I happened to be waiting for a tram just near the old Yellow Peril whilst on the way to acb's birthday dinner, yesterday. It's looking a bit worse for wear these days, but I guess it's at least 20 years old (I can't remember exactly - anybody ?)

So we ate at a nice vegetarian cafe called Sub Terrain in North Fitzroy (which doesn't exist according to whereis.com.au, although "Fitzroy North" does). Across the street, painted in green on somebody's fence was "I believe in my childood dreams" (my photo of this didn't come out very well). Later on, in the toilet out the back, I noticed the wall to my right had "don't forget to remember your dreams" scrawled on it, while the one to my left said "I know you don't love me."

Background music started off with The Jackson Code's The things you need (excellent call !), and ended up on Paul Kelly's classic Post, possibly stopping on the way for some Tom Waits, but I couldn't quite hear it.

acb's birthday dinners have become something of a ritual over the past few years, with (more or less) the same group of people, none of whom I end up seeing any other time of the year. It's all very pleasant and entertaining - the kind of thing dinners ought to be.

The menu (not shown above) - the actual menu, not the contents of it - was rather odd, because they'd decided to use a Star-Trek-like futuristic font on the headings for all the types of dishes (Entree, Main, Dessert, etc.), if not the names of the dishes themselves (I forget exactly now). It all seemed a bit uncharacteristic of the cafe. Perhaps these people need to hire an aesthete.

The food itself, however, was very good. I had an "inner warmth" pizza, which had pumpkin, sunflower seeds, and...uh...some other stuff on it. I'll have to come back here some time and explore the other nice-sounding things on the menu.