adelaide’s concrete heartbeat and why i’ll never stop running from it

i landed in adelaide with a backpack full of half-remembered plans and a coffee mug that smelled like burnt regret. the first thing i did was toss my phone in a black hole so i could forget the 1710110028 timestamp on my calendar. weather? turns out it’s 21.72 degrees right now, which is either perfect or a cruel joke depending on whether you’re wearing a hoodie or a sundress. i’m the second kind.

strolling down this street where the buildings look like they’re trying to hum a sad blues song, i overheard a group of tourists arguing about whether the man in the van yelling into a megaphone is ‘cultural’ or just loud. someone else told me the café across the plaza serves the best avocado toast but only if you order it in swahili. i tried saying ‘avocado toast’ in swahili. didn’t work. still ate it. it was kinda okay.

neighbors here are either biking down the lane with baskets of fresh greens or rolling down the street in patrol cars. i asked one of them why no one owns a fridge here. they didn’t answer. just stared until i walked away. made me think maybe this is a city for people who don’t need refrigeration. or people who enjoy stalking strangers.

i heard that the street artist who paints the giant donkey on the wall near the market is actually a former asylum patient. i didn’t get a picture because i was too busy getting lost in a maze of back alleys that looked like they belonged in a hp lovecraft novel. if you get bored, the next city over is just a road trip away. i don’t know if that’s better or worse.

i found this spot on tripadvisor-adelaide’s hidden art alley-where quests about mysterious symbols are apparently optional. next to it, a yelp review warned me the flat white here tastes like regret. drunk advice, probably. but i drank it anyway. it was fine. the barista said climate change makes their coffee taste like static. i’m starting to believe them.

the map below shows where my last coffee was. i was drunk at the time and probably took a wrong turn. or maybe i just hate directions.

i snapped a few photos along the way. here’s one of a woman balancing a basket of exotic fruits on a scooter. i don’t know her name. she’s either heroic or terrifying.

another pic from a market stall selling dried chili flakes and sticks of lime. the vendor was arguing with a pigeon. i wondered if the pigeon had a better life plan.

i also saw a group of three strangers painting a mural over a payphone. they weren’t tourists. i asked one why they were doing it and he said it’s for the ‘memory of the receiver’. whatever that means. probably a conspiracy. maybe they’re just bored. you can check their work on instagram-adelaide street art finds-if you’re into that vibe.

this place is a mess. it’s humid enough to make your hair stick to your forehead and salty enough to make you question your life choices. but somehow, it’s figured out how to breathe. i don’t know if it’s the coffee or the weird neighbors or the fact that every second here feels like a plot twist. either way, i’ll probably be here tomorrow. probably drinking something questionable and definitely checking if the avocado toast place is still open.

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