Good news (for cats)

With coffee prices nudging ever closer to five dollars, it may come as a surprise to learn that not everything is getting more expensive in Port Melbourne. For the last seven years I've traipsed round the town's grocers hunting inflationary evidence of a tinned kind.

Cat keepers have two fewer places to restock than last year, thanks to Whiskas not yet marketing a free-range or organic version of their cat food to satisfy About Life customers, and Quickstop deciding not to stock pet food any more. There's little movement amongst the remaining vendors though, with IGA selling at exactly the same price as back in 2010.

Didyabringyagrogalong?

If you were passing Station Pier this evening, and thought you were seeing things, don't book your emergency optometrist appointment just yet. For the "New" Spirit of Tasmania was indeed loading up some two hundred "shitbox" cars, with pirate-dressed drivers, on the final leg of their charity rally to Hobart.

Decked out with crazy paint jobs and sporting cheeky team names like Trough Lollies, Two Dicks Outback and Didyabringyagrogalong, the officially sub $1000 cars had driven the road less travelled from Mackay to raise money for the Cancer Council. And with almost $1.5 million banked, it looked like there'd be plenty of well deserved celebrations going on overnight.

Narrowing contest

According to the official Consumer Price Index (CPI), a product that cost a dollar in June 2010 should now cost twelve cents more. According to Spencer's WPI (Whiskas Price Index), 7 Eleven has roughly tracked inflation in this case, whereas IGA and Thomas Dux have defied it.

Whilst consistently the cheapest feline supplier, Coles' price has still shown an above inflation increase over the period of my annual data collection.

Urban urchins

Port (and South) Melbourne received the attention of the RACV last month, courtesy of their magazine's regular feature on urban wedges to explore. "A pocket of Melbourne between the city and the bay that never dates" is the preamble into a colourful sprinkling of some of the neighbouring suburb's well known (to locals) gems, that thankfully avoids repeating the "heart of wellness" slogan.

According to the 2011 census, the under 15's make up only 12.4% of the Port Melbourne population (versus 19.3% nationally). Nevertheless, another dominant retail area seems to be emerging to join the hair salons, nail bars and bike shops on Bay Street, with Little Urban now joining the likes of Buckets & Spades, Junior Republic, Tiny Polkadots and Cotton on Kids. Hopefully the parents are a little friendlier to the staff than they are to parking officers.

Inflationless

In the first year after I started my highly scientific annual comparison of grocery prices there was a fair degree of change, but since then the price of tins of Whiskas has remained surprisingly static. The relative pricing of these supermarkets and servos too has managed to remain the same for a full five years now...

But then as pet related stories this week go, no amount of statistical wizardry was ever going to topple the tale of adventurous Frank; a very worthy successor to Ricky Nixon as Rouse Street's most infamous character.

Underinflation

For four years now I've been keeping a beady eye on the (cat) food shelves of our local supermarkets, kind of expecting to expose some price movement controversy.

However in reality there's been virtually no change in the outgoings for our Port Melbourne feline friends, with the 24-hour West Gate servo still asking double what Coles (who themselves only close their doors six hours a day) charge for a humble tin of Whiskas:

• Coles - $1.63 (no change)
• IGA - $1.80 (+3%)
• Thomas Dux - $1.99 (no change)
• 7-Eleven - $2.99 (+3%)
• United QuickStop - $3.35 (no change)

Population 8-ish

It's Good Beer Week again, and once again the nearest pub hosting an event is the Wayside Inn. However this year our local brewers were also heavily involved, even offering use for a day of their Bertie Street kettles as prize for avid home-brewers keen to try and recreate their freshly award winning Alpha Pale Ale. Surely now a Port Melbourne pub will see the light and start serving this their fine ale?

Matilda Bay are currently heavily pushing this advert which employs considerable artistic license, given that its been eight years since any of their beers were made anywhere near that particular bay on Perth's Swan River. Also recent arrivals to the settlement, Itchy Green Pants and Minimum Chips are for some reason not counted. In fact, the actual population of our town was 14,521 according to the 2011 census.

Bertie Street

It took a while for the stocks brewed back in Dandenong to be depleted, but buying a bottle of Matilda Bay beer should now reveal its Port Melbourne birthplace. The brewery bar meanwhile is now open Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings with a few, good quality, $20 dishes to accompany the fine selection of ale (although sadly nothing for the vegos). It is also hosting a Women of Beer brew day in a few weeks time.

Matilda Bay's Fat Yak is available in most of the town's CUB pubs, but actually arrives (along with kid sister Big Helga) on the Spirit of Tasmania, having been brewed down in Hobart. The smaller-scale locally-brewed beers however, which are split into two ranges, are available from some of the local bottle shops....

