And then there was Shady Pines, a basement saloon behind an unmarked door on an empty alley wedged between Crown St. and Oxford – two of the city’s most happening strips. A speakeasy to make any true Brooklyn trendster weak at the knees. Sydney’s only American Apparel shop was less than a block away.

Past that unmarked door, was a low-ceilinged room, its floor spread with worn carpets. A long bar stretched along one wall, its bottles catching the dusty light of the ornate lamps. The stuffed and mounted heads of North American animals – everything from bison to catfish – adorned the walls.

Having spent a semester trudging about Brooklyn, investigating the whole urbanised, hipsterfied Americana thing going on there, I’d now found in Sydney something far edgier, and infinitely more confused. A parody of the Brooklyn parodies of old school Midwestern dive bars.

Our table was lit by a candle in a grimey mason jar – the mason jar! Adored festish of the Brooklyn hipster enclaves from September to October 2011! – and we ordered whiskey and local cider. A bowl of peanuts in their shells was placed on the table by a disinterested waiter.

I did what any aspiring young Brooklyn trendy would do; I got out my phone, and when no one was watching I took photos. And then I pretended I wasn’t embarrassed to be doing so. And the room was so dark, so like authentically divey, that the pictures turned out terribly. And then I planned my next blog post.

Wandering Valparaiso a couple of years ago, I heeded the advice of Lonely Planet and visited a couple of cemeteries on the hills overlooking the city. Last year in Cienfuegos, when unsure of how to spend the day I visited a bayside cemetery, again at Lonely Planet’s suggestion. With all the melodramatic statuary – angels fainting over one another, lions weeping, virgins imploring the heavens – and photogenic decay that goes on within them, such cemeteries make the perfect guidebook filler.

Cemeteries in Anglophone countries just don’t garner the same inches of guidebook approval. Maybe they seem too muted, too dour and Protestant. Maybe they don’t seem old enough or grand enough, and thus don’t seem mysterious enough.

Wedged behind a supermarket on a narrow street in an area thrumming with bars and restaurants and street art and winos, Newtown’s Camperdown Cemetery has plenty of mystique, it just doesn’t advertise it. Hidden behind graffitied walls, it is easily overlooked by everyone except the local goth kids and their Saturday night candles.

Harking from Sydney’s sandstone days – circa 1850 – Camperdown Cemetery is only a couple decades younger than La Recoleta, but has a completely different vibe. After a girl was murdered here, the bounds of the cemetery were decreased to make more room for a park and less room for the dead. Tombstones from the reclaimed land were deposited higgledy-piggledy within the cemetery ground. Most are now overgrown, many are cracked or crumbling. There’s little sense of order to the place, which might be why ghost (and goth) sightings are so common.

A lugubrious Moreton Bay fig tree holds court over the gates of the cemetery; eventually its roots will infiltrate every grave and overturn every tombstone. Already many of the tombs sit crooked and subsiding. Still, for all the desolation and decay, the details of many of the tombs are in tact, and these paint a picture of life – and how it tended to end – in the Sydney colony. Death by water is a recurring theme, the victims of some shipwrecks buried in common graves.

As the stones crack and shift, those buried beneath them lose their names and fade into obscurity. Camperdown Cemetery evokes none of the permanence of its Baroqueish counterparts in other places, but is all the same a repository of crumbling history in a country that often forgets that it has any.

I used to say that not many great international acts came to Australia. I was very wrong, but it never mattered anyway because there were so many local acts working the circuit. I was bummed to realise I’d be missing the main late-Summer festival season, but there’s always a show somewhere.

These guys are The Former Love. I’ve known the front man since he was a mere bairn. Still kind of a shock to realise that he and his mates aren’t twelve years old (and thus a surprise to realise that I’m no longer 18). Less surprising to discover that in the last few years they’ve become pretty awesome.

It’s not their own song, but they stole a bit of local infamy with this…

Here is the original…

And for a bit of their original stuff (even Sydney loves antlers)…

Dear self six months ago,

Thank you for your postcard from Mazunte, full of nostalgia after almost two years in Mexico. It was very good to hear from you even though, silly tit, you obviously didn’t consider the fact that six months after that postcard was sent I wouldn’t be starving in New York but rather sunning myself back in Sydney.

