Kate Jinx
is In Wild Air
Kate Jinx is a writer, and film curator (mostly). She is the Director of Programming at Golden Age Cinema in Surry Hills, a current PhD candidate at UNSW exploring the filmed documentation of gay lived histories, and a houseplant enthusiast. A freelance writer, and broadcaster/ opinion-giver on radio and TV, Jinx has presented performance lectures about very important topics like evil cats and teen witches at institutions that are really far too reputable for that kind of thing.
Culture
Big Ego Books
You want a publication on weird cat trends? Woodbutcher houses? Underground interiors? Surreal fashion? Aussie pubs? Redheads?
Big Ego Books is your new bookish BFF.
Run by print-lovers, artists, and beautiful weirdo friends Raquel Caballero and Emily Hunt, Big Ego is the second-hand selling culmination of 20+ years in the industry and life-long obsessions with the glory of the printed page. Constantly turning up oddball gold nuggets and books you simply can’t live without, Caballero and Hunt have extreme bower bird abilities which thankfully trickle into their online shop and offline at Alaska Projects in Kings Cross. Their Instagram is eye-watering.
Just don’t buy up everything on my wishlist, ok? Niki de Saint Phalle, I’m looking at you.
People
Kelly Rakowski
Run by super dear friend of mine Kelly Rakowski, h_e_r_s_t_o_r_y is a well of lesbian culture told through images (not loneliness). Believe me, it digs deep! Rakowski mines online and offline queer archives to deliver daily insights into gay lady culture, and importantly always crediting the original photographer and archive so you can use her detective work to follow up for more detail if you’d like. Recently, Herstory has been collaborating with fave LA/NY shop Otherwild, producing clothing and accessories inspired by historical queer imagery and culture (I’m a big fan of the Gay Power cap in denim), so you can wear the herstory on your sleeve – and for singles, check out the ‘personals’ on the Instagram account. You may just meet the power bottom or femme top of your dreams…
Places
McIver’s Ladies Bath
From the outset, the well-camouflaged McIver’s Baths in Coogee don't look like much, a simple shed and a bare set of concrete steps descending to a sliver of grass and a sign prompting you to toss a gold coin donation (no longer just 20c!) into the old blue bucket to the right. But beyond that corner is a little utopia with one main rule: no men allowed.
Built 130 years ago, the baths are the last remaining women and children’s ocean pool in Australia. Every summer, the rocks and coveted grassy spots provide a safe space for women to forego their religious dress, and for older ladies and teen girls to get their bits out, or cover up, or whatever they damn well please away from the prying eyes and unwanted comments of bros on the beach. Heaven.
Things
Seductive Reasoning
I’ve been a fan of American sister trio The Roches ever since I picked up a copy of their LP Nurds (purely for the cover at the time) about 15 years ago, but I never dug much deeper than that record and their incredible self-titled LP from 1979. On a long bus ride last year, listening to ‘Hammond Song’ on repeat, I read up a little on their story – and whoa, the gold it delivered, including the introduction of Seductive Reasoning, the first LP by Maggie and Terre Roche (sister Suzzie would join them later), which Paul Simon had a hand in releasing. It wasn’t a hit when it came out (Rolling Stone described it in 1979 as having being released to “resounding public indifference”), but I’m making up for lost time.
Most mornings the first song I pop on is Underneath the Moon and my girlfriend and I belt it out – “crazy to fight the mooooooooooon!”, our version of Maude’s ‘greet the dawn with a breath of fire’ from Harold & Maude (another 70s American classic).
Thoughts
Hot Milk
After years of mismatching my holiday read with the actual holiday (post-grad study has the tendency to warp your ideas of what is a ‘relaxing’ book), I dug my heels in the sand this summer and picked a book set in a small beach-side town while I was, miraculously, staying in a small beach-side town. Granted, Northern New South Wales’ Woolgoolga is a bit different to a Southern Spanish village, but let’s not get greedy.
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy is the hypnotic story about a young woman who travels with her ailing mother from London to the Mediterranean to find something of a cure, written in a dreamy but economical style – sunshine in the streets, jellyfish sting in the sheets. I tore through it in between applications of SPF 50, the perfect ‘beach book’.
Also highly recommend Levy’s slim but powerful memoir, Things I Don’t Want to Know (my own copy is underlined so much, you can barely make out the text).
Hot Milk by Deborah Levy is the hypnotic story about a young woman who travels with her ailing mother from London to the Mediterranean to find something of a cure, written in a dreamy but economical style – sunshine in the streets, jellyfish sting in the sheets. I tore through it in between applications of SPF 50, the perfect ‘beach book’.
Also highly recommend Levy’s slim but powerful memoir, Things I Don’t Want to Know (my own copy is underlined so much, you can barely make out the text).
Wildism
Chevalier
The ‘Greek Weird Wave’ of cinema is a bit of an eye-roll of a term (up there with Mumblecore), but it’s an easy shorthand to describe the recent spate of uniquely odd films that have floated our way over the last couple of years. Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster) gets most of the praise, but my €s are on Athina Rachel Tsangari (The Slow Business of Going, Attenberg). Her latest film Chevalier is set almost entirely aboard a luxury yacht adrift in the Aegean Sea, on which six Greek men have been taking a fishing trip. The night before the strange group head back to Athens, they take part in a competition to decide who’s the best – at everything, including sleeping, drinking, speaking, cleaning, machismo… everything. For a film set on the Aegean Sea, it’s incredibly dry. An absurd black comedy, and one of my favourites from last year’s festivals – just watch the trailer.