Chatswood Sydney's Chinatown of the North

CHATSWOOD :: SYDNEY :: NEW SOUTH WALES

CHATSWOOD IS NOT A CITY I ENDED UP AT BY CHOICE, BUT AS USUAL I AM GLAD I HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO WORK AND LIVE THERE, AS PART OF MY GENERAL SYDNEY EXPERIENCE. Chatswood has long been a centre of Chinese culture on the North Shore -- a "Chinatown of the 'burbs" as Tasted by Two remarked. With all its high rise apartments and runaway affluence, I preferred to think of it as a little Hong Kong. Fittingly enough, I had a Hong Kong Chinese girlfriend for the first six weeks I lived in Chatswood (actually it was down the Pacific Highway at Greenwich), just across the road from the Royal North Shore Hospital. At that time, six weeks was about the limit to which I could maintain relationships, before they collapsed into acrimony. I have come a long way since then. Sometime in the second half of 1997 I was transferred from my comfortable little hamster's hole in Bankstown to the hurried and harried offices of the North Shore Times, in Chatswood. The editor Ron was rumoured to be one of the crankiest in the Cumberland Newspaper Group. I personally saw him reduce one female American intern to tears in the first few weeks that I was there! It won't disappoint you I promise.

re forcefully than in any suburbs. Along with Darwin, this is the last surviving outpost of the classic Aussie larrikin. Instead of rebelling against the basic Australian personality, Newtown folks push that personality to its logical extreme. For example, Australians have always been down to earth and minimalistic in their fashions. It should therefore come as no surprise that the Bohemians of Newtown go in for a natural look -- no shirt, no shoes, whatever gets you closer to Mother Earth. If the potency of body odor offends you, this is probably not the best place to go. On the other hand if you enjoy lively discourse and lively folks keeping it real, then you will enjoy Newtown. Unlike other famous parts of Sydney (for example Bondi Beach, the ocean exerts little influence here. Instead, as in Melbourne, people turn to the streets for their entertainment. Restaurants, shops and pubs are the principal methods of diversion.

If you want find out what is happening in Newtown, click the Newtown Precinct Page for details. The Precinct accurately describes Newtown as the "cultural and creative epicenter of the Sydney inner west". In a newspaper article, Pam Walker wrote:

Newtown has long been home to large numbers of visual artists and writers. In the 80s it was the hub of independent music with many a band paying its dues in pubs like the Sandringham.
Now the area has become the cradle for the performing arts, actively nurturing young playrights, actors and dancers. So exactly what is about Newtown that attracts the creatively endowed?
The Enmore Theatre's Greg Khoury says that the suburb's artistic leanings go back a long way. In fact, Newtown has thrived since its inception as an artistic outpost to Sydney in the late 19th Century.
But first, a basic geographic pointer -- Newtown is basically one long street (King Street) and a lot of little appendages. I remember that the first few times I visited King St in the 1990s, I realized this was a helluva long street. The roads might be bustling with snarling little cars and trucks, but the pavement is a walk on the wild side. There are Thai eateries, Turkish pide and kebab joints, tattoo clinics, M&S accessory retailers, raucous pubs and billiards hall. Or rather make that billiard halls!
So on to the goodies and where to find them. Later I will tell you about my Newtown date with the amazing A. back in the Nostradamian year of 1999!

NEWTOWN BEAUTY
Glow Girl: 208 Australia St, Newtown. Phone: 02/9519 3101.
The ad claims: "Imagine... a massage followed by another massage, a facial, some lunch, some wine maybe, a waxing, a pedicure, a manicure..."
This place is open late evenings and offers a complimentary skin analysis.

NEWTOWN CLOTHES
MOST OF THE CLOTHES SHOPS IN NEWTOWN VERGE ON THE VINTAGE OR RECYCLED OR CLASSIC TIP; THERE IS ALSO A STRONG ECOEMPHASIS. Here is a selection of some of the clothing stores in the suburb:
Exclusive Vintage Clothing: 383 King St, Newtown. Phone: 02 9517 2283. Mobile: 0415 174 883.

This is one of the stores which has helped make Newtown the center of the Sydney vintage clothing scene. As the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported in 2004: "Sydney's hunger for vintage and secondhand clothes has fuelled a 15 per cent profit surge for the Salvation Army's retail stores in the last 12 months.
"The workers hit the clearing house floor, sorting the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of clothing that arrive each year.
"The best clothes are sent to the Salvation Army's inner city stores - in Darlinghurst, Glebe and Bondi Junction - where prices and turnover are higher.
"Meanwhile each morning, between 20 and 30 wholesale buyers wait for up to an hour outside the Salvation Army's Minchinbury and St Peters factories. They buy damaged or stained clothes which are then cleaned up and sold at marked-up prices at the Paddington, Glebe and Bondi markets or in commercial second-hand stores in Surry Hills and Newtown.
"The vintage look is favoured by celebrities such as Helena Christensen, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chloe Sevigny and Sarah Jessica Parker in Sex and the City...
"Michael Liebewberg, the owner of Rokit, a vintage clothing store in the Rocks, defined vintage as clothes 'usually 25 to 50 years old'.
"'Second-hand is clothes from the '80s to last season,' he said.
Kita Vintage Clothing: Shop 2503 King St, Newtown.
This place gets a recommendation from blogger the girl loves to shop!, who remarked in 2006: "Vintage seems to be all the rage for the past season or so (in Sydney)... so it's about time we got a list together..."
U-Turn Recycled Fashion: 2 Enmore Rd Newtown. Phone: 02 9516 0686.

