Handsome Steve on Handsome Steve’s House of Refreshment: ‘The key is minimalism: stripping stuff away rather than adding. The essence of a wog bar is that there is no need for a menu, as you know it will have croissants, some cheese, some ham, and good bread perhaps and of course great coffee.’

Handsome Steve on the Convent location: ‘I expected to be either rejected outright or nibbled to death on the details. To my surprise and delight, the far-sighted people at the Convent gave the go-ahead: yes, you can put terrazzo on the floor; yes, by all means paint a giant mural on the corridor wall.’

Handsome Steve on growing up: ‘I asked my Dad, well into his eighties, if this growing up business gets any easier as the years tick by. He said no, it didn’t. That’s when I decided we all needed a place where we could leave the everyday world behind for a spell: the House of Refreshment.’

What more can we say?

It's heating up. The city turns itself inside-out, with houses, restaurants and bars disgorging their inhabitants - sending people out onto the streets. And the cicadas have started to sing in summer. Cicadas spend most of their lives underground (up to seven years), shedding their skeletons intermittently and preparing for their debut above ground. That's when they crawl from their holes, climb a tree and burst into song. It's the males that produce all that racket, by vibrating membranes at the base of the abdomen, called tymbals. They're among the loudest insects in the world; the louder they get, the more likely they are to attract Mrs Cicada.
No wonder there's tension in the air when cicadas are at full volume.

Inside, that new-shoe smell wrenches you right back to sliding a sock-covered foot into the metal measurer, when being fitted for new school-issue Clarks T-Bars.

The ends of shoe boxes stacked floor to ceiling form a geometric wallpaper. Joseph hunches over a Singer crammed into a corner and stitches Velcro onto a pair of red shoes. A pair of dusty black shoes made for club feet hangs by the laces above his head, like a pair of boxing gloves. There are doorways to corridors lined with more boxes; some open out to a workshop. And just inside one door are the wooden molds for countless classic shoe designs. They're from the days when Watt's made more bespoke shoes and boots.

'We still do it, but these days it's mostly surgical footwear (for short legs, deformed feet)', says Bob Watt. He's been working here for 58 years, since he was 15, and learnt bookmaking from his father and his grandfather, who learnt from their fathers and grandfathers, who learnt from their father...all the way back to 1895 when Watt's Corner Shoe Store opened its doors here, on the corner of Lygon and Grattan Streets, Carlton. (Opposite Bosari's.)

And despite an honours degree in science, Joseph (Bob's son) makes shoes, fits children and adults with branded shoes, does repairs and restocks the shelves.

Let's hope he has a son.

Lovers of Deadwood will be delighted to learn that Melbourne wasn't that dissimilar. It was a lawless encampment, with notorious brothels, opium dens and big personalities. And, of-course, it was all violently snatched from the Kulin people.

Making Modern Melbourne is a delicious, bite-sized history of our city written by Jenny Lee and brought to you by Arcade Publications - publishers of pocket-sized books about Melbourne's lesser known histories.

Any good bookshop can sell you this great read, give you change from a $20, and give you a new perspective on what's at the heart of modern Melbourne.

Jenny will be talking about the book, and about the city, at Coburg Library (7pm, Wed 29 Oct; bookings 9353 4000). Oh, and Arcade's sell-out History of Literary Melbourne Walking Tour is on again (1.30pm, Sat 25 Oct; bookings 9329 9665).

The glistening blue expanse of Fitzroy Pool turns 100 this Sunday (19 Oct). And they're having a party. And, so they should. The pool nearly went under in '94 with the newly amalgamated City of Yarra declaring it under-patronised and a financial drain. The community protested by forcefully occupying the site, day and night, until Council agreed to keep it open.

Head down this Sunday for a free BBQ snag, a swim (wait an hour after that sausage though), DJs and hijinks. And look for the Aqua Profonda sign. The then manager had it painted at the deep end in the fifties (misspelled) in an effort to reduce the number of times he had to jump in after migrant kiddies. It's Heritage listed, and was tiled into the pool floor (misspelled) 50 years later.

'One of the most common questions I get asked is: "what's the strangest thing you've seen?"' Says Jack McGrath, the amateur astronomer who sets up outside Abbotsford's Retreat Hotel most clear nights. I tell them: 'whatever falls out of that front door', pointing to the pub.

'I believe the Universe is peppered with life, but until I have a close encounter of my own kind, I'll just keep struggling away out the front there'.

Apparently, sky is in short supply in high-density Abbotsford. Jack and his telescope were forced onto the footpath to gain an unobtructed view of Saturn, Jupiter and star clusters. With an extension lead running through his front window out to the front of his house to power his telescope and computer, Jack gradually began to show passersby (many from the neighbouring pub) the view through his 'scope and to explain the southern sky.

'I used to get around 15 or 20 people a night, now I get between 40 and 50', says Jack. I'm building a second telescope to keep up. I started it in 2003, and now just need to polish the mirror.'

The next clear night, head down to Abbotsford and ask Jack to show you the stars. He does it for the love. He's usually there around sunset for at least a few hours, and has been for getting onto two years now.

The literally priceless Lentil as Anything phenomenon has taken off like wild-fire, with restaurants in St Kilda, Abbotsford, at Collingwood College, ArtPlay at Birrarung Mar and in Brunswick.

The Brunswick resturant moved to Lygon St recently, but was gutted by fire before even opening. The clean-up is underway, but the Lentil crew is calling for donations - of equipment, time, anything. This new Brunswick site is to include a Learning & Arts Centre, which will be used to train refugees and long-term unemployed in hospitality skills, and give everyone the chance to make music in the music studio.

To see if they're interested in that recorder you've had since school or the extra set of gleaming new pots you got for your wedding, call Grace on 0415 524 839.

...is a free lecture by Burkard Polster (pictured) about bubbles. Polster, maths lecturer and self-professed 'mathemagician' at Monash uni, believes bubbles are mathematical oracles, guiding us to beautiful solutions of many tricky problems. It's an open invitation to discover the secrets of soap-bubble maths, to learn how to blow bubbles in bubbles and to make exploding dodecahedral bubbles. Not to be missed.
Sunday 12 October 11.30am-1230pm.