Innholdsfortegnelse for Issue 107 - May/Jun 2022 i frankie Magazine

Hands up if you have ever said “sorry” upon entering a lift. Or done the silent equivalent, which is just apologising with your eyes and making yourself so small that you do not exist within the realm of space–time until you arrive at your floor and slide out in a puddle and re-congeal on the outside. I basically did this every time I got into a lift until one day a co-worker said, “What are you apologising for? You’re allowed to get in,” and I died internally and have taken the stairs ever since. My point is, if you’ve ever apologised for taking up space, or you remember every piece of negative feedback you’ve ever received, or almost have a panic attack if you feel like you’re about to let…

I’ve always been fascinated by planes and airports. I was born in the ’80s and flying back then was very glamorous. The one time my parents saved up to fly, there were only 12 passengers on our flight, so everybody got moved. Mum and I sat in first class and Dad and my brother sat in business class. I remember staring up at the flight attendant. She was wearing a white polka-dot blouse and was so pretty and I thought, “This is what I’m going to do.” It was my first time on a plane and I still have my boarding pass. I cherish it. I’ve been a flight attendant for nearly 10 years. Some people think we’re only there to serve tea and coffee, but we’re primarily there for…

nina ahn, seoul, south korea MY BREAKFAST Gimbap (››) with tofu, mushroom and soybean-paste soup. Beginners might think gimbap requires a lot of prep, but you’ll find that it’s an easy, nutritious food to make. You can roll up a variety of ingredients you like in rice and sheets of gim (seaweed). I love to add spicy anchovy and perilla. LOCAL BREAKFAST TRADITIONS Many people don’t have breakfast at home on working days. Younger people have a Western breakfast like toast because it’s easier to prepare, while others buy gimbap at the convenience store. The traditional Korean breakfast is a rice bowl (bap) and soup (guk), along with three or four different side dishes. CAFFEINE Coffee is inseparable from Korean lives. You can’t imagine how many cafés there are –…

MADE IN DAGENHAM aka WE WANT SEX EQUALITY The British dramatisation of the 1968 Ford sewing machinists’ strike was originally going to be called We Want Sex. The working title was based on a real-life rally mishap, where a protest banner declaring “We want sexual equality” failed to unfurl in full. I assume the filmmakers thought We Want Sex might have been too racy (or misleading) for the British public, because in the end, they opted for something more twee and, well, British. Thankfully France was more than happy to honour the original title. Put it down to the country’s long history of protest culture, or perhaps the French marketing team’s knowledge that sex sells (many of France’s adapted film titles do seem to go out of their way to…

It may sound a bit hoity-toity, but découpage is one of the easiest crafts to pick up. In fact, you probably nailed the basics in grade 3 art class: cut out pretty pictures and glue them down. That’s all découpage involves! So what can you decorate using this technique? The question is: what can’t you decorate? Boxes, trays, frames, pots and vases (like we’ve used here) will all work a treat. You don’t have to use the illustrated sheets we’ve provided on the following pages, either. Any kind of paper (whether it’s magazines, cards, paper napkins, old books or wallpaper) can be added to your arsenal. Wrapping paper is the ideal thickness for gluing, but if you’re working with something thicker, simply dab it with a wet sponge, or dip…

Job interviews, much like visa-application interviews (and watching the movie Interview with the Vampire), are widely regarded as among the most uncomfortable experiences a person can endure. Sweaty and nervous, you’re forced to dodge the same question 14 times and somehow give a different answer to every one of them, all the while wondering if there’s spinach in your teeth, or if your fly is undone. Well, I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way. If you follow my advice, you’ll sail through your next meeting (I need you to imagine a yacht for the purpose of this presentation). First things first. Once you’ve secured an interview, find out the full name of the manager/chairperson/CEO and immediately change your surname to theirs. Family is so important…

LETTERS@FRANKIE.COM.AU Dear frankie, I spent most of my pre-teen years dreaming of what it would be like being a ‘cool teenager’. I always thought I would be reading magazines, analysing fashion trends and learning how to talk to boys. Unfortunately, growing up in America I had nothing like frankie to read, and thus abandoned the idea of magazines. Now living in Australia at 19, I decided to pick up issue 106 on a whim. I can confidently say that 12-year-old me would be proud of my choice. I haven’t felt this inspired in a long time. Thank you endlessly, Bella Dear frankie staff, I have to compliment you on putting together a magazine that is interesting, informative and current. At first I thought frankie would be out of my age…

The shift to working from home has stripped people of a lot. I read that in the newspaper. Some people miss their colleagues (I find that hard to believe), others miss the thrill of leaving the house each day (incomprehensible to me), and the really weird ones miss getting dressed (I have no words for them). For all the strange things people miss in this new world, no one, not even a single suck-up middle manager, has come forth to say they miss being forced to stay awake at a desk all day. There are no articles waxing lyrical about the joy of fighting the 3pm slump with a piece of fruit (talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight). Nothing good comes from forcing people to remain alert from…

If you’d told me as a new adult that I would have to pee into a five-litre jug every month for six months to confirm the miscarriage I had wasn’t turning into cancer, I would’ve handed my adult licence in there and then. No thank you. I’ll stay in my childhood bedroom and do chores forever. The thing about grief is that before you’ve gone through it, you obviously wouldn’t ever wish it upon yourself. And the whole ‘everything happens for a reason’ sentiment is obviously flawed – I think humans are just adaptable and resilient. But there is something about my experience of miscarriage that felt necessary. In it, I found moments of joy and dark humour. A partial molar pregnancy is when two sperm manage to get inside…

