Tim Trainor spends every waking moment finding out what's all the gay rage in Perth right now. Events, culture and random bits and pieces from Perth, Australia.
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Viewing posts tagged ‘perth’
July 5
Review: Andaluz Bar
I’m always a fan of the one sentence review, but this time around instead of my usual opening rant I’ll let this audio clip from Pretty Woman give you the idea behind Andaluz Bar (web):
Andaluz don’t hate you, but if you turn up looking like a whorish Julia Roberts they may ask you to please leave. They are swanky, so yes, they are very expensive. The place is on Howard Street in the CBD, down a small alley, which I have been sworn not to comment as ‘very Melbourne’. I don’t know exactly when they opened but it wasn’t more than a couple of months ago.
Andaluz already have a strong following with the central business crowd. A friend tried to get in on a Wednesday evening but was turned away because the venue was already full. My group only managed to get at table by showing up dead on 6pm Saturday when the bar opens (you can’t make reservations). By the time I arrived (late) at 6.30pm every other table was already taken. They’re popular with the mid to late 20’s crowd; the bouncer even gave me a ‘holy shit’ when he discovered I’m actually much older than a 1988 kid. Thanks for that, charming bouncer.
Food is all tapas and like all tapas outside of Spain it’s very expensive. Not the place for a large dinner. The dishes are nice though, and served confusingly fast. The drinks list is extensive and the cocktails are exceptional. I can only describe my espresso ‘mexican wave’ as ecstasy to my lips, minus the MDMA.
You’re in close quarters with everyone around you but the place feels cosy rather than cramped. If you have some cash to burn and want to have a bit of a wanky and indulgent evening I give Andaluz a tick. But as you get more and more tipsy keep your Julia Roberts hat on and keep in mind that it’s all very expensive.
Accompanying photo stolen from STM Magazine. Pretty Woman joke premise stolen from Ragan Fox.
June 22
Murray Street Counter
Update: Check out page 11 of Tuesday’s West Australian for a run down of ‘Counter’. It’s an art installation commissioned by the City of Perth.
This interesting little distraction was being set up in Murray Street Mall at 8.30am this morning. It’s a person counter. The number on the display counts up every time some one walks through. You can find it directly opposite the entrance to the Perth Underground Station. By 5.30pm it was up to 2000.
Don’t ask me why it’s there, but it sure is intriguing. If you have the story behind the Murray Street counter please let me know. It must have a more meaningful purpose than enticing high school kids to run in circles around it (as seen in the accompanying photos). Countdown until a drunk bogan causes structural damage to the counter.
June 18
Media bits
Queen of Tupperware and gatekeeper to Perth’s drag empire, Val Nourished, has arranged herself onto page 2 of today’s West Australian. She’s there to talk about storage containers and lap bands, which I guess are sort of the same thing.
Props to Matthew for nabbing this great publicity - page 2 is a real effort. No points for The West editors who seem to have mixed up their gender prepositions, calling Val Nourished a ‘he’. Hrm. I guess they don’t understand the concept. You can read the whole article here.
Extended shopping hours are up in Parliament this week, and the big retailers are being very vocal. Myer said they have no immediate plans should the extended hours be approved, which must be a major blow to gays bois Perth-wide. Myer have a great business opportunity staring them in the face: simply turn Myer Basement into a mini-club on Friday nights. Every gay boi in Perth is already there anyway, might as well get them to stay, drink alcohol and buy more clothes. Then again, I already have enough trouble trying to find S sized garments in there - damn gays have already raided them all!
Finally, going back to The West Australian: That certain gay bar owner recently featured in a very oversized article publicising her engagement. Uhhhh. No comment from me, but here’s a facebook status update that was brought to my attention:
———- loves that Bree Maddox is getting hitched while the gays who pay her way can’t.
June 9
Media bits
The verdict is in: Gerardus Heijne has been found guilty of murdering his long term boyfriend early last year in their East Perth penthouse. For those who haven’t been following this local story, it could easily be woven into a made for TV movie: Gay lovers, rich entrepreneurs and founders of the Leonards chicken empire in WA hit rocky relationship waters, introduce money troubles into the picture, extravagant spending, a ‘bisexual’ teenage lover and a murderous climax ensures….
… well that’s the way The West Australian have painted it. In today’s paper they’ve included a sensationalised account of what went down, going right back to when the pair met at Connections in the 1980s. Have a read through, and just like I did, you can cringe every time they put quotation marks around the words “husband” and “marriage”.
Despite our murderous gay men it turns out Perth ain’t that bad - we’ve been ranked the fifth most liveable city on the planet. Glad to know our city is at least ‘liveable’. If you read further into the story it does feel like this survey was designed for middle class British families looking for the best place to emigrate to - no wonder Perth is so high up on the list.
In a recent ‘quality of life‘ survey Perth was ranked 21st. Will our liveability decrease as our desirability to poms increases? Omg, did I just go there?
June 6
foot. in my mouth.
One of the team at The Wire Magazine emailed me in response to my previous swipe at the mag. I have to eat some of my words because apparently all of the staff are in their 20’s to early 30’s, with some of them having recent ties with Perth’s street media.
The staffer also said it’s hard to make a magazine like The Wire when it’s wrapped in The West Australian, which I can appreciate. Must. hold back. urge. to criticise. The West….
I’m always more receptive when open lines of communication are drawn so I’m not going to write off The Wire just yet. If any of my readers ever catch me calling them “gayrage-heads”… please give me a slap.
