Thornbury & the Night Cafe
“Sometimes what’s different is what remains the same”
“The story of the old man and the hipster”

Director’s Statement
It’s a sort of stereotype about Melbourne’s inner north to talk about how ongoing gentrification is removing the vestiges of migrant culture. Undoubtedly this is to some extent true; the number of trendy bars, cafes, hairdressers etc. on traditionally Italian and Greek main streets is clearly evident to anyone who walks through the streets of Brunswick or Northcote or Preston. However, these cultures are far from being erased; these businesses, some odd, some without an obviously profitable business model, persist despite the increase in affluence and (arguably) whiteness in their respective neighbourhoods. Nowhere is this more evident than Thornbury High St, where hipster burger joints share footpath space with Italian pasticcerias and people spill out of bars next door to empty gambling dens.

For this documentary, I want to explore a neighbourhood in a state of flux, but also the parts of it that remain stationary. We focus a lot of attention on what’s different, what’s new, what’s been removed, what’s been forgotten, but I believe an important part of memory is focusing on what is left behind, what is unchanged, and most importantly why it is unchanged. Why are most shops on High St Thornbury transforming into trendy cafes and bars yet businesses that seem less profitable can remain? Are real estate prices not driving them out? Or do they form such an important part of the neighbourhood’s community that they are kept afloat by the people who care for them dearly? I believe by looking at what remains when a neighbourhood undergoes a period of great change can we then begin to answer all of the questions surrounding memory, identity and neighbourhood.

Synopsis
The film will begin by examining the literal structures and buildings that house the businesses of High St Thornbury. I believe by looking at these places and structures we can see their history, what preceded them, how long they have been there, and even draw a distinction between newer businesses and those who have been there for a long time. I want the viewer to be able to intuit and understand this through having a knowledge of the physical Thornbury.

From here, we will continue to an intermixed series of interviews with and meditations on the various businesses of High St Thornbury. Business owners, employees and their customers will talk about how their business fits into the locale, what they know and remember about the area and how they’ve seen the area change, depending on how long they’ve been there. The viewer will also gain an insight into the businesses’ practices: what these employees and owners occupy themselves with all day, the coming and going of customers, how foot traffic and trade changes and evolve throughout the day as Thornbury turns from a shopping strip into a centre of nightlife.

Finally, we will cast our gaze on the infamous Night Cafe, which throughout the last two segments will stand in as a symbol for all of the old-style businesses that remain on the street. The various residents of Thornbury will talk about their knowledge and experience of the Night Cafe. Although I’m open to talking to some customers, I want the Night Cafe to remain somewhat obscured; I believe it’s more interesting to talk about how it is perceived by the rest of the neighbourhood, how things are strangely repulsed by it yet simultaneously revolve around it. The Night Cafe’s persistence in the neighbourhood will hopefully answer some of the questions I have set up in my statement.

Method – Potential Interview Subjects
Here are some businesses and (in some cases) their proprietors who I think could make interesting interview subjects:

Perimeter Books
Perimeter is a brick-and-mortar bookstore, distributor and independent publisher based in a small shopfront on High St, specialising in art, architecture and design books. The owners Dan and Justine are a nice, fairly young couple very respected in the art book world in Melbourne. Their shop has been their for quite a few years, I believe just before the full gentrification of the strip began.
Carwyn Cellars
This bottleshop-cum-bar has become a hub in the area for anyone looking for specialised alcohol or a quick, microbrewed pint after work, and is always very busy, especially on the weekend. It’s had its current owners since 2007 so has seen the area change quite a bit in that time period.
Umberto’s
An old-style Italian bar and bistro with delicious, excellently priced food. It’s been on the strip for a very very long time but has adapted into a restaurant that, although pokey, has excellent service and is massively popular.
Thornbury Theatre
One of the oldest institutions and businesses on the strip, the Thornbury Theatre is rumoured to be undergoing another change from ballroom to cinema. This place has adapted so many times over the years, it would be great to see the proprietor’s attitude to the changing strip.
Monticello Cakes
An old-style Italian pasticceria that has bee on the strip for a very long time, and also situated right next door to the infamous Night Cafe. The owners, presumably Italian background, would have a lot to say about the gentrification of the neighbourhood.

Shooting Style
The interviews will be conducted in a traditional documentary style subject interview, with the subject responding to unseen and unheard questions from the documentary filmmaker. However, I want to frame the subjects in their businesses: a bookseller surrounded by the books he sells and publishes, a pastry chef surrounded by her sweets, a bartender surrounded by his craft beers and boutique wines. For the rest of the film/b-roll, I will focus on capturing the aesthetic qualities of buildings and what they can tell us about the neighbourhood’s memory and history.

For this assessment, we were required to present 6-10 images that the title “Memory, Identity and Neighbourhood” evoked for us. I was unfortunately unable to attend class for the presentation, so I’ve instead outlined here why I chose these photos and their relationship for me to the concept of neighbourhood.

I decided to go with a bit of an overarching theme for my selection, as you’ll see I’ve tried to capture several (in my opinion) iconic locations within a block radius of my house in both daylight and nighttime. The area of Thornbury I live in is simultaneously very residential, filled with daytime cafes and locations and also a nightlife hub. Different locations play a different role and present a different face depending on the time of day. What is overlooked during the day can become a hub of activity once the sun sets, and vice versa.

The High St/Hutton St 7-Eleven is Thornbury High St’s pivot point. Hutton St is a residential street used as a thoroughfare by many travelling east-west, so people are constantly turning into or just past the 7-Eleven during rush hour. However, during the daytime the convenience store mostly fades into the background of your mind. It’s not something that I “notice” when I travel up and down High St in the daytime; it’s somewhere you might stop for petrol or a snack but, positioned as it is back from the main street, its significance is overtaken by the cafes, restaurants and bars that open up and spill onto the sidewalk along High St.

