Spring has sprung: the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing and mating right outside your office window when you’re trying to concentrate on a spreadsheet. It’s time to fling off the knitwear and thermals and explore Sydney in the sun. Concrete Playground has collaborated with some of Sydney’s favourite bloggers to bring you the best picks of what our city has to offer in music, art, food, film and fashion this spring, as they describe their ideal spring weekend in Sydney.

This is Sydney By The Blog: Spring Fever.

Part Four: Matt and Polly from Darlinghurst Nights

Weekends are like gold for us. Wedged in busy weeks, we savour every free moment we get. We’re up at six on Saturday morning, and by seven we’re at Fratelli Paradiso on Challis Avenue, Potts Point, for sheep’s-milk yoghurt and granola. And coffee.

Then it’s up to the Sydney Sustainable Markets at Taylor Square to get apples, delicious East Sydney honey, and picnic goods. We have great plans of going to the pool, but actually wind up walking around the neighbourhood. Taking photos as we go. We might do some shopping at the brilliant One of a Kind on Darley Street or Blue Spinach down on the corner of Liverpool and Womerah Avenue.

We might stop and see new work by Matthys Gerber at Sarah Cottier Gallery, Matt Glenn’s show at James Dorahy, and the brilliant Turkish artist Ahmet Ögüt at Artspace – he took us on a very funny running lecture around Woolloomooloo and Darlinghurst last week.

By then, we’re shopped and gallery-ed out. Taking the papers and picnic goods we head to Beare Park, on the water at Elizabeth Bay. If we get through the papers, we have books: Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, and Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This is where we’re likely to spend most of the afternoon. Lazing, hopefully in the sun.

We’re dying to see Trevor Jamieson in Namatjira, across town to Surry Hills. The play doesn’t start until eight, so we stop at our favourite Frenchie, Tabou. The cote de boeuf is spectacular – it has to be shared. After a cup of Mariage Fréres tea, we’re off to the Belvoir Street Theatre for Big Hart’s take on the Arrernte country artist’s life. Can’t wait.

You need a debrief after a play. So throwing around ideas, we walk briskly back to Tastevin, another favourite French restaurant, on Victoria Street, Darlinghurst. The food is perfect here, but we’re after a nightcap – and cheese and muscatels.

Sunday morning, we wake up bright and early, strap on running shoes and head out. We drop a couple of DVDs at Darlinghurst’s answer to Empire Records – Darlo DVD – and run down to Rushcutters Bay park. After working up a sweat, we go to Sel et Poivre on Victoria Street, Darlinghurst – of course – it’s a local favourite, and although the duck rilettes and country pate baguettes are staples, we’re there first thing. For $7.50, the special – bacon and egg baguette and coffee – is hard to beat.

Reading papers and magazines, breakfast turns into lunch, and pretty soon we’re walking the neighbourhood again, looking for interesting sights for the blog. You never know where you’ll find them. So we try to walk different streets and lanes every time, eyes peeled.

As the afternoon winds on, we stop for a boost at Gelato Messina on Victoria Street. We always try the new flavours, and although the Muum Maam (Thai green curry) is interesting, we’re not taken. Liquorice is a favourite, but it’s rarely available. Instead we opt for Number Two (peanut butter, caramel and chocolate fudge) and the Salted Caramel and White Choc-Chip – with an espresso – and sit on the footpath to do some people watching.

On the way home, we pick up a bottle of Montenegro from ABC Cellars on the corner of Farrell Avenue and Darlinghurst Road. Every week, we get a box of fresh produce from farms within five hours of Sydney from Food Connect (we pick it up at East Sydney Neighbourhood Association on Wednesdays) – and this week, we got Warrigal greens, kale, beetroot, watercress and coriander. Lining up a couple of records by John Fahey and Seaworthy, we set about finding a recipe that works. There’s not one, so Polly improvises and throws together a soup of kale, Warrigal greens, stock, egg and parmesan.

It’s hard to believe the weekend’s over. It’s Sunday night, we’re racing into summer – but after a dream weekend like this, we feel completely ready for the week.

I happened to glance skywards whilst heading down Victoria Street, in Darlinghurst the other day.

I just hope the rust doesn’t set it.

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.

They’ve borrowed the idea from progressive graffitiists, but I’m not sure. It colonises more of the fabric of this part of town, and the ad was pretty weak. But it’s a fairly non-invasive advertising – it’s there on Saturday night and then it’s gone – and when it comes down to it, I like the neon brightness of Tokyo (or Kings Cross).

You can usually see a homeless man on this bench. He engages all passers in conversation, ‘though we can rarely keep up. He often has a bag of jumbled up food, just like the one sitting there.

Once, walking past, there was a wallet lying on the ground open, with cards and things scattered.

But whatever the usual life of this area, the claim says, this corner is just off limits. They even added an extra ‘m’ for good measure.

This sign appeared on a telegraph pole on Victoria Street, Darlinghurst, last week.

It’s rainy and grey. The party season’s gone and the summer sun has faded. All those shoes people left around town on debauched long weekends are hanging long in their memories.

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.

Roslyn Sharp took thousands of photos of local icon Theresa Kompara (otherwise known as Mrs Christmas) in front of her Victoria Street home (itself otherwise known as ‘the dollhouse’).

Theresa’s the most fascinating mix of eccentricity and sweetness you can imagine – I interviewed her a month ago for a profile, but so far noone has bitten for the feature so I may write it up here.

Another local, Diego Ibanez, has been haunting the streets lately, snapping people walking through the neighbourhood – including us – but it’s this picture that made it into Sydney Life.

Neither photograph won the Sydney Life Prize, though all 22 finalists are in the running for the people’s choice award – it’s open and on show in the Central Walkway of Hyde Park North, Sydney, until October 25, 2009.

In a neat inversion of the Situationist slogan (“Beneath the paving stones, the beach!”), hidden above the cars is a native rooftop garden.

Embarkation Park (or as Malcolm Turnbull’s dog apparently calls it, Bark Park) has been around for a few decades, and the garden extends from small shrubs to larger native trees. It’s an ‘intensive’ type green roof, built on a layered system, according to this report for the council. It’s an off-leash park and it’s open between sunrise and sunset.

According to this Navy newsletter, it’s a “known shooting gallery.” It’s also a hotspot for gay cruising. But with a spectacular view of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House and the rest of the city skyline, it’s also one of the best vantage points for New Year’s Eve fireworks and other harbourside celebrations.

So honours for the first Woolloomooloo green rooftop may actually go to the top of this Navy car park.

Someone, crack the code!

UPDATE (28/8/09):

This one on the left is fading, it’s on Liverpool Street between Womerah Avenue and Victoria Street in Darlinghurst – just across from the Green Park Hotel. The one on the right is newer, it’s on Liverpool Street, near Darlinghurst Road (thanks, Blake).

So now we have:

A is for “azimuth”
C is for “cephlapod”
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”

Riddle or just randomly chalked letter clarifications?