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Published: January 17th 2012
Awesome face
This has nothing to do with the subject of this blog but I love this guy's face. His facial features are beautiful and very representative of how most of the Aboriginal people here look. I took the picture from the cover of a book in the Darwin Museum.No shoes, no shirt, no service. Those words mean very different things here in Darwin.
No shoes: it is extremely common to see people walking around barefoot. At the gas station, at the grocery store, at the restaurant, wherever. I would say about one in five people are barefoot. At first I thought maybe a lot of people couldn't afford shoes, and while that might explain why
some people are barefoot, for a lot of them, it's just a choice. It's the way they live.
I see a lot of parents with shoes walking around with their shoeless kids. I have to say I'm not used to it and I don't know if I ever will be. I mean I know I've led a pretty sheltered and order-filled life in a lot of ways, but it just seems so dangerous to me. There's a lot of crap on the ground, you know? Especially at gas stations and in grocery stores! Broken glass, rusty nails, huge repulsive bugs some of which are poisonous, dog vomit, chewing gum, I could go on, and there's also this weird bacteria in the soil that can kill you in 48 hours! (see earlier blog
Random Aussie
This guy had a shirt and shoes, but I felt compelled to take a picture of him anyway. I was sitting safely in the car, with Majeed, who didn't exactly approve of me taking this. But I decided to have a laugh, post the photo and live on the edge. "
Poisonous and Dangerous ") I dunno.
No shirt: it is even more common to see shirtless men (who are often shoeless as well). You can go wherever you want without a shirt. Actually I have seen some restaurants with signs that require a shirt and shoes, but many don't. And when guys do wear shirts, they're often muscle shirts aka 'undershirts'. And often these shirts have pictures of naked women on them or they advertise strip clubs. I've often fantasized grabbing these guys, wrestling them down and ripping off said shirts, but so far I've managed to just give them dirty looks. Maybe I'm just uptight? Or maybe I just don't get fashion.
We went to visit an apartment one time and the landlord showed us all around while shirtless. We thought that was pretty funny. Well at least informal if not funny. We see this guy outside almost daily playing sports and hanging out and we have
never ever seen him with a shirt on. His skin looks like leather. I guess he didn't get the skin cancer memo.
No service: whilst in North America, the saying goes "no shoes, no shirt, no service", here in Darwin 'no
What's the go?
That's an Aussie expression that I love. But really, what IS the deal here? Notice the license plate. There are a lot of hilariously decorated cars here and a LOT of personalized plates. Plates I've seen on cop cars include: "Patrollin", "Spd kills", and "Indic8". Funny. service' takes on a different meaning. Basically there is often just NO SERVICE. When you get to the restaurant, you walk up to the cash, place your order and pay. Then you sit down at the table and sometimes you get your food brought to you but other times you get to take this pager-like thing with you while you find a table (you know, like at Red Lobster). When the pager starts blinking and buzzing your food is ready and you go up to the counter to get it. It's kind of exciting because it feels like you've just won something!
I wanted to go around taking pictures of random shoeless and shirtless people, but there's this voice inside me that tells me it's rude. And that I could possibly get into some sort of trouble. Call me cautious but a lot of people around here are rough around the edges and I'm just not into fights.
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