ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
If you ask Peter Dollarson which artist should be playing this year’s AFL Grand Final, he’d pensively rock back in his chair, smile to himself and say ‘Mumford and Sons’ as gentle as a warm spring breeze.
A native of Betoota Heights, the 28-year-old now lives in The Ponds – just a hop, skip and a strum of a ukulele away from South Betoota Polytechnic College.
He studies film, part-time.
Which means he’s got more time to work in a popular French Quarter coffee shop by day and a trendy, inner-Old District gastro-cocktail bar by night.
But that also means he’s perpetually broke.
“Which is why I live down here, in the real Betoota. On the wire,” he told our reporters.
“I love it. All the culture, fresh arrivals and whatnot. It’s great. You don’t get this type of authentic food say, up in Betoota Grove or the Heights. Not even the French Quarter. That place has been gentrified beyond comprehension,”
“Sad – but you can’t stop the tide of so-called ‘social progress’. I’m glad this area is still a bit rough, still a bit dodgy. Like, there’s every chance I could get mugged on the way home from the pub or – I might be able to find heroin just as easily as I would a beer?
However, The Advocate can reveal that during the course of the interview, young Dollarson ordered and consumed a $9 Vietnamese Bánh Mì, a glaring indicator that the so-called grungy suburb has nigh-on reached gentrification.
“This roll is a testament to the suburb still being in touch with its roots,” the Rolf De Heer fan said in regards to a roll that used to go out the door for $4.50 under the previous owners.
