Cameron's Brain

PolyEster Books

I had a great lunch today with Paul aka Gonzo, the owner of PolyEster Books, one of my favourite stores in Melbourne. His mission: to provide the freakiest underground books, films, magazines and comix. Walking into PolyEster is an incredibly overwhelming and frustrating experience. It's like being a kid in a candy store! And I'm on a book ban until I have a regular income coming in (grrrr). Check out their new stock (pdf) including a new book and dvd on Bill Hicks.

Coffee snobs

While I was in Arizona I had a non-stop argument with Shel Israel about how much American coffee sucks and how Melbourne is, without a shadow of doubt, the coffee capital of the world. I have not found a better place for coffee anywhere else in the world. Not in Italy, France, USA, UK - nowhere.

To prove it, check out Peter Christo's Melbourne Coffee Review blog and then check out Rob Barac's new site called CafeGeek.

I did get a rare great espresso in Seattle recently (from Vikki's secret little hole in the wall) but that was the only decent coffee I had during my two weeks in the US. If you know places to get a REAL coffee in the US, go up to Rob's site and fill in the details!

Melbourne Stencil Festival 2005

I went and had a look at the Melbourne Stencil Festival 2005 this afternoon. There's some terrific work there and the exhibition space itself, the restored North Melbourne Meat Market, is worth the visit alone. They are exhibitng work from local stencil artists and from around the world, including Logan Hicks, Sixten, Mephisto and Satta. It's on for another week, so check it out if you are in town. I'm a big fan of street art and there are some great stencil lanes around Melbourne. I'd love to get a stencil artist to design a logo for The Podcast Network. Any takers?

The best hot chocolate in Melbourne

... is at Movida. Grab a seat at the bar and order the "Churros", hot chocolate and spanish doughnuts.

Victoria's Police To Get Stun Guns

About a month ago I commented on a fatal police shooting in my suburb Yarraville and then got into a good debate with Victoria's Finest about whether or not police should be issued with stun guns. Well I see in the news today that "The Victorian government has given the state's police the green light to use stun guns that deliver 50,000-volt shocks....  The Police Association pushed for the stun guns to be issued to prevent fatal police shootings, the most recent of which happened last month."

Sounds like great news to me (although I appreciate some of the concerns Victoria's Finest had... if you're still reading VF, what think you?) and three cheers for the Police Association and Police Minister Andre Haermeyer for making it happen.