Competition time

The 26th of June has become the day that the supermarkets of Port Melbourne come under the, microscopically intense, scrutiny of Spencer's pricing comparison.

This year the net has been cast wider, to include milk bars and the rebranded West Gate servo. Which does go to show just how much extra you can pay for convenience. If you can brave the meat cleaver wielding robbers, then Coles is still the winner, but not by as much as last year.

Port Melbourne pubs

This, is Spencer's one hundredth post on Port Melbourne. Seeing as all of the town's serviceable pubs (the Hibernian is going to take more than a lick of paint to recover) are finally back open, and at least sixteen of those posts have been devoted to them, it seems fitting to mark the milestone with another guide.

A happy advantage of the suburb's unusual mixed demographic is that these pubs are not all carbon copies of each other, they each have their own personality, and will therefore appeal to different people. So rather than give my own biassed order of preference, here is a chart that I hope will help people decide what suits them best:

I have included The Palace because, despite having a South Melbourne address, it is much closer to Bay Street than to Clarendon Street. See here for a list of individual reviews.

The one oh nine

The Australian Open may be on, and the Rugby World Cup long gone, but Tag Heuer have paid for their moody makeover of a 109 tram and evidently intend to get their money's worth. However with trams on this route reportedly running every 8 minutes during the day, there's not brilliant odds of seeing this particular car at Beacon Cove (especially if the driver decides to quietly jettison his passengers at Montague Street as seems increasingly common these days!).

Yarra Trams claim to be running an extra hundred weekend trams to the beach this summer (across five routes). With a new timetable taking effect today, I thought it high time for some more spurious graphs...

Not so liveable?

Port Melbourne performs surprisingly poorly in The Age's new ranking of Melbourne's 314 suburb's "liveability", coming in at 132nd place. Despite being very well appointed in the criteria of coastline, proximity to the CBD, and eating out, it would appear that Chadstone is a better place to live. Really. Interestingly our neighbours faired rather better:

#29 Albert Park
#39 St Kilda
#47 South Melbourne
#61 Middle Park

The lacklustre performance is perhaps explained by the large area deemed to be covered by the suburb, which includes all of the, distinctly less liveable, industrial area North of the Williamstown Road...

The scores in each of the 14 categories appear to be as below. No surprise that we don't get marks for undulating terrain, harder to understand however how we score higher on trains than trams:

Damned Lies

One year on, and the number two Google result* for "Bay Street Port Melbourne" is still using the same laughably out of date photographs and business names. It spurred me on to create an up-to-date list of shops, cafes etc along the strip, and here is the current breakdown:

The Bianca complex was under construction when the baystreet.net panoramas were taken, which makes them at least three years old. Since then there has been a net increase of 11 operational shops and businesses along the street, and it's interesting to note the changing flavour of the town:

During this time we've said farewell to fancy sounding Kinki Koki, Bolis, Sketa, Bosa Bella and Papillon. Whilst during the same period we've said hello to the more simply named Golden View, City Tiler, Green Element, Cruise About and Skin.

But wait, there's even more superfluous charts below the break...

Movers and climbers

It's been a year since my last in-depth investigation into Port Melbourne supermarket price competition, so it's a good time to measure the effect of inflation.

Without further ado, here are today's prices of Whiskas tinned cat food, with 7-Eleven predictably still bringing up the rear:

• $1.55 - Coles (+55%)
• $1.84 - IGA (+24%)
• $1.99 - Thomas Dux (-26%)
• $2.90 - 7-Eleven (+6%)

Neither Brewsters nor Simple Affair seem to be selling cat food at present.

Too much pizza?

Is it possible to have too much choice when it comes to pizza? Well I would argue yes, at least when it's at the expense of other eating-out opportunities. Port Melbourne does pretty well for cafes; come lunchtime you have a reasonably varied selection of places to grab a light bite, but after dark things aren't quite so balanced. Cue superfluous pie-chart:

This is a distribution of establishments, besides pubs, on or near Bay Street that routinely serve food (either eat-in or take-away) in the evening. As you can see, we're well catered for south-east asian food, pizzas and fast food. But where are the restaurants for those of us who like their food a little more spicy - say Indian, Middle Eastern or Mexican? After all, South Melbourne has the Spirit of India, Ceylon Curry House, Bengal Tiger, Bedi's and Funky Curry 3. Albert Park has Gharana and Kamel. Whilst St. Kilda has Rangoli, Tandoori Times, Amigos and Blue Corn Cafe. Heck, even Middle Park has the (highly recommended) Roti Man.

So if you're thinking of starting up a new restaurant in Port Melbourne, how about following the successful pattern of neighbouring suburbs?