There is a series of wedding proposal street stencils along Womerah Avenue, just outside Darlinghurst public school.

The stencils are a little blurry at first, you might miss just one, but they keep coming. One after the other. You get an insight into the proposer: cute, into street art, fairly persistent.

Do you know Laura? Was the proposal a success?

The guys at Concrete Playground asked us to dream up a perfect Darlinghurst Nights weekend, so we obliged – but thought we’d better cross-post here for you.

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 spied some loose pages from a book on Womerah Avenue, next to Darlinghurst primary school, and it got me thinking.

I used to weave my way along the footpath reading books on the way to school. There was a second hand book shop between my cafe job and home where I used to split my pay cheques between records and books, and one of the things that really bugged me about second hand books was when the pages started to fall out.

My copies of Lilian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia and Bob Blunt’s Biased History of Australian Rock are like that. The former due to age, and the latter, cheap printing. But the frailty appeals to me, too.

Following a few leads on the pages – “Ella, Felix, Mrs Cosway, Lydstep Town Hall” – I discovered it’s a copy of Barbara Vine’s The Minotaur. I’m relieved. But is someone out there searching for those lost pages, scattered on the way home from a Darlinghurst second hand book shop?

As school went back for term 4, Darlinghurst Public School announced their new, grassy playground on the message board at the south-western corner of the school.

Since then, each time I walk past, I gaze longingly down at the lush greenery, wishing I could walk on it barefoot.

This morning, it looked so glorious, and we wondered if it could really be real. It is just so green. Without going in the school gates, we got as close as we could, and it did seem to look decidedly non-plastic.

While we were pondering, a cleaner came out of one of the offices and proceeded to walk across said lawn. I called out to him, to get the facts.

It is plastic grass.

Looks lovely though.

Spotted on McLachlan Ave, Rushcutter’s Bay, underneath the railway line is this addition.

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?