Brunswick: The Indie Kid's Paradise Down Under

Yesterday Sara and I, having no classes on Fridays, ventured out into the suburb of Brunswick, what I think is the coolest area of Melbourne outside of the city centre so far. What's great about Brunswick is that it's very neighbourhoody; it seems like it would be a great place to live, but it's also very centrally contained. Most of it (or what I would call "Main Street", I suppose) is located on Sydney Road (and that's where I took this picture). It's filled with little cafés and restaurants of all ethnicities, boutiques, hardware and grocery stores, little everything shops (often Asian-themed), and op shops: the coolest places around. Op stands for opportunity, so essentially it's the same thing as a thrift store, but it's also a low-budget college kid's haven. You can get everything really cheap in those places. Like yesterday Sara and I went over there for the *primary* purpose of getting things to wear at the next smoko (themed "rock-off"), and, deciding to go the 90s-grunge-Kurt-Cobain route, I bought a red plaid flannel shirt and a plain white t-shirt, which I reconstructed so that the back of it looks like a spine (followed the instructions here). It's pretty rad. I'm proud of myself :) So that, and I also bought a bunch of cool-ass jewelry for belly dancing-- which I officially start on 10 September, yay!-- and some potpourri for my room, all just AUS$25. Sweet deal!