THIS WEEK ONLINE – The PARTY Issue

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Wow. It's been a million billion years but we are back.
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Instead of filling you in on all the important news that's occurred over the past 14 days [I cannot remember a single thing to list...Trump's arrest...? maybe?], I have decided to only bring you the absolute best, most necessary, and riveting news. So, naturally, this issue is PARTY themed.

• Does Sydney party? 
• Australia’s essential workers can’t afford to live alone
• How Melbourne near-destroyed all-male, all-white lineups for good
• Australian scientists grow human lung
• Scotland figures out net-zero partying
• Coburg market: the best place in the world
• Photos from Sydney’s 70s queer underground
• More

As Julie Fenwick writes for VICE AU: “Sydney is known as a graveyard, where nights out come to die.”

No greater truth lies in so few words. On episode one of suburb tours, Fenwick braved Newtown, engine of gentrification, home to the veneer of alternative tastes factory, but actually just a big steamy incubator for still-fresh 18 year olds, primed to cut their teeth on the world at piss-smelling places like the Marley. If everyone in Melbourne says Newtown is like the Fitzroy of Sydney, and everyone in Newtown thinks Newtown is the coolest place to be, then who’s driving this plane?

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In fact, no one can afford to live alone. We have a threshold in this country for housing that is not going to impoverish you when scaled against your wage, which is 30%. Housing should be no more than 30% of your wage. Now that the average capital city rent has RISEN TO FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY TWO DOLLARS A WEEK, essential workers, among everyone else, cannot afford to live alone.

According to a recent report released by the national housing campaign, Everybody’s Home, for someone working in hospitality or meat packing, 81% of their pay would go to housing. Aged care, nursing or early childhood: 77%. Teacher or firefighter: 58%. And.. shut up.. I know what you're going to say.. you SHOULD NOT have to live with a partner to afford housing. That’s just twisted.

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Melbourne’s nightclub scene appears to be deteriorating, especially as everyone yeets themselves off to Europe or wherever, but one thing will always set it apart from the other states. All-dude lineups are basically a thing of the past. They still happen, of course, but the shame code in the city is so, so strong. We either booed out all the boys clubs or shamed them into putting some chicks on their lineups. I spoke to WIP Project, who are celebrating three years of running a directory of non-binary, gender non-conforming, and women DJs, artists, bookers and promoters. Which means they're celebrating three years of making the words “we’d love to book more female DJs but there just aren’t enough” curl up and die in throats everywhere.

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AUSTRALIAN SCIENTISTS GROW HUMAN LUNG

Australian professor of nanomedicine Wojciech Chrzanowski and his colleagues at the University of Sydney Nano Institute have developed a world-first replica human lung, to be used for testing. As reported in Guardian Australia, Chrzanowski found it [why am I crying] “heartbreaking” to recall some of his early scientific work, where research involving animal testing was inevitable.

“The moment you start working in a lab, and have to start squeezing and cutting animals, you feel sorry for them,” Chrzanowski said. 

“In the past, I was involved in a trial with baboons, and they are really intelligent. The moment you start approaching their cage they start screaming, hitting things, and hiding. They know that something wrong is going to be done to them. It is heartbreaking.”

Instead of accepting it as distressing but inevitable [weeping at this point] Chrzanowski decided he would dedicate his life’s work to finding a better way. Aside from the cruelty, findings in animal studies are hardly ever replicable or applicable to humans. Because we are not animals. But it’s hard to get approval for human trials. Chrzanowski’s mini human lungs could be the future.

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Can dancing save the planet? A Glasgow arts venue-slash-night club has become the first in the world to switch to a power system that converts the body heat of dancers into renewable energy. The man behind this incredible invention is geothermal entrepreneur David Townsend, who thought all of the heat and energy generated on a dance floor was an almighty waste. 

The technology works by sucking up hot air from above the dancefloor, converting it to fluid using similar tech to a refrigerator, then it is turned into water, then pumped underground into boreholes underground the club’s community garden, and all the heat is stored for later use. The $1.1 million project is expected to pay for itself over five years, and apparently the ravers love it, and are more than happy to cut loose for the good cause. 

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Allow your eye to devour the goods and stuff and trash and clutter and garbage and treasure to be found at the Coburg Market. And meet some of the people that make it the special place that it is.

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More photos, as a treat. It’s been 50 years since the early 70s. Isn’t that amazing? 

Then, William Yang was a 20-something with a camera, capturing his friends at parties, events, houses. His beautiful images of Sydney’s gay liberation in the 70s illustrate a dynamic portrait: a collective of people publicly finding themselves.

“Gay people were becoming visible,” Yang told VICE. “To our surprise, there were many other gay people in the city.”

“The LGBT community is very well documented now, but back then it wasn't,” he said.

“I was just photographing the people I knew, and my friends, my own community. Not very many photographers were recording their own community in the 70s. So now the photographs are valuable in that they are rare… and you can see the formation of our community.”

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Did you forget we have a really good quick news channel where we explain the most important news story of the day to you in words you can understand and within a short period of time? Don't forget.

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