December 20, 2006

Over and Under

Two Vancouverites – Michael Kluckner and Christine Allen – have relocated to Sydney.  Canadians will certainly be familiar with Michael’s books and watercolours detailing the heritage of our city.  Now they can read his and Christine’s blogs, detailing the differences between us and Aus.
Here’s a sample:

Last week, on a visit into the City, I was struck by a major difference between Sydney and Vancouver (or, indeed, Seattle or the rest of North America): people don’t walk along the street carrying coffee or even soft drink or water bottles.
 After 3 1/2 months in the South Granville area of Vancouver, I had come to the conclusion that the standard urban human/sheep walking style involved one hand extended slightly in front of the body, the fingers and thumb in cup-holder position (the other arm, bent at the elbow, positions a mobile phone near an ear, of course). In Sydney, nobody eats and drinks while they’re walking. You see a lot of people buying take-away lunches and drinks from hole-in-the-wall delis, then carrying them to nearby parks or squares, but people don’t amble down the street sipping from large cardboard coffee cups.
Yes, there are Starbucks — a few anyway in the City — but the coffee culture in Sydney, which goes back to the milk bars of generations ago, is a sit-down-and-talk-with-friends one. Nevertheless, people here are as glued to their mobiles while they’re walking as anywhere else….

Click here for Michael’s blog, and here for Christine’s.

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Comments

  1. The same is true in Japan. I visited friends there in 1993 and they said that even at streetside vending machines, the Japanese will stand there to drink the beverage and deposit the can in the (recycling?) bin at the machine.

  2. The great thing is that in both Sydney and Tokyo, no one looks askance at anyone choosing to quaff their beverage while strolling, at least in my experience.

  3. I’ve loved Michael’s books for years. He’s documented the Vancouver I grew up in, and sadly too much of the Vancouver we’ve permanently lost.
    Someone should advise MK (love his initials) to get a blogging platform for running his site (WordPress, Typepad, etc.) as he has no RSS feed and therefore I will probably not visit it very often. Christine is using WordPress so I can subscribe to her feed.
    Some of his photos and observations so far a very compelling.

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