All imagery by Toni Veziris
Four days of sneakers, Japanese influences, great food, and negotiating with the part of me that would rather stay home.
I’m excellent at accepting invitations.
Enthusiastic, even. Sounds great. See you there. Looking forward to it.
Then the day arrives, and the introvert inside me requests an emergency meeting.
Do we really need to go? Who’s going to be there? Could we replace this entire experience with dinner at home and absolutely no conversation?
Usually, he makes a persuasive case.
The problem is, I’m getting bored in my little bubble, too. Comfortable, yes. But you can only absorb so much culture from a sofa before you’re just a guy watching other people leave the house.
After more than two months in Europe, I was curious about Sydney again. What was happening here? Who was making things? Had I been missing something, or had I just been successfully avoiding it?
Last week, I went outside to investigate.
There were shoes. There was octopus. There was an improbable parking situation.
Things escalated.
Wednesday: apparently, leaving home comes with footwear
The week started with an invitation from Nike Sportswear to its seeding suite at Surplus.
An appointment, some new gear, a chance to see the space. Manageable. My inner recluse examined the proposal and reluctantly approved it.
Inside: a few familiar faces and considerably more people I had absolutely no idea who they were. The standard event ratio.
There’s always that brief moment of scanning a room, wondering whether you recognise someone or have just seen their face on your phone enough times to feel entitled to say hello.
We chatted with the organisers, caught up as a team, and looked around. Great space. Easy atmosphere. Conversations that didn’t require anyone to perform a more interesting version of themselves.
I had a fancy sparkling water. Water with enough bubbles and presentation to suggest it had done better in life than the stuff coming out of my kitchen tap.
I also left with a pair of Nike Moon Shoes in Sail and a pair of shorts, gifted by Nike.
A productive afternoon by almost any measurement.
I’d love to tell you the footwear was irrelevant to my improved opinion of going outside. Unfortunately, I’m trying to establish some credibility here.
But beyond the gifts, it was a good start. People were welcoming, conversations happened easily, and the whole thing required far less psychological preparation than I’d given it.
One outing down. No emergency evacuation.
Thursday: Goros makes a convincing argument
On Thursday, the BASE-CAST team went to Goros for its Vol.II launch.
Sydney has been feeling increasingly Japanese to me lately. I keep noticing it in the food, the spaces, the clothes and the way music sits inside a room. This may partly be where I’m choosing to look. Either way, I’m enjoying the view.
With BASE-CAST expanding into Japan, I have another reason to pay attention. A culture I already love is becoming a bigger part of the world we’re building.
Goros fed directly into that appetite.
Warm pine, low lighting, records framing a vinyl-only DJ booth. Somewhere you could settle in and let the evening develop a few ideas of its own.
The music was good. The food was properly tasty. The team was together, and I was having one of those evenings where you stop monitoring how long you’ve been out.
Then there was the service. Actual, attentive, friendly service. I know. Take a moment.
It sounds like a basic thing to praise, until you’ve spent enough evenings trying to make eye contact with someone who seems to have entered witness protection halfway through your meal.
At Goros, we felt looked after. That changes an evening. You relax. You enjoy what’s in front of you. You start thinking about coming back before you’ve left.
Which I will.
Good work, Goros. You’ve made staying home slightly harder to justify.
Friday: The Marble Table, Served No. 01
By Friday, the scale changed.
Maria, BASE-CAST’s editor-in-chief and the person behind The Marble Table, hosted its first dinner: Served No. 01.
At home. A small table. People whose lives had already crossed through work, shoots and the creative world we move around in.
Justin, Zac, Mali. Maria cooking. I documented the evening and, at one point, got involved with a blowtorch.
Finally, a social role with clear responsibilities.
We already knew one another, which helped it work. At a shoot or an event, you often get fragments of people. A conversation while someone sets up. A laugh before somebody has to leave. You like them, mean to catch up properly, then resume communicating through occasional reactions to each other’s stories.
Friday gave us somewhere to sit.
Maria started with burrata, fennel and citrus. There was an extra off-menu bite, too, because apparently the printed menu wasn’t enough work already.
