There was a time when Melbourne’s Mission to Seafarers was the hippest scene in town. Artist Laura Delaney told me it used to be *the* place to go for sailors and well turned-out Melbourne ladies to get loose and have a rum-fuelled glide around the dance floor.

These days it still functions as hang out for seafarers in serious need of a bit of land-based social time, but you might not even notice it’s there, wedged between a highway off ramp and a cluster of high-density towers at Docklands. Visual artists Laura Delaney and Danae Valenza in collaboration with sound artist Lisa Steward are making people take notice again. They’ve spent the better part of a year at the Mission, working at the bar, listening to stories, dusting out the archives and distilling the building’s 150-year history into a walk-in contemplation of community, isolation, migration and communication (complete with giant, dripping ice spheres that sing) as part of the Next Wave Festival.

They’ve taken care to build the art into the functionality of the place. The musty, time capsule feel of it is intact (and in some places literally amplified). Anyone can still wander in off the street to shoot some pool or watch TV (Fridays between 12 and 2pm are apparently the best for cheap drinks and Chilli Padi food) with all profits put back into keeping the mission running.

As ambitious as the whole project already is, it’s still not quite finished. On Friday, (more…)

The predictability of what I normally eat makes dining the filing of my body’s working life. But this is where Daniel George Dobra’s molecular food night steps in, electrifying the brain back into questioning exactly what your mouth is tasting. Nothing on the plate here is quite what it seems.

Appropriately garbed in lab coats and working from a penthouse laboratory at the Aylesbury Hotel, Dobra (formerly of The Brix and The Royal Mail) is presenting some illusive fare in a style not normally seen by the likes of anyone but Swedish millionaires. In our nine courses and several cocktails we experienced sensory everything from champagne foam to colour-changing water-soluble dyes. There was an anti-establishment French bouillabaisse (served here cold and raw), a magically meatless take on osso bucco and a three-part crack baggie and toothpaste-tube ensemble.

Reconstructed sits atop deconstructed; foams fight with gels to float powders and pastes. The “bacon” from the dish ‘morning after served the night before’ will blow your mind when you find out what it really is. A dessert ode to St Kilda Beach is done disgustingly well, and the whole team are more than happy to explain the scientific processes while you sit back and nibble at your edible after-dinner cigarettes.

And the Lord looked down on the sons of men and said, “Let there be more greyhounds on pants. Chinos, in particular.”

And Jesen listened, and the Lord saw that the greyhound print chinos were good and instructed Comeback Kid to waive the shipping fees so that the sons of men may cover their shame cheaply. And He also specified that they should be available in classic khaki and forest green, and bare the likenesses of over fifty famous greyhounds. Spot them all!

Now, let us pay.

I found Tom the typewriter guy by emailing Robert at the Australian Typewriter Museum in Canberra. I had recently acquired a very beautiful, but very underserviced Remington Noiseless. Robert was quick to reply: “Elgin Street, Carlton, up at the top end.” These slightly cryptic instructions were followed by the encouraging words: “I don’t know his surname, I don’t think he uses one, but he is excellent with typewriters.”

Robert was right. Tom is on Elgin Street, he doesn’t use a surname and he is excellent with typewriters. He has a shop full of them, and photocopiers and fax machines, which he says people still buy. In this day and age? Cray-zee. You can’t just show up and walk into Tom’s shop. You must call. The reason you must call is that Tom lives upstairs and he, understandably, doesn’t want to hang out in his shop all day waiting for you to show up. Once inside, Tom will give you a quote. You can either take it, or go see the other guy in town who fixes typewriters. Which is no-one.

Tom learnt his trade in Europe and he learnt it well. Not only did he fix my Remington Noiseless he also cleaned it up and gave it a polish. Now it looks far less scrappy and works a dream… for a typewriter. Those of you who have used a typewriter will understand this. They are hard work at the best of times. You really have to punch those keys. I have no idea how the ladies of Mad Men did this all day without breaking their fingers but I tip my hat to them, and Tom, and Robert of course, for keeping the dream alive.

Ever had your nails done? Check Talon Salon, one of Next Wave’s Kickstart projects. An intimate audio theatre work taking place at a Vietnamese-run nail salon in Richmond. Playwright Michele Lee put together an exceptional creative team for the production of a site-specific piece that unfolds in four narratives – or sound tracks – inspired by real stories, which touch upon issues of Asian identity in Australia. There are nearly 60,000 Vietnamese-born people living in Victoria. And a hell of a lot of nail salons.

An interview with Michele Lee (Play Writer), Tanya Dickson (Director) and Clare McCraken (visual designer).

How did you initiate the concept of Talon Salon?

