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.

Taylor Square has its own theatre, that’s for sure. But tonight it had the staging, seating and lights to go with it.

Approaching Taylor Square, I heard screams – which is fairly typical – but louder than normal, amplified, and as I rounded the corner, I realised it was a couple of actors. They’re in out of focus picture above, sitting on those round seat like objects.

It’s Milk Crate Theatre – based in Darlinghurst since opening in 1999, and working with homeless people.

It has one of the most striking sets in the inner city. With the background of bustling Oxford Street, and, in the distance, the sandstone courts, it’s set design taken to the limits. Something funny happens when you put actors in front of the scene, it does actually become a set.

My pictures don’t do the scene justice, it was hard to tear your eyes away from the actors.

This photo was taken while waiting for the lights to go green – looking from behind the actors to the audience.

I walked in half way through, and I couldn’t stay, so I can’t say too much about the plot. I would love to be able to next time.

Another temporary art thing appeared at Taylor Square recently.

We caught it mid-construction, but the final results are spectacular. It’s Dale Miles’ work, Underworld.

I love that this terrific beast is arising from the dingy downstairs toilet at Taylor Square. A real underworld.

These weird geometric objects appeared behind a fence on Taylor Square last night.

I walked by on Friday morning, as council workers tore plants out of their planters and pots, and tossed them into the back of their trucks.

They plant those flowers, take them out, plant them, erect new planters, take them away, without any real connection to what’s going on with the plants – they seem pretty healthy. Still, those planters have been strange from the moment they appeared.

I walked past later, at about midnight, and a fence had been erected around the Taylor Square public toilet. I peeked over the top, and this is what I saw.

I’m pretty sure it’s Dale Miles’s Underworld (the latest in the Taylor Square Plinth project – we blogged about Louisa Dawson’s work in October). He’s shown widely since graduating from the National Art School several years ago – see more here.

He says it’s a response:

to the mysteriousness of the shape of the space enclosed by the entrance fence and the two descending staircases. It is the mystery of the void inverted, the spider exiting its funnel.

The original idea is this. More pictures to come.

About this time last year, almost to the day, one of our readers spotted would-be Nazi graffiti on the road in Darlinghurst. Then this appeared over the weekend, near the old toilet block at Taylor Square.

But as one of our readers, Tony, noted in the comments at the time:

Well, actually, this is not a nazi cross (Swastika) at all. The real cross is the other way around (mirrored image).

This ‘reversed Swastika’ can be found in numerous places:

1. The Nydam Bog (look at the bottom of the page).
2. A buddhist temple
3. The flag of the city Hirosaki, in Japan

So we could be facing a very angry Danish from the year 200AD, a peaceful buddhist monk, a Japanese backpacker eager to come back to Oz… or an angry (and probably drunk) kid that doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. Place your bets ;-)

So there you have it, and it’s reappeared at the tail end of another summer holiday.

Walking through Taylor Square today at lunchtime, several council workers were hard at it laying some bitumen next to the old loos on the northern side of Oxford Street.

I asked one of the guys what it was they were working on. He told me it was for a “temporary art thing”.

Intriguing. Watch this space.

The council wants to increase city cycling by an amazing 500 per cent, and they’re putting in cycleways, cycle lanes and shared zones left, right and centre.

But it gets murky in the inner city, where new cycle paths eat into limited on-street parking. Like this cycle route through Bourke Street, from Woolloomooloo to Zetland, that’s recently gone to tender.

Residents object to losing precious parking spaces, but also what they’ve called the unsafe design of the cycleway, and along Bourke Street, between Taylor Square and Albion Streets, they’re making it clear which parking spaces are set to go.

Allegedly, 100 parking spaces are to go.

It’s a difficult predicament, but is it a bit of ‘not in our backyard’?

There’s a rooster and a fantastical island scene down at the corner of Foley and Langley Streets, Darlinghurst.

It’s just behind Oxford Street, near Taylor Square, and along with a Kill Pixie diss by some Slayer lover, there’s a fetching rooster stencilled on the wall.

There’s also this vaguely occult collection of symbols pasted up: an island palm, a pyramid, a skull, waves and sand.

There’s a surprising little block of land tucked behind Oxford Street, near Taylor Square.

It’s a garden, but quite a different one. This one, at 306 Palmer Street, has been owned by the council for years. It used to be called the Darlinghurst Children’s Garden.

Here’s a pic from the late ’70s from Sydney council’s archives, and another taken this week.

It’s hard to tell what the garden was like for the three children in that photo. Between the picket fence, the flares and the black and white picture, there’s not much green. But whatever the case, it’s not as friendly now.

The council’s been wondering what to do with the patch of land for years. Seven years ago, before South Sydney Council was amalgamated into the City of Sydney Council, they deliberated on the garden at Erskineville Town Hall.

Now it’s fenced in, but seemingly well maintained – couldn’t it be a garden in the meantime?

Walking through Taylor Square on Sunday afternoon, we noticed this.

Denise Litchfield, of Newtown, had descended on the old below-ground toilet the night before with a cast of “lavatory assistants, urban knitters and crocheters.”

It’s Sydney’s last surviving underground toilet (not including those in train stations) – it’s a convenience that’s not that convenient, because it’s not open – though it gets a last gasp every now and again via an art project like this.

Denise, who also blogs here, knitted this as part of Sydney Design 09.