sunday marketness

What a day... it was grey yet warm this morning... positively summery all afternoon and it's just started raining buckets with a possible thunderstorm on the way. Although there is that really beautiful smell of rain after a warm day wafting through my apartment just at present... mmmmm...

In a lot of ways today has followed a similar kind of theme to last Sunday... other than us being in a whole different city, obviously...

Ma came down at around 10:30 and we set off for the Bowerbird Bazaar (although I think their blog is much better than the website, you get much more of an idea of the stuff that was there), which is very much about environmentally friendly art and design. It was held in the Queen's Theatre, which I was last at when I went to see Adam Richard back in March. It was the perfect venue for this particular kind of market too... there's a "broken down" and lived in quality to the inside of the Theatre (which doesn't quite come across in the photo I took) that just felt right. And there was some seriously cool stuff there too.

I fell in love with the jewellery from re:vision... I mean when you combine photography, recycled camera parts and jewellery, what's not to love. There was also all of the stuff from Rebound Books taking old, tattered books and turning them into journals and diaries and photo albums (and then using the discarded spines of the books for bookmarks... I bought four of those). I really loved their diaries... they take old Little Golden Books and rebind them to include the diary, but they leave the whole story in, just spread it out with a page at the beginning of each month. If only I used a paper diary...

There were a large number of similarities between the Bowerbird Bazaar and both of the Melbourne markets actually... a number of the stalls (including Rebound Books) were ones we'd seen over there.

There's also a point where you just have to acknowledge that certain items are stalking you and give in...

The item is question are the Keep Cups... their head office in Melbourne was opposite the laneway where our hotel was (on the Collins Street side), and I fully intended to pick one up on our last morning, but with one thing and another it totally slipped my mind. But when we saw them this morning, I just had to get one. As an added bonus, I got to design my own. Other people were just buying the ones that were on display as is, but I asked her if it was possible to design my own (since none of the colour combos were doing it for me). She looked at me very conspiratorially, lowered her voice and said that I could... hehehe... so I now have a possibly unique Keep Cup which is black and red (a black cup and plug with a red lid and band). I only got a little one though... I don't really drink all that much hot coffee, so I think I'll be fine with this one. Too cute though... I think I'm definitely going to have to get a hot chocolate on the way into work tomorrow.

The other thing I fell in love with was a tiny square painting from IMOK, which has disappeared into the Christmas Abyss, along with a photo pendant from re:vision.

I put my name down on their mailing list too (and I'm going to have to stick the blog in Google Reader)... since they're supposed to be having another one in about six months.

I'm just a little miffed that I didn't see the "live installation art" (ie street art) while we were there... I have no idea where the hell that was hiding...

We also had something to eat from Let Them Eat who had a stand at the bazaar... I probably should have skipped the salads though, since they weren't anywhere near as nice as the sweetcorn and fetta patty thing... too much action on the chickpea and the mung bean I think.

Then we set sail for Port Adelaide...

Part of the reason is that The Port Festival is on at the moment, but also because the Fishermen's Wharf Markets only run on Sundays... so we figured we could kill two birds with one stone.

Turns out that for the most part it was "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" (you know, I never realised that was actually a quote from Macbeth... but I've been using it much more than usual lately).

Those outdoor events always bug me for a number of reasons, but fairly high on the list is when they have live music... it's always so loud that it intrudes over everything else and you can't hear yourself think.

The other thing that would generally annoy me would be any kind of busker or street performance... but the ones today weren't really all that bad.

Of course when you're walking up (and then down just to prove that you can) stairs on stilts, even when you do it with a really bad fake French accent... or else you're wearing nothing but flesh coloured boxerbriefs (albeit with some sort of dancebelt underneath) and you then proceed to have a little shower in a barrel like my little friend in the photo on the right... then I don't have so much of an issue.

Sadly while I took a bunch of photos of Shower Guy none of them were all that great... part of the problem was not really being able to see what was on the camera screen due to all the sunshine... and then there was the whole issue of not really wanting to look like a complete and total stalker trying to take shots of the dude in wet underwear. I do like this photo though... it's just wrong... and during part of their routine that was accompanied by shouts of "Scruba Scruba!"...

There was also a new display of the Dolphins at the Port art installation (although with less dolphins and I think they were only in one location)... that's where the silver dolphin and rider (titled Sonic Eco) were... and it was definitely my favourite. The only problem with having them all bunch up like that was that it was hard to get decent shots of the individual dolphins... you can't see that the child on the back of the dolphin also has a dolphin tail... I did like it framed against the sky though.

The Fishermen's Wharf Market on the other hand scores a bit fat zilch. It was full of crap... mostly secondhand or else the dodgiest stuff that you've ever seen. The only stall that was even remotely interesting was one that stocked a lot of Lego... but really, what use do I have for Lego anymore! Okay, there were some keyrings/bagtags with little Lego characters on them that I was considering... but still...

Once we'd called it a day at Port Adelaide we drove down to Glenelg with the idea of getting some icecream. This, of course, was a flawed idea, because it was a bright, sunny, summery day... so every man and their dog decided that they were going to go down to Glenelg.

The upside of that was that it also meant that there were a lot of half naked young men with their Bonds underwear showing over the top of their wet boardshorts (or not so wet... which was fine too) wandering about. There was actually one guy who was sagging so badly (or well... depending on your point of view) that the only thing that could possibly have been holding up his shorts in the front was his cock, because pretty much his whole undie clad ass was hanging out of the back.

But, errr, yes... icecream... I have to say that I'm not sure about Baskin Robbins "Green Tea" flavour... it's not really sweet (as it allegedly has real green tea powder in it), and it has a very odd taste. Very odd.

I think Ma and I had been out in the sun too long though... I left my glasses case (with my glasses in it) in her car, so she came back with them... and then I realised I'd left a spare pair of shoes on the backseat of her car (that one I'm blaming on her... I decided to expose my lilywhite feet in my Croc thongs, and wasn't sure if I'd be able to wear them for the whole day... so she suggested I take another pair of shoes... which I did... and then forgot them)... I only remembered the shoes after she'd left the second time, so I'll wait until next weekend for them.

So yeah... a very different Sunday from usual... but not a bad day all up...

Current Mood: