There are two bollards in the St Vincent’s Hospital carpark on Burton Street, Darlinghurst. One is covered in a sock.

Pat Armstrong, who spotted the single sock covered bollard, said: “Well, that’s one way to get rid of an old sock.”

It’s clearly seen better days. Is a sock restretching service? The sock afterlife? Hiding something?

This customised street mirror is on Wisdom Lane, Darlinghurst. It’s a side street that’s really barely used since the Eastern Distributor went through. So I guess there’s not much need for a 180 degree mirror.

It looks like a sad old sun to us. There’s something Duchamp about it, too, with the assemblage of mirror and coat hanger. It was spotted by one of our readers.

There is a series of wedding proposal street stencils along Womerah Avenue, just outside Darlinghurst public school.

The stencils are a little blurry at first, you might miss just one, but they keep coming. One after the other. You get an insight into the proposer: cute, into street art, fairly persistent.

Do you know Laura? Was the proposal a success?

Walking up to Taylor Square this week, I couldn’t help but notice these boxes on the pedestrian crossing.

What are they, I wondered? Public art? Improvised cardboard robots?

Actually, no.

Looks like the days of walking unimpeded across the corner of Bourke and Campbell Streets are gone.

And there’s the culprit, a new set of traffic lights.

I spotted these photocopied pictures on Liverpool Lane, down near Crown Street, East Sydney – but they’ve been appearing on walls around the neighbourhood.

I assumed it was street art. But the more I think about it, the more I think it could be a kind of guerrilla cigarette advertising. They all feature these hip looking inner city people smoking, and the cigarettes are really the focus.

I love that street artists have immediately colonised them anyway. And whoever customised the second picture makes the same inference, turning the cigarette into a gun: “Bang!”

The guys at Concrete Playground asked us to dream up a perfect Darlinghurst Nights weekend, so we obliged – but thought we’d better cross-post here for you.

Spring has sprung: the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing and mating right outside your office window when you’re trying to concentrate on a spreadsheet. It’s time to fling off the knitwear and thermals and explore Sydney in the sun. Concrete Playground has collaborated with some of Sydney’s favourite bloggers to bring you the best picks of what our city has to offer in music, art, food, film and fashion this spring, as they describe their ideal spring weekend in Sydney.

This is Sydney By The Blog: Spring Fever.

Part Four: Matt and Polly from Darlinghurst Nights

Weekends are like gold for us. Wedged in busy weeks, we savour every free moment we get. We’re up at six on Saturday morning, and by seven we’re at Fratelli Paradiso on Challis Avenue, Potts Point, for sheep’s-milk yoghurt and granola. And coffee.

Then it’s up to the Sydney Sustainable Markets at Taylor Square to get apples, delicious East Sydney honey, and picnic goods. We have great plans of going to the pool, but actually wind up walking around the neighbourhood. Taking photos as we go. We might do some shopping at the brilliant One of a Kind on Darley Street or Blue Spinach down on the corner of Liverpool and Womerah Avenue.

We might stop and see new work by Matthys Gerber at Sarah Cottier Gallery, Matt Glenn’s show at James Dorahy, and the brilliant Turkish artist Ahmet Ögüt at Artspace – he took us on a very funny running lecture around Woolloomooloo and Darlinghurst last week.

By then, we’re shopped and gallery-ed out. Taking the papers and picnic goods we head to Beare Park, on the water at Elizabeth Bay. If we get through the papers, we have books: Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This is where we’re likely to spend most of the afternoon. Lazing, hopefully in the sun.

We’re dying to see Trevor Jamieson in Namatjira, across town to Surry Hills. The play doesn’t start until eight, so we stop at our favourite Frenchie, Tabou. The cote de boeuf is spectacular – it has to be shared. After a cup of Mariage Fréres tea, we’re off to the Belvoir Street Theatre for Big Hart’s take on the Arrernte country artist’s life. Can’t wait.

You need a debrief after a play. So throwing around ideas, we walk briskly back to Tastevin, another favourite French restaurant, on Victoria Street, Darlinghurst. The food is perfect here, but we’re after a nightcap – and cheese and muscatels.

Sunday morning, we wake up bright and early, strap on running shoes and head out. We drop a couple of DVDs at Darlinghurst’s answer to Empire Records – Darlo DVD – and run down to Rushcutters Bay park. After working up a sweat, we go to Sel et Poivre on Victoria Street, Darlinghurst – of course – it’s a local favourite, and although the duck rilettes and country pate baguettes are staples, we’re there first thing. For $7.50, the special – bacon and egg baguette and coffee – is hard to beat.

Reading papers and magazines, breakfast turns into lunch, and pretty soon we’re walking the neighbourhood again, looking for interesting sights for the blog. You never know where you’ll find them. So we try to walk different streets and lanes every time, eyes peeled.

As the afternoon winds on, we stop for a boost at Gelato Messina on Victoria Street. We always try the new flavours, and although the Muum Maam (Thai green curry) is interesting, we’re not taken. Liquorice is a favourite, but it’s rarely available. Instead we opt for Number Two (peanut butter, caramel and chocolate fudge) and the Salted Caramel and White Choc-Chip – with an espresso – and sit on the footpath to do some people watching.

On the way home, we pick up a bottle of Montenegro from ABC Cellars on the corner of Farrell Avenue and Darlinghurst Road. Every week, we get a box of fresh produce from farms within five hours of Sydney from Food Connect (we pick it up at East Sydney Neighbourhood Association on Wednesdays) – and this week, we got Warrigal greens, kale, beetroot, watercress and coriander. Lining up a couple of records by John Fahey and Seaworthy, we set about finding a recipe that works. There’s not one, so Polly improvises and throws together a soup of kale, Warrigal greens, stock, egg and parmesan.

It’s hard to believe the weekend’s over. It’s Sunday night, we’re racing into summer – but after a dream weekend like this, we feel completely ready for the week.

Just imagine what these might have seen?

You can find this pair of eyes on Burnell Place, Darlinghurst, just near the corner of Liverpool Lane. It’s on a well camouflaged car park door.

Double mirror? Secret portal? I really like them. Not much more to say.

I walked past this hotel so many times before I realised what made it so inviting.

Okay, so it’s kind of obvious when I take a photo and lead the post with it.

The Marriott hotel on College Street, Darlinghurst – across the road from Hyde Park – has a green wall (or garden panel, as the manufacturer calls it). It’s a garden of pre-grown plants, trained for vertical growing, and watered and fed by an automated drip system, and it all grows in a lightweight biodegradable foam (instead of soil).

It’s not cheap for the modules and drip system – an Age article last year quoted it at $1800 per metre.

Not cheap. And still reasonably token. But still far more striking and inviting than your typical hotel lobby.

Masking tape holding the remote to its top, this TV was looking forlorn on Burton Street, Darlinghurst, outside the East Sydney Doctors surgery/gallery.

“I work, colour too!!!”

It would have been a prime find once upon a time. But, you know, people have these huge TVs now, and by the way everything’s on the internet. It’s gone now, probably for an art project.

I spotted this flower on the wall where Foley Street ends on the Darlinghurst side of Taylor Square.

It was a gorgeous spring day, which seems less than a memory in today’s rain. But a closer look revealed an opportunistic bouquet of lips, perched above a guerilla fern on the wall. It reminds me of a rougher take on Phillip George’s remarkable Edge of Empire show at Breenspace.