I swear, the street performers in Melbourne are the best in the world. I’ve been to India, China, Albajeria, all around Europe and to the big cities in America, so I feel I’m qualified to make that kind of statement. Objectively, they’re just awesome, and SO unique. There are a lot of snake charmers in India, so it gets a bit old once you’ve seen someone doing it for the eighteenth time that day. Albajerians are all into their physical feats right now, so breaking bricks, dancing on their hands, benching actual benches full of tourists…and it’s nice, but there’s not so much creativity involved.
Whearas in Melbourne you can get anything. I was sitting eating my lunch in Fed Square and just watching a guy in overalls setting up a quality Melbourne ladder platform. Alright, pretty ordinary stuff. And then he climbed right up onto the platform and started doing circus acrobatics. Nope, he wasn’t a tradesman…he was just using a set of aluminium platforms in his performance, and doing an amazing job of it. He steadily took them off during the performance, revealing a glitzy costume underneath that had people spellbound. It’s like the work ethic of Melbourne tradespeople meets the city’s arts scene in a glorious blaze of colour and life, and I was thoroughly entertained during my lunch break!
So that was random. Now I’ll have to cast a suspicious glance at anyone I see setting up planks and trestles, because they could be secret circus performers who are about to do amazing feats like climbing up them using only their feet or balancing with their entire body horizontal like a flag. The core strength, seriously…I’ve never seen anyone do that sort of thing with an aluminium trestle ladder. And I certainly hadn’t seen someone doing a handstand on top of a piano and playing it with a set of reeds stuck in their mouths. And then there were those two guys doing stand up comedy in armadillo suits. Oh, Melbourne. You’re so creative.
-Amelie