Happy

I’m enjoying Brunswick. It’s cool enough for an op shopping, gin swilling, truffle infused hipster like me without being too cool. You know, like, exhaustingly cool.

For example:

Brunswick cool – hey look, I found a vintage Petula Clark record from 1976 released on K-Tel in the Brotherhood of St Lawrence Op Shop. Awesome!

Fitzroy cool – Ugh, that’s so basic. Don’t you know Petula Clark stole her sound from a Japanese singer named Pei Turamoto who released one album of experimental Nippo-pop in 1959 that only sold 24 copies? I own the only copy in the southern hemisphere.

I don’t want to be Fitzroy cool. I don’t care if my vintage jacket is by Swiss Model rather than the obscure young designer who killed herself after Mary Quant stole all of her ideas. I like being able to buy my gin from Dan Murphy’s rather than having to know the small batch distiller personally. I prefer being able to buy a Petula Clark record from 1976 for $2 at an op shop rather than having to get my hands on the album of her Japanese contemporary by winning it in a high-stakes poker game in an underground opium den in Macau.

 

Fortunately there's plenty of my kind of cool to go around. Here are today's purchases, for a total of around $12:

 

And then there's the rejects:

 

 

'There's a party on with Rolf Harris' is now more of a warning than an enticement. And, from the well-worn trope of horrifying Christian album art...

 

To be fair, if I had hair like that I'd be a happy Christian too.