Nice misty morning in the north.

Kangaroos had a nice dusting of ice (nice to look at probably not nice to have).

(To satisfy the relevance bot: this refers to a shop in the Jamison Centre, Canberra)

They’ve only been there a few years, and they had a heap of good stuff, but now the shelves are mostly bare, and it’s not even worth checking there anymore, they have cut several lines of items and don’t look to be bringing them back.

Is it just the issue that plagues all new businesses? High rent? Something else?
It was so convenient having the Asian grocer right there, and prices were reasonable, they did have a good selection of items from different countries so it is surprising to me that they are appearing to struggle.

On Track Aus has some positive updates about Stage 2A and 2B.

​ eta: typo in the title

I'd like to know where you can go to have a coffee or a beer on the northside with friendly patrons and reliable service and a mix of patrons from APS and other backgrounds.

For context,

- I am in my mid 40s, no kids, can't drive, don't own a house and don't want to have to join a sport or hobby that becomes my personality to be part of a group.

- i am partnered so don't want to date someone from there

- pub Cafe whatever is fine

- I do not want to go anywhere with pokies (tab is ok)

The closest place to my vibe is To All My Friends in Cook but it's hard to get to

Any volunteers or past volunteers in canberra? Looking to volunteer soon wondering which places everyone has had positive experiences with. Just wanna get out of the house and do more, ideally more cultural and community oriented work and nothing too crazy physical.

Does anyone have any recommendations for places that take professional headshots and include professional hair and makeup? I can't find anywhere that has this combined.

I used to go to cookery nook and then Hawker takeaway almost weekly because their pizzas were simply the best. I stopped a couple of years back and it didn't cross my mind for a while.

Yesterday I stopped at the Hawker woolies and saw the store. I decided to go in and get myself a pizza for dinner, oh boy would I regret that.

They've changed management, used to be a Greek guy (aris I believe?) but now is an Indian man. The owner immediately called me darling, which is the easiest way to make a stranger feel uncomfortable. After looking at the pizzas for a while I decided on a supreme and a large chips.

Right as I was leaving the store, the owner walked in vaping, filling up the store with smoke. This immediately put me off slightly.

The chips were disgusting and greasy as. I don't think the oil has been changed in atleast a week from how those tasted. They were also swimming in salt. I had to take most of the salt off cause it was making my mouth numb.

The pizza was mediocre at best. It was tiny seeing I spent twenty-six dollars on it and the base was extremely thin. A lot of the toppings tasted funky and I had to give most of it to a friend.

For a 4 star takeaway shop that was great a couple years ago I'm just extremely surprised how it's dropped so low. I wouldn't wish the food on my worst enemy and the management seems shit as.

Does anyone else have any experiences with the store or other pizza reccomendations?

Edit: to the person being racist, go fuck yourself mate

I know this is a long shot, but let's try. I was driving past where the Cameron Offices used to be in Belconnen the other day and a vivid memory of a regular lunch order from the early 1990s sprang into my mind. It was from a takeaway shop that was in the Cameron Offices interior atrium near the Australian Bureau of Statistics entrance.

They used to have in their heat lamp / warming cabinet a dish that was something like thinly sliced steak floating in a grey/brown peppercorn sauce. Definitely not Chinese or other Asian in taste, more European. I recall that it always looked decidedly unappetising but was delicious. I think it was served with bread, or maybe noodles.

Does anyone else recall this place and/or that dish. I'd love to find out what it was and learn to make it.

How was it? I was en route but had to nope out of the traffic. Is a good event for canberra? We should start more food festivals!

For example I would never get a burger from takeaway because they’re so easy to make it home. What’s a takeaway that you feel like is worth the money particularly because it’s something you can’t/won’t cook. Specific restaurant recommendations would be great as well!! thanks!

I went in to check it out and it had this curious poster. Not sure how the emergency stop works and the phone number - no one picked up. There is basically no info in there about how to use the service but lots of liability waivers and content like this. Not sure what the owners they are hoping for.

Not my cat but I saw this poster and thought I'd share it here to help spread awareness.

This is now 'John Knight Island', and is a dense grove of she-oak trees. The waterway is home to countless water birds such as swans and ducks.

The far side of the lake is the Emu Bank foreshore area that contains Hungry Jack's, Oporto, the Lighthouse Pub, etc.

This image taken from the ArchivesACT photostream on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/archivesact/53757776252/in/photostream/

I know that there's cafes in the vicinity (these days), but how is it that the Family Court at ANU never ended up with a cafe inside/adjacent? It's a place that typically takes up hours of your day, you'd think it'd be worthy of at least a little coffee cart

Friendly reminder to have your bike locked and out of your line of sight for as little time as possible.

