shopping and street art

A slightly more productive day of shopping today!

Ma brought down my blender (woohoo!), so now I just need to find somewhere to store it, and work out a few things to make with it. I made some Mango Lassi this afternoon which wasn't too bad, and I might make a smoothie tomorrow morning.

As expected, Supermarket Adventures took far, far longer this week than last week when I was flying solo... four times as long in fact (at least for just the initial run around the supermarket)... but then I did get a whole bunch more stuff. And I made a VERY appealing discovery... Palmer's Cocoa Butter Formula Dark Chocolate and Peppermint Lip Butter.

OH! MY! GOD!

Never before have I wanted to make out with myself quite as much as I do right now while I'm wearing some of it. Sadly it was actually Ma's... so I'm going to have to get myself a tube of it next weekend. Smells SO damn good! Nummy!

The rest of the food style shopping was about average, and after we came back here and I unpacked it all we decided to go down to Arndale because for some really odd reason the Big W catalogue had some decent looking clothes in it for both Ma and me. Now usually when we go looking at places like that the clothes never look half as good up close (damn deceptive catalogue photography), and while that was true to a degree there were actually some decent things.

I found a Transformers logo teeshirt (woohoo!)... I've been looking for something in that genre for AGES, and they had a couple of different ones, both of which fit. I settled on the Autobot symbol version, because while the Optimus one was kinda cool, I was always a Bumblebee man. And my ongoing obsession with scarlet continues... I found a red Bonds zip up hoodie which looks pretty groovy actually. There were also a couple of other tops and a pair of slip-on thin soled sneakers (to replace the ones I have at the moment when they finally give up the ghost). It's all going to end up being saved for the Sydney trip I think (only 30 days to go!)... be nice to have some nice new things to wear while I'm there.

Oh, and by the by... what the hell is it with checkout operators in retail chain stores? As soon as you ask them if you can keep the coathangers they all seem to lose their tiny minds. You would think that they would take the coathangers out, fold the clothes, if only roughly, and give you both clothes and coathangers separately... well, no... they just attempt to roll the clothes around the coathangers. Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid... so we just went straight back to the car, I took things off hangers, Ma folded...

The Universe also played that game of "You got that thing you wanted, now I'm going to show you other, possibly better versions of the same kind of thing" with me... after I bought the little box for my bedside table last week, I found a slightly more substantial version, and one that was kinda more what I was looking for (without giant holes in the sides and with a catch and corners and stuff) for the same price somewhere else. But since Ma is the Queen of Packaging (and to a lesser extent me too), we got the new box and she took the other one away for use at some future date.

After we'd finished wandering around Arndale we headed into the city. In the free local paper yesterday there was a little blurb in the Entertainment section about the Toy Soldiers having some sort of exhibition.

And luckily the blurb came with a little picture of some of their artwork, because I recognised the TS logo right away... Benzo is part of that crew (I'm guessing that's the right word).

I half expected it to be in an actual gallery of some sort... or something not overly permanent... and we ended up having to go around the block a bunch of times because we couldn't quite see the place in question, and couldn't work out where to park. In fact that might be one of the levels of Hell... or Purgatory or something... going around and around and around city blocks, looking for a street number you can't quite find, and not being able to find anywhere to park.

But I digress... as per usual.

Eventually we found somewhere to dump the car and trotted back to the general area. Turns out it was pretty much just a doorway, which is why I kept missing it as we went past in the car. A doorway, leading down a set of stairs into this little anteroom, all adorned with just coolness really (some of the tribal tikis, various other bits and pieces), before the main "gallery space". I was a little surprised that it was such a tiny space and so up close and personal with the guy behind the little counter that I forgot to get my camera out and take any photos of the anteroom... next time maybe.

And because it was such a small space and the guy was just right THERE behind the counter, it was hard not to say hello and whatnot... plus I was dying to know if he was one of the Toy Soldier boys or what... turns out he was... Store, in fact, who's responsible for all the pigeons, and the clouds and stuff... and possibly the flying fish on the place down at Glenelg.

It was trippy just being in there talking to one of the guys whose artwork I've been admiring for ages... I'm just glad it wasn't actually Benzo otherwise I might have said something stupid or otherwise made a fool of myself.

Store told me to give him my email, and he would let me know next time they had a different exhibition thing at the shop... and I asked him if they'd done any "outdoor works" recently... and he gave me a couple of leads to follow up. Ma and I attempted to follow up one of them this afternoon, but I think I got the name of the street he mentioned wrong... so I'll probably go into town and wander about a bit tomorrow. The second spot he mentioned was something they're doing during Fringe, so I'm definitely going to go and have a look at that once it's done.

It's just a shame that I'm so broke and all they're artwork was "so" expensive (not as far as artwork is concerned, but just in relation to what I could afford), because there were a few very groovy things in the shop... Benzo skateboards and stencilled bags... Store's artwork... just groovy stuff.

I was a little bit floaty and hyper when we left... it was like meeting somebody famous or something... very cool. Anyway, as we went back to the car I noticed a pasted up notice with Jules' name on it... he (I'm assuming it's a he) is another name I keep seeing everywhere... and is actually responsible for the Phoenix Crane. Turns out he's having some sort of exhibition in an "outdoor makeshift gallery" next Sunday. Not sure if that means they'll be stuff on walls or if it'll be freestanding stuff and he's just using the space. I do have half a mind to go down there though... just take a look. We'll see.

Anyway, after I saw that we decided to go in search of the alleyway mentioned... which actually led to these "car park barns" (I'm not completely sure what the hell the deal with them was) that were full of stencil art. Woohoo!

So lots of street art sightings going on this afternoon... then it was back here for Mango Lassi and whatnot.

And a good day was had by all...

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