(Above: one of three world famous eleven foot tall steel giant crows created by Will Salisbury in 2001, southbound side of I-81 in Omar, NY. More here).
A little while ago Tom Kenyon mounted a stern argument in The Punch on the subject of gay marriage. There's no logical reason to allow gay marriage, he asserted, calling on thousands of years of tradition. Though come to think of it, relying on tradition might make for a good argument for polygamy or even incest (you know, after Adam and Eve, what then?).
Tom caused a bit of a storm in the comments section, what with his insistence on marriage involving children (which got a few childless couples agitated) and talking about a single mother's pension when he probably meant supporting parent's benefit.
This week he's at it again, in Australia's cheap skate conversation, with a penetrating, probing question Is Adelaide the most insecure city in Australia?
Now after you've said d'oh.
Funnily enough, what should catch my eye but this bit of brooding:
...we need an attitude change. We are too negative and the idea of change really freaks us out. Our attitude needs to be, “What do we have to do to make this work?” It’s time we all changed the way we think and talk.
Well you know Tom, maybe it's time you started with yourself and your own negativity and being freaked out by changing social and cultural practices. Why I reckon if Don Dunstan were alive today, he'd have reclaimed the old births, deaths and marriages building in King William street, and turned it into a centre for gay marriages, angling for the tourist trade.
You know, come to the land of the croweaters, get hitched, ride in a horse and carriage down east Rundle, spend a night in the casino, go for a punt on the Torrens, eat up, do a bit of culture vulturing, drop all your pink dollars, and then bugger off back where you came from.
Well I reckon it's as good as one of your ideas to get SA on the move:
Coffee’s another thing. We could become a state of baristas, not just coffee makers. People should be able to get around SA without ever having a bad coffee. For that matter we could take Tea more seriously as well.
Oh dear, so that's what happened to the multi function polis. Everybody decided they'd rather be baristas instead.
And really it's an idea that's a match for this insight:
Lastly, we need to build on our strengths. For instance, we have great food and wine in South Australia we could start there. Eating is so important to humans both for our health as well as socially.
Eating is important for our health? No, really?
But then Tom's rant reminds me of every second restaurant, diner, or other seller of goods and services in the United States, where someone has put up a sign saying "World famous for", and then inserted whatever their thing is - burger, hotdog, shoe repair, haircutting, packaged goods. You name it, every seller and his dog is world famous for something.
So it stands to reason that if we do food really well, it will stand out in the minds of our visitors. But I mean world’s best. Not better or just good.
And Tom's not without ambition. He wants SA to take on the French, by ripping them off:
We could either adopt the Michelin system here or devise our own but it has to be hard and we need to consider making it compulsory in some way. I think that we should go for Australia’s first Michelin star. We could start with the city centre and work our way out.
Well I'd give that idea half a star for originality, and half a star for usefulness and three stars for cribbing. I guess the only question now is what to call this new system. How about the Kenyons? Maybe not. But I look forward to eating at a three Kenyon restaurant in Burra someday, provided they serve a Cornish pasty on a copper plate.
Moving along, Tom also has grand plans for the wine industry:
Um, Tom, I don't quite know how to tell you this. Ever heard of Penfold's Grange?
Sometimes I think we get so outraged because secretly we worry that Adelaide may actually be a backwater.
Often the “solution” that is put forward is to build an iconic building such as a tower or a fantastic or unusual museum. These are all great ideas – we should build more unusual and more controversial buildings. Interesting buildings give a city character. I like buildings that have gardens down the side and on the roof. It would be great to see some of them.
Great, great. I was thinking maybe a viewing platform like the one on the giant rocking horse at Gumeracha, or maybe we could have a garden in the front, like Larry the lobster has down Kingston way.
Iconic buildings of themselves are not enough. What lures visitors is other visitors saying, “You have to go there. I loved it. I want to go back.” That means we need to make Adelaide an experience people want rather than a place where there are interesting buildings.