I wasn’t the sort of girl who pulled off the heads of her Barbies; I’ve adored dolls since I was a little girl. For that reason, my childhood collection remained intact. I didn’t think too much of my little collection until I met Dr Anne Clendinning, a history professor here in Ontario, Canada. Anne had a premier collection of 300 vintage Barbies! When she showed me, I almost passed out with joy. Anne gave me my first Midge doll. A few years after I met her, she received a breast-cancer diagnosis. After she died, I found it comforting as I grieved for her to organise all the little bits and bobs she’d given me. Then I found a website that details all the clothes and dolls manufactured from 1959 to…

For several years, Brit Pfeiffer dreamt of ripping up the big backyard lawn at her Tarntanya/Adelaide rental and turning the space into a sprawling veggie patch. She’d even drawn up plans and achieved that most difficult of holy grails: approval from her landlord. But somehow, between working, making pottery and writing her master’s thesis, she never quite found the time. That is, until Brit stumbled upon a complete stranger willing to build and maintain the plot for her, for free – and who’d give her a weekly veggie box as thanks for the privilege. “It was pretty random, actually,” Brit recalls of the day she connected with Jackson Bennett, a professional chef and permaculture enthusiast who was rapidly ramping up a new city farming venture, dubbed Urban Grow Boi. Jackson…

Where is it? 139 Wallace Street, Braidwood, New South Wales. Describe Saloon Design House in a sentence. Dena Pharaoh-Pezzano: Sublime limited-edition luxury clothing, handmade with love in Australia. How did Saloon Design House come to be? Jane Magnus: We flung open our doors a little over four years ago. Dena is originally from Sydney and moved to Braidwood after a long career in the Sydney fashion industry, where she had her own brand and was a designer, dressmaker and patternmaker for other labels. DP: Nothing makes me happier than sewing. When Jane and I met, the Saloon vision was born and we’ve never looked back! What goes on here? DP: Saloon is where we share our creations with the wider world. We have floor-to-ceiling swinging saloon doors and chandeliers hanging…

Hi Wei Wei, what do you do for a crust? I’m a self-taught wedding and family photographer for my business, Aweiding Photography. It’s rewarding serving Melbourne’s multicultural community and seeing the smiles on people’s faces when they look at the photos. Gary runs a small business called FilmNeverDie. It sells analog cameras, film, Polaroid cameras and also has a film-processing lab. Tell us about your place. This adorable Art Deco apartment was built in 1939. The block it’s in has eight units and a courtyard at the rear. The entrance of the building has a beautiful green canopy filled with huge succulents and trees. The apartment is everything we ever wished for. It has timber flooring, curved windows, high ceilings decorated with modest cornices, black Art Deco doorknobs, a cute…

It’s Sunday morning. You want to sleep, but your thumping head, queasy stomach and sweat-drenched body say otherwise. The only thing worse than your aches and pains is the ‘hangxiety’ – a sickening combination of fear (did you act like a tosser last night?) and guilt (there’s no way you’ll get anything done today). Like many of us, Sam Wilson knows the feeling all too well. “I was a heavy social drinker. I didn’t think you could socialise without alcohol,” she says. “I knew it was having a negative impact on my mental health. I’d have spurts of trying to moderate it – a month off here and there – but nothing really stuck. It wasn’t until a hangover from hell in 2020 that I decided I needed a bigger…

Tell us a bit about yourself. I am a research scientist by training who has found their passion in visual arts. Up until last year, I was working in the development of novel medicines in Cambridge, UK, and doing photography in my free time. I did both science and photography side-by-side for about a decade, but my priorities changed during the pandemic and I decided to quit my job to move closer to my family and to pursue art full-time. I now take photos, draw and paint on a daily basis. It has been a tremendously rewarding year. How did you first get into photography? My love for photography started at a young age, but I didn’t take it very seriously until I was about 18. I was studying chemistry…

In May 2021, a video of a band of kids screaming in a public library took the world by storm. The song was called “Racist, Sexist Boy”, and the band was The Linda Lindas. Channelling the spirit of riot grrrl bands like Bikini Kill, the group captured worldwide attention with their furious, passionate rallying cry against discrimination – not to mention the fact that the members were all between 10 and 16 years old at the time. They’d penned “Racist, Sexist Boy” a year earlier, just as coronavirus had taken hold, when a classmate told them his dad had warned him to stay away from Chinese people. “People were going through a lot and they didn’t feel like they were being heard,” says 17-year-old guitarist Bela Salazar. “And I think…

Ainsley Warner used to have the kind of job it’s hard to switch off from. As a social worker in Sydney, dealing with “the very spiky end of mental health”, she worked with people going through addiction, homelessness, domestic violence and other tough stuff. Then one day, she discovered weaving. “I took a friend for a weaving workshop for her birthday,” Ainsley remembers. “I don’t think she ever did it again. But I became obsessed and didn’t stop.” Soon Ainsley was weaving baskets and making jewellery – always from natural or upcycled fibres – as a passion project doubling as self-care. “It was a really meditative process for me,” Ainsley says. “I could just tune out and go stitch by stitch.” She rented a studio spot in Sydney, hosted markets,…

How well do you know your neighbours? For many of us, the extent of our relationship with the people we live next door to might constitute a bit of small talk while putting the bins out or collecting the mail during a holiday. Neighbourly friendship might be thought of as being a bit old-fashioned, but there are some people trying to keep it alive. In a suburban street in Melbourne’s north, two young men and their elderly neighbours have captured the hearts of people yearning to connect with the world around them. For brothers Daniel and Luke Mancuso, their relationship with ‘Yiayia’ and ‘Pappou’ is a very special one indeed. It is a bond built over generations between two families who have shared a fence for decades. Later, they were…