This morning a bunch of locals had breakfast down at the big brekkie. Lisa and I returned to my living room to record the jelly wrestling episode: the one where we finally worked up the courage to go see the jelly wrestling at the Oxford Tavern.
Listen in here [22 min, 10mb, mp3]
Read the original posting here.
Instead of the Oxford Tavern, there’s an op-shop on the corner of Crystal and New Canterbury. Standing outside the shop is a cardboard removalist box. It’s full of rejected clothing, that even the op-shop itself doesn’t want. I pull up on my bike. Surely there’s something in here that can be salvaged. Standing casually, smoking a cigarette next to the box is the barber from The Locals Barber Shop. He laughs and says he’s been thinking the same thing about this box. We rummage through it together. It contains old crimplene dresses that are nearly interesting, but with patterns we just don’t quite like. At the bottom of the box is a eighties silk suit, brand new, still on the hanger. “What about this one?” he asks. I consider it. It has a peach and brown design, more brown than peach. It’s almost passable. He lifts it out so we can look more closely. On the back, the pattern changes from an angular abstract motif to a predominantly peach colour scheme, in fake Aboriginal dots and squiggles. We don’t need to say anything. Back it goes in the bottom of the box. Now we understand.
AM
I call up Tully. For some reason he didn’t make it to the Jelly Wrestling on Wednesday night. I’d sent him a teasing text message from the pub, saying:
I can’t believe
you are missing
this…You of all
people
to which he replied:
What are you
kidding? I’ve got
jelly and a lack
of clothes at
home!
But given how it all panned out, I do wish he could have made it along. And now I want to debrief. We meet at Sweet Belem for coffee and chess, and I tell him the whole story. Phew, he sighs. Wow. I do wish I was there.
He has to scoot: more essays to procrastinate over. As we part at the lights, we make a tentative arrangement to meet again, to drive around Petersham scoping out photogenic sites. He’s a keen photographer, you see…
PM
After we visit Geoff at the church, Vanessa and I go for a coffee at Papa Cafe on Crystal Street. This place is famous for being a mecca for soccer fans around World Cup time. Apparently, hundreds of people come, they block off the whole street. And this year is no exception. Posters and news articles plastered all over the walls. A TV set pipes in an Italian talk show on cable, the topic is “New Haircut, New Man?”
We talk about our relationships with our parents. Vanessa has a book to show me, all about maps. One map, my favourite, shows the layout of the territory of the path to hell, including the Creek of Gambling, the Tributory of Sloth, and the Falls of Final Damnation. Another good one is the Map of a Woman’s Heart. I walk her home and she gives me some home made biscuits. “I can’t stop baking at the moment!” she says…
Here we go again. That’s what I was thinking. Yet another trip to the Oxford for jelly wrestling. Could I bear it? I certainly wasn’t carrying with me the “fresh anticipation” I’d felt just two weeks ago: the curiosity of trying out something new, the concrete experience of seeing something for yourself which is so locally famous. To run through the whole routine again? The strippers doing the same set of yogic maneuvers? The traipsing back and forth between main bar and back room? The fake cheering for the fake contest between fake opponents, narrated by the fake MC? How to experience this anew?
This trip was organised by the Sydney Ladies Artists Club, following Lisa’s gender-conscious ponderings after our last visit. Her idea was to get a significant posse of ladies together - just enough to tilt the mood of the room and slightly shift the event. We had observed, from our previous expedition, that the five girls who came along with our group had a positive impact on the enjoyment of some of the performers. I think the performers felt a certain solidarity when they saw women out in the audience cheering them on.
As it turned out, last night the mood certainly did tilt, but not at all due to our “intervention”…
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The following is lifted from the SLAC (Sydney Ladies Artists Club) website. For those of you who missed last week’s Jelly Wrestling Extravaganza, we offer you a second chance!
The idea, cooked up by Lisa, was to try and get as many ladies into the pub as possible. We reckon this will change the entire dynamic of the event. It’s a valiant demonstration of the power of audience participation! So keep next Wednesday night in yer diary, ladies! (Of course, men welcome too…)
It’s wet, it’s wild, it’s the contentious gender spectacle of live jelly wrestling!
SLAC joins forces with Bilateral Petersham for a second round of soft-porn sightseeing at the infamous Oxford Tavern. Soak up the view (& flying jelly) from front row in the back room. Enjoy strip shows between rounds by consummate performers with truly impressive command of their hamstrings. But best of all, be there as we collectively effect a subtle intervention in the event dynamics and displace the primacy of the heterosexual male gaze… we’re going to stack the joint with Sydney Ladies, Artists or otherwise!
where: The Oxford Tavern, corner New Canterbury Rd & Crystal St Petersham
when: Wednesday 10th May 9pm
$7 door chargebring your lady friends!
[NB: the following blog post has been rated M: for Mature Audiences. It contains Nudity, Gambling, and...Adult Themes.]
Go on. Admit it. You’ve been past there dozens of times. You’ve joked about it. You’ve used it as a landmark when giving directions between Leichhardt and Marrickville. You’ve admired the neon signs. You’ve “always wanted” to go in - to see what Jelly Wrestling at the Oxford is all about. But you just never quite got around to it, did you?
Well, last night, a brave contingent of locals and ring-ins alike finally breached the threshold of Petersham’s Oxford Tavern.
To be fair, some of us had been to the Oxford before. But on that occasion, the pub’s front room was closed off, and we perched uncomfortably in “Rita’s Late Nite Lounge” between the pokies and the door, feeling rather cheated (but also mildly relieved) at how tame the whole thing had turned out to be. The full Oxford Experience was yet to come.
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This Wednesday night is Jelly Wrestlin’ night at the famous Oxford Tavern. The action starts at 9pm. We will be there. Feel free to come along! If you like, join Jim and Shimada and me* at the Portuguese Tapas Bar on Audley St for some “throwdowns”** and a snack, from 7pm, before the Jelly slinging begins! Send me an email if you need further info…
*grammatical correction [thanks to camperdowner. Previously, this sentence read “…join Jim and Shimada and I…” Essentially, what I mean to say here is “join us for a drink” therefore the pronoun should be “me” not “I” (I wouldn’t say “join I for a drink”, would I?!)
**”throwdowns” - the small bottles of beer they serve at the tapas bar and gloria’s. It’s good, cos they stay cold.
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