Astor Arcade shop 3
665 Beaufort St
Mt Lawley Western Australia 6050
(08) 9271 8338
http://www.waremtlawley.com.au
Hours:
Mon-Fri 10:00 - 17:30
Sat 10:00 - 17:00
Sun 11:00 - 16:00
Ware has been one of my favourite shops for gifts and fancy shopping for years, as it has a great selection of quirky, funky, cute and vintage-inspired items: gift-cards, cards, wrapping papers, children toys, play-games, decoration items, kitchenware, "writtingware", plus a small selection of women and children apparel, jewellery and other fashion items, handbags, and so on. So many cute things talking to you directly, with a cheerful buy me, buy me, buy me! It is very easy not to ignore the call and stop yourself from buying a little something.
Ware, though, it is not what used to be. They have less artsy innovative pieces they used to. In fact, Ware used to be the "it" shop to find items that nobody else had, with an awesome range of high-design and world-class illustrators items. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case, and, at present, their items are more mainstream than ever, and not exclusive at all. To be completely fair, their bag selection has always been ugly and unstylish, and somewhat diminishes the rest of the shop, which is quite quirky and fun.
The staff are always very helpful, friendly and easy-going, and they will let you browse around without being disturbed.
The prices vary from the cheap little thing to the expensive item, pricey in general, so you better restrain yourself, and limit your visits for personal or seasonal gifts, or just to buy gift cards, if you can!
Photo courtesy of Greg O'Beirne, Via Wikipedia
Wild an tame at once, gracious in its movement, and harmonious in its meandering course, the Swan River looks and feels more like a lake. This lake-like soul is what gives the Swan its specific idiosyncrasy, and also that special something that differentiates Perth from other cities with rivers.
The Swan is a warm hug holding together areas and people that are alien to each other, the walking friend that says hello to joggers and walkers at sunrise or sunset, the backyard of the many million-dollar houses nested on its shores, the view for contemplative picnickers looking for serenity and hidden places in the heart of the city, the free theatre from where Perthites look at the sky in special days, a friend to the highway, an initiation road for drinkers going to the brewery and students going to the University, and a relaxing cradle for tourists taking a ferry to Fremantle. Most importantly, the Swan is the mirror on which Perth looks at herself day and night when she wants to look prettier than she is - Mirror mirror on the Swan.
The Swan is also a paradise for blue algae, mutant fish, and dead creatures, who dream of those days in which the algae were green and living elsewhere, the only mutants around were the newly-arrived settlers, and the only dead the rocks on their shores. Days of large horizons and wide spaces bygone.
A lyric river, with a heart full of regrets, that mesmerises despite its toxicity.
676A Beaufort St
Mt Lawley Western Australia 6050
(09) 2716 459
http://www.emerge-art.com.au
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Emerge-Art-Space/151606848217955
Hours:
Wed-Sat 11:00 - 16:00
Emergence Art Space is a small commercial gallery that exhibits and sells contemporary Australian Art. Located in the heart of Mount Lawley, a few steps from almost any bar, café or restaurant in Beaufort's coffee strip, EAS is a microcosms of talent and good taste to be enjoyed by art lovers and posh art collectors. The gallery exhibits and represents a group of local painters and sculptors with different and distinctive styles.
The building might not catch you attention, but the pieces of art in their shop-window might do so. There are two main exhibition areas, the pretty one downstairs at street level with wooden floors and great lighting, really well curated, which holds the solo exhibitions, and the space upstairs and the long corridor, which isn't that glamorous or good, and showcases individual pieces by different artists not as wow as the ones downstairs.
Enter Emergence, don't be shy - the curator will welcome you and tell you a bit about the exhibition, even if your wallet is not big enough to purchase any of the pieces hanging from the wall. This is one of those places that, a-priori, you expect nosey people, and find welcoming warm art dealers with a good nose for talent.
The quality of the artworks exhibited in the main area is fantastic and varied, from abstract to figurative, surrealism to realism, conceptual art and anything in between, including Aboriginal Art, depending on the solo exhibition and artists featured each month.
Right now, when this review is written, there is a fantastic exhibition by Australo-French tin sculptor Pierre Capponi that made me wish badly to be a "poshie" of the world to buy something.
