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The Pink Palace, policy and power: Home-making practices and gentrification in Northcote

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 23; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10304310903056328

1469-3666

Rosemary Overell,

Rural development and sustainability

Abstract Cultural practices constitute cultural spaces, which include, or exclude, specific identities. This article examines a set of particular ‘home-making’ cultural practices surrounding gentrification in Northcote, Melbourne. I use the notion of home making to understand the implications of gentrification on a particular site, the Pink Palace. The Pink Palace was a former warehouse, located on Eastment Street, Northcote, which operated as a home, a punk music venue and a space for radical political activism between 1998 and 2005. It was closed in 2005 when the lease was not renewed. Through ethnographic interviews I conducted with people involved at the Pink Palace, I understand the punk subcultural activities practised as instances of home making which attempted to fix a meaning for the Pink Palace and its surrounds. I posit this articulation of home making against the home-making practices of Darebin City Council, which attempted to re-signify Eastment Street as a ‘creative community’ through cultural planning. An analysis of Darebin City Council's policies shows how such policy constructs the Pink Palace and its nearby area as the home space of a creative-consumer identity. The creative consumer is a gentrifying identity whose home-making practices enacted the creative community imperatives laid out by Darebin City Council. The home-making practices of the gentrifying creative consumer worked to over-determine the punk home space constituted through the (sub)cultural practices of the Pink Palace residents. The punk significance of Eastment Street was invisibilized as the practices of home making by gentrifiers gained ascendance. With the gentrification of the space, the Pink Palace residents no longer felt ‘at home’ in Eastment Street. They were excluded from their former home space and the Pink Palace closed. Notes 1. I am aware of the, often heated, discussion surrounding the term ‘subculture’ (Bennett and Kahn-Harris Citation2004; Muggleton Citation2000; Muggleton and Weinzierl Citation2003). It is with these debates in mind that I have consciously chosen ‘subculture’, over, say, ‘scene’ (cf. Kahn-Harris Citation2007). I acknowledge the shortcomings of early subcultural theory, which tended to privilege semiotic analysis of subcultural products rather than critically engaging with subcultural formations as diverse, living entities (cf. Hebdige Citation1979). In this article, I grant the subculture associated with the Palace a liveliness through ethnographic content. Here, I am drawing more on the ‘first wave’ of CCCS work on subcultures, which was based on qualitative interviews and participant observation (Willis Citation1977, Citation1978). Further, I chose ‘subculture’ because it suggests a coherence, which I wish to capture, particularly in this first section of the paper. Scene is an accurate appellation for, say, the wider ‘punk’ networks of which many of the Palace residents were a part (cf. Straw [Citation1991] 2005). However, when referring to a highly localized grouping, as I am, I feel subculture is more apt. 2. Brick making was the main industry in Northcote during most of the twentieth century (Lobert and Ruffy Citation1988, 23; Lemon Citation1983). However, other light manufacturing and small businesses also flourished (Lobert and Ruffy Citation1988, 35–6). Eastment Street, in particular, was home to shoemakers, bakeries and laundries (CitationDarebin Historical Encyclopaedia n.d.; Sands & MacDougall Citation1915, 1923, 1961, 1967, 1972; Darebin City Council Citation2007b). 3. The interviews were conducted in the period June–August 2007. I undertook participant observation at the Palace, before it closed in March–April 2005. 4. Though, recently, it is worth noting that there has been something of a recuperation of home-making practices in, particularly middle-class, culture. 5. Rose draws on Bataille's notion of ‘monuments’ (Citation1985). These monuments operate as ‘Babel-like summits designed to lift us out of the ongoingness of life’ (Rose Citation2002, 461). That is, monuments work as over-arching devices constructed by subjects as a foil to the excessive potential meanings of ‘life in general’ (ibid.). 6. See Barnes et al.'s (Citation2006) article on Port Kembla, Wollongong, for a critique of council planners' assumptions that creative-city planning is a normative solution to local social and economic ‘problems’. 7. Not unsurprisingly, creative-city advocates use a similar rhetoric. See Landry (2005). 