melbourne by train and bus, but it just started pouring and thundering, so I doubt it will happen now. Just what happened last week...maybe Friday will be dry).

Anyways, on the subject of skating, on friday night Simon and I went out to the pub in Fitzroy because I'm sick of hanging out at the Uni bars. Basically, you get a more 'alternative' crowd in Fitzroy then the preppy college kids at the pubs we have been going to. Some older guy was there with a board so I started talking to him about skating. He started skating in '87 and used to ride for 'Koala Skateboards' back in the day, and apparently once knew Julien Stranger slightly. Anyways, that was interesting enough, but where I'm going with this is that he informed me of a big annual Skate Party happening the next day (last Saturday), the "Shred for Shane" skate jam. It was in memorial for Shane Cross, who for the non-skaters reading, was a young up and coming pro from Australia, known internationally, who tragically died in a drunken motorcycle accident in the past few years. The photo at the top is the guys painting the bowl for the event. It was supposed to start at 4:20 in the afternoon, but I showed up early to skate before it got crowded, but couldn't skate the deepend of the bowl, but still got to skate a bit, drink some beers, and talk to some of the other skaters. In Australia, the government doesn't try to control skateparks as much as in America. Instead of building large cages around the parks so you feel like your in prison and handing out tickets for not wearing pads, the cities generally let the skaters take control of their own park, which means no city permission was needed for painting the bowl, or for the event as a whole as one guy told me. A totally different scene from when the riot police showed up at the Berkeley skatepark, complete with shields, helmets and batons, when Roughneck did their Bay Area BART day tour and chose Berkeley for their final destination point/BBQ area (unfortunetly I don't have a photo handy, there was a good one in an old thrasher though).
To the left is one of the locals (Da Fitzy Crew) doing a noseblunt. You should be able to get a larger image if you click on the photo, or just see all of them on my photobucket page (I'm also learning how to layout the page a bit better now, I just have to move the HTML code around). Anyways, once the painting was finished, the real shredding began and the music started up. Dudes were killing it, so at that point I mainly sat back and watched, cracked open a few more beers and chatted with some more skaters. AC/DC was on the tunes for awhile, then they moved on to some other stuff.

After the Skate Jam, I met back up with Simon and headed over to the "Art House", a bar that I had gone to for a bit the night before on a exchange student pub crawl. The guy who runs the punk/oldschool skateshop told me about a show happening there after I small talked him at the shop. The first band were from Adelaide, called Paper Arms, and sounded sort of like Fugazi. They were good, and Simon really liked them which I was glad about since I had convinced him to come to the show (not that he had anything better to do). The second band wasn't as good, but we were caught up playing pool anyway. I don't care much for TV in general, so when the times at UniLodge get boring I've been playing pool, even though you have to pay. (I'm constructing some cardboard rings to place in the pockets so we'll get unlimited games during each pool session). We played some guy and his girlfriend from Sydney and won, which was different from the night before when we got are arses kicked by these two older guys. Theres also a pool tournament happening at Uni Lodge soon, which I'm entered in. Simon is too self conscious to enter, even though I tried to convince him. I rarely see anyone else playing here, and I can't imagine the competition will be too fierce, but it should be fun regardless, and hopefully free. But I digress, back to the show. The third band was more indie, and they were okay. The last band, A Death in the Family, were pretty good, although the singer was maybe a little too whiny, but it was hard melodic punk. No one was really moving in the audience, but I could still feel the energy. It also turned out the guy from the skateshop was the bassist in the headlining band. This upcoming Sunday I plan to return to the Art House to see Team Rad play, a skate rock/thrash metal band. The bassist skates the Fitzy Bowl heaps, which is how I heard about them, and I hope to do some thrashing to some metal.

My Sunday night plans were a bit of a mystery to myself. A few days before, Simon and I had been playing pool at uni lodge when this Iranian guy Aref we had met once before came to chat with us. He told us he was going to a dance audition (as a viewer of a performance, I think the word 'audition' might have been the wrong word he was looking for), and invited us along. Simon, always trying to be polite, almost immediately signs on, so I agree to as well. Later Simon told me he figured why not, he had never met an Iranian before, and I guess I found the whole situation so novel, it had to be interesting on some level. Of course the next day we were wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. So, Sunday evening, we met up with Aref and this other guy whose name I forget. Oh yeah, there 28, 25 and 26, so I was the youngest person, not that it matters, but just an interesting fact. Simon is the 28 year old, but I wouldn't have guessed it if he hadn't told me. The Dance Recital was at a place called "The Meat Market" which turned out to be...an old meat market. The floor was cobble stone, but like big bricks, so it wasn't uncomfortable to stand on, with a large stage in the middle. I'm getting ahead of myself though, the event was absolutely nothing like I thought it would be. I imagined some sort of stiff, high society ballet or something. It turned out to be some sort of post-modern disco heaven or hell. There were disco balls creating the lighting effects, and each set of dancers performed one traditional three minute dance, and then one disco version of their style of dance. The first was Indian, then Thai, then break dancers, then middle eastern belly dancers or something. It was all pretty strange, but better than I expected because. The crowd seemed like the typical artsy crowd, some older bourgeois types, down to the hipster students. We must have been an interesting group though, two well dressed, well groomed guys with tucked in shirts, one Iranian, one Indian, and two tall kind of grungy white dudes. There were more dancers than the ones I mentioned, but we left early.

Anyways, it stopped raining, I pray (metaphorically of course), that it doesn't rain tommorow and I can go to the Knoxfield skatepark that I mentioned earlier. Otherwise I guess I'll have to get a headstart on my homework. I'm going to check out a restaurant called "MexiCali Rose" in a neighborhood called "Richmond" this weekend. I assume its Mexican food, although I don't know anything about it other than the name, but what else could it be? Its a little dot on a map I have. Check out more of my photos on photo bucket if you'd like, but post a couple from around town down below.

Later, Nathan.

Typical looking houses in urban Australia.


These are the yellow barriers that are all over Melbourne. It's the first thing I skated my first night here. I got a boardslide transfer thing on it, but haven't been able to do much else since.


Lots of Graffiti and street art around Melbourne.


A view from the top floor of my building, too bad the dental hospital gets in the way.