Did you see the bright lights in Potts Point and Kings Cross over the past few months?

It was the tail end of a sustainable lighting trial by the council – they swapped 200 street lights to LEDs in Circular Quay, Martin Place, Alexandria Park, and on Darlinghurst Road between Bayswater Road and Macleay Street, plus another 50 street lights at Bourke Street, Surry Hills, with Energy Australia.

Energy savings of 30-40 per cent have been touted, which is a big deal considering the council reports spending a third of its electricity on street/public lighting. No results yet, but the council plans to install the energy efficient lights in all 8500 of its street and public domain lights over the next three years.

We were lucky not to walk right into this fence at the corner of Macleay and Manning Streets, Potts Point.

Fortunately, RTA workers erected two signs directing pedestrians around the two metre high fences – “PEDESTRIAN” and “DETOUR”. Guys, I know stating the obvious is getting to be a fine art, but this taking it too far, right?

It’s the silly season in Darlinghurst, but that’s no reason to just throw your shoes off in the street.

That stylish kicker was on Macleay Street, outside the Potts Point Fratelli Fresh. But it’s by no means the only pair in town. Cast off shoes are reaching epidemic proportions.

There’s another pair just around the corner on Llankelly Place. Just over to the left there, it’s a pair of suede heels.

A fancy night out gone wrong (or right?) – it could have been a Take It Home And See If It Works, but this has the feel of something much bigger.

Kings Cross’s glorious El Alamein fountain was switched off for a moment this morning.

It gets cleaned a couple of times a week, according to the council worker who flicked the switch.

“You wouldn’t believe what foreign material winds up in here,” he said. “Hungry Jack’s burgers, doner kebabs, you name it.”

He reached up and screwed up one of the fountain’s spokes and on went the water.

Braving the chlorinated breeze, it was a perfect time to capture the fountain without its characteristic splash.

Snapped by a reader, Kerri, on her way to work this very morning was this latest instalment.

Ever heard of “The Snicket?”

Well I hadn’t, but colloquially, it is the name for the pedestrian pathway that leads down to Billyard Avenue from Macleay Street, and this is where the X-Ray Specs were found.

Thanks Kerri.

It’s been a busy week for the guerrilla knitters in Kings Cross.

Three days ago, we caught their yarn going up in Fitzroy Gardens, but they’ve been working around the clock with a crane and a giant ladder, and the results are spectacular.

I love the idea of public art, but all too often the stark modernist blocks and balls in our public squares seem more alienating than intriguing. They stand so defiantly, inscrutable.

I Heart Kings Cross is something quite different. Warm, friendly – probably a bit smelly after all the rain – each piece of crochet and cross-stitch is so obviously made by someone.

It’s glorious and wonderful.

A pair of eyes are ogling across at a bikini-clad pole (that’s at the pedestrian crossing where Darlinghurst Road becomes Macleay Street), and, as if to underscore the knitters’ take on public art, they’ve wrapped one of the discs in Dennis Wolanski’s Angled Wheels of Fortune in a relaxed, loose weave – “Chill out, ’80s sculptor.”

The police station has been drafted, too, and the entire spectacle now stretches a little further down Macleay Street and up Darlinghurst Road, though the focus remains on Fitzroy Gardens.

This is one of the most unexpectedly glorious things I’ve seen in ages. Walk by, if you can.

They’ve been knitting for a month or two, now, in cafes and bars and on park benches, but over the weekend the assembled thread wound its way around Kings Cross.

Centred on Fitzroy Gardens, and the beautiful El Alamein fountain, but extending a little way along Macleay Street and Darlinghurst Road, it’s a project called I Heart Kings Cross, and it’s part of the council’s Art & About program.

The guys behind it, Reef Knot, formed out of the ashes of Knot Gallery four years ago, where the crew had collaborated with designers, musicians, sculptors and painters to create installations for street, art and music festivals.

Inspired by the work of Newtown’s Denise Litchfield, Texas’s Knitta Please, and Stockholm’s Maskerade, they’ve tackled this massive knitting project.

Collectives are springing up all over the place to knit in public places. It’s being called guerrilla knitting, and I reckon its roots are in guerrilla gardening. It’s a little bit political, and a lot about creating sections of spontaneous beauty in sometimes tired neighbourhoods.

We don’t usually post so many pictures, but this is really just spectacular, and every single bit of knitting is worth seeing. We started to feel a little sorry for the trees without woollen cloaks, especially with the current cold snap.

I’m terribly sorry, but a recent post would suggest that this is just asking for trouble.

Count them. 11 drums of vegetable oil.

And where was such a scene sighted?

On Macleay Street, only metres from the location of the “new” vomit.

A couple of years back, the Pop Shop, on Oxford Street, shut its doors.

I noticed the familiar faces of owners Angelo and Robert in Blueprint, on Macleay Street, earlier this year.

And then today, walking down Crown Street, between Campbell and Albion Streets, I noticed this:

They’re back!

The Cross is probably at its most grotesque at 7 in the morning. Especially on a Sunday morning.

Fights are still breaking out and the ground is absolutely littered with trash.

And vomit.

Sometimes the vomit stains the ground for months, maybe years to come.

Fortunately, just moments after this shot was taken, the Karcher boys were heading north down Macleay Street.