Stranger Street

Amongst all the Saxe-Coburg streets in Brunswick, there is the peculiarly-named “Stranger Street”. I’m never quite sure whether this would best refer to the alienation of living in inner-city Melbourne, where most of us pass one another in utter ignorance of identity, or if the street itself is odder than the others around.

Brunswick certainly has its oddities. Early morning it is abuzz with the bin men, delivery men, and commuters hurtling their way to university or work. By mid morning, the Nonnas and Yia-yias are out, antalgic but armed with study sandals, robust cardigans which hide elbows of steel, and shopping trolleys. As midday approaches, “old Brunswick” emerges, replete with monologues, tics, and clothing combinations that even the most avant-garde fashion student would struggle to concoct from Savers.

Through the afternoon, one sees some pretty unusual things. A man on a Penny Farthing, with an anachronistic flashing red light on the bike (but at least within the law). A man on a recumbent bike fashioned from a couple of wheels, a drive chain, two planks and a crate. Further up in Coburg, a man dressed in what I can only describe as a wizard’s garb. And then last week, a man who stopped me in the street to enquire if I had, earlier in the week, attached my bike lock in such a way as to entrap his water bottle. 

Well, really.

Is this the sort of thing that is so desperately important that one would think about it for several days and then proceed to stop a stranger in the street?

In Brunswick, yes.