Made in Sydney
Forget the corporate behemoths and characterless chains. Support Sydney's independent homegrown heroes.
Sydney is the best of both worlds: it's a global city that punches well above its weight internationally, but it's also a City of Villages, a place where you're on nodding first-name terms with people in your neighbourhood.
In other world cities - London, New York, Paris - you're nothing but a faceless drone living in overcrowded isolation. Neighbours have never met. People daren't make eye contact with anyone else in the street, let alone talk to them. And the only folk likely to engage them in conversation are mentalists. They scuttle down identikit high streets as part of a mass-market chain gang, buying their clothes and their groceries and their flatpack furniture and their books and their coffee from multinational behemoths because they've no other choice.
But not here in Sydney. Not yet anyway.
Ours is a colourful, characterful, mulitcultural city where independence is prized and diversity is embraced. Sydney doesn't do bland homogenisation. This is a city rich in international flavour, where spice is the variety of life, where the local butcher, baker (if not the candlestick maker) can survive.
The ever-advancing tide of globalisation might be impossible to stem, but we can at least control the undertow to stop ourselves being swept away by it. That means that we as Sydneysiders have a collective community responsibility to get behind the little guys, loyally support our independent local businesses, encourage those trying to make a positive difference.
Over the next few pages, you're going to meet a few such people. They are proof that you can make it in Sydney, in every sense. We found a butcher and a baker, but couldn't find a candlestick maker - a measure of how times have changed. However, we do have local florists, baristas, booksellers, jam makers, burger flippers, beer brewers, providores, culture curators...
Say "hello" to Sydney's homegrown heroes.
First up... The Butcher