St. Kilda
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From the mid 1980s, St. Kilda was the suburb of our choice for leisurely Sunday lunches, browsing bookshops and soaking-up Bohemian culture. We fondly remember the rambling festival days, Café Maximus with barman Tim's generous Mai Tai cocktails, and the Blue Danube restaurant with the plate-overflowing schnitzels, mounds of hearty sauerkraut, vegetables and chips.

Very sadly, a disease slowly began to spread through St. Kilda in the late 1990s. The first signs of disease were the shrinking influence of the Hungarian, Russian and Polish communities and their replacement by garish commercial restaurants and shops. By 2000 it was obvious that the previously interesting and entertaining festival days had turned to commercial trash with tasteless mobile fun parks, distorted loudspeakers and hotel bars serving only beer (in plastic cups whose discarded corpses were swept into crinkling dunes around our feet). The terminal stages of the disease sent St. Kilda agonal in 2001 when the Blue Danube closed, taking away the last BYO restaurant with good value food. Every restaurant in Acland Street and Fitzroy Street is now fully licensed and forbids BYO, so you will be forced to pay 2x to 3x retail price for wine and champagne. The cost of drinks combined with the generally poor value meals drives the cost of a typical Sunday lunch to intolerable levels. We have not voluntarily chosen St. Kilda for Sunday lunch or other dining for over 2 years now. At least the fantastic "cake shops" have survived relatively unchanged, Monarch being the best for chocolate, and Europa best for the Polish style with heavier cakes and pastries.

Ooops -- I just remembered that there is one good value BYO restaurant left at the far end of Fitzroy Street, heading back up towards the junction: Cleopatras, where they serve middle eastern style food with a great selection for vegetarians. Let's hope Cleopatras survives! Help if you can.

Update 2007

John, Warren and Greg went to the 2007 St Kilda festival to see what it was like. Sadly, the commercialisation of the event is becoming more obvious, with expanded huge circus rides filling the foreshore area, queues of people trying to get past bouncers at the doors of famous pubs. Most pubs were charging $10 to get in the door (including the Espy). Due to the heat, wind and crowds, we didn't trave too far, mainly loitering around Acland and Fritzroy steets.

Sad news: Cleopatra's restaurant is gone! -- The last good value resturant with vegetarian meals has been sold and has been absorbed into the huge row of nearly identical yuppie-magnet style restaurants in the upper end of Fitzroy Street.

The fabulous rock string quartet Fourplay [see http://www.fourplay.com.au/] were performing on the World Music Stage that afternoon on the Upper Esplanade. Some low-quality photos of Fourplay at The Corner Hotel in early 2000 are on the Musical Events page. Thanks to our new Canon EOS 400D digital camera I took high-quality photos of Fourplay at the St Kilda festival and have placed them on a dedicated Fourplay page.

		Left: Lunch at old Devorollis. The only place with affordable house wine at $21 a bottle. Other restaurants ranged from $28 to $42 per bottle.	Below: Looking in 4 directions from Acland Street.
			Above/Left: John and Warren insisted that we gets photos of the classic motorcycles on display.
	Left: Looking up Fitzroy Street towards the junction.	Above: The famous "TV show rooftop" and Warren (he insisted for some reason that he be in some shots)
			Left: The lower esplanade.
Looking towards Acland Street at Festival 2000	Looking towards Luna Park at Festival 2000	St. Kilda beachfront at Festival 2000	Crowd at stagefront at Festival 2000
Showing Gerhard around Festival 2000	Greg & Alex who helped design the Skeptics web site	Sunday lunch (~1994) DOD and Fish crossing the road	Sunday lunch (~1994) DOD, Sue & Fish
John at Café Maximus (~1993)	At the Café Maximus bar (~1993)	At the old pub (~1994)	John & Warren in Acland Street (~1994)
Warren & John at Maximus bar (~1994)	John & Warren at the old pub (~1994)	Café Maximus bar (~1994)	Acland Street Festival 1999
Luna Park at Festival 1999	Bored with the Festival Stage 2002	Festival 2002	Festival 2002
Fstival 2002	Festival Stage 2002	Festival Stage 2002	Festival Stage 2002
Festival Stage 2002	Lunch with Gerhard (2000)
	Festival 2004	A spliced pan of the abover 3 images (1229 x 342)

Festival 2002

Sunday lunch at an expensive place

Festival 2002