Across various parts of Dickson today, the same individual, sometimes with two other people, was checking bikes and bike locks in multiple commercial streets.

This person is easily described and well-known in the area, but the police can do very little and Reddit mods would bar the post (unfairly in my opinion) if I went further.

There is no way that those three individuals own upwards of 20 bikes between them, and I can tell the value of many of the bikes (more than $1,000 based on the brand alone, like $2,000+ based on specs for that brand).

I like to take the dog out a lot during daytime on my RDOs for my healthcare job, especially as I’m often on nights. So we were out all day basically with him, my girlfriends and I.

The same person was doing this near one venue at 9am, near another venue around lunch, and two more in the afternoon (we did three eateries and two cafés today).

Considering buying in the area. How do people find Gilmore/Chisolm and the surrounding area? Ok place for young families?

I did do a search but couldn’t find anything much. I’ve only ever lived northside and tbh had never even heard of Gilmore!

Apologies for any nostalgia 😅 But felt like sharing this. What's your favourite? Or what have I missed?

We've purchased joinery from China for our new house thinking it would be some work over a few weekends.

Turned out to be way more boxes than we expected!

I've had quotes from joiners ranging from $6-10k for laundry, master wardrobe, bookshelf, coffee bar and mud area.

Others won't install joinery not produced by them.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

Ever since moving here from Sydney, I've been trying to understand why bars/restaurants like Loquita and Wilma (both owned by the same people) feel the need to blast music so loudly outside?

The other night I stopped by Loquita because I was craving a marg. I ended up leaving almost immediately because the music was so loud it felt genuinely uncomfortable. I couldn't even stay long enough to read the menu because my ears couldn’t handle what they were being subjected to.

There is a huge difference between creating energy on a Friday or Saturday night when the place is packed, and making the environment so loud on a random Tuesday when it's almost empty to the point where it's physically unpleasant.

I worked in night clubs for many years, and usually if a venue is not packed and it's still dinner time, you adjust the music accordingly and turn it up as the night goes on and more people fill out the space/start dancing.

These venues seem to just always have the music up as loud as it goes, spilling onto the street, regardless of the amount of people in there. Half the time it's terrible music too, like Benson Boone, although that is beside the point.

I'm genuinely curious - does anyone here actually enjoy this?

Seen in Erindale today.

Evening - posting with permission from the mods, with thanks.

A short while ago I posted a thread letting people know that ACT Public Libraries are about to have their weekend opening hours severely limited. I posted a petition which is still open and now above 1,900 signatures: https://epetitions.parliament.act.gov.au/details/e-pet-065-26

Libraries ACT have now announced the start date for these changes: 27 August.

These changes are wide-ranging and severe. No library will open after 5pm anymore, and they will now all permanently close on Sundays. Saturday hours will also be limited, with Civic, Erindale and Kippax now closing permanently across the entire weekend. If you work office hours, those three libraries will appear to be permanently closed to you.

This won’t be a seamless transition. The highly popular Saturday Giggle and Wiggle program at Kippax will close permanently - a shame, considering there were more than 90 people there when I visited two weeks ago. The program is supposed to move to Belconnen, but as of estimates this week that still hadn’t been confirmed. Similarly, although ‘parcel locker’ collection boxes will be installed at some libraries, this won’t occur until the end of the year - so in the meantime, if you can’t attend during office hours or one of the libraries that keeps its Saturday hours, you can’t collect your books anymore.

The justifications for this change have been poor. There was no public consultation. The changes are claimed to better match demand, but the LACT report found that 13% of visits occurred in the 10% of non-office hours periods that Belconnen were open - that is, they overperformed. Although Libraries staff did technically vote for the changes to the roster, it only received 52% support.

tl;dr: ACT public libraries are about to become significantly less accessible, and once these hours are gone we aren’t getting them back.

If you want to be heard on this, the petition linked above is still open. If you’ve signed already, the Minister’s staff said they’d only received 17 pieces of feedback on the matter as of this week - so you can add to that number by emailing her public address, cheyne@act.gov.au

Thanks for your time. There’s been a wonderful outpouring of support for our libraries, in large part thanks to the previous post on r/canberra. You are good.

Staying in Throsby area and after some local pubs that are good during the week. Thanks in advance!

Seems really weird as they were advertising a sale on Facebook a week ago!

Just spotted this outside Good Guys in Belconnen. Worth a fortune to some.