M: At the time when I was doing a residency with ABC radio national I had the audio theatre piece in mind and got my nails done. Not that I do manicures that often, but I had done one in Vietnam the year before and it was kind of nice! It made me reflect about my mom and the post-Vietnam war generation coming to Australia with low language skills and limited job opportunities. The content came from that experience and the form came from a residency, being aware that Next Wave is into experimental forms.

On your website you write “even audio work requires costumeries.” What is the relationship between audio work and theatre in this piece?

T: Talon Salon asks the audience to engage and to be active, it can happen in theatre shows but here there is a lot more room for it. And for imagination.

C: It also points out that everyday artisans are performers in their own right. It is the mundane becoming the artwork, there is something very beautiful about that process of painting the nails and skill level.

T: We set up a framework for the scene in front of you to be viewed as a piece of theatre, it highlights the performance and invites to look at it more closely.

M: We change the space by being there with our props, the reference to costume is mainly because there will always be someone from the team to help the visitor settling into the experience and we made decisions about what that person should wear.

C: Even the staff pay greater attention to the space, which has a very particular aesthetic and decor. Something that we discussed the most was how to the balance the existing artistic elements and what we contribute. Not to interfere too much, that’s why we talked about when putting the headphones on for two weeks because that changes the way in which you look at getting your nails done!

With the hundreds on nail salons in Melbourne, why did you choose this one?

M: It was a warm reference from my manager at Victoria legal aids- that’s my office job. She doesn’t get her nails done but walks past this salon everyday and felt welcomed by Quyen, the owner, engaging people on the street. The first step was to be getting our nails done together and I came back to interview the staff. Later on, when picking a site I felt comfortable enough to ask Quyen.

Is it a good nail salon?

C: As technicians yes, but in terms of working with us it’s pretty exceptional. When you interact with everyday trade there can be a real mistrust between what you want to achieve as an artist and the functioning of their business. But Quyen has been very open to our ideas, curious and very generous with her time. The staff are very sweet and it’s quite spacious!

There are four tracks to choose from, without revealing too much can you give us some indications about what they are?

T: There is ‘Husbands’, which tells the story of three men associated with the salon. I’m interested to see who picks that story, it is an unexpected perspective. ‘Telephone’ is reconnecting an aunty working in a nail salon in Melbourne with an estranged niece living in Ho Chi Minh City. ‘Travellers’ is what happens after hours and follows in unexpected relationships. ‘The chair’ is the abstract piece that dwells on the beauty industry and asks why we do these things to ourselves, but explores multiple things as well. The other three are a narratives but this one directly places you in the work.

C: ‘The Chair’ touches upon the important theme of the dynamic between the person getting their nails done and the technician. Because for those people who have never got their nails done it’s the most confronting part, how you feel about the power dynamic of having someone washing your feet and cutting the dead skin away.

How central is intimacy to this work?

C: It’s very interesting because we had a listening party and we were offering hand massages. It’s that thing of touching someone you don’t know!

M: That was so sensual for me!

C: You were amazing you did so many! When I was painting nails I felt that we had to have quite intimate conversations because I felt that I couldn’t just sit quietly holding their hand.

M: About the workers, I read early on when doing research for the project that it’s not just about skilled labor. It’s emotional labor as well.

C: Something else I found is that hands say so much about a parson and what we do. I realised that when I was painting nails, people who do things with their hands were quite embarrassed about their finger nails, like a few painting students. I had to say, “It’s okay, my hands are like this as well!”

M: It’s very intimate to be that close with people and to be touching them. When you come to our show people touch you!

The Next Wave Festival runs from May 19 to 27. Tune in for daily Next Wave posts on our site – even the weekend!

The kids will love Fairy Park. It’s an entire mountain peppered with castles, castle-sized playgrounds and fairy tale scenes. For more than 50 years it has been a dream come true for the little ones.

But kids are fucked up. Watch the Boohbahs and tell me kids aren’t sick and warped. More than that, fairy tales and all their harsh lessons seem grim as you grow older. Maybe you’ll read the original Grimm tales and they’ll seem even grimmer. Or maybe you’ll dip into Freud and realise that fairy tales are no more than a symbolic exploration of fear.

With all this is in mind know that Fairy Park, while a child’s treat, can be one of the strangest and most frightening experiences of an adult’s life.

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Andrew Morgan runs People’s Potential Unlimited (PPU), the Washington DC label that discovers and reissues some of the weirdest and most insane ultra-rare boogie, funk and soul from the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. His latest gem/find is Uku Kuut. Not a lot is known about Uku. He was born in the Soviet Union and raised in Sweden and Santa Monica. When Morgan tracked him down he was recording and producing music in Tallinn, Estonia. As an 11 year old he performed as a vocalist alongside some of Estonia’s top jazz musicians and his mother is legendary Estonian singer Marju Kuut.

