Concrete Playground

Temperance is a strangely old-fashioned word. It’s like the lone priest that struts into a do-hick town, shaking things up, pouring precious booze down dusty drains, squeegeeing the hookers, and teaching the men how to be real men. In general it means moderation, but it’s come to be spelt with a capital T and slapped onto all wagons from which the moon don’t shine. The Temperance Movement even had a brief heyday in Australia, resulting in the six o’clock swill if not all-out prohibition.

It’s rather ironic then that one of the pop up bars setting up shop in Sydney’s back lanes this summer is in Temperance Lane. Wedged between two pearly towers, like a zesty chunk of lemon shoved between your teeth after tequila, this location was chosen for the permanent offspring of the summertime Seven Metre Bar due to its “old world” charm. Do crims love old world too? Because it’s also been chosen to host a pop up gallery run by the UTS Designing Out Crime Research Centre on Tuesday February 16. Mark Titmarsh, one of the inner city artists behind the initiative, says the aim is to create templates for cultural activity in the dark and shadowy corners of the city. Tagging and petty crime will be replaced with live painting by Deb & Bridge, interactive digital works from artists like Bert Bongers, video from Daniel Mudie Cunningham, Mitch Cairns and more, plus some ‘acceptable’ street art. That’s the theory anyway — we’re sure if Mr. Temperance rolled in he’d consider all that ribald drinking and fun-making verging on criminal. The swilling starts from six.