Chapel Street – from one extreme to the other

Today I walked from Elwood to Prahran Market down the length of the famous Chapel Street. Although I might be feeling lousy and gummed up still I am determined to walk everywhere in order to see as much of th real Melbourne in its suburban and city streets as possible. A bonus will be shedding some of he extra pounds piled on in preparation for the “Survivor Melbourne” diet.

Anyway that's not what I started to write about today. As I said, I walked the length of Chapel Street. It is a street that crosses at least three suburbs from fashionable Prahran, through funky Windsor to flaking Balaclava.

In Prahran is a market with enticing trays of fruit and vegetables laid out in rainbow arrays of colours. You don't have to know he name of anything here just where to find it in the spectrum. Lychees resembling the conkers I see everywhere on the budding plain trees lining the Elwood streets, blood oranges, scrumptious grapes that look hand picked for the gods and 4 x D-cup sized watermelons!

The rest of Prahran's Chapel Street is full of oversized sunglasses, GHD-curled hair and scruffy sculpted whiskers. Stroll further down passed Pran Central shopping centre and the Stonnington Library and you stumble upon the Chapel Street Bazaar. My eye was caught of all things, by the display of antique lace in the window but the rest of the shop is filled with the most funky retro junk you never knew you needed. We have entered the realms of grungy retro trendy Windsor where there are opshops like Fat Helen's, others for herb enthusiasts and smokers, and adult wares where giggling and pointing is definitely not allowed. Here the graffiti is designed, in contrast to the spray painted scribble a few doors down passed the Dandenong Road and the Astor Theatre.

We're not in Kansas anymore Toto as we cross into Balaclava at Carlisle Road. I met some oddities on this part of the street. Old folk walk their yappy dogs, owner and pet both wearing dressing gowns. Dressing dogs is the thing to do here. Older women sporting vibrant henna-coloured hair push shopping trundlers. In this part of the street I meet more midnight-coloured faces than elsewhere. There's a lad with stick-thin ankles protruding from ¾ length baggy pants who looks like a CCF advertisement. An African woman passes me, two ugly, healed over knife wound scars mark her cheeks. These people are so far apart from their neighbours at the other end of the street. It is unbelievable that so little physically separates them when so much keeps the apart.