There’s a restaurant / café in Hetauda (called Sesame) that I spent a lot of time in. It is really lovely. The food is amazing. The blended iced mochas are out of this world. The staff are wonderful. The atmosphere is great. One of the other volunteers was impressed that it has houseplants. He thinks houseplants are definitely an important indicator when it comes to café décor and I think I might agree with him. There are some dream catchers hanging up and a lovely big round window as well. It is a very photogenic place.
Lots of people come here because it is a lovely place.
But one of the things I find quite cute and quite funny is the people who come in little groups and then spend quite a bit of time using it as a photo studio. Photos and videos get taken. Hair gets fixed. Poses get refined. Props and backgrounds (aforementioned houseplants for example) get rearranged. Dance moves get practiced. Faraway stares get honed.
This is not something I do. I’m not a big fan of photos (taken of me or by me). But it did make me think about what I used to do when I was a teenager. How did I stake my place in space I occupied? How did I claim social cache from the places I visited?
We did take some photos (and then took the film to be developed to find out if we’d cut anyone’s head off or everyone had their eyes closed, or someone had a ridiculous look on their face, or my thumb was over the lens, or in fact, all of the above). But even if we had taken the photos, sharing them back in those days wasn’t quite the same. We did show them to each other when the film was developed. But that was often to the people who were there and often several months after the fact. We didn’t walk round town with the photos in hand throwing copies of them at all and sundry like a student theatre group fliering at Edinburgh Festival.
But we did talk about the places we went to and we did claim our social cache that way. The group that went to the alley behind the chicken shop to smoke. The people that sat on the roundabout in the middle of one of the local backstreets. The people who went to the Pancake Parlour for sample Tuesday. The people that went to Skate Ranch. The ones that hung out in the playground of the local primary school. The people that sat on trains running the length of the Belgrave/Lilydale line. The different pubs or clubs we went to. The different fast food joints: McDonalds; KFC; Red Rooster.
So I giggle at the people using Sesame as their studio. I think it’s really sweet. But I’m personally quite glad that I can enjoy Sesame without having to use it as a studio.
I’m sure I’ve got some foot photos from Pancake Parlour in the 1990s somewhere – maybe it’s time they hit Instagram!
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