Glam or Goth

A few weeks back John and I went to a Michelle Turcsanyi's 40th at The Harp Hotel in Tempe. That's Mich in the pink leggings and her husband, Attie, as Gomez Addams. They hired the back room, and had The Usual Suspects playing. The theme was Glam or Goth, and it was great to see everyone make an effort. Much drinking and dancing was had, including Hungarian dancing and a cha-cha train. The guys in the Kiss costumes are part of Mich and Atties Hungarian dance troupe, and there's a pic of them at the earlier Octoberfest post. It's also great to be able to stumble home without the hassles of taxis or public transport.

Pertinent Trivia

An appropriate title to blog after a hiatus of computer death, and daylight savings.

Computer death is self explanatory, but daylight savings needs clarifying.It's so much easier to blog when it is dark outside, and summer hours get me out and about.

Anyway, around one corner from home is an institution called The Marrickville Golf Club. On the first Friday of the month they have a trivia night. It is a gem of a timecapsule - a social time capsule where at least three generations of Marrickville culture get together to play Trivia. Sometimes it's four generations. This is in a setting of a 1960's bungalow in someones backyard - but the backyard is a golf course. Hang on, this is the real deal... a 1960's golf clubhouse on a golf course. Filled with folks whose names are on the tribute boards adorning the walls. An asterisk next to the name of Life Members, generally means deceased. This kind of night is keeping the sign writer at bay.

Friday's Trivia Night was a hoot... there was no trivia competition as such, as it was all Christmas trivia leading up to a dance party with Glen Miller as the starter. The usual trivia MC was too pissed. As the Oldies left, it degenerated into dancing and laughing. If you are missing any old 80's vinyl singles, the DJ has them.

Eventually, this conglomerate of society petered out into poofters, lesbians, grannies, grandads and Cary Street people. And a few of us ended up having nightcaps on my front veranda. Thank God (FSM) it was a Friday night.

Oktoberfest

Just along the Cooks River from home is the Concordia Club. It's a German social club that used to be on Stanmore Road - in a 70's style Brutalist building. Thankfully, they downsized a few years back and took over the Tempe Lawn Bowls Club. Greens and clubhouse. Germans going to greens... not new.

And like Munich, they have the Bavarian Oktoberfest. Beer, music and dancing.
John and I went along on Saturday to sample the Germanic festivities, and resample, and resample. I only had six beers (which should be "biers"), over a couple of hours. Half litre steins are the go - $7 for a take home glass stein and $6.50 to fill it. That makes my intake being three litres of Warsteiner, a brilliant Pilsener. We were drunk, but strangely not as drunk as if you drank that volume in a local pub. Then again, I doubt any local (apart from Concordia Club) would have it on tap. As we exercised our stein arms, we met some locals - Simon from Tempe; and Kim and John from atop the Warren Cliff. Hope to catch up with them in the future.

We arrived as a procession of very Anglo Medieval marchers were about to parade. Decked out in finery of felt and feathers; with a couple of drummers and pipers, they did a great tattoo (see the photos). Afterwards, we spoke to Helmut, who was manning a barbecue and cooking German sausage. We know his name as he sported a Concordia Club badge proudly proclaiming "Helmut, Director". He told us that the marching group was "found" as they practised in the adjoining parkland. (I can't do his German accent in text but he said; "You must march at our Oktoberfest". And so it goes.)


After the parade, the Medieval Anglos made good use of the Green Common, and proceeded to play Croquet.

Michelle Turcscanyi and her husband, Atti, do Hungarian folk dancing. I worked with Michelle for many years as she is the art director for Time magazine - but a corporate schism has occurred and I no longer work on Time. Their dance group did an amazing set - fifteen minutes of folk dance. One of the photos here shows them being introduced and the MC was explaining how the dancing is unstructured and free flowing; with men solo first, women solo next... then coupling. The band in the background is a German band brought over especially for the event. They only speak Deutsch, so the MC was doing a lot of explaining. They played mostly bad eighties pop but in German, which made it bearable. But it was a good time to stumble upstream towards home.

Marrickville Cultural Festival

Sunday was Festival day along Marrickville Road. Was a good crowd, as the pics will show. Deborah Conway was playing but John (at left) and I kept moving through the crowd. She has a beautiful powerful voice. I wanted to see Unkle Ho, but there was no way to find out when he was playing. The Council website had a dud link to a programme so we missed out. It would have to be one of the better street festivals around due to the diversity of local cultures, although I thought there'd be more Vietnamese and Greek food.

The Last act , Deborah Conway. The sound at the centre stage where Unkle Ho would have been playing was poor - three walls boxing it in and distorting. That makes it a bit easier to accept missing him.