Well here's a suggestion. Work on your own antediluvian social attitudes, and look around and recognise what's already there, from Penfolds making Grange through to the Adelaide Festival.
Our wine is great too. It’s a different style to the French wines but we are really good at making the wines that we make, especially the Shiraz, so our wine regions need to be part of our plan. We need to raise the quality of our wine to such an extent that South Australian regions become the world wide bench mark for at least a couple of varieties.
Um, Tom, I don't quite know how to tell you this. Ever heard of Penfold's Grange?
Overseas awards include a gold medal at the 1979 Wine Olympiad in Paris, where the 1971 Grange shocked the French by winning the Shiraz class against top wines from the "home" of Shiraz - France's Rhone Valley. And Wine Spectator magazine named the 1990 vintage Grange 'The Best Red Wine in the World' ...
...Penfolds Grange Hermitage is a monument of opulence. Its hallmarks are the ripe, opulent, spicy flavors of Shiraz on a plush structure that owes everything to the deep, sandy soils and warm, even climate of Barossa Valley and the Southern Vales. (here, where you can also read Max Schubert on the story of Grange).
Oh I know it has its ups and downs, but hey, show me an eastern states red with its pedigree.
What on earth can you say about a man wanting to blow SA's trumpet, and forgets to bring along the trumpet? Would you call him some kind of defensive worry wart?
In Adelaide we worry a lot. A mall, trams, grandstands, hospitals even roundabouts cause hours of debate. However, nothing winds us up more than someone criticising our city. We’re so defensive.
Yep.
Sometimes I think we get so outraged because secretly we worry that Adelaide may actually be a backwater.
Well Tom I'm not so sure about Adelaide, but I'm damn sure about some of its politicians, at least the ones at work at the moment.
But look if the gay marriage thing doesn't work for you, I've always had this grand vision of replacing Light's statue with a giant crow, rather like Goulburn's iconic sheep or the giant koala on view between Horsham and Stawell. Surely this would be a real goer?
Often the “solution” that is put forward is to build an iconic building such as a tower or a fantastic or unusual museum. These are all great ideas – we should build more unusual and more controversial buildings. Interesting buildings give a city character. I like buildings that have gardens down the side and on the roof. It would be great to see some of them.
Great, great. I was thinking maybe a viewing platform like the one on the giant rocking horse at Gumeracha, or maybe we could have a garden in the front, like Larry the lobster has down Kingston way.
But we shouldn’t build them and expect people to come to see them thus solving all our problems. It won’t work. Let me give you an example. Would you go to Taipei? It’s the home of Taipei 101 the world’s tallest building. It’s a great building in a great city but Taipei’s not an international tourist mecca.
Gee Tom, you're no fun. And to think we braved the Basque separatists to see Gehry's Bilbao tourist trap for the Guggenheim, and a fine building it is too. Is it so long ago SA was building its own shrine to the arts?
Iconic buildings of themselves are not enough. What lures visitors is other visitors saying, “You have to go there. I loved it. I want to go back.” That means we need to make Adelaide an experience people want rather than a place where there are interesting buildings.
Well here's a suggestion. Work on your own antediluvian social attitudes, and look around and recognise what's already there, from Penfolds making Grange through to the Adelaide Festival.
And for the love of the lord, stop sounding so defensive, always worrying about living in a backwater, and always referencing other people in other places, like the French or the Taiwanese. Backwaters have their charms, even if I can't think of all of them right now ...
Meantime, memo Penbo at The Punch. More from Tom Kenyon and Bronwyn Bishop? Time to get thee behind a paywall, and pay something for something, instead of nothing for nothing. Though I did just love Bronwyn's witty repartee:
Joke of the week. Minister Albanese accusing someone in the Liberal Party of not being a sophisticate – he’d sure know one if he met one. Really!
(Below: first stop over at the giant koala and then enjoy these giant SA attractions, though I can't swear they're all still operational).
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