You were of course right about many things. New York is cold and expensive, and I spend a lot of time fretting about all the travel I am not doing, books I’m not writing, clothes I’m not wearing and money I’m not making. Life is very different from what it was in Mexico.

I’m not starving though, and I haven’t dropped out yet. I am enjoying uni, thanks for asking, although I still don’t really know what I’m doing there. You were wrong about the ramen though; pizza by the slice will kill me long before noodles do. Also donuts.

Anyway, I’m in Sydney. My first trip home in two and a half years. My first hot southern Christmas in five years. Mum is very happy. The cat is feigning indifference.

It is wonderful to be back. I’d forgotten how deeply this country resonates with me: every raucous bird call (you couldn’t really call it song), every aromatic rainstorm. It is beautiful here. A shame I’m allergic to everything. Far too much nature about.

I haven’t forgotten the girl. How could I? She was in Sydney too. You can see her wrist in one of the photos. She’s not around as often as she was. When she is, it feels like Mazunte all over again.

I’ve been eating all the delightfully crappy foods from our childhood. I’ve hung around with a lot of marsupials; I still remember so many of the weird animal facts we learned as a kid. The neighbourhood we grew up in doesn’t feel quite as suffocating as it used to. I think my accent might be growing back.

So basically, I’m keeping it together. Things aren’t as bad as you feared.

Good luck out there,

Phil

P.S. yes that is a baby koala…

Anyway, this is about a visit to Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn…

On the rooftops of Brooklyn, people are trying to bring the transcendence of the country into the empty spaces of the city. Overlooking the East River, a 6000 square foot rooftop farm is growing tomatoes, radishes, chilies, and orderly rows of herbs. Chickens scratch in their coup and honey is congealing in the beehives. A bunch of local chefs get their produce here; no other veggies in New York have as direct a commute as this from soil to plate.

The labour at the rooftop farm is provided in part by volunteers. A no-bullshit ethic prevails; there’s work to be done and if you’re only here to spectate, you best stay the cuss out of the way. The volunteers work like Puritans, while down below them the Sunday sloppy brunch crowd enjoy the fruits of their labour.

While doing a little ‘research’ for one of my Glimpse articles, I came upon this fellow. He’s wearing the battle gear of the 14th Brooklyn, who fought for Lincoln in the Civil War. Just like all good Brooklynites, they were distinguishable by their attire, which was like, totally avant-garde. Maybe even French.

Pilfered from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Brooklyn

Look at that rugged beard. Look at that jaunty headwear. Look at that ironic pipe (sorry to say I’ve largely missed the pipe craze in NY). Look at that totally vintage jacket. Look at that aggressive belt. Look at those strappy leather boots, with pants strategically stuffed into them. Sure the pants are kind of baggy, but apparently skinny jeans are on the way out anyway. And the 90s are on the way in, which is why hammer pants are back (if they ever really left. They definitely never left Argentina). Look at that cool leather backpack (it fits my iPad , my Macbook, and the collected works of Joan Didion!). Look at that gun; it would make a great juxtaposition in any living room beside the Guy Fawkes mask and the Ai Weiwei screen print.

Taste of Williamsburg had put pickles on my mind. And pulled pork and salty caramel ice cream and organic oregano popcorn and earl grey creme brulee and frozen custard. None of it was exactly traditional, but it was all a fusion of other traditional, country comfort foods. It was this kind of urbanised country kitsch that made me want to write about such things for Glimpse.

So I went to the Chili Pepper Fiesta and listened to some awesome rockabilly twang, and I went to the Hard Cider Revival and ended up talking to picklers and bakers, and I went to the Peck Slip Pickle Fest and discovered that I had a pickle limit, and had to take refuge amongst the peanut butter and honey crafters. And I went to all of these alone because if there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s that New York loves the idea of going to these kind of things way more than actually going to them. But in true pseudo-country style there was always someone who talk to, who wanted to feed you and who really didn’t seem to care if you didn’t want to buy their home-style spicy pickled beets.

