Week 15

Strangers on the Tram

The penultimate chapter in this unfolding story…

It’s been fun rolling this out week to week, but also I’m starting to kinda miss doing the spontaneous comics every week. I have all these small moments stacking up that would be nice to draw but then a few weeks goes past and more things happen and then nothing feels that fresh or relevant to return to. The only solution would be for this to be a full time job. I think I would need about one hundred paid subscribers and to get a hundred paid subscribers I would need a base of maybe 10 000 free ones? Just several thousand off that right now but we’ll see how it goes, give it a couple more weeks! It’s all free anyway, I don’t even have paid subs on.

This Week I Learned…

This week I re-learned how much I enjoy interacting with strangers on the street.

First there was the guy that pulled me over really excited to point out an undercover police operation playing out on Queen St. He got really disappointed when he saw I had a baby with me because he clearly wanted me to stay and watch the whole thing play out with him.

Then I struck up a conversation with a security guard outside the Swatch shop, where a line of people was growing at 7am. He told me they’d been lining up since 4am for a special Mission to Earthphase Moonshine Gold Swatch x Omega + Snoopy collab, which was going to be released on that day only. He basically convinced me to buy one, saying I could flip it online for twice as much. He himself did it on occasion with these special drops, coming back in civilian clothes after his shift ended. (N.B. I tried to go back and buy one but they’d sold out just a couple of hours earlier, at 1.30pm, making those who got up at 4 look a little foolish I think.)

There was the guy on the tram that overhead a conversation me and Dean were having about the band Butthole Surfers and started giggling at the name so we kept saying Butthole Surfers until he was a puddle on the floor.

And then there was Fran, who stopped to admire a tiny plant on the street with me and Rachel and together we talked about all the secret green spaces of Melbourne. She invited us up to her apartment to admire her 110 house plants. I have her card and plan to follow up next week.

I would have loved to draw any of these interactions and maybe I will. Perhaps a larger tapestry will emerge.

Met anyone cute lately?