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?

There’s a lot of talk about what St Vincent’s Hospital is doing to Darlinghurst, but most of it is as seen from Victoria Street.

Here’s the view from inside. It used to be called Chaplin Street, but it’s been so remodelled it’s hard to tell what you’re looking at now. A series of larger terraces have been carved out of the ground, and for the moment, replaced by utes, cranes and forklifts.

Changes to the terraces along Victoria Street in Darlinghurst have shocked locals.

In March, we blogged about the hospital’s moves.

This week, all over Darlinghurst, stickers appeared saying, “STOP ST VINCENT’S HOSPITAL DESTROYING DARLO!!!”

The changes are shocking. So OK, not like electric shock. But walking the streets – one of the greatest things to do in this neighbourhood – it’s changing very quickly. The sight is an unpleasant surprise, and some locals have reacted.

The stickers are outside the Green Park Hotel on Victoria and Liverpool streets, and on walls and telegraph poles right around the neighbourhood. St Vincent’s Hospital has long owned the stretch of terraces, but the rapid expansion is really changing the local skyline, and more importantly, the street level urban fabric.

The work has well and truly begun, though, so I wonder if there is anything to be gained from this street activism?

Have you noticed St Vincent’s Hospital is gradually moving north up Victoria Street?

Bill Warner’s chemist recently shut up shop, but it too is moving north, to the old laudromat site, on the corner of Surrey Street.

With the Garvan Institute on one side of the pharmacy, the other used to be two Victorian terrace houses, one of which was St Vincent’s Hospital’s Diabetes Education Centre. I am sad to see these lovely old buildings go.

The new community health unit is about to open on Burton Street, or maybe it already has, meaning the old Caritas building on Forbes Street is up for redevelopment and residents don’t seem all too happy about it.

The skyline looking south down Victoria Street is about to change.

And it’s called St Vincent’s Hospital.

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?