Great Things

After having written a post questioning some bits of Australia, I thought it would be a nice counterpoint to write a post celebrating some other bits of this place. So here goes:

1. Taking the ferry to work.


You get on, you get a seat and if you're lucky it's a nice day outside so you're able to sit on the upper deck. The ride lasts about 30 minutes, enough for a nap or a good devouring of the morning paper. Often there are young, good-looking people for you to admire. In the afternoons, people gather in the bow on the bottom deck, and stand around drinking beer from brown paper bags, in full sight of the security cameras. Sometimes, they forgo the brown bags entirely. Other times the harbour is filled with sailboats, and they sail alongside the ferry. If the day gets really exciting a sailboat may cross into the ferry's path, and then the ferry captain sounds a warning horn, and people on the ferry crane their necks to see who has almost crashed his boat into the ferry hull.
Finally, all of the ferry boats are named after surf beaches located on the northern edge of the city, just up the coast from me. There's the Freshwater, the Narrabeen, the Collaroy and the Queenscliff, and you can learn about them here.

2. Banana bread.


Australians regard banana bread as a fundamental right of existence. You can get it everywhere, all the time. My favorite so far is served at Bacino, an Italian-cycling themed coffee joint with branches around the Northern Beaches. Bacino warms the bread in a panini press so it comes out with a checkerboard texture, and is then dusted with icing sugar and served with butter on the side. It's a great pleasure to melt the butter over the nooks and crannies of the panini, smoothing it across the icing sugar, and soaking it into the bread. Best consumed outside under an umbrella, watching the world go by.

3. Markets

One of the advantages of perpetual summer is the ability to live a much larger proportion of life outside. Australians love going to the markets. In Sydney proper you can go to Glebe (arty), Bondi (trendy), Manly (mishmash), Balmain, Paddington (trendy-expensive), Paddy's (fish) and so on. My friend Kelsey has small feet and regularly scores expensive leather shoes for cheap. Many Australian designers like Lisa Ho and ksubi (formerly tsubi) got their starts selling at the markets. In the case of the clothing-heavy markets, they're usually held on Sundays, so after you've had some banana bread you can head out for an arvo of shopping and seeing and being seen.