Ch'lita Collins

I want you, dear reader, to understand that Surplus is essentially contained within one block—you can get food, go to a gig, buy sneakers, play bingo, get graffitied on, have your Air Force 1s customised, accidentally be part of a stream, rock climb, buy vintage books, skate a half pipe, meet the love of your life, run into old friends, et cetera.

"There's a line around the block. It's impossible to make our way around the market because everybody wants a picture with her or to stop and chat."

I pop over to my new friend Diya's Night Market, where I'm meant to interview her for i-D magazine. She's selling hand-embroidered hoodies and jeans made in India. Diya is what media publications call "the coolest girl in the world". There's a queue around the block. It's impossible to make our way around the market because everybody wants a picture with her or to stop and chat. I feel like I've become a groupie, a professional hanger-on, a "friend of". She has a bodyguard, and the same manager as ███████. I have been exposed to a lot of stars from working in this field. I know shit from clay—it's about how they make the whole room feel when they walk in, and the people love her. Diya is the real deal, we drink chai ██████████ ███████. Eventually, I become overstimulated and head outside, where I watch PlaqueBoyMax's live stream with a bunch of floppy-haired kids I met at the party. He's at Luna Park with Huda and Jonny Chopps. Meanwhile, outfits assault my eyes: jackets with Japanese ████████████ crudely transfer-printed on, a fluffy hat worn over a baseball cap, faux-fur coats in 30-degree heat (Celsius, not Fahrenheit), indie sleaze-revival skinny jeans and huge sunglasses, Enfants Riches Déprimés T-shirts paired with Saint Laurent leather jackets, a T-shirt that says █████████████████. The whole scene reminds me of the strange type of kid who loiters outside the ██████████ store in SoHo, New York City. I overhear someone say, "Yeah, I'm between cities. Sydney and Melbourne."

I wonder where these types of kids would be placed on the streetwear parabola meme graph …

Something I've noticed throughout the Surplus event is the sheer number of employed skaters, building stalls and essentially running the whole thing. I understand that they're the rock stars of sport: physically attractive, poorly behaved and make bad boyfriends. They provide beautiful visual noise, like the little dots that add up to a Seurat painting; these skaters contrast with the aesthetic clutter of slime-green Lime bikes that pollute the city.

They have a ██████████████ runway model making pizza at Scarr's. My colleague who was at Surplus last year knows the male model pizza chef, Cristiano, so we jump the queue, which goes as far as the eye can see, for a half-cheese, half-hot-pepperoni pizza with hot honey. My most pick-me trait, aside from refusing to wear sneakers, which has now gone out the window, is that I don't like pizza. I eat half a slice with some ranch; I can acknowledge that this is a good pizza. It's nice to see other people enjoying the food, too.

███████████████ blares over the PA while we drink Mexican Cokes. I'm hanging out with a bunch of guys who work in streetwear; they're dressed in Tom Sachs Nike, baggy jeans and skate tees, and we're getting along really well. We head back to the Suzy Sheer gig. There are three kids lined up on the balcony, all with stringy fringes laid underneath train conductor hats. Slowdive plays between sets. The music sounds like a witch house playlist. My mind starts running a Mark Fischer monologue. I feel old because I'm tired and my back hurts. I tell my colleagues that I need to write, so I go home. That night, I dream of the acupuncturist in New York whom I visited for what I call "groupie whiplash", which is neck pain caused by doing hair-ography at a gig. The "doctor" puts a needle in the wrong place of my skull; I bleed out over the disposable paper sheet laid over the table. The pain is gone.