Union Kiosk, Melbourne

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January 2025

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It’s early morning, New Year’s Day. The city is largely asleep. Nevertheless, this is Melbourne, so you’ll still find a café open. The shops are still closed, the galleries are still closed, hell, even the public toilets are still closed, but there’ll always be a café open.

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Despite the night’s celebrations, there’s plenty of movement on the streets. Not nearly as much as a ‘normal’ day, when office workers are abound, but movement, nonetheless. It seems those up and about on this particular morning can be grouped into five categories. In order of volume: 1. Tourists. 2. Café staff. 3. Joggers. 4. Street cleaners. 5. Homeless people.

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The tourists not nursing hangovers are trying to catch a coffee and breakfast. It can sometimes be difficult to pick out tourists in Melbourne, but with office workers at home on temporary freedom leave and shoppers having not yet arisen, tourists stand out a bit more. Making them much easier to spot is one particular give-away: the wearing of shorts. Melbournians in the central business district don’t wear shorts. Only tourists wear shorts, and particularly male tourists. You spot them walking slowly, looking up, looking around, often mentioning street names and directions to their partners. Some women also wear shorts, and more often than not, they are from Queensland. After all, in Queensland, why would you wear anything else? There are always exceptions to any rule, however. In this case, teenage boys. Even Melbournian teenage boys where shorts, despite the weather, so the only way to know if a teenage boy is a tourist is if his is with their father, who is also wearing shorts (or mother, if she is from Queensland). Not that it really makes sense to wear shorts in Melbourne, even on January 1^st, in the heart of summer. A temperature of 42 degrees Celsius one day doesn’t necessarily mean it will be in the forties the next. More likely, it will be less than 25, possibly even less than 20. This is a common trap for tourists, most of which are accustomed to more stable weather conditions. At these times, you can hear male tourists commenting, “I should have worn pants” in between giving their partners directions. Unless they are Queenslanders, of course, who don’t own any pants.

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Café staff can also normally be quite tricky to spot, but, again, with today’s absence of office workers, they also have one big give-away: black and white clothng. Café staff wear black and white. It’s as simple as that. Black pants and a white t-shirt. Melbournian office workers also wear black, particularly in winter, so separating the two is not always easy. Today is an easy day, particularly in contrast with tourists, who often wear shades of colour, with Queenslanders usually wearing colourful, short-sleeved shirts with all manner of floral prints.

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This morning, there are a large number of joggers running about the place. Are there normally this number of joggers on the city streets, with their numbers masked by the sheer volume of office workers and shoppers, or are they just out in large numbers this particular morning? Perhaps they had a big night and feel an internal psychological conflict with a boozy blowout contrasting with who they desire to be, a conflict that forced them into their running shoes early this morning. If you’ve ever met a jogger who hasn’t jogged for a few days, you’ll be well aware of this psychological dagger. The inability to sit still and a building of irritability are telltale signs. It’s their own unique brand of hell. Any dreamers of being the next billionaire unicorn out there will do good to discover a magic drug for joggers, much like a weight-loss drug or a sleeping pill.

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The street cleaners are out in force. Like a small army cleaning up the city after a large societal vomit, they and their trucks busily move about picking up the mess. The sounds of reverse beeping and hydraulics mix with the clammer of bins. It’s a true wonder how this efficiency works.

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In amongst the street cleaners are the homeless. Many humans didn’t go home last night and will wait a few more hours before they make it to their warm, cosy beds, but where do the homeless go? Visiting Melbourne frequently, you’ll notice that they often don’t go anywhere. The same faces are on the same street corners, day after day, night after night. They have their spot, and they don’t give it up, not even for street cleaners. This is their home. The intransient nature of a homeless human’s life is a gut-wrenchingly tragic irony.

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Amongst all this is Union Kiosk, a relative oasis in the heart of the central business district. It rests in peace and harmony in Howey Place, a roofed laneway near major shopping outlets. The entrance, with its double doors, give the impression of a large space inside, yet the room, with the counter, coffee machine and tables is mistakenly small. The first question is: where to sit? Inside seems like a traffic area, with staff skipping about and patrons lining up to order. How about outside? Yes, there is ample space, with chairs and tables in the morning sun. But wait. Look a little further and there’s a second room adjacent. Tables, chairs, relatively empty. This looks like a great place to relax.

