City Of Sydney Approves $300K Grant To Beautify Oxford Street
The City of Sydney voted, on October 31, to provide Sydney WorldPride with an additional $300,000 grant, in hopes of getting Oxford Street Precinct ready in time for the one million visitors who are estimated to attend the 17-day festival.
This brings the City’s total grant support to over a million dollars.
Too Little, Too Late?
However, for some businesses and residents, the $300,000 is too little, too late.
Owner of Daly Male, Terry Daly, said, “If you’re spending $300,000 I don’t want to do a quick facelift for a minute. Spend the money and make sure the street looks great for the whole year, not just for WorldPride.
“It’s a lot of money. If they strung up the Christmas lights or rainbow lights up and down the street, from building to building, cross the road, and left it permanently there so everybody knows that Oxford Street is a gay street. Or they made each crossing a rainbow crossing and they stayed there permanently.”
‘You Can Roll a Turd in Glitter’
“Can I mention the old expression ‘you can roll a turd in glitter but it still smells really bad?’,” quipped the owner of Sax Fetish, Wayne Nicol.
“This $300k is welcomed, but it is a giant smoke screen. They have no idea what to do and now it’s too late to do anything of consequence. So they are just throwing a bunch of cash at it in the hope they will at least get good press.”
He went on to state, “It is way too late for the City of Sydney to be coming at this with a chequebook, budgetary sleight-of-hand and no actual vision or even moderately transformative ideas.”
‘Rainbow Lipstick On a Pig’
Local resident, Christopher Pepin-Neff, told the Star Observer, “This wouldn’t be necessary if the City of Sydney had not approved the ‘demolition of Darlinghurst.’ There are mines in WA with less construction vehicles than on the back streets of Darlinghurst.”
“I hope the straight businesses that move in there are happy with the rainbow crosswalk when it is done.”
Pepin-Neff continued, “It’s rainbow lipstick on a pig. It’s mildly insulting to think that twenty years of neglect can be fixed with $300,000 worth of paint.”
For years, Oxford Street has been plagued by high vacancies and aggressive vehicle traffic.
The grant will specifically assist Sydney WorldPride with the Oxford Street neighbourhood during the duration of the festival. This includes the activation and beautification of vacant shops as well as the installation of environmental lighting to “enliven” the street.
The City is also encouraging retail businesses to decorate and dress up their shop fronts with rainbows and pride banners and flags.
Oxford street needs way more than that – good luck covering up the mess you made Sydney! Most of those who go out to Darlinghurst/Surry Hills, just add to the mess and expect others to clean up – no sense of community.
Oh here we are now with comments from the Gay Community complaining about what council is, has and will do for Oxford Street.
Hasn’t it been and especially since Clover became the Mayor of Sydney the majority of the Gay Community supporting her every word in making things on Oxford Street great for us.
It is a bit rich that now as the saying goes 2 minutes to midnight before the World Pride Event the owners of Gay businesses and people in general saying council hasn’t done enough.
Sydney City Council as well as the State Government have failed we of the Gay Community and especially Oxford Street.
The Rainbow Crossing being removed some years ago because of political bigotry and shops emptying out and looking nothing like a Gay precinct.
Maybe it is time for each and every one of us to truly weigh up what Clover has done for us and to oxford Street and make changes in the way you throw your support behind Clover and anyone else promising us the world.
Gee..!!
I grew up in Bourke st, Surry Hills and came out in 1982. There were gay bars and clubs everywhere. I now live in Melbourne and have done so since winter 1994.
I went to visit in Christmas 2021 and was totally shocked with the decline of the buildings and overall state of Oxford street that has bought many out of the closet. I felt I was the only gay in the village (sinc) and left earlier to the blue mountains.
It needs long term rebuilding of mostly everything. The tack is huge and what a shame it hadn’t been done since Sydney was awarded world pride. Shameful
$300,000.. Just enough for a cup of coffee these days. What a joke!
How about dipping hands into the many brown paper bags that passed hands to developers!
What a joke! $300,000 is about enough to “beautify” about two shop fronts. The Council are not serious about Oxford St, and there appears to an ulterior motive, involving powerful property developers. We should be demanding a Judicial inquiry into the Council’s behavior.