CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
“So where do you live, mate?” asks Artie Beechworth (Digital Media Director, 26)
His uber driver, Leo (66), gives him the benefit of the doubt.
“North Riverlakes” says Leo.
“You know where that is?”
Artie pauses. Does he just smile and act like he’s new to town, or does he make a run at the bonafide working class stripes he strives for while drinking VB long necks and listening to Violent Soho.
“Aww yeah. Just off the M1, aye?” he says, consciously throwing the ‘aye’ in to imply that he isn’t the son of two freelance art critics that never holidayed further west than the city’s airport lounge.
“Yeah. Not too far” says Leo, as he begins to notice the cracks in Artie’s contrived everyman-ness.
“Yeah, I’ve got a few mates from there” says Artie, making a monumental error by continuing this conversation.
Leo shows a feigned interest and begins quizzing.
“Oh true!”
“Whereabouts?”
Artie, who is visibly treading water, pulls a suburb out of his arse. It’s one that he only hears about when he hears reports of drive-by shootings during the Triple J breakfast news update.
“They’re in Eagleburn” he says, in a desperate effort to attribute fictional mates to a suburb that could easily be 100 kilometres away from Leo’s home.
“Right” says Leo.
“Fuck me. What do they do?”
Artie, now completely stuck for an authentic working class occupation for his now completely made up outskirt-dwelling friends, goes with the first thing that comes to his head.
“They play full contact sport” he says.