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A second room away from the main space, away from the percolating coffee machine, queue and the outdoor foot traffic is a wonderful advantage. Here’s a café with three choices of contrasting seating spaces: one in a busy and noisy indoor area, one outside with fresh air and some laneway bustle and a third in a quiet, peace-loving zone for quiet, peace-loving moods. Here, the wood tables, green tiles and bamboo seats set the ambience, with not a white t-shirt to be seen. Here’s a place to take in the early morning of a new year.

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Union Kiosk is a vegan café. Soy, almond and oat milk go in the drinks, with vegan meat and cheese in the food. What’s more, it’s a jaffle café, with drinks, jaffles and sweets making up the menu. The beauty in simplifying choices can never be underestimated. Far too often humans are overwhelmed with choice, and having a menu that focuses on a narrow range of selections makes life easier and less confusing. Let’s not spend time reverberating over a menu; let’s just enjoy our selection of the menu.

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Before long, the spinach, mushroom and vegan mozzarella, along with the matcha soy latte, arrive, brought in by a staff member who has an astonishingly calm persona and a friendly smile. Who would have thought this was early morning, New Year’s Day? The placing of plates on the table breaks the silence. Even though there are a number of patrons in this second room, mostly couples sitting opposite each other, the room lives up to the impression it makes from outside: quiet. There’s no talking, no music. As the staff leaves, silence falls again. Maybe this is New Year’s Day, after all, with no one fully awake yet. Wait, what’s that? Ah, the fridge in the storage area behind the table starts to buzz.

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Two-middle aged men in the room start to speak. Both are wearing glasses; one with black frames and the other with blue. They sit opposite each other. “Did you see the fireworks last night”, the man in the black frames asks. “No, I went to bed”, says the man in blue. “I should have done something, I suppose”, he adds. Silence again.

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The memory of a cartoon image comes to mind. In the image, a man is sitting with his feet up, watching television. The letters NYE appear under his feet as foot stools. A thought bubble appears above his head. In the bubble, the same man is with a group of people, all celebrating the new year. It’s looks like they are all enjoying themselves and he wishes he was at the party instead of being at home. But looking further, there is a second thought bubble, this one emanating from the head of the man when he is at the party. It’s a thought bubble of a man inside his own thought bubble. This time, he’s at the party imagining he was at home, with his feet up, watching television.

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Humans always think of being somewhere where they are not. The allure, the dream, the mystery of another place is forever enticing. Yet, when humans arrive there, they then almost immediately think of being somewhere else. An example is a holiday. What do people often think about when they are on holiday - being at home, of course! There are other examples: a different job, a different car, heck, even a different partner for some people. This must be a fundamental part of human nature. This internal motive for something different may even hark back to prehistoric times, helping human survival skills. Surely someone, somewhere has this as a rule named after them, whether they named it themselves or it was attributed to them. It seems like something a mid-20^th century Harvard professor would have named. Again, there are always exceptions to rules. Here, the obvious one is tea. Once you have a cup of tea, you don’t immediately think of having another type of drink. You just wait patiently for another cup of tea.

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A couple dressed in black sit nearby, seated opposite each other. Both have arms and hands completely covered in tattoos. Both have large inserts in their earlobes; one a circle and the other a star. Both have dark hair and both are on their phones. Nether are talking. Silence.

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A young French couple enter the room. They sit, opposite each other, and discuss the menu, in French. He’s wearing dark blue pants and she is wearing light blue shorts. Perhaps he has been in Melbourne for quite some time while she may have recently arrived from Queensland. Probably. He stands up and walks towards the door, as if heading to the room next door to order. Silence.

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Outside in the seats in the laneway, two young women sit down, opposite each other. One seems to be an Anglo-Australian, wearing a black t-shirt and a long purple skirt and has pink hair. The other is Asian, wearing a black and white check shirt, a black skirt and has dark brown hair. The pink-haired woman starts to talk. The brown-haired woman listens. The pink-haired woman continues to talk. The brown-haired woman continues to listen. This continues for quite some time. What a wonderful talker. What a wonderful listener. No more silence.

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A small sparrow flies in to pick up some crumbs, then flies out again. Just like that, in and then out. Is that how the staff of Union Kiosk think of patrons? Surely not. This is not the place, or the time, to be in, then out. It’s a place to sit and breathe. It’s a time to sit and breathe. Happy new year, everybody. Or rather, let it be a new happy year. May peace and harmony be with you.

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Justin

Observervervse

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