I walk past a building on the corner of Craigend Street and Kirketon Road in Darlinghurst most days. It has an intricate facade, and a seemingly perfect location overlooking Kings Cross and the city.

Yet it’s played host to a string of bars and restaurants, including the lamented Global Burgers. You might see a shadow of old vomit too.

Haunted, cursed, bad feng shui?

In the buzz following Clover Moore’s liquor licensing changes, a DA went through to open ‘Lotus Wine Bar’ downstairs. Seems like such a cool location. It was going to be a seven day a week, 11am to 3am place. But less than two months later, in August, the $75,000 proposal was withdrawn.

Background 10/12/08

Prompted by Scot’s comment below, I checked out the background for Dale Jones-Evans’s intriguing (and, in 2004, award winning) building. It’s all here.

As the architect and developer I imagined a precious, gritty little building exploding out of this tiny, Tokyo-like, 7 x 15 metre, forgotten site. A commercial redevelopment appeared more suitable to the intense nodal semiology of the Kings Cross circus, William Street Boulevard, the corner condition; the urbanity of traffic-tunnel-signage and the general prevalence of human lunacy.

I think the Emily Kame Kngwarreye work’s gone though. Anyone know when/where?

I took this pic last week – on the corner of Craigend Street and Kirketon Road, Darlinghurst.

I think it has been there for weeks and weeks and even with all the heavy rain we’ve had recently, the vomit stain remains.

Sunanda Creagh picked up the Guerrilla Gardeners story today in the SMH, mentioning for the first time (I think) that Channel 10 is behind the mysterious gardens that have appeared at sites in Ashfield, Killara, Bankstown, Canterbury, as well as Surry Hills and one site we’ve been keeping an eye on in Woolloomoolloo.

The development covered in today’s Herald features a bandstand, new turf, chairs and plants in Australia Park, next to the Newtown neighbourhood centre. It was erected without a DA; it would hardly be guerilla if they were applying, right?

I don’t know that if we put a DA in on land that’s not ours that it would get through.

But the magic of guerilla gardening, as I get it, is about planting gardens in forgotten bits of dirt in urban areas. The Guerilla Gardeners’ projects have deployed a bandstand, a recommissioned VW car and a Hills Hoist for visual effect. And while the plants used have been pretty, they seem to lack the long term garden (/community) development.

Call it a new era in community spirit or just foodies wanting to get their fine produce thing on, community gardens are thriving across the city.

Council got a full update on community gardens on November 17:

The City owns two community gardens and provides support for a further eight community gardens. Located at: Angel St, Newtown; Longdowne St, Newtown; three gardens on Raglan St, Waterloo; Moorehead St, Redfern; Ogden & Marriott Sts, Redfern; St Johns Rd, Glebe; Dowling St, Woolloomooloo; and Chapman Rd, Rozelle Bay.

There is strong demand for the additional community gardens to grow food, provide social interaction and involvement in environmental education and projects… in Glebe (Paddy Gray Reserve), Pyrmont (Kid’s Garden at The Knoll), Woolloomooloo (Bourke Street Park) and a City farm at Sydney Park.

In total, a budget of $25,000 is allocated annually to support community gardens. This excludes additional support through grants and sponsorships which changes each year according to requests received and funding allocated by Council..

There’s a new council how-to guide for community gardens, and a new council job for a community gardens officer.

Looking across roofs in Darlinghurst you see a lot of concrete. That’s kinda cool, especially walking through the Bladerunner-esque train underpass in Woolloomoolloo. But can you imagine turning some of the roofs green, with grass, small plants and trees, as well as solar panels and other ‘green’ technology?

It’s not as far fetched as you might think. Right now there are no more than a handful of these ‘green roofs’ around the city, but last year the council granted $48,000 to a group of Sydney-based architects, landscape architects and others to investigate what could be done to encourage more. It was widely reported at the time. But nothing since, despite the group reporting to council five months ago.

One of the authors, Tone Wheeler, says between 60 and 65 per cent of all buildings in the Sydney CBD could have some form of green roof, and that simple planning changes could be used to encourage their development.

A minor amendment to the planning laws can encourage better buildings. This could be done by giving [building] owners more ground space or an extra floor in the building, which can be offset by the whole of the roof being accessible to grow plants or food.

But at the council meeting on November 3, the Mayor, Clover Moore, described the Green Roofs Manual as “being developed”.

At the same meeting, they approved Wheeler’s development application for the Wayside Chapel on Hughes Street in Potts Point – featuring a green roof terrace.

A guerrilla garden/public art project appeared on the corner of Cathedral and Palmer Streets, Woolloomoolloo, a few months ago – we blogged about it at the time.

The letters W-O-O-L-L-O-O-M-O-O-L-L-O-O were pegged on a Hills Hoist right in the centre of the garden.

As you can see above, the Hills and letters are gone.

Update (21/11/08):

Went past today and it’s all gone. Back to being a fenced-off concrete square.

To anyone who has ever wondered what those green boxes are that are frequently, but not always located adjacent to red post boxes…

Well, this is where mail is stored, for mailmen to pick up and deliver to us.

How clever.

So I ventured back to the Maltese cafe for a trial of the malt shake (with just the tiniest squirt of vanilla flavour). Now I don’t know if that first shake was so good because of all the build up and time between shakes, but I think my shake craze might be over. Don’t get me wrong, the dude makes a very decent malt shake (and for $2.50, it is quite a score), but the magic was gone for me. Then again, I am quite a faddish person.

They’re pasted over and over and over each other. Posters for club nights, motivational speakers and politicians, and other things. And like many other cities, Sydney council’s been battling them for years.

Now the council’s banned pole posters, threatening a $1500 fine per poster (they’ve also banned the guys who clean your windows while you’re waiting at the lights).

And replaced them with eight of these ‘poster pillars’ at locations around the inner city.

But a poster distributor told City News the postering is legal.

I don’t think [council have] got a leg to stand on. It says in Hansard that [the Protection of the Environment Act] doesn’t apply to street posters fixed to telegraph poles. I’ve sent them a copy of Hansard.

“They’re saying it costs them $1.5 million per annum to pull posters down. It’s costing me about 80 or 90 cents to put up each one up and it’s costing them $4.40 to take each one down. I just think we can work together. Maybe they should just pay me the money to do it.

In any case, street press, papers, mags, blogs – all these things are important, but they’re pretty niche – posters jump out at everyone who walks by. Will anyone pay attention to the new law?

I love this time of year.

In September, there is the sweet smell of jasmine in the air. Come November, exquisite peonies make a fleeting appearance in the florists, and the purple flowers of jacarandas cover the streets. This one’s in Cathedral Street, East Sydney.