Amusing observation: The Wire’s Facebook profile says they are a fan of UK shirtless rugby hunk Ben Cohen… wha?
June 5
Better late than never!
The May edition of WAX Magazine is now on the streets. Yes, I said May 
Don’t ask, but there was a delay of sorts. The important thing is you can now ogle over the scrumptious Phil Priest who is on the cover walking up some stairs in Kings Park. Wonder what’s on his iPod? Maybe he stores photos of himself naked on it! mmm.
My column is again joined by the infamous bathroom camwhore photo. I tell you that hairdryer in the background adds a touch of class!
Unfortunately due to the delays in getting the May edition out, we are skipping June. But we’re not going away, stay tuned.
June 4
Perth media bits
If you picked up Xpress or Drum Media today you would have seen RTRfm’s new station lineup for 2009/10. Very disappointing that ‘Open Closet’, the community radio’s gay and lesbian music and current affairs program has been shafted. It’s completely gone with no replacement. The changes coincide with the station getting a new General Manager - email Graeme Watson to tell him it should stay.
Today The West Australian properly launched their new competitor against Xpress and Drum Media: “The Wire Magazine“. Oh boy does it stink! You get to read everything that was in our free street press weeks ago, and pay the cost of a newspaper to do it.
The copy reeks of middle aged journos desperately trying to reach out for Gen Y, and is littered with embarrassing statements like “hey wire heads” and the Art Gallery’s Art Bar being described as “painfully cool”. To top it off, the opinion page is about how John Farnham is now ‘uncool’. Who cares!
The West really didn’t think this through: Gen Y don’t buy newspapers, and The Wire Magazine has no street cred. Avoid it.
June Out in Perth is on the streets this weekend.
June 4
Perth’s greatest asset
I must be really out of the loop because apparently Perth is home to the most popular user on Myspace Australia. That blabbering horse Louise Mombo (below) presented a story on A Current Affair last week. It was very entertaining*
When you just can’t be bothered trying to scope out all the fantastic indie music and art acts that come out of Perth, or quiet achievements like being the first city in Australia to adopt digital radio - you can always take solace in the fact we have the Aussie Myspace Queen. Hell… uh… yeah!… *cough*
Apparently this has already been covered all over Australian media for the last year, I never realised it because I abandoned myspace long ago, because it’s a hole. I just hope Perth doesn’t become known as the city that ‘whores it all out’. As the myspace queen said in the ACA story (actual word for word quote):
I want to be real online. Like. I don’t want anyone looking at me as some. Like. Object. Or something. Like. If a guy talks to me I know he wants to talk to me because of me, not because of the way I look or how I pose in my pictures. Probably.
I really want to not laugh…. I really do.
May 20
One last word
This is the last time I will bring up daylight savings, but I have some very important news. It turns out the guy who sparked the Bree Maddox Today Tonight outburst is actually moving to the Eastern States! I wish I could say it’s entirely because of daylight savings, but apparently he was planning on moving there anyway. It will at least give Bree some consolation, after hearing her advice he really did get himself a job and a LIIHHFFEE!!
I was trawling through YouTube and found this heinous video about WA daylight savings, which I thought I would share with you. Tell me how much you hate it with the new comment links I have poured my blood, sweat and php coding tears into. You can also comment on any other post now. Do it!
May 18
Perth’s growing skyline
Noticed there are so many god damn cranes in the city but don’t know what it’s all about? Well you lazy bum, I just did a whole lot of homework for you. Here’s what’s coming up (building and shopping wise) in the Perth CBD.
one40william is that mess of steel, concrete and noise right above the Perth Underground train station. When it’s finished it’s going to look like a giant Jenga tower. While the artist impression pictures are pretty funky, the shops are not the thing to get excited about. According to floor plans that long glass window directly above the train station entrance will be a ‘tavern’. The perfect vantage point to get trashed and laugh at people catching the train (or maybe have a perve?). Expected completion April 2010 (booo too far away!).
enex100 is that mysterious set of doors in the Hay Street mall that haven’t opened yet (the ones with Mimco next to them). When they do it’s going to be a whole lot of disappointment: Friendlies Chemist, something called ‘Health Kick’ and another Woolwooths. Zzzzzzz. Those doors will open next month.
Raine Square is the other hunk of metal across the road from one40william. Not too many details on the net about this building but it will be the new home of Bankwest (banks employ a lot of gay people), and will have three levels of retail (one40william only has two). Apparently there will be new underground tunnel built so you can walk directly from the tower to the train station. One artist impression I found featured a Prada store along Murray street. November this year.
By 2012 the old Bankwest tower Central Park will no longer be Perth’s tallest - 20 years later we are finally growing out of the 1990s! The BHP Tower will become the tallest skyscraper in Perth once completed. It’s under construction right now in Perth’s famous giant hole in the ground.
May 15
A day off…
I’ve been a bit slack lately, and I don’t have anything huge or controversial to report right now. But, I would like to say…
Tomorrow when you go to your local place of voting, VOTE YES for Daylight Savings! Bring Perth alongside the rest of the world and give us more time to spend outdoors with our friends and family in the summer. VOTE YES!
Even if you were going to vote no, just do me a favour and vote yes this one time … your yes vote will help negate people getting too much of the media spotlight.
Stay tuned to gay rage, I have some cool Perth related items to post over the weekend. I’m also toiling hard to add the function to allow readers to comment on posts. In the meantime, here’s a video for all of the Perth Bears who read this blog. If you’re a fan of parody, you might want check out the original. Love when he breaks a nail:
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