Tour Of The 'burbs

We went on an impromptu tour of the inner west suburbs this afternoon in a bid to check out one of the (near to the city but not quite type) suburbs which was touted by the newspapers' real estate supplement as being a good alternative to young couples who have come to the sad realisation that they cannot afford to buy a property in the popular eastern suburbs where they have been renting. We had gotten lost in the suburb that we were checking out and had hopped on a bus which took us to the next suburb and which didn't look like there was any cafes, shops, restaurants in the neighbourhood. We finally hopped off the bus when we found some signs of civilisation and at the shop where we bought some drinks, got directions to the nearest train station.

The bad news when we got there, was no trains were running due to the omnipresent weekend trackworks. The good news was there is a bus replacement. The bad news was we didn't know when the next bus would come. The good news was it came within 2 minutes. And that was when we had our impromptu tour of those suburbs as the bus meandered through the various neighbourhoods.

The conclusion we came to was it would be a long time coming before the recommended suburb would become gentrified and we didn't think we could live there in its current state with its current inhabitants for the next "x" years before gentrification descended upon the neighbourhood. The neighbouring suburbs that we had toured were also not within contemplation. We were just too fond of our little inner city village, with quaint cafes and nice restaurants, the kooky, bohemian inhabitants and the great weekend markets and other little shops.

The more fun part of the afternoon was the Newtown Feastability - a food and wine (and music, drag queen shows, bands) event. I succumbed to the hoola hoop furore that was going on with the professional people (planted of course, amongst the enthusiastic group) doing fancy moves and the mere mortals, just trying to keep the hoops at waist level.

I am obviously not a shy person...