These Fitzroy Garage Parties…

I have more questions than answers.

As an elder millennial I was both amused and confused when I first saw the Fitzroy garage party content on my Tik Tok fyp, but just before I had seen even the first one, I had seen one Tik Tok about “private school boys cosplaying as working class” - or some accusation along those lines.

Then I started seeing the content. Ahh yes, these kids. They look too clean to be legit. Their clothes are so fresh and pressed. It looks like a venue that would’ve cost at least $500 to rent for the day. The hair cuts, the expressions on their faces - nothing about them seems like an authentic, working class vibe.

But Americans are seeing it, Canadians, Londoners are all reacting, and the content goes more and more viral. Then people start stitching and commenting - Melburnians who actually understand the history.

“It’s getting gentrified!!!” - of course, and inevitably.

Who can even afford a place in Fitzroy these days? What’s the average house price?

It’s been a while since I’ve personally lived or even visited Melbourne so I do need the updates, if you have any.

It seems the issue is not only with rich kids trying to “seem poor” - it’s our collective consciousness, now, in this post-pandemic era to start observing through most people’s stories and facades.

The recent trend of bullying Nepo babies, the inherent awareness of the wealth gap between classes - of which Australia tries to stay under the radar with, but these Fitzroy garage kids are blowing the lid!

Unintentionally - I might add… it seems they innocently felt like they were at a cool party and wanted to share it on Tik Tok.

It’s quite possible they are overwhelmed with the reactions. I don’t know - I haven’t asked them. Are they actually from private schools? We don't have the evidence to verify, it's just been a collective assumption.

More and more parodies of the scene has since evolved, with "Carlton garage sesh," or other suburbs and the like. Some people are even getting their parents involved. It's a vibe. It's Summertime in Australia, sitting around drinking beers, listening to music.

The beers of which - one Tik Tok creator, @purplepingers did point out, is a rather more expensive brand, Double Lemon, which costs $42.95 for a case of 10.

I don't know much about beer economics, but it seems from these reactions, this adds to the evidence that these were, indeed, Australian private school boys in the original Fitzroy garage sesh.

But again, we don't actually know. They could be guys that wanted to seem like they usually drink Double Lemons - maybe it was a garage sesh treat. So much of what we see on social media is constructed, curated to an extent. So we don't know how authentic it was, only the people who were there really knew what the real vibes were.

If their goal was to go viral on Tik Tok, they succeeded. And even to an international audience. Even amongst the young women dressing their mothers in their outfits, the Grinch steeling children's presents and other similar home Christmas videos - or has that type of content just been all over my fyp...?

The nuances and connotations of the original garage scene in the suburb of Fitzroy, however, has been lost on the international audience, and so the content gets duetted and stitched with those more well versed in the history and cultural context of making a Tik Tok featuring "Fitzroy garage party" as its subject.

I'm not feeling equipped enough to analyse it to serve it justice, however my own personal memories were "back in the day" of the early 2000's... ahh, slightly simpler times when Chocolateria San Churro was in its early days and hadn't evolved into the national franchise that it is today.

I didn't get the full experience of the now accused "gentrified" Fitzroy but perhaps was witnessing the early 2000's creeping in of it.