Looking for... ?

Apologies for the lack of posts. Decided it was best to say nothing rather than be unfunny, not that this post is guaranteed to entertain. Also had to find a story that didn't involve Air Mauritius.



Looking for Alibrandi was perhaps the Bend it Like Beckham of Sydney in the 1990s, something so iconic it was on the high school English curriculum. Indeed, Melburnians and other non-Sydneysiders still race each other in the Sydney University quad like Josie and John Barton did in the movie. Josie Alibrandi's Five Dock home was actually shot on location somewhere in Glebe, so one night my friends and I actually literally went up and down Glebe Point Road and looked for Alibrandi. We (or rather I) asked at each shop, restaurant, the youth hostel, and at one point we flagged down the bus 431 and asked the bus driver "I'm looking for Alibrandi - do you know where Josie Alibrandi lives?". Silly man had been living under a rock (or rather some place in the Shire that didn't get SBS), he didn't know who I was talking about.

Eventually, we found Josie Alibrandi... in ourselves.

Hah.

Actually, posting 'Looking for Alibrandi' is a popular request that should've been but was never made. It's a little outdated - in the movie (and book), the Inner West (of Sydney) is still working class, and the Italians are still daggy and oppressed (a far cry from today when antipasti is now 'Modern Australian'), although maybe today the Wogs still marry the Wogs and the North Shore marry the North Shore (if not rich Asians from Chatswood). Does Australian young adult literature, then, need to look for a new Alibrandi? Who are the new Alibrandis? The Lebanese (or Phoenecians, rather)? The Asians? Indians?

Watch this space.