The City Has a Million Tales

by Alex Rieneck

I took the image to the right using my mobile phone, on Oxford Street in Sydney near Taylor Square. In case it isn't that clear to you, it is an image of a colour printed flyer that has been taped to the surface of the small stainless steel ledge in a public phone box. The paper in question has obviously been printed on a home colour printer, on standard paper. It shows images of some guy who (it is alleged) is a drug informant for the Police. Before I censored it, it contained the guys name, home address and a good physical description of him. I was impressed. I took a photo.

Up until that point I hadn't especially realised that that particular phone booth was a drug dealers assignation spot. I mean, I had seen any number of "lower socio-economic strata" types hanging around there, but I had, in my innocence, thought that they were simply using the phone. It turns out that they were, just in a way I hadn't expected.

A few days after I took this picture a man was shot in the head in Tempe. According to a story in the Sydney Morning Herald the Police said the murder was probably related to the fact that several bikie gangs were busily engaged in fighting over the drug trade on Oxford Street and in Kings Cross. I found this interesting. I had noticed that Oxford Street had gone down the toilet over the last couple of years and now I knew another reason why this was so. There is no more story. The flyer remained in the phone booth for two days, then it was removed. I imagine the guy in the printed flyer took heed of events in Tempe and pulled his head in. It is the kind of thing that is likely to put the wind up even the most hardened miscreant. Which of course, was the point. As it always is.