Then came slow-cooked octopus with cauliflower purée, finished over flame with a little assistance from me. Give a guy a blowtorch, and he will briefly believe he's essential to the entire operation.
There was gnocchi with trout XO, followed by Basque cheesecake and cherries.
A serious amount of work for someone to put into feeding people she likes.
And you could feel that care around the table.
Zac tried octopus for the first time. Dinner can do that: put something unfamiliar in front of someone, in company comfortable enough that they’ll give it a go.
He loved it. His assessment of the evening eventually reached eleven out of ten, which is mathematically troublesome but emotionally clear.
Justin talked about the food and how much it meant to have someone prepare it all for us. Mali happily ran through the menu between conversation and dessert. Nobody seemed in any hurry to finish the evening.
Maria explained why she wanted to do it. She loves cooking for people she appreciates, and she wanted to spend time with us beyond the settings where we usually meet.
That intention came through that evening.
The conversation wandered. People were funny. We had time to discover a little more of the people we thought we already knew.
I spend plenty of time photographing people. It’s easy to collect images of someone and still have very little time to sit with them.
This felt good.
The Marble Table may eventually grow into larger dinners and other experiences. For its first outing, the smallness was a strength. Maria could cook, experiment and host. We could eat, talk and be present for the beginning of something.
I’m looking forward to the next one.
I’m also available for further highly specialised blowtorch work.
Saturday: Surplus, and a minor Sydney miracle
On Saturday, I headed to Surplus in Darlinghurst.
Before we discuss the festival, I need to record something.
I found free parking in about three minutes.
In Sydney.
I considered staying in the car for a moment to properly acknowledge what had happened.
Outside, the weather was great, and the place was pumping. People everywhere. Clothes worth looking at. Stalls I wanted to investigate. The kind of street activity that reminds you a city has a life beyond where you normally buy groceries.
After Europe, I’d been keen to see how Sydney’s parties, festivals and cultural gatherings felt in comparison.
It’s a dangerous habit to come home with a mental clipboard. You start measuring everything against a sunny afternoon somewhere you visited, with no responsibilities.
Sydney deserves a fairer hearing than that.
Surplus gave me plenty to work with. Presented by Supply Store and Nike Sportswear, the festival spread through Darlinghurst, pulling fashion, food, music and street culture into the same neighbourhood.
The Japanese presence was particularly hard to miss. The wider programme included Nike Japan, BoTT, Tokyo’s Breakfast Club and food from Tokyo’s udon specialists. Walking around on Saturday, that connection felt very much alive.
Some very cool kids also made the rest of us reassess otherwise reasonable wardrobe decisions.
The Nike and Carhartt WIP release was a highlight. The marketplace queue was impressive, though I preferred to appreciate it from a distance.
I’ll line up for Messina, peeps.
We all need principles.
It was crowded enough that I missed a few things I’d have liked to see. Part of that was the sheer number of people; part of it was me arriving with curiosity when a little planning might have helped.
Next year, I’ll be more organised. Give myself more time. Get to some music gigs as well.
The organisers put a lot into it, and you could feel the response on the street. People wanted to be there. They showed up, looked around, and found one another.
It made me want to see more.
Apparently, I should do this more often
By the end of the week, I’d accumulated new shoes, photographs, footage, a very good dinner and several reasons to question my commitment to staying home.
The moments I keep thinking about are fairly small.
An easy chat in the Nike space. Being looked after at Goros. Zac discovering he likes octopus. Maria getting to share something she’d put real work and care into. A busy Darlinghurst street on a good afternoon.
None of those things was available from my sofa. Annoying, really. I’ve put years into making that a compelling destination. I’m still an introvert. The next invitation will almost certainly trigger another internal negotiation.
But it’s harder to argue that nothing’s happening when you’ve spent four days enjoying what is.
I came home glad I’d gone.
And with better shoes.
I’m excellent at accepting invitations. Actually leaving the house requires further negotiation. Four days of Nike, Goros, The Marble Table and Surplus gave me good food, new shoes and several reasons to reconsider staying home.