Love Freo

Somehow the closer I get to the end of the year, the busier my life seems to get. Not only am I flat out at work, my social calendar is bursting as well. That’s great, but I have to remind myself to keep a healthy balance – like displayed on this old Freo building: 8 hours work, 8 hours leisure, 8 hours sleep. My life is currently something like 10-9-5 (I guess if it was 5-9-10 I wouldn’t complain).

This may seem ridiculously unimportant, but being a communication designer I just can’t understand why the ticket machines in Freo have been designed against the visual rules. E.g. in the western world people read from left to right and from top to bottom. So what I read first on a Freo ticket machine is ‘2 Tickets’ (but I just need one…). Well that’s not nearly as confusing as the fact, that to get my ticket I have to press the red button. Generally red is used for stop, warning and danger signs, so one would instinctively hesitate pressing a red button. Red means’ stop’, green means ‘go’, but for the Freo ticket machines this rule has been turned around – crazy world.

So this is another of my guilty pleasures. Not because it’s bad for me but because as a man in my 30s I should be doing other things on a Saturday morning. This is a kids programme, as you can probably tell from the name (by that I mean it’s aimed at tweens and teenagers, not toddlers) but there are a few things about it which make it curiously addictive.

Firstly, it’s filmed entirely in Fremantle, and it’s always nice to see the place you live in and love to be on the TV. Secondly, the chap who plays the lead role, Vinnie, slightly over-delivers each line, which gives the show a sort of urgency where you feel you shouldn’t switch over, as if something is about to happen. The other thing I love, given that it’s aimed at younger viewers, is it’s not facile or patronising. Implausible (maybe), bizarre (slightly) but always thoroughly entertaining, even with their recycled story lines.

One thing I wondered is why I have never seen this programme being filmed. I am in Fremantle all day every day, and not once have I seen a camera crew pottering about. But now I’ve learned they filmed all this a few years ago. You can bet your ass though, that if they come back for another season, I will be trying to get into the background of every shot.

StreetSmartz –  10am Saturdays on Channel 9

info@lovefreo.com

StreetSmartz Cast (Image from the Streetsmartz.tv Website)

There is something very charming about the paintings on shop walls, which advertise their goods, like these ones which I saw on South Street, on the wall of an IGA, and in the Freo port area, on the wall of an old warehouse, which apparently housed a flower wholesale at some point in the past. The enterprise is long gone, but the flowers on the wall stayed. It must be very satisfying for the artist to create paintings at such a great scale.

A short film by Vincenzo Perrella and Dan Osborn. Music by Adrian Kingwell.

It is as big as our experiences and our imaginations; it grows as we grow. This is true for all humans, whether I’m in steel-and-glass city skyscrapers or branch-and-mud jungle treehouses, stony highland castles or goatskin desert tents. Everything is relative and Nowhere is in the eye of the beholder. One person’s Nowhere is another person’s Everywhere. The most unimaginably remote outpost is someone’s everyday world – and means the world to that person.

Tales from Nowhere – Don George (Ed.) – Lonely Planet Books (2006)

I read this quote today and really like it, it’s so true.