An activist/street artist called the Invisible Man has left small plaques on walls and telegraph poles around inner city Sydney, particularly Surry Hills and Darlinghurst. But recently, the Invisible Man’s branched out.

At this spot on Premier Lane, Darlinghurst, and on a few other walls around town, the Invisible Man’s appeared as a copycat of This Is For That’s alphabaffiti.

We’ve had people searching the blog for various combinations of ‘Darlinghurst’, ‘Sydney’ and ‘invisible’ or ‘invisible man’ every day for the past month or so. And at least one report, in the comments, of hand delivered material from Invisible Man.

Then one of our readers, Steve, noted this plaque on the corner of Farrell Avenue and Kirketon Road, Darlinghurst.

Hard to see, I only caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye. It’s stuck to the curb that forms the garden bed on the little traffic island at the intersection of Farrell Avenue and Kirketon Road.

This one is for Lisa Marie Smith and references something happening with her in Bangkok in ‘96 – and on a side note, asks to ‘FREI BOGAN SCHAPELLE CORBY’.

It’s also got what looks like a giant spliff on it.

And then this…

Walking down to Cafe Hernandez on a recent morning, we noticed this artwork on a shelf, dated 2007 – clearly by the same artist – Damien Jones.

Yesterday we walked down Kirketon Road and came across an obviously dumped washing machine.

It reminded me of a time years ago, when I lived on Barcom Avenue, and my flatmate and I found a dryer on the street. We were so excited, we dragged it up the stairs and into our unit. We plugged it in, only to find out that, no, it did not work. So we dragged it back out onto the street.

I wished someone had just attached a note to the appliance, like they did to this TV I spotted today on Kings Cross Road.

“OUT OF ORDER.”

We saw this cute tiger, complete with naiively written caption this morning. It was on William Street, Kings Cross, up towards the corner of Kirketon Road.

On one of those green electrical boxes nearby, we noticed another strike from the same artist. Another tiger, with a speech bubble that said “PONYO”.

Looking at the tag – a reference to the Miyazaki film, I guess – I realised it was the same graffitiist that had tagged my freshly painted apartment building overnight.

All of a sudden, I was looking at these lopsided letters and thinking ‘illliterate’ instead of ‘naiive’, you know what I mean? From graff-lover to Leo Schofield in a second. But what else do you do?

We last posted about the pending opening of Japanese place, Sushi Yachiyo, back in May 2009.

Well, the location is yet to prove itself un-haunted as we are still waiting for the doors to open for business.

It must be soon though, as I noticed take-away menus affixed to the door, with a voucher for free edamame, when walking past yesterday.

And this morning, a workman was busy inside, before 7am.

I can’t help but think of cast-offs in the street.

And this one, on Premier Lane in Darlinghurst, had me particularly intrigued. What would I find inside: mouldy food, treasure, a body?

None of the above as it turned out. Just a musty box, painted aquamarine inside, and an old TV.

I’m still thinking, though. Only days before it might have boxed up old photos, early ’90s CDs and books, maybe for years.

A new Japanese place, Harumi, has just opened up on Darlinghurst Road. We dined there on the weekend, and it is pretty good, although what I really crave is a local ramen house. Harumi occupies a space which has seemed doomed in the past couple of years. It was recently vacated by Pasion cafe. Before this, it was a burger joint and further back, a fish and chips place. Let’s hope Harumi can make this work.

In other exciting (and optimistic) news, a second Japanese restaurant, Sushi Yachiyo, is set to open on the haunted corner of Kirketon Road and Craigend Street.

Weirdly, the menu and prices all look pretty similar to that of Harumi.

RAMEN PEOPLE! WHAT WE WANT IS RAMEN!

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.