Naked City: Tunnel Vision!

Naked City: Tunnel Vision!

As reported in last week’s edition, there’s been a cruel attempt to ban buskers from the Devonshire Street tunnel with bogus “not authorised” signs supposedly issued by Sydney Trains. Thankfully, it’s all been revealed as a prank or a cunning deception – perhaps the work of some killjoy out to silence every busker in town.

It does however highlight the cultural and social significance of this conduit of seething humanity. Originally part of the Metropolitan Goods line linking Central with Darling Harbour, it has served the city well for decades – a home to hundreds if not thousands of buskers over the years and a canvas for a vibrant display of civic murals.

Bubbling and bustling during the day, it can also be freaky to traverse during the wee small hours as shadowy and threatening figures approach like in a film noir, from your distant view. There’s no turning back once you have reached the half way mark, even when a bunch of drunken hoons fill its cavernous dimensions with a series of ear splitting screams.

Nevertheless, its daytime bon vivant makes up for any nocturnal dangers as you are swept along in an endless procession of students, office workers, shoppers and pensioners heading for a day out in the city. Where else in this great metropolis can you surround yourself with such a mobile mass of fellow Sydneysiders, striding out with both purpose and an all embracing sense of the common good?

We even know of some folks, so keen to mingle with the community at large, who do three or four laps of the tunnel each day, spurred on by the ever-changing line-up of buskers and street performers. It’s the latter who provide an almost seamless soundtrack for your three to four minute journey from Central to George Street or vice versa. As the echoing sounds of the buskers morph into each other, it’s as if you have been thrust into some enormous audio concrete mixer, spewed out at the other end to the dissipating strains of a Bob Marley medley.

God, we love the Devonshire Street tunnel and a pox on that shameless prankster who tried to shut the buskers down – may you run the gauntlet of ferocious muggers at 4.00am in the morning. We would even love to see the Council and State Government acknowledge its cultural significance by staging a number of special events during the coming Vivid Festival. Everybody has seen the Opera House lit up (yawn), but what about the good old Devo Street tunnel?

The sheer elongated length of this urban icon would lend itself to a projected version of the 2002 cinema classic Russian Ark. As you might remember, this remarkable movie was all shot in the one take and tunnel goers could experience a similar unedited encounter as they stroll from one end to another. The walls would be transformed into the interior of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg and actors (NIDA students would do) could be positioned every four or five metres to recreate the most important scenes.

Punters would even be encouraged to interact and shake their hands. Surely the experience of clasping mitts with Peter The Great, Tsar Nicholas or even Catherine The Great (a cameo of course from Clover Moore) would surpass the predictable boredom of Morrissey at the Opera House, instructing all and sundry that eating a snag sandwich was akin to an act of paedophilia.

THE HIT LIST: Check out two exciting young trios at Foundry 616 this Thursday 26. The Curran/Rapp/Thomas Trio are joined by the Farrar/Brown/Ryan Trio as they push the boundaries of modern music and explore a very contemporary soundscape. www.foundry616.com.au

 

 

By Coffin Ed, Jay Katz and Miss Death

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