Byron Bay is the Artistic Equivalent of a Dog Being Sick.

Whilst living in Brisbane, every traveller that I spoke to said ‘you HAVE to go Byron Bay’ this may be a case of something being so hyped up that it couldn’t possibly have met up with my expectations, but in all honesty I didn’t know what to expect, just that there is a hippy vibe down there and the beach is nice.

Unsurprisingly, the beach was nice and there was a “hippie vibe”which mainly consisted of tourists wearing tasteless brightly-coloured tie-dye baggy pants thinking that they were fitting in and really old fuckers that were clearly local and had clearly lost their minds. I have never been in a place that offered more variations of tarot reading than it did coffee, and coffee is addictive, and amazing, god I love coffee and fuck I can’t believe that in 2014, people still pay money to hear bullshit from a lunatic. There was one guy who was clearly homeless who had a sign on cardboard sat on a table he had found selling palm readings for $10 and I never saw him sat alone.

Everywhere I went there was somebody selling “artwork” consisting of the peace symbol with the word “Peace” sometimes accompanied by the word “Love” made up of different coloured dots on small canvases. This tremendous achievement in artistic design appeared to be transferred to anything with a surface that could also then be sold on to any passers by. The creators of these works were usually middle aged, sun damaged older women but occasionally you would witness the unfortunate evidence that the young had begun to catch on to this gimmick too.

If I had an 8 year old boy with downs syndrome and he managed to create the exact same canvas, I would shed a tear of pride, but these are adults creating these crappy imitations of 70’s teenagers artwork of whom at the time had a purpose of “spreading the love” as they felt that nuclear war was imminent. Hippies had their place in time because they thought the world was going to end and the only survivors would be cockroaches. Although theoretically nuclear war could start at any point without warning, Byron Bay isn’t anywhere near a nuclear warhead silo as far as I am aware. Today, painting the exact same shit shows that you know nothing about art and trying to peddle it to tourists makes you a colourblind parasite.

As I mentioned above, the beach was great.

The dead Jelly-Squid understands me.

We also hiked up to stare at a lighthouse at the top of a steep hill, the view was fairly decent I’m pretty sure I saw some whales chilling which was pretty cool.

The place we stayed at was “Byron Bay Beach Resort” and besides the expensive charges for WiFi and their owning of a restaurant next door which has musicians playing most nights (whether you like it or not, you’re listening to their full set) the atmosphere was nice and relaxing, they offered free bike hire and really cheap surf board rentals (it cost me $10 to realise that surfing isn’t easy and I should never have tried) the room we stayed in only had a fan and no AC so it’s hard to say how comfortable you would be in the summer but when we stayed the temperature reached no higher than 25/26C  just make sure you put the radiator on at night as the temperature really drops and the cabins seem to have no insulation.

I suggest that you visit Byron, but if you get there expecting greatness, you may be disappointed.

Unless you just chill on the beach the whole time you’re there of course.

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