197 Murray St
Perth Western Australia 6000
(08) 9221 4365
http://www.footlocker.com.au
The Foot Locker sells a good selection of female, male and children sports and casual trainers, plus basket shoes for men, hip-hop clothing, and some accessories (watches, hats, sport bags, socks, t-shirts, pants, etc.) from a selection of well-known International brands. Regarding shoes, the range of prices is great, from the very expensive 300-dollar runners to the 80-Dollar (or less) ones for adults, even less if you are lucky or they are on sale.
The shop is a bit run down and not very funky, to be honest, and the space would need a restructuring to make it trendier and more comfortable for the visitor. However, the staff work their socks off and run -literally- to attend to you fasta fasta and give you what you want at the price your want. They are not only fast, but also knowledgeable, and, unlike other places, they won't trick you to buy the most expensive item, but will listen to you and provide you with what you want within the price range you want. They don't have the time to breath, so don't expect them to smile at you if you go when the place is busy, which happens most weekends.
Foot Locker keeps me returning to them each time I need a new pair of trainers, and that is because of their prices and service. They have a membership club with discounts and offers and a wonderful return and refund policy of 28 days! They also have hidden discounts that you only discover when paying for your purchase. I got 20% off my already cheap Adidas runners!. They really are ahead in service from the surrounding sport shops, that is always my experience.
Shop 11, 649 Beaufort St
Mt Lawley Western Australia 6050
(08) 9227 1880
http://www.yuzu.com.au
Hours:
Tue-Fri 11:30-14:00 and 17:00-21:30
Sat-Sun 11:30-14:30 and 17:30-21:30
Semi-hidden and squeezed up by The fish & chips shop and Fresh Provisions in Mount Lawley, Yuzu Kaiten Sushi is an authentic Japanese restaurant that delivers at all fronts.
The place is tiny, but the space so well organised and taken advantage of that it looks and feels much bigger than actually is. The atmosphere is very pleasant, with a stylish mix of green and black colours and jazz music playing all day long.
The food is fresh, good, varied, tasty and good-priced. The train offers a mix of sushi (maki and gunken), sashimi, fried food, and carpaccio dishes of different prices, with the usual pieces that you find in other train restaurants in Perth. You can order a bento set if you prefer, or order the more expensive dishes from their a-la-carte menu.
They have lunch specials: bento trays for 9.50$ (choose 1 main. 3 sides and a sauce of your selection), or a burger combo for 13.50$ consisting of the burger (chicken katsu, chicken teriyaki, or prawn katsu) with sweet potato fries plus a drink of your selection. The burger meals are delicious.
The selection of soft drinks is OK. It makes me always happy finding unsweetened O Cha green tea, which goes well with everything if you don't want the usual hot green tea or sweetened flavoured teas.
The service is terrific, with a super-friendly all over cashier-waitress taking care of anything you need.
The place attracts mostly quiet people, wanting to enjoy their meal alone or with another person. It is not good for groups, and that is always a blessing, to me. A good deal of visitors are also "take-away-yees".
My main criticism to the place is the abuse in the use of mayonnaise and spiced mayo. Please, let customers decide whether we want mayo or not, and in which quantity. They got it right with their fried food, as a dollop is put on the plate, but some of the maki rolls and sashimi pieces have it on; it looks, uhmmm?, decorative?, but it is a bit, uhmmm? invasive? My suggestion: have an artistically-set dollop of mayo on the plate, instead of on the food and everybody will be happy.
I love the place, and the fact that is never crowded or empty. The reason might the its odd location and the lack of visible sign anywhere around. A blessing in disguise because you want your quiet good sushi place to be your little secret forever. Amen.
The War you Don't see is a British documentary produced and directed by Australian journalist John Pilger that focus on the dangers of embedded journalism in war times.
If journalists do not do their job, we are misinformed and more easily manipulated, we don't see the suffering of innocent civilians and, therefore, we don't oppose the involvement of our governments and Army in those conflicts.
The documentary presents many cases in History to proof the point, specially focusing on the Iraq War but showing examples that go from the support of Cigarettes in the media in the 1920s, to the Vietnam War to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, to Wikileaks. It is not as much a critic to those who start and carry out unjust wars, but a warning call to the Journalists, who should be doing their job properly, asking the right questions, investigating things when needed, so we know the truth and act upon it.