8. Though Shaw's work on Sydney contradicts this (Citation2006). In Northcote, however, widespread abandonment was not present. 9. Florida (Citation2003), in fact, suggests that such a situation is crucial to the gestation of creative city spaces. His ‘bohemian index’ is determined by the amount of creative-workers living (notably renting) and ‘playing’ in a particular space. 10. The MUA strike occurred on Melbourne's wharves during 1998. It centred on the decision of Patrick Stevedoring boss Chris Corrigan to sack all his unionized workers. This was due to their alleged ‘rort[ing]’ of union bargaining resulting in high wages for what he perceived as very little work (in Trinca and Davies Citation2000, xiv). Because of the Coalition government's workplace relations laws, general striking was difficult, thus the ‘Wharfies’ picketed the docks, while Australian Council of Trade Unions lawyers pursued the matter in court. Meanwhile, non-union workers were brought in to work. See Trinca and Davies for a journalistic account of events (2000). 11. The names of the interview subjects quoted in this paper have been changed. 12. Prior to 1998, the warehouse had operated primarily as a bakery (Sands & McDougall Citation1915, 1923, 1961, 1967, 1972). A title search reveals that from 1968 until 1972 it operated as ‘Rinaldi's Bakery’, after which it was jointly owned by Mr Silvestroni and Mr Sambucco, who also used it for baking (CitationLand Titles Office, Victoria n.d.). In 1989, Mr Silvestroni appears to have bought the warehouse outright, after which, according to the Palace residents, it operated as a jeans warehouse (ibid.). 13. Most of the Palace residents were vegan – subscribing to the radical animal rights ideology outlined by O'Hara (Citation1999). 14. This was particularly true when the punk-death-metal hybrid genre of ‘grindcore’ was performed at the Palace. Refer to Kahn-Harris for a discussion of the ‘sonic transgression’ of musical forms such as grindcore (2007, 30–4). For a general discussion regarding the relationship between grindcore and punk refer to Mudrian, chapter 1, ‘Punk is a rotting corpse’ (Citation2004, 25–45). The Palace also hosted avant-garde shows and art noise bands. However, as the residents pointed out, these less explicitly ‘punk’ performers remained punk … influenced. Lucy expressed this sentiment: ‘grind[core] music is just yet another sub-genre of punk … So when all the residents of the P[ink] P[alace] referred to “punk”, it was an umbrella term that roughly encapsulated most of the music played there … whether it be grind[core], hardcore, metal, crust, folk punk or whatever.’ 15. ‘Dumpster diving’ is a practice where people, resistant to participation in capitalist exchange, and concerned that much supermarket stock is thrown away before it is rancid, steal food from large bins behind supermarkets. 16. An article in the metropolitan magazine The Melbourne Times also harnesses an understanding of Northcote as ‘organic’ (Ennis Citation2007, 9). ‘[B]randing visionary’ Gilbert Rochecouste dubs the suburb as the first ‘organically cool’ creative precinct in Melbourne (ibid.). 17. ‘Shabby chic’ is, in fact, a popular style of interior decoration. See Ashwell and Costin (Citation1996). 18. It is worth noting that Open Studio is only a two-minute walk from the former Palace site. 19. See Lemon for a very brief historical outline of the Commercial (1983, 114, 131). 20. The businessperson responsible for NSC remodelling also re-branded and renovated the ‘Corner Hotel’ in Richmond. The same owner also established the ‘Public Office’ bar and band venue in Melbourne's CBD. Richmond is another inner-Melbourne suburb which has undergone gentrification, of which Logan provides an early analysis (1985). The ‘Public Office’ is an example of a classic form of gentrification. Formerly a warehouse, it was renovated and re-branded as ‘cool’ partly as a result of the hip bands that performed there. Gentrification in Melbourne's CBD is discussed by Lobato (Citation2006). Gibson and Homan (Citation2004) discuss the shift towards unamplified music in their work on Marrickville, Sydney. 21. Victor also regarded Northcote as unwelcoming owing to the inception of sites such as NSC. Before proceeding with his remarks regarding the Commercial Hotel, quoted above, he commented: ‘In the past, Northcote was more like a place for the, I guess, um, … punks … [Now] it is less welcoming’ (emphasis added). 22. Such as illustration and shop-front design, as well as residential spaces, primarily apartment blocks and refurbished warehouses. 23. Though the term ‘renaissance’ is not specifically used in DCC documents, Evans (Citation2001) uses it as the subtitle of his book Cultural Planning: An Urban Renaissance, which outlines strategies for creative industry to revitalize (gentrify) urban spaces. Smith discusses the rhetorical use of ‘renaissance’ in relation to New York City (1996, 35).