Once night falls, however, 7-Eleven becomes a hub of activity. It’s a compulsory stop on one’s drunk walk home from the train station or tram stop, the only place left open past 1am on the strip and abrasively bright compared to the dim street lights and low-lying, darkened shop fronts. On a strip that is becoming increasingly gentrified and “inner city”, it has the character of a distinctly suburban petrol station and convenience store.

The unnamed, unmanned laundromat is another vestige of an era passed. Its blue paint job renders it more visible during the day than the aforementioned 7-Eleven, but it’s almost always empty and thus remains mostly unnoticed. It’s one of those businesses that you’re never quite sure if anyone uses until you use it yourself. Again, once night falls, the laundromat becomes a beacon. Its opening hours are very loose (its official closing time is 10pm, although despite the fact I took this photo just past midnight on a Tuesday you can see two people inside) and the lights almost always remain on throughout the night, meaning again as you pass the various darkened shopfronts, the laundromat really stands out.

A similarly mysterious business, which I was unable to photograph due to the wise guys sitting out the front, is the plainly-named Night Cafe just across the road from the laundromat. Its exterior (and interior) is as old world and out of place as the laundromat, as in it sort of blends into the background next to all the hipster graphic design fronting all the other business. Inside there’s an innocent round table where old Italian and Greek men play cards, then a very empty cafe-style area. The actual register and counter hosts only a coffee machine and a small selection of cakes, although hardly anyone ever seems to order coffee. Its real intrigue comes at nighttime, when on hot nights the front door is left ajar and you can spy inside. There you see a faint late emanating from another room behind the main space, except your vision is blocked by a barrier made of green felt. My Italian babysitter in Coburg taught me this means a less-than-legal card game is taking place in the backroom. This is an aspect of my neighbourhood I’d love to be able to delve further into, although it may prove difficult.

These two photos display the entrance to an alleyway just a few houses down from my house, which seems fairly innocuous and suburban, but forms part of an arterial route through Thornbury’s laneways and backstreets towards the South Preston Shopping Centre. On the right side, as you can see from the greenery in the first picture, is a very old, run down house with an overgrown front yard full of junk. Further in the laneway is a mechanic with a slightly sketchy feel to it, so there are always equally sketchy characters and cars coming and going from the area. At night time, the laneway is a favourite of those heading home or waiting for an Uber after leaving the various bars in the area, and becomes a favourite spot for a quick drunken piss. You can see clearly in the second photo the local residents haven’t reacted well to this development. I think this photo best illustrates how difficult and nuanced the gentrification of a neighbourhood can be; you get all this great food and culture (ideally) on one hand but on the other there is a very tangible impact on the original residents, even if this one is particular gross and obtuse.

Thornbury to me is a wonderful neighbourhood, because it extends all of the great culture and nightlife you find in Fitzroy and Northcote, yet it still maintains a healthy dose of “old world” charm and quirk. You can also feel the resistance from both parties as they encroach on each other’s space, as old business stubbornly survive and thrive in the evolving environment.

We spent a lot of time in class this week talking about what our neighbourhoods mean to us, and how where we live defines or shapes who we are. However, I think what was left unsaid and perhaps was only inferred was how our neighbourhood, or at least how we perceive our neighbourhood, shapes how we see other neighbourhoods.

Although I’ve recently moved to Thornbury, Coburg maintains a close place in my heart, a place I’m very proud of and will I suppose protect from criticism. My parents still live there so I spend plenty of time there as it is. What’s always struck me about people’s perceptions of Coburg is that the further away they live from the suburb, the more negative/sketchy their perception is. Another student and I both touched on how Coburg has this reputation as maybe dangerous and sketchy, when it really isn’t, and it made me think about why this perception exists.

My theory is that we form these conceptions of other neighbourhoods based on how they differ from our own. Perhaps it’s the run down, old world bustle of Sydney Road that other places lack that translates into an image of criminality? Perhaps it’s the late night kebab shops, or the darkened suburban streets once you stray from the main way? I hate to say it but it also might be the dwindling but enduring reputation of Lebanese and other Middle Eastern groups in the area.

I by no means want this to infer that I see my neighbourhood/s as more real or complete than others. The last two weekends I’ve gone away, first to a friend’s house in Anglesea and then to a wedding in Sorrento, which took me through parts of the world I’ve always thought I could never live in. My youth in an inner-city suburb has perhaps conditioned me to believe I could only live in a dense, multi-cultural part of town close and connected to the city itself. However, driving through places like Point Cook and Mornington and Rosebud I realised that, of course, these places are self-contained and liveable communities in their own right.

In particular, I spent a long time in a “bazaar” of sorts in Rosebud. On a Sunday morning, the people of the area had all pulled up in their utes and vans and set up little impromptu stalls selling all sorts of things I’d never think to see. There were two full-fledged illegal DVD stands, going as far as taking requests for TV shows that had recently come out in the US to sell at the next market. There were dozens of old folks selling trinkets, broken pieces of ceramic, even a tub of bones (???). There were a myriad of food stalls, vintage clothing, someone selling soaps. You think of these beachsides towns as places really only inhabited during the summer holidays, but you could see that they had their own established community and neighbourhood that one might not envision coming from the city.

I don’t think I’ve sufficiently answered this thought, but I think throughout this course it will be interesting to at least touch on the idea that neighbourhood not only shapes us, but also how we see others.