The City That Awaits Me!

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In light of my journey abroad on an exchange program in Melbourne, Australia Spring 2014 semester, here is a little bit on their beaches!

Melbourne Beaches

You'll Find Melbourne Beaches Close to the City Centre

By Larry Rivera

Melbourne beaches can be found just south of Melbourne city centre.

Because a river, the Yarra, runs through it, and major Melbourne attractions lie along its banks or north of it, visitors to Melbourne tend to forget that this is a bayside city with a number of beaches.

Coastal Melbourne faces Port Phillip Bay and the city's closest Melbourne beaches are Albert Park and Middle Park just south of South Melbourne.

The next Melbourne beaches south would be St Kilda, Elwood, Brighton and Sandringham.

St Kilda Beach

St Kilda Beach is sometimes likened to Sydney's Bondi Beach with the suburb of St Kilda developing in the 19th century as Melbourne's seaside resort. By the start of the1900s, St Kilda had become the home of some of the wealthiest Melburnians.

Then it went into decline with brothels and drug dealers making St Kilda their turf until more recent changes gave the area a much-needed facelift with fashionable boutiques, stylish cafes and many fine restaurants.

Along the St Kilda foreshore, the pier juts out into the bay and Melbourne's Luna Park, a fun park such as Sydney's Luna Park, lies just south of it. The beach remains one of the more popular Melbourne beaches close to the city centre.

Brighton Beach

A feature of Brighton Beach, south of St Kilda, is the number of brightly colored bathing boxes a short distance from the water.

These bathing boxes, used also for the storage of clothes and sometimes small water craft, are private change rooms. They are found mainly on Brighton and on the beaches of the Mornington Peninsula.

Surfing beaches

Surfing areas of choice are located outside the greater Melbourne metropolitan area: in the east, in the Mornington Peninsula; and in the west, along the Great Ocean Road such as Bells Beach near Torquay where the international Rip Curl Pro surfing competition is held at Eastertime.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

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Music, as cliche as it may sound, is my passion and I hope to one day live my dream of opening up my own concert venue to truly invest all my time into it. A place near home, legendary Maxwell's in Hoboken officially closed its doors at the end of July. Luckily I got to experience one of NJ's most intimate venues that showcased great talent like Tyler Hilton, Wakey! Wakey!, and Nirvana.

Maxwell's, a Hoboken rock institution, to close at the end of July

By Tris McCall/The Star-Ledger 
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on June 03, 2013 at 2:38 PM, updated June 10, 2013 at 5:13 PM

Maxwell's, the Hoboken corner restaurant and rock club with an international reputation, is closing its doors at the end of July.

The lease to Maxwell's, which has been at the heart of the rock scene in Hudson County for decades, is up at the end of July. But the decision to close the club at 1039 Washington St. isn't the landlord's.

"We were offered a renewal with rates that weren't necessarily onerous," says Todd Abramson, the club's booking agent and co-owner. "But after much thought, given the changing nature of Hoboken and the difficulties of trying to run a business in this town, we decided it was time."

Maxwell's, says Abramson, will invite back some old friends to finish its remarkable run.

"On July 31, I think we're going to go out the way we came in — with the band 'a'." a, which featured members of the Bongos and Glenn Morrow, who'd later found Hoboken's Bar/None Records, was the first act to ever take the stage in the restaurant's back room. (The Bongos will also perform on July 31.)

That was a very different era in the Mile Square city. Rents were relatively affordable, and the boom in condominium development hadn't yet seized Hudson County by the collar. 

Hoboken became an arts town, and a rock scene would soon thrive there.

As the years went by, there'd be other places in town to play. But Maxwell's was always Hoboken's flagship venue.

In recent years, parking at the north end of Hoboken has become increasingly tough, which has posed a challenge to touring bands —- and their fans.

"Parking has always been difficult in this town," says Abramson, who started booking at the club in 1986, and became a co-owner along with Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth and Dave Post of Swingadelic. "But now, for all intents and purposes, it's been outlawed. I've had bands whose vans have been booted because the signs are so unclear."

But the lack of parking alone didn't sink Maxwell's. As Hoboken has changed, the club and restaurant has lost much of its initial clientele.

"The culture in Hoboken is driven by TV now. A lot of the bars downtown are fighting with each other for who has the most giant TVs. That's what Hoboken nightlife has become."

Abramson, who lives in Hoboken, will continue to book the Bell House, a larger venue in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn.

"A change of scenery isn't going to be bad for me," says Abramson. "It's been a long time."

Nirvana live 1989

Is There Really a Difference?

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As someone who is very fond of blogging via Tumblr, I have grown very fond of Google Blogger's simplicity and I will probably begin utilizing it on a more consistent basis from here on after. There is a distinct difference between blogging and social media and an explanation on their differences are much needed.

Difference between blogging and social media

The numbers of internet users that have caught the social media and blogging bug grow daily and will continue to do so exponentially thus making it all the more critical to retain a competitive edge.  But how many of us really understand the big picture?

Many of us simply post at will on Facebook or tweet sporadically on Twitter and have not even heard of Pinterest let alone posted a pin!  Any modern business owner will have an active website but do they have a blog?  Blogs can be run separately but you should really incorporate a good blog as part of your business website.

Blogging is an outlet for your business promotions, news & views

The aim of any website is to increase the number of hits to it so that you can inform your audience about your services and products and ultimately engage and persuade the site visitor to buy from you.  Without a blog, your website is a static source of information.  This used to be the norm and businesses could get away with it because the competition was small and no-one had really heard of social media.  However, today in order to attract and grow an audience you have to play the social media game.

The social media game involves your blog as the central point.  Without an active blog, time spent on social media is left to the mercy of the social media operator.  By this I mean that if the social media platform of choice suddenly closes down and withdraws their (free) service then you are left high and dry.

Doing social media without a blog essentially means you are putting all your eggs in their basket and not in your own – ie you are giving away control of your information.  To reinforce my point see below:

• Ownership of information posted on social media – Facebook users may not realise that by posting on Facebook they are granting them (subject to privacy settings)  “non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, world license to use any content posted in connection with their active Facebook account.  Similar terms and conditions no doubt prevail on other social media platforms and users should examine these details carefully if copyright is of concern to them.  Below is an extract from Facebook’s terms and conditions (as at 28 March 2013) about such matters:

“For content that is covered by intellectual property rights, like photos and videos (IP content), you specifically give us the following permission, subject to your privacy and application settings: you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.”

As I see it social media is operated as a free service to the user.  Therefore, the operator has no obligation to continue to offer their services and can simply shut down abruptly if it suits them.  Naturally, the operator may have advertisers on their site and they would of course have a responsibility to them but they certainly have no real commitment to the user.  This means that serious business owners need to own and control their own website and blog and harness the power of social media to encourage traffic flow towards their on-line marketing control centre – namely their own website and blog.

If you are a small business who does not know how to achieve this Stella Gooch Executive Business Support can help you in many ways.

VS.