i [heart] 2006

Step aside, Paris, for there is a new City of Love.

Sydney is smug in that self-satisfied, stylishly post-coital type of way that usually follows terribly expensive and kitchy evenings of debauchery.

The heart theme on the bridge was great. It started at nine and kept pulsing with a massive, reverberating heartbeat across the city until the big hand met the little hand and we all met 2006.

Should we spend $4 million on fireworks while bushfires rage across the state? Fuck ‘em, said Sydney. I can because I’m fabulous.

Fuck ‘em, said the city to all the dickheads who have been dickheads at Cronulla and Lakemba and Maroubra and on talkback for the last couple of weeks. Fuck the narrow mindedness, the self-righteousness, the intolerance, the nasty, poisonous notions.

Fuck you, it said. We’re all in this together so why don’t we just get along and enjoy ourselves.

It was great to see many were ready to oblige. I saw one couple starting a family next to the heavily burdened port-a-loos in the Rocks. Bright young things hunting for a cab and a pash in Kings Cross. Friends meeting in Newtown to talk shit and share lolly pops at a stranger’s party.

It was great to spend a day and two nights falling between the dirty, seedy and fantastically in-your-face gaps of the city.

You’re broken glass. You’re mad. You’re absolutely fucked.

And I love you for it.

Happy 2006 everyone.