I didn’t always love St Kilda.

I grew up in quiet leafy Middle Park; my high school was in Windsor. St Kilda lay in between, a kind of Badlands to be crossed, every weekday, from behind the safety of Mum’s car windows. When the lights at the intersection of Fitzroy and Grey Streets turned green, she would release the hand break and the car would, for the briefest moment, roll backwards, like a horse retreating from a shadow-filled place: the other side of Fitzroy Street.

Things were different over there. Shops had neon signs in the windows and curious names like Club X or Danish Blue Adult Centre – what did an adult centre sell? Down below the grand-but-peeling George building, a set of dingy stairs led to a bar known, according to a worldlier school friend, as The Snake Pit – what depravity lurked below? As we drove up the Grey Street hill, my brother and I might see women in short skirts standing on corners, or people fighting outside Sacred Heart Mission. On the Barkly Street corner, we kept our eyes peeled for a furniture shop called, thrillingly, The Bitch is Back. The audacity! To my teenage mind, St Kilda had what Middle Park lacked – bravado, danger, life – and while Mum’s eyes slid away from it all, grimly focussed on the road ahead, I wanted to know it from the other side of the glass.  

In the early 2000s my wish was granted. I met a boy from St Kilda, and, a few years later, got a job at The George Cinema, selling tickets and making choc-tops, dipping the cone and twirling the chocolate just so before squishing mint leaves and raspberry lollies on top. Every Thursday, when the weekly program came out, I did the rounds of the local hotspots, pinning up session times. Twenty years later, many are still there: The Coffee Palace backpackers, The Grocery Bar, The Banff, which still does cheap pizza and a mean pasta-in-a-bag. The bloke down at Chronicles Books was always up for a chat about the latest release, and though the shop closed in 2009 it’s now a bar that goes by the same name. Those were the years in which St Kilda became a real place, not an idea – I even, to Mum’s dismay, became a regular at The Snake Pit, which wasn’t a den of sin but a decent bar with a pool table and great trivia on a Monday night. I walked up Grey Street to my boyfriend’s place, and while I didn’t linger on street corners, I never felt unsafe. What better place to be 20-something and in love?  

I’m now 39, and that boy and I live off the Grey Street hill with two young kids in tow. We’ve lived in other places over the years – Collingwood, Sydney, Nanjing – but nowhere else is home. Has St Kilda changed? Some would say its gentrified beyond recognition. The Prince is now less sticky carpet and more skinny latte; the infamous Gatwick Hotel is fancy apartments; around the corner, the shabby old Novotel on the Esplanade has made way for Saint Moritz Beachfront Residences where, for a cool 15 million, you can have “amenity beyond imagination and luxury without limits.” Some cultural spots have gone, too: we miss The George Cinema, which closed in 2014, and while we used to have three or four bookshops, Readings on Acland St is now the last bastion clinging to life.

But the lattes at The Prince are excellent, especially after a wakeful night with a baby. And the new Victorian Pride Centre is fabulous for many reasons, not least of which are its smooth floors, perfect for wheeling a pram…  

Is St Kilda a suitable place to bring up children? people ask me. Like my younger self, when they hear ‘St Kilda’ they think drugs, prostitution, debauchery. I’m never sure what to say. Have I found the odd syringe beneath the play equipment? Sure. Has my young son picked up nangs and asked what they are? Yes. Have I been shouted at by someone high on smack? Occasionally. And while all of that may be a deal-breaker for some people, that’s also what makes St Kilda what it is: not Middle Park. There are people here who know “luxury without limits”, and there are those who find brekky at the Mission, a hot shower at St Kilda Gatehouse, and a place to sleep via the Salvation Army Drop-In Centre.

Jump on the 96 tram and spend a day with us, I should say. We’ll hang out beneath the apricot tree at VegOut, where the compost pongs, the rainbow lorikeets screech and the rollercoaster rattles past. If you grab the coffees, I’ll pick up a chocolate Kugelhopf from Monarch. I’ll see you there, on the other side of Fitzroy Street.

This piece was written in 2023 for The Age’s ‘Life in the Burbs’ series but was pipped at the post by another (excellent) St Kilda article. So I’m publishing it here instead 🙂