Spotting the next hip hub



This was published 8 years ago

Spotting the next hip hub

By Craig Mathieson

Melbourne's evolving landscape continues to throw different areas into the spotlight. Here are the suburbs to watch.

In 2010, friends and fellow Fitzroy residents Dion Waterman and Dan Jones realised there was barely anywhere they liked to go for a drink in their suburb. After they'd groused about this crucial shortcoming for a while, friends and colleagues told them to stop complaining and do something about it. So they did. They decided to open their own bar, and started a search with simple parameters.

Shoona from Chadwick Models, in Footscray. Shoona wears Maurie & Eve Onyx split pant and loop top, both from Fame Agenda.


''We wanted to be in Collingwood, but not on the main drag,'' recalls Waterman, a 34-year-old Perth transplant who had experience working in hospitality. ''We wanted something cheap and close enough for people to get to from public transport, but too hard for dickheads to find.''

What they came up with was 99 Problems, a low-budget shop-front conversion that successfully opened for business at 31 Johnston Street in April last year. The bar was less than a kilometre from Brunswick Street, the increasingly commercialised epicentre of Fitzroy that Waterman describes as ''disgusting'', but the rent was half (about $25,000 a year instead of $50,000) and the environs were radically different.

The <i>Dogs in Space</i> house in Richmond.

The Dogs in Space house in Richmond.

Melbourne's suburbs, particularly in the inner city, are constantly evolving, and while the process of gentrification - where an influx of wealthier residents redefines a neighbourhood's social, ethnic and commercial mix - is well known and readily observed, it is the locales that are as-yet unaffected that offer the most interesting lifestyle opportunities, whether it's an under-the-radar restaurant, cafe, or a local milieu populated by young musicians and artists.

Gentrification snakes its way through Melbourne on a mix of financial opportunity and perceptions of cool. It has reached Yarraville, Windsor and Thornbury. For some Melburnians, the desire to have an address in a hip location is nigh-on impossible to resist, but the very thing that creates that urge - which made Carlton, Fitzroy and Richmond very expensive residential areas - is an initial population that pays no attention to the dominant next wave.

''We got beers in that we liked, we got spirits in that we liked. We basically did what would appeal to us and our friends,'' Waterman says of 99 Problems' operating philosophy. ''We didn't want some over-the-top mixology culture, or a real hipster nest where people felt uncomfortable to come in. We have locals walking home stopping in.''

The bar, which has a narrow street frontage and is licensed to hold 50 customers, is in premises that had been closed for years - the last working business there was an S&M dungeon. Situated midway between Smith and Wellington streets, 99 Problems shares a patch of Johnston Street with abandoned shop fronts converted to residences with the addition of ramshackle curtains, empty warehouses and offices, a mechanics and a Greek tavern; on the floor above is a low-income boarding house.


But the heraldry of urban change is readily apparent, whether it's fresh ''Leased'' stickers or the yellow sheets of mandatory planning request notices. Next door to 99 Problems, a long-abandoned factory has been remodelled as the Magic Johnston Studio Space, a 1200-square-metre conversion with space for 50 creative ventures. A cafe is due opposite; an eyewear store has opened nearby; and in 2013, Circus Oz will move into the refurbished former Collingwood TAFE.

In this part of Collingwood, the process of creating alternative cachet, which in turn leads to gentrification, has been compressed, because parts of the 3066 postcode have quickly undertaken both phases. To the south, on the Fitzroy border, Gertrude Street has gone through dizzying change in the past few years, while gentrification has also moved up the southern end of Smith Street. Further down Johnston Street to the east, near Hoddle Street, marketing firms and graphic design studios sit alongside a new provedore and the perpetually busy Bluebird Espresso cafe.

Gentrification has been recognised in Melbourne since the beginning of the 1970s, when Lord and Lady Casey, the Australian politician and diplomat who had just finished as the first Australian-born governor-general and his formidable wife, bought a home in East Melbourne.

''At the time, it was a slightly seedy boarding house suburb,'' notes Miles Lewis, a University of Melbourne academic whose areas of expertise include Australian architectural history and housing policy. Lewis, who believes ''trendification'' is more accurate than gentrification, says interesting places to eat, along with colonies of artists and musicians, have long attracted waves of affluent newcomers. The difference now is that the pressure they exert has increased, especially with the decline of migrant blocs such as the post-World War II Greek and Italian communities that would anchor a suburb's identity.

In the 1980s, Richmond was home to a swelling Vietnamese community, students, and a generation of post-punk musicians. The latter was chronicled in Richard Lowenstein's classic 1986 movie Dogs in Space, and the four-bedroom house at 18 Berry Street, whose chaotic, creative inhabitants inspired the movie, sold last month for $1.15 million.

Richmond, with its renovated Victorian homes, apartment developments and numerous cafes, is a model of how a suburb moves from underground to mainstream.

''A lot of Richmond was identified as Struggletown. The demographic was quite old - there were a lot of wharfies living there,'' recalls Peter Perrignon, the director of Hocking Stuart Richmond, who has been involved with real estate in the suburb since 1990. ''There was no doubt that proximity to the city and the presence of the creative class attracted a lot of the early buyers.''

Two decades ago, Perrignon was selling a single-fronted, two-bedroom home in good condition for about $200,000. The same entry-level property today would be expected to fetch $850,000. In real-estate terms, the outcome of long-term gentrification couldn't be any clearer: ''The market has doubled and doubled again,'' Perrignon says.

Gentrification is already lurking around Johnston Street. The entire block that 99 Problems is in has a demolition clause on it, meaning leaseholders could be moved out if a developer is ready to try and launch the neighbourhood's first medium-density apartment project. ''I think we'll be here for five years,'' Waterman predicts.