I loved the documentary. I thought that the Libyan war –which erupted just when the doco was showed In Australia- was showing more of the same, another oil war masqueraded as a free-the-people war. Pilger makes the right questions, upfront, and does not allow his interviewees to bullshit the public. Pilger is not complacent with his colleagues, not even with the heavy weights of journalism. He does what he asks them to do, and that makes the documentary honest, thrilling, entertaining and informative. However, to be honest, we knew already much of what it is said in it. In fact, there were thousands of people demonstrating against the Iraq War in Australia (and the USA, EU, and the rest of the Western World) calling the arms of mass destruction "arms of mass distraction" despite those embedded journalists believing USA-UK's lies and contributing to their spread. People are sometimes wiser that one could think. The problem is that, once the war starts, and civilians are slaughtered every day, we need to know what we are fighting for. Pilger shows us the nitty-gritty of it, the details, the Monica Lewinski's sort of proof.
On the other hand, we do not want to see deceased chopped bodies in our news bulletins in certain countries (I'm just remembering the airbrushing of one of the iconic images of the Madrid Bombings showing severed limbs in most Australian media). I thought that not only the media is guilty of that, but we are guilty too, for not wanting to know the real human drama behind any war, especially if the deceased are not ours.
Too many people swallow the news (TV or newspapers) as if they were God's Gospel, without thinking that perhaps the channel they are watching is owned by a filthy-rich guy who is not interested in the truth, but in controlling its spread, so his corporation or businesses do better and he earns more millions. Lies make them richer. We have to be honest with ourselves. Lies in the news are easily spread because the level of education of the population is not high enough (in fact, money is more valued than education nowadays), and because independent thinking is not promoted in school, University, or anywhere. Quite the contrary. Everybody wants to be in tune with the social network in vogue. Everybody wants to belong to a flock. So, the problem is not just the sort of journalism we have nowadays, or that the news lie to us regularly, but also the sort of viewers we have nowadays - Viewers who don't question what they hear or see on the news when war is on, or when there isn't even a war. I missed a hint of this point in the documentary, which I consider very important. That would have been moving a step forward from the usual blaming of the Empire, as if our society wasn't to blame for letting others think for us, or swallow crap without any sort of resistance.
Said this, the documentary was great, as it proves that we are certainly being lied every day, intentionally or by default, in war times or not. We are told that we are fighting for the freedom of the people, but that is never the case.
A wish. I would like Pilger to focus on the crap of ours, the Australian one, and examine closely which sort of news are shown in our TV stations every day, or which sort of crappy newspapers we have in Australia regarding local issues. Why is so? Who are the responsible? What are the lies? Who are the liars?
Compulsory watching!
A new instalment in the SACT franchise, with all the elements that the fans of the series loved. The new episode focuses on how our favourite four girls face the challenges of marriage and consolidated relationships, and how marriage means different things for different people.
I'm surprised at the poor reviews of this movie, which I think it is not worse than the first, which has double rating. Completely senseless. The story has moments that really connect with the original characters in the series. Needless to say, fashion and luxury are still gorgeous and an essential part of the look and mood of the movie, but the story makes good points and grounds the characters. Most importantly, the acting has returned to what we were used in the TV series, making us forget some of the flaws we resented in the first movie. I cannot believe that nobody noticed how terrible the acting was in the first, and how correct it is here.
The movie has some very fun moments, many of them by the always cheeky (and hilariously vulgar) Samantha. The gay wedding at the beginning is great, with a cameo by Liza Minelli as wedding minister and singer.
The main problem of the movie is the whole trip to Abu Dhabi. Not the trip, the destination. I had the feeling that this was a long commercial about Abu Dhabi. The girls could have gone elsewhere luxurious and still face the same challenges. I thought that focusing on cultural differences and the idiosyncrasy of the Emiratis was a waste of time, and completely unnecessary for the story, which, until the trip starts, was making good points about marriage. I would have eliminated the touristy part and dug deep in the part of the relationships. On the other hand, this being a show about sex, love and relationships by very liberated Western Women, the UAE were never going to be a good destination. Never ever!
This is one of those chick-flicks that will entertain women who were fans of the TV series and have all the background to understand the actions and evolution of the characters. In fact, properly speaking, this is a double-length episode of the series screened in cinemas.
Abstain from viewing men and people who are not familiar with the series. Otherwise, don't complain! You’ve been warned!
Just for fans of the SATC series.