Brothers was a great album, maybe even a classic album. Some might call it a perfect album. So what do you do after releasing the perfect album? Anything you want, that’s what, as long as it’s different. Nothing short of Kid A was going to be expected of the Keys after Brothers. They could have invented some new instruments, they could have even taken a bunch of old ones (preferably really old ones) and played them at the same time, like all the other polymath troubadours of today (very clever Andrew Bird, now sit down). Ideally, though, they would have gone even further and found a way to make music without instruments (no, not Medúlla style), using only the powers of their awesomeness. Instead… I still just hear guitar and drumkit, and only one of each at a time.

2. The album appears to have been recorded in a studio, and in good health.

Why do record companies even let artists near studios these days? It’s very simple: Bon Iver disappears into a winter Wisconsin cabin with a mysterious liver ailment and emerges with a brand new sound. Just to remind everyone of his inspirational experience in the wilds, he slaps some frosty trees on the album cover. The new minimum standard for album art should be as follows: if you didn’t record in it, you can’t put it on your album cover. If the Keys wanted to put a beat up old van on their album cover, they could have at least taken the time to write an album in that van, maybe take it down to Mexico, get a case of Montezuma’s Revenge. That would be inspiration.

3. War has not ended. Famine has not ceased. The rapture is not upon us.

Given the ability of the Keys to bring a room full of music appreciators to the verge of climax, some kind of even higher experience was expected of the new material. If they were going to stick with guitar and drum, the Keys could at least have used these to lift humanity to some higher state. The expectation surrounding El Camino were nothing short of Messianic. And yet… we’re all still here. War continues to rage, pestilence stalks the land, the Republican primary race limps on through weeks of drivel and bile. All signs of the end of days, but it appears the Keys won’t be the ones to bring us to the promised land.

Otherwise the album is just dandy.

[If you want to count the drumkits, you could do it here: The Black Keys - Gold on the Ceiling]

Idaho loves antlers too. In fact, a lot of the antlers that decorate Brooklyn bars and vintage stores might have come from Idaho. It’s a connection that would probably embarrass both parties. Idaho probably isn’t the mysterious place that Brooklyn is thinking of when it is looking at a pair of antlers; that place is more like seventeenth century Salem crossed with some kind of other place that has shamans and medicine men and interesting knitwear.

Antlers aren’t mysterious when they’re in Idaho though; they tell a very distinct story. Those antlers were once attached to a specific animal, that was shot by a specific person. This happened in a specific place on a specific day with specific weather. There was a specific strategy to shooting this animal. The person then had to carry the animal – either whole or in pieces – back to his truck. Later he had to separate the antlers from the rest of the animal, or if they’re still attached to the head, he had to separate the head from the rest of the animal. He probably also cut up the rest of the animal, because while the antlers are cool, chances are he also intended to eat a fair amount of the animal.

Food in Brooklyn doesn’t have this kind of story. Instead it has adjectives, like grass-fed and organic and cage-free and free-range and heritage and heirloom and humane. These adjectives are kind of like codes that no one can really read. They sound cool, but they don’t exactly tell a story.

Stories aren’t so mysterious though, especially when they involve rifles and bonesaws. Sometimes they’re a bit too visceral. The antlers in Brooklyn don’t have any fur on them usually. Someone else stripped and boiled away all the decaying organic matter to reveal the lovely texture beneath. Then they sold the antlers. Antlers in Brooklyn come from antique stores or markets, not from animals in the forest. But that doesn’t mean Brooklyn doesn’t love them.

It seems more and more people in New York are reaching for that mythic banjo. Or harmonica. Or washboard. Or fiddle. Or jug. Why it’s happening now isn’t entirely clear to me, although it might have something to do with Bon Iver getting all Walden in Wisconsin. It could also have something to do with Sufjan’s waylaid 50 states project (although he hardly needs American folklore any more; he has his own now). If he won’t do it, someone else is going to have to finish the project on his behalf.

So I’ve been stalking New York’s hillybilly troubadours. Not just any old kid with a banjo, but the new breed of bumpkin polymaths who can play any instrument, and have the suspenders and moustache to prove it. It hasn’t been very difficult to find these guys; they turn up everywhere, from stages to subway stations. I just have to follow the chatter of the washboard, and the crowds of horn-rimmed groupies.