jexa versoFitzroy, April 2015<br>
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I can't remember anything about the avatarpolymorph.net of 2015, but when I visited again today I wasn't entirely surprised to discover it was down. With a little more searching I learned that Avatar Polymorph (born Nicholas Playford) was a writer who lived in the Fitzroy area from 1990 until his death five months after I took this photo. One reviewer wrote of his surrealist fiction: "The ontological flux of the everyday is suddenly revealed as overwhelmingly fantastic."<br>
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Together with Steve Proposch, he also wrote one of the most accurate and damning essays on gentrification I've ever read. It's about Fitzroy, but as they note it applies to cities everywhere. Worth reading the whole thing (it's fairly short), but here's the essence from Proposch:<br>
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"Thus, no sooner has their creativity brightened and enlightened the joint, and society besides, than the artists who have caused such positive change are forced out by skyrocketing rents and an influx of people who want what those scummy artists have got but have no ability or desire to improve or add to it. Before too long all the people who started the movement are forced to move on, either due to the jacked up rents and property prices, or the loss of peace and quiet prosperity replaced with high demand, demand, demand."<br>
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Full article: <a href="https://www.troublemag.com/fitzroyalty/" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.troublemag.com/fitzroyalty/</a><br>
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(I've also just realised how fitting it is that the library, the police station, and the commission flats are all in the background of this photo.)<br>
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