At least once a year, I find myself tangled in a debate about the differences between Melbourne and Sydney.<\/p>\n
Inevitably, there\u2019s the standard twaddle about coffee and beaches and whatever, but then there\u2019s never much of a real conclusion, and neither side changes their opinion.<\/p>\n
However, this week there was a story that summed it up better than any roasted bean or length of sand ever could.<\/p>\n
At Sydney\u2019s Bondi Beach, a production company was filming a reality doco about the beautiful people who frequent the area.<\/p>\n
But rather than rely on \u201creality\u201d, the producers posted a message advising that any local who wasn\u2019t considered \u201cfit and\/or attractive\u201d to stay out of shot of the camera.<\/p>\n
In short: if you\u2019re ugly, bugger off.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s got to be the most Sydney thing I\u2019ve ever heard, and it\u2019s hard to imagine it ever happening in Melbourne.<\/p>\n
Mainly because we like things a bit rough and scruffy here, and any local film crew would be likely to fill the background with all the imperfections Melbourne can offer \u2013 including graffiti, crumbling roads, grey clouds, and certain football fans.<\/p>\n
We don\u2019t hide them here. <\/p>\n
Instead, Melbourne has a strange way of embracing our defects. And we even thrive because of them.<\/p>\n
Last week, Melbourne was named the best city in the world<\/a>. It\u2019s no small honour, and it\u2019s not the first time we\u2019ve received such titles.<\/p>\n Far from being shocked, most citizens of this town would have nodded their heads and said \u201cdamn right it is\u201d. But what\u2019s funny about Melbourne is those same citizens could easily write a list of why it isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n Including, but not exclusively, the crime rate, potholes, machetes, union corruption, soft judges, firebombs and no train to the airport.<\/p>\n And we also have a shocking habit of paying far too much for things that either don\u2019t happen (Comm Games<\/a>) or don\u2019t work properly (myki<\/a>), while then devaluing other things that do \u2013 like our school teachers<\/a>.<\/p>\n You could argue that far from being the best city in the world, Melbourne is one of the worst.<\/p>\n But we know it\u2019s not. And I think it\u2019s because Melburnians don\u2019t hide from the ugly bits. <\/p>\n We talk about them, get angry about them, and we even celebrate them when the occasion is right.<\/p>\n The Japanese have a beautiful concept called kintsugi. When a bowl or dish is broken, it\u2019s put back together by filling the cracks with precious metals like gold. Then the damage and imperfection becomes the most precious part of the object.<\/p>\n To me, that\u2019s Melbourne.<\/p>\n Sydney would just go out and buy another bowl. Where\u2019s the beauty in that?<\/p>\n So the next time I\u2019m tangled in a debate over Melbourne versus Sydney, I\u2019ll mention that Bondi \u201creality\u201d show, and I\u2019ll hold up my long black and say, \u201cHere\u2019s the gold cracks.\u201d<\/p>\n Justin Smith is an author, journalist and broadcaster<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least once a year, I find myself tangled in a debate about the differences between Melbourne and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550338,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,689,195744,89155,272309,134,272307,84074,272300,272302,272305,647,673,677,197495,272308,272301,272303,144370,272299,670,272306,427,272304,660],"class_list":["post-550337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australia-and-new-zealand","tag-beautiful-people","tag-bondi-beach","tag-crime-rate","tag-entertainment","tag-film-crew","tag-football-fans","tag-gold-cracks","tag-just-blaze","tag-key-difference","tag-melbourne","tag-new-south-wales","tag-oceania","tag-production-company","tag-real-conclusion","tag-reality-doco","tag-roasted-bean","tag-school-teachers","tag-standard-twaddle","tag-sydney","tag-time-out","tag-tv","tag-union-corruption","tag-victoria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550337","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550337\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550338"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}