It’s Valentine’s Day on the weekend, so it’s no surprise to see people breaking out their best romantic moves in the neighbourhood.

These two are walking home via a bollard on Macdonald Street, Paddington – just over the bridge from Darlinghurst, after it stops being Burton Street.

It’s a paste-up, with Mini Graff‘s distinctively clean, pop style, though it’s the first of her cute characters I’ve seen about in a while.

There’s a person with a cute animal trio on the wall in Hanslow Street, Surry Hills.

It’s hard to tell exactly, but I think there’s a rhinoceros (could be a hippopotamus), one giraffe and one elephant, and a person.

UPDATE (26/9/09): The paint stuck to the wall a bit better when this stencil appeared on Williams Lane, Paddington.

It’s definitely a rhino, with a giraffe, an elephant and a fairly stocky person.

There’s another chalked up alphabetism under the Boundary and Burton Streets Bridge, behind St Vincent’s Hospital. As our eyewitness Ben notes, it’s the bridge “with the occasional cool cup art” (by Andy Uprock).

So, now we have:

A is for “azimuth”
C is for “cephlapod”
D is for “diatribe”
E is for “entropy”
K is for “kibosh”
M is for “modulate”
N is for “nebulous”
T is for “thought bubble”
Y is for “yesterday”
Z is for “zipper”

It is looking fairly random from this list. Anagram fans, does anything jump out?

Rose Terrace in Paddington, just off South Dowling Street, near the corner at Oxford Street, has undergone a make-over.

A little bit of research shows an interesting history.

The 32 houses were built in 1874-75 in three terraces to form a triangle, with a common area in the middle. Kids used to play, clothes-lines were erected, neighbourhood parties were held here. Then in the 1960s, individual houses were sold and the common area became a place to park cars and dump trash.

In 1973, the Rose Terrace Society was formed to fight against the owner who wanted to build a multi-storeyed building on the site. The then Lord Mayor of Sydney, Leo Port, came to the rescue. The owner was defeated and the common area was given back to the people as a community garden. A Local Citizens Committee was established to care for and maintain the garden with a grant of $5200.

According to the Paddington Paper (official newsletter of the Paddington Society), in April 2009:

The Rose Terrace garden park has been scooped out clean for a complete renewal. City of Sydney has worked with residents and landscape specialists to come up with a new look for this park…

Pulling up the tar from the old road surface has revealed treasures and rubbish. It seems 100 years ago, road base was just small rocks and anything that would go on top of the sand.

Digging struck treasure too. The sandstone gutter that originally went with the sandstone curb saw daylight for the first time in many years. The sympathetic landscapers are preserving and re-seating it ready to go along side the new tarred surface.

Well, it is all complete and looking lovely in the spring time.

Motivational message spotted on Gurney Street, in Paddington.

Looks like the work of Canberra girl Hanna Davies…

A strip of Oxford Street in Darlinghurst – on the way up to Paddington – renamed itself ‘Three Saints’ recently.

It actually happened in the second half of 2008. Businesses on the Oxford Street, South Dowling Street, Victoria Street and Barcom Avenue intersection started talking renaming, set up a website, and started jamming out some names.

• Fruit Bat Crossing
• Penguin Square

They settled on Three Saints, due to nearby St Vincents, St Sophia and Sacred Heart.

So they’ve got the branding down.

Top picture is the window of Ariel bookshop – and below, Ariel’s shopping bags.

Is this common, this renaming business?

With all the recent hubbub about artists and children, you’d think Kill Pixie would steer clear of this kind of work.

The evidence is there though. Kill Pixie flagrantly flouting the Australia Council for the Arts‘ ruling on artists working with young children, here at the Paddington Early Childhood Centre. But maybe, to be fair, it’s a relic, a throwback to a happier, more innocent time.

Walking about the neighbourhood we often spot peoples’ cast-offs. Inevitably, one of us will ask: “Should we take it home and see if works?”

I saw this old Hoover vacuum cleaner today on Burton Street, up near the art school. I really wanted to try it out.