NEWTOWN FETISH
The Kastle: 131 Abercrombie St, Chippendale. Phone: 02/9690/1150.
In a media saturated with imagery I sometimes wonder what desire looked like before we were exposed to porn... the assumption being that pornography always leads to S&M? Can you remember your earliest fantasies... they were undoubtedly less hardcore than your pornconditioned fantasies now? Unless you have an exceptionally strong moral foundation... or you're a feminist. But if you don't have and you aren't, and if you have been infiltrated by fetishism to some degree by all the pornware out there (and to be honest everyone is a fetishist these days, as much as they would like to deny it), then you might find yourself someday at a place like the Kastle. I visited this Newtown institution at the end of 1993 when I was studying at CSU Mitchell in Bathurst and living in a share house with Meat Pie director Garnet Mae (the movie about a guy with a thing for kitchen appliances, who gets a penis transplant), Fiona Honor, and the adorable though terminally messy/messed up Katja Forbes, on the outskirts of town. In a place which I think was called Rocket Street. Looking back on it this was one of the few sharehouse experiences in my life which actually worked, for a couple of months at least. It was a nice change of pace to the psychotic gay/lesbian sharehouse I had experimented with on the other side of Russell Street. Living at Rocket Street had its nice domestic vibe and warm stove moments until the end of 1993, when we all veered off our different ways. Late 1993 we were going through a kind of happy hardcore/techno phase and Fiona Honor's boyfriend Stu was displaying the first signs of an interest in S&M. I don't remember how exactly it happened, but we decided one weekend to car it to Sydney on the other side of the mountains, no doubt in Garnet Mae's trusty old skyblue shitbox, and visit the place they called The Kastle. Sinister looking entrance -- just an anonymous door on an innercity backstreet. Kind of looked like an abandoned warehouse. Enter inside and suddenly it is warm and there are tonnes of guys and gals wearing black leather, heavy moustaches, dark techno on the decks (this was the early 1990s, remember!) I was expecting it to be a nightclub, but it was more a theatre... a theatre of cruelty. True to his form Stuart Ridley stripped off his shirt and allowed some dame to drip hot wax on his chest, sometime near the end of our stay. The beginning of his descent. Then I saw a man and two women engaged in a threeway kiss, and I knew that a new festish in my mind was born. The holy trinity: two girls and a guy. An act more recently made famous by the photographer Wyatt Gallery, and Miss Japan 2008 and Miss Trinidad/Tobagos. They have lived the fantasy... I have not (not yet!)

NEWTOWN PUBS
Bank Hotel: Newtown.
Jess had the following piece of advice for those looking to pick up at the Bank Hotel: don't.
"Unless you are a very butch lesbian, don't bother with the Bank Hotel in Newtown! Definitely pass through there on your way to Suma Lee Thai which is downstairs - it's AMAZING (albeit expensive)."
Botany View Hotel: 597 King St, Newtown. Phone: 02/9519 4501.
Described as the best venue in Sydney for all of your boot-shaking needs.
Regular live acoustic music including the Acoustic Lounge.
Coopers Arms Hotel: 221 King St, Newtown. Phone: 02/9550 3461.
Devoted to promoting grassroots acoustic music in Sydney.
The Sandringham Hotel: Newtown.
This is one of Sydney's legendary venues, with an outstanding record in live music and the like. You are not a Sydneysider unless you are at least partially familiar with this place.

CHATSWOOD RESTAURANTS
CHATSWOOD WAS ONE OF THE FEW PLACES AND TIMES IN MY LIFE WHERE I WORKED AS A FOOD REVIEWER -- THAT IS TO SAY, REVIEWING FOOD WAS PART OF MY JOB. The other reporters at the North Shore Times must have seen reviewing food as a menial task -- what fools were they! Occasionally I would African Feeling: 501 King St, Newtown. Phone: 02/9516 3130.
put it in your mouth (aka Melissa Leong from FBI Radio fame) said of this place: "Chef Hudu Alhassan may originally hail from Ghana, but his little slice of Africa in Newtown is just about one of the best places to go on safari in Sydney. Taking cues from all over his home continent, you can expect to experience distinct flavours from plantain chips from Nigeria, Bua; tender goat curry from Ghana and Yai Machuzi - boiled eggs rolled in chicken mince, coated in bread crumbs and spices - kind of like an African scotch egg..."
C1 Brasserie (Modern Australian) Chequers (Chinese/Yum Cha) Fook Yuen Seafood Restaurant (Chinese/Yum Cha) Forbidden Palace (Korean/Chinese) Genghis Khan Mongolian BBQ (Mongolian) Golden Bo (Vietnamese) Iwa Yakiniku Dining Room (Japanese) Kam Fook Restaurant (Chinese/Yum Cha) Momoya (closed) Ten Ren's Cha for Tea (Taiwanese) Tomato (Korean) Toraya (Japanese) Xic Lo (Vietnamese) Thai Pothong Newtown: 294 King St, Newtown (50m from train station.) Phone: 02/9519 8050.
An award winning restaurant in the heart of Newtown. To make a booking go to http://www.thaipothong.com.au.

NEWTOWN THEATRES
Enmore Theatre: 52 Enmore Rd, Newtown. Phone: 02/9550 3666.
Without a doubt this is Sydney's leading concert venue, hosting in recent times the incredible Franz Ferdinand, the legendary old school Bangles, and so on, and on. If the Arctic Monkeys played there one day I would be really impressed. For more information and booking details go to the website at http://www.enmoretheatre.com.au.
Newtown Theatre: Corner Bray St and King St, Newtown.
Sidetrack Studio Theatre: 122 Addison Rd, Marrickville. Phone: 02/9294 4655.

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