We missed the parade last night, but headed out this morning to take a look at the carnage.

Feathers, glow-sticks, flags, head-pieces, goon-bags, discarded shoes, more feathers.

They were all spotted on surrounding streets – Bourke, Crown, Palmer, Burton.

Oxford Street was looking remarkably polished.

More so than those kicking on.

Despite protests from a vocal group of local residents, the first stage of the Bourke Street bike path is almost finished.

The cycleway, developed by GMW Urban, runs between Cowper Wharf Road and Corfu Street in Woolloomooloo.

Sydneymedia says 75 per cent of submissions received (631 of 842) supported the cycleway – 182 raised issues such as safety, parking loss and the potential impact of the cycleway on trees.

It’s easy to see where those 182 residents are coming from. Parking’s short at the best of times. But as the Nature Conservation Council of NSW said in their submission, “Zero emissions transport infrastructure, such as safe cycleways, must take priority over residents’ parking spaces.”

The next stage is from Woolloomooloo to Green Square. It’s the first step in a planned network of 200km of bike paths around the city. And it’s fantastic to see the council not just talking about lovely ideas for 2030, but actually taking steps to make them happen.

Discarded shoes keep showing up across the neighbourhood.

These two pairs of heels, one a sort of fawn boot, and the other a bit more sensible, appeared on Bourke Street, Woolloomooloo, down near Harmer Street.

Just as I was beginning to really wonder what was going on, I hit the motherlode.

The silly season seemed quieter this year. The fireworks weren’t quite so explosive, not quite as much rubbish on Darlinghurst Road the next morning, and so on. But maybe that was just here. Maybe the kick-off-the-shoes urge was greater elsewhere.

There’s a new paste-up on the wall of the Hopetoun Hotel, Surry Hills, by Jumbo and Zap.

But it’s not just Bourke Street, and it’s not just those two.

Whoever is Premier of New South Wales next week might well front up to a press conference on Macquarie Street and talk about getting tough on graffiti. But on the streets this year, Sydney has witnessed a huge resurgence in public art — for its own sake. We’re enchanted by the stuff because it’s ephemeral, because it adds an unexpected magic to our streets, and mostly because it’s absolutely obviously clear that the artist made it for us.

That’s the beginning of a piece I wrote, covering a lot of great stuff that’s had first airing here, you can find the rest at New Matilda.

There’s a stand-off happening on Church Lane, between Bourke and Little Bourke Streets in Surry Hills.

Two cherubs, with birds flying from a cavity in each babe’s stomach. Or are they stealth fighters?

They’ve been on the wall of Object gallery’s office, in the St Margaret’s redevelopment, since the artist Jason Wing’s show (with Vernon Ah Kee).

This little bit of alpine art is on the loading dock of a Surry Hills warehouse, just behind the Bourke Street Bakery and around the corner from the Brett Whiteley Studio.

It’s a series of craggy mountain tops, set in pink – each mountain seems to have a letter, but I can’t make sense of it – it’s out the back of Gineico Marine’s Devonshire Street warehouse, on Esther Street and Esther Lane.

There are quite a few other bits of street art on the block – see local blog Acid Midget for more. Little stencil galleries like this are tucked away across Darlinghurst and Surry Hills, I wonder whether the work tends to cluster because of a lack of monitoring, support from residents and local businesses, or just that once one person’s done a stencil at a spot, others want to join them.

There’s been a real vacuum in Surry Hills since the Hopetoun hotel’s surprise closure in September.

The old fold-back doors are boarded up – they were always perfect for the kind of summer afternoons we’re shaping up for. You can just imagine the kind of forlorn looks locals give the place every day.

Well enough is enough. One of our favourite street artists in this town, Zap, kicked off a one-man cultural reclamation this week, on one of those boarded up doors at the corner of Bourke and Fitzroy Streets.

It’s a fairly abstracted, Madvillain-esque character, and it’s one of the coolest Zap paste-ups I’ve seen.

There’s a great big courtyard in the St Margaret’s development on Bourke Street, Surry Hills. It’s occasionally hosted art launches and graduate architecture shows, but there’s a new sign on the wall announcing an application to hold a weekly farmers’ market. The DA says it would be every Saturday from 8am ’til 1pm (set up at 7am and pack down at 2pm), initially with 30 stalls.

It’s great supporting urban agriculture, and I doubt anyone would complain about having access to good, fresh food that’s been grown in the Sydney basin. But how many farmers actually take part in these markets every weekend – is there really enough farming to support yet another?

There are 1050 vegetable farms left in the Sydney basin (according to a NSW Government and Horticulture Australia quoted in the SMH), which is just over half the usual quoted figure of 2000. And the report says it’s falling fast, with current development plans likely to further halve the vegetable growing land over the next 20 years.

That suggests big long term challenges for Sydney in just feeding itself. But in the short term, there are less and less farms, but more farmers’ markets – and it’s a pretty huge time commitment for farmers to drive in from western Sydney, with seven hours from set up to pack down. With the Fitzroy Gardens farmers’ market going strong in Potts Point, do we need another farmers’ market in the neighbourhood?

I love seeing cast-offs in the street. They’re not always in working order, but there’s a lot of potential.

This cane chair was near the on-ramp to the Eastern Distributor, on Bourke Street, Woolloomooloo.

The council wants to increase city cycling by an amazing 500 per cent, and they’re putting in cycleways, cycle lanes and shared zones left, right and centre.

But it gets murky in the inner city, where new cycle paths eat into limited on-street parking. Like this cycle route through Bourke Street, from Woolloomooloo to Zetland, that’s recently gone to tender.

Residents object to losing precious parking spaces, but also what they’ve called the unsafe design of the cycleway, and along Bourke Street, between Taylor Square and Albion Streets, they’re making it clear which parking spaces are set to go.

Allegedly, 100 parking spaces are to go.

It’s a difficult predicament, but is it a bit of ‘not in our backyard’?