On Visions of Estonia, Uku produces a mad blend of funk and soft jazz. Written and recorded at his home studios in Los Angeles and Stockholm between 1982 and 1989, the album matches left-field beats with lost ’80s boogie groove. All recorded on domestic and Soviet electronic gear. Songs such as ‘Real Love‘ and ‘Secret Dream‘ sound like they could accompany the outro of an ’80s morning television program. The closing ‘Right or Wrong’, with its strutting boogie and crooning vocals, proves that while some get ready to bag out the Eurovision song contest not all Eastern Euro songs are lame.

Charles Schulz (of Peanuts) famously bought every single Esterbrook Radio #914 pen nib when they heard they were being discontinued. R Crumb won’t fuck with anything but a Rapidograph technical pen. Pencils though? Voices in unison were praising the Eberhard Faber Blackwing 602. Famous users included Vladimir Nabokov, Frank Lloyd Wright, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, Stephen Sondheim, Igor Stravinsky and Chuck Jones. How many famous people use your favourite pencil? Don’t make me laugh. Even the Blackwing’s motto ‘Half the pressure, twice the speed’ is imposing and sleek in a modernist kind of way.

Then: disaster. Blackwings were discontinued in 1998. I have seen evidence of them selling for upwards of $50 on eBay. An incredibly exhaustive blog sprung up. The streets ran with graphite. People wept. Then: Resurrection. California Cedar Products bought the Blackwing trademark and started manufacturing recreations of the Palomino Blackwing 602 and the Palomino Blackwing. The former for writers, the latter for sketchers – and now available in Australia at NoteMaker. It’s almost impossible to overstate the reverence people have for this pencil. Such fanatical devotion to a writing stick. But, as Ray Eames said, “What works good is better than what looks good, because what works good lasts.” And sometimes what works good can even come back from the dead. It’s the Jesus pencil.

“Not creepy” is how Kenny Pittock told me to describe Twenty Nine Drawings of People on the Train. And considering this publication is precisely what the title suggests, his sentiments, intentions and motivation for making it all seem pretty on the level.

Usually Kenny makes sculptures that look like the thing they’re supposed to look like. But his hour-long daily commute from Ferntree Gully to VCA led him to start sketching his fellow passengers and what was a simple game to pass the time became an obsession amounting to 300 or so portraits, and counting.

The drawings are crude, candid, often unfinished but accurate representations of the real Melbourne public transport experience. And if you can’t get enough of that realness, there is further documentation on his blog and YouTube channel, including gems: Man in suit (with a racist and his dog) and Girl in bandana handling a ball.

We needed an antidote to the disproportionate pride people take in their shitty meals, documented online for the world to see. That is Cook Suck. He writes some pretty scathing reviews on some pretty disgusting home-cooked meals – but, like, where’s your credentials dude? We asked him to step up to Celebrity Non-Chef. And here it is. Over to you, CS.

Introduction

I was going to cook a dish from probably my favourite food blog at the moment, The Bookery Cook, but it was one of those Mondays where the world felt like bullshit and I would probably wind up on my own website if I tried something tricky – so I cooked an easy favourite from Justine Schofield’s site. Haloumi, eggplant mash, goddamn pine nuts (aren’t pine nuts so unreasonably expensive?), crispy as fuck rocket, and market beetroot so fresh and juicy your hands look like you’ve just got home from the abortion factory. It’s a top dish: the tahini/eggplant mash with lemon juice is impossible to fuck up and it’s great on bread for lunch; it’s like baked beans and toast for people who have sexual intercourse.

Ingredients

• Haloumi
• Eggplant
• Beetroot (bunch)
• Tablespoon of tahini (you’ll be forced to probably buy a tub of it)
• Lemon
• Rocket (fresh as you can, supermarket rocket is the pits)
• Pinenuts
• Garlic clove

Steps

1. Oven to 200C – bit of oil and salt on whole beetroot, wrap in alfoil – oven for 40.

2. Eggplant: same deal with oil and salt. Puncture all over with fork (which is very satisfying, get into it, feels good man) – oven for 30.

3. Remove, let cool, peel the beetroots and then chop into circles. Don’t put gloves on, just do it with your hands, release your inner animal.

4. Same deal with eggplant – combine with tahini and lemon juice in a bowl and mash with a fork until you’re feeling it.

5. Now fry the haloumi. This is the hardest part – everyone has their own method. I go hot and quick with a bit of fresh mint in the oil, but whatever.

6. Finally, make the salad. You should be having a side salad with most meals you cook (in my opinion), but a simple olive oil/rocket/pinenut deal will do here. Lay it out however you want, see picture for details. Don’t get too George Calombaris with it but don’t eat it out of the pan either; have some fucking self respect but keep it cool.

7. Eat in front of housemates, don’t share. Don’t even give them any of the leftovers, fuck them, they’ll never learn that way.