If the bar had to relocate tomorrow, where would it go? ''Footscray.'' The hub of the inner west has long been discussed as a site for gentrification, but Footscray is only now, slowly, acquiring the community assets and population that make a suburb hip. Comparatively cheap rents and the availability of studio spaces have drawn artists, but Footscray's most prominent attraction is the breadth of culinary choice.

''To have that diversity is amazing,'' says Lauren Wambach, whose Footscray Food Blog (footscrayfoodblog.blogspot is a popular chronicle of the suburb's vibrant food scene. ''We don't have generic African restaurants - we've got distinct Ethiopian, Sudanese and Somalian. The Vietnamese places aren't generic, either. There's the pho places, the noodle shops, the bakers. With Footscray you get that depth.''

Picking up a traditional Korean rice drink from Snow Tree, a bright new cafe on Leeds Street, Wambach can point out the subtle differences that provide ''vertical change'': A Vietnamese restaurant, Sapa Hills on Hopkins Street, has a more polished service staff and a liquor licence, while the menu for Konjo, an Ethiopian restaurant amidst a cluster of similar establishments on Irving Street, offers greater explanation of dishes and ingredients.

Footscray's restaurants, still with budget prices, are starting to think about wider markets than their own ethnic groups. ''The first wave is here,'' says Wambach of the creative artisans and young families who've been priced out of Fitzroy and Prahran. A married mother of three who works from home as a medical typist, Wambach has been in Footscray for six years. That's long enough to see the signs of change flicker, fade and then flicker again: central Footscray still has a street drug trade as well as early adopters wary of gentrification. ''They're very hard to please. Some residents don't want anyone to come, but they're cross that no one comes,'' says Wambach, who was shocked to recently discover that east of Footscray train station is now considered the suburb's ''yuppy side''.

Footscray also got an original music venue earlier this year. Owners Matt and Melanie Bodiam had been at the Arthouse Hotel on the central business district's northern fringe for a decade, but when the lease ended there they opened the Reverence Hotel at 28 Napier Street (the Arthouse is now an Irish theme pub) to house alternative music.

''We didn't have the money to do that in a lot of the trendier suburbs. We had a bit of faith in Footscray - it's just five kilometres from the city and there are a lot of young people here, university students,'' Matt Bodiam says. ''There are the ingredients for a good community and a good music scene.''

A suburb that is going to attract social change agents needs certain elements. Abandoned shop fronts that can be quickly returned to retail usage is one, as are empty former industrial and commercial spaces that can double as cheap housing and studio spaces. The change that has moved through Prahran and down Chapel Street to Windsor has nowhere to go now, because St Kilda East and Balaclava are already affluent suburbs with few empty spaces or cultural opportunities.

It is a different matter in Melbourne's north, where what began in Fitzroy late last century has moved outwards along the arteries of tramlines to bring gentrification to Clifton Hill, Brunswick East, Northcote and now Thornbury. Hence the people priced out of those suburbs are now remaking Preston.

''When you make music, you don't make money, so you have to go to places along with your friends and all of a sudden it's semi-cool,'' observes Richard Stanley, a musician, bar employee and head of the leading independent record label Aarght! Records. Stanley has previously lived in, and had to leave, Richmond, St Kilda and North Fitzroy before finding a three-bedroom house with polished floorboards and a garden for $400 a week in Preston.

''If you haven't been north of Bell Street, that's a real psychological barrier, but once you cross it, you're fine,'' Stanley says. ''Preston is nice and peaceful.''

When Dave Morgan, a long-time chef and coffee fanatic, came back to Melbourne in 2006, he started working at one of Thornbury's first cafes, High Street's Northern Soul. But he and his wife couldn't afford to buy a home in Thornbury, so they went two kilometres north to Preston, where Morgan would observe a daily migration to Northcote and Fitzroy to access their cafe culture. In 2010 he moved to fill that gap, turning an empty shop at 107 Plenty Road into Boundary Espresso, a warmly welcoming cafe that seats almost 40 and does baked eggs with a Middle Eastern twist.

''I came here to avoid the competition,'' explains the 40-year-old Morgan, who knew that with Preston rents half of what a similar space would cost in Northcote, the ''fair chunk'' of life savings he was investing would last longer and allow him to stay true to his beliefs. ''We just stuck to what we wanted to do. We weaned people on to chorizo.''

Boundary Espresso shares a winding block with a laundrette, a woodworking machinery shop and the tell-tale curtained former shop fronts. Just south on Plenty Road, several eight- to 10-storey apartment buildings take the place of dilapidated former industrial sites and in the past year, Morgan has noticed an influx of 20-somethings to Preston.

The cafe owner says that if he had to move he'd go a few kilometres north, to the intersection of Plenty Road and Tyler Street, where Preston becomes Reservoir.

''That's the next frontier, for five year's time,'' says Morgan, describing a mostly empty shopping strip on a hilltop.

A further five minutes on the 86 tram that runs along Plenty Road gets you there and it's much as indicated, with a newsagent, Indian restaurant and real-estate agent's office dotting the closed retail shells of the 1950s and 1960s. But a few doors down Tyler Street, highlighting the art deco influence common to Preston's building stock, is the Tyler Street Cafe, which owner and operator Matt Barnes opened three years ago when he and his wife were priced out of Northcote and moved to Preston.

Does Barnes see inner-city culture and its urban renaissance reaching him 11 kilometres from Melbourne's centre? ''That's what I'm banking on,'' he says without pause. ''We had our first sightings of a hipster recently. The refugees from Fitzroy are coming.''

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