The moment I enter, I know I don’t belong. Having spent the morning shopping with my nephew we arrive in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, with plastic bags hanging like Christmas ornaments from our wrists. Unwittingly, we have stumbled upon the epicenter of the hipster universe; a place where facial piercings are deliberate as opposed to the legacy of some tragic industrial accident, where man buns roam free. I look hopelessly lost. But, for better or worse, this is the place we’ve agreed to meet friends for lunch.
The moment I enter, I know I don’t belong. Having spent the morning shopping with my nephew we arrive in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, with plastic bags hanging like Christmas ornaments from our wrists. Unwittingly, we have stumbled upon the epicenter of the hipster universe; a place where facial piercings are deliberate as opposed to the legacy of some tragic industrial accident, where man buns roam free. I look hopelessly lost. But, for better or worse, this is the place we’ve agreed to meet friends for lunch.
The restaurant is dark, with cool wooden floors and garish wall decorations. Much like the butterfly enclosure at Melbourne zoo, the room has been scientifically designed with its inhabitants in mind. This is an atmosphere in which hipsters will not just survive but flourish. It’s wonderful to view them up close in their natural environment and I’m acutely aware that, one day, restaurants such as this will be the only place people will ever see hipsters up close. For hipsters, like SNAGs, Teddy Boys and Tyrannosaurus Rex before them, are destined to fade into extinction. Then I see him.
He is seated at the table across from us. Dressed in black jeans, a leather jacket and sunglasses, he looks exactly like a musician should look when they duck out for a spot of brunch. Gareth Liddiard of the Drones is a bona fide rock star. By which I mean that he’s not some moderately talented wannabe frittering away a few years between finishing Uni and succumbing to a career in graphic design by releasing a couple of competent but ultimately forgettable records. Instead, Gareth is an extraordinary lyricist who creates compelling albeit unsettling music. It’s not for everyone, but I think his work is magnificent.
I try not to look over in his direction, but it’s hard not to. If I wander over and ask for a picture, will I make his day? Or is being accosted by a middle aged man who’s just finished shopping at H & M and is suffering an acute case of retail delirium (a heady mix of physical fatigue, dehydration and general sensory overload) going to put him off his meal? I start to imagine how I might break the ice…
Me: Either you’re Gareth from the Drones or you’d be odds-on favourite to win a Gareth Liddiard look-alike competition.
Him: (cue relaxed laughter) Let’s take a picture together! And while we’re at it, would you like to join us onstage this evening?
It never happens. Instead, I settle for a series of furtive but (hopefully) discreet glances between bouts of attempting to understand the menu. The menu is so utterly verbose as to be practically meaningless. When one of our group offers to order share plates, I am grateful to be relieved of any responsibility. The waitress – tattooed, pierced and with a facial countenance that could turn the tide – asks me what I’d like to drink. It’s then that I make a catastrophic mistake.
Knowing I’m out of place, my strategy is to be a ‘low maintenance’ customer. I order coffee which prompts the super-grumpy waitress to ask what kind of milk I want. Without thinking, I answer ‘regular milk.’ This is the wrong answer, as evidenced by the near full-facial collapse of the person taking my order. She sighs a deep, difficult sigh as though I have extinguished a part of her soul. It’s at that moment that I’m informed that we’re at a vegan café where there are no animal products for sale. My attempt to be low-maintenance has backfired spectacularly. In fact, it couldn’t have gone any worse had I waltzed in wearing two porterhouse steaks for shoes and demanded a hat made of bacon. My only hope is that Gareth hasn’t noticed this faux pas and he doesn’t think less of me as a result.
But I am puzzled. Even though we are in a vegan restaurant with a strictly enforced ‘no real milk’ policy, the menu is littered with carnivorous offerings – chorizo, calamari and the like. Only later do I learn that these ingredients aren’t really chorizo and calamari but something called ‘quorn’, a meat substitute made from an edible fungus. Thinking back, the menu was so full of quorn that it could well be described as ‘quornographic’. When the calamari arrives, I dive right in. It’s quite tasty but a little chewy and I can’t help but notice that the waitress is now missing a shoe. It’s hard not to conclude that the appearance of the faux calamari and disappearance of a piece of footwear are somehow related.
Gareth finishes his meal before I do. As he gets up, I wonder if this is my last chance to declare my undying affection for his work and – technology willing – get a photo. But I can’t bring myself to do it. There’s something about intercepting someone on the way to the bathroom that feels, well, undignified. Perhaps it’s better this way. The fact that he’s worn his sunglasses through the entire meal in a dark room only proves how much a rock star he really is. That’s because Gareth from the Drones is, in stark contrast to the calamari, the real deal.