2022
Last night a bunch of Melbourne Local Guides mixed in with some Melbourne Photowalkers met up for dinner and a walk through the Gertrude Street Projection Festival. Gertrude Street runs through the suburb of Fitzroy and has long been known as a strong art district. Unfortunately it seems someone forgot to tell the festival it was supposed to be about projection, well mostly anyway. It was quite lame this year with very few projections and many small installations. Some of them were cool but mostly a bit lame with way too many commercial entries. Seems this festival has lost its way over the last couple of years.
We started at Belles Hot Chicken which had some really good reviews. One of our number made a reservation and we were looking forward to some good food. The guys who did not make a reservation got there early and got to sit and eat. Those with a reservation were told when we asked for our table that they don't take reservations and immediately seated a bigger group. They basically accused the guy who did the reservation a liar to his face. We decided we would not be part of a business that would choose to not serve a small group with a reservation just so they could seat a big group that did. They cleared out a couple of tables of people who clearly were pressured to finish up and get out so they could seat this new big group. Naturally they got one star.
Still hungry we headed down the street until we reached Beach Burrito Fitzroy who were more than happy to feed us. We started with some poppers and drinks
Followed up by a Mucho Burrito which was really nice, great spicy flavours and actual meat
Beach Burrito even has a skate bowl in a cage inside!
Beach Burrito got plenty of stars, five in fact for their great service and great food. The place has an excellent atmosphere. It is family friendly with small booths for those that might want to get a little romantic.
Naturally we mixed photos with a bit of Maps editing to fix up some details here and there as well as adding plenty of photos to places along Gertrude Street
There seemed to be plenty of rabbits and chickens for no readily apparent reason...
As we walked the festival we enjoyed what installations there were and naturally messed around like we always do
Finally at the end of the night we tried to find coffee, but can you believe in Melbourne the home of coffee everything was shut. So we finished up with a group photo of those that were left (we really should do these things at the start)
All in all it was a good evening with mates even with the false start.
