$17.50 for a movie ticket? Really? Not even a 3D one - $17.50!?!?! What kind of ridiculous price fixing is at work here, when pretty much all the chains charge $17 or $17.50 for the extreme luxury item of sitting in a seat for two hours to watch a sequel to a toy advertisement (Transformers 2), or in the case of Shrek 4, a 90 minute ad for toys.

To put it in perspective, we have quite possibly the most expensive movie admission prices in the world. From vague memory seeing a first run movie was about $13 in New York (US$10.50), $14 in London (£8) and if you went on a Tuesday, $4.40 in Toronto (C$4). I even saw a Bollywood movie in India for 30 rupees (75 cents).

Sydney - really. What the fuck?

And they wonder why we're downloading movies. You wouldn't steal a car - you wouldn't steal a handbag. True, but the cost of cars and handbags hasn't doubled in the last decade, the cost of cars has in fact largely come down.

On an aside, tickets to next months Sydney Film Festival haven't gone up and this year are a comparatively reasonable $17 (Or $13.50 if you buy a 10 pass). So screw the chains, go see some art house crap ahead of time for cheaper, and support our arts organisations.

With the current shitstorm about the Melbourne Storm breaching their salary cap and losing all their trophys filling our airwaves it's worth noting that really, no else in the country (let alone the world) probably cares. Ever try explaning the state-by-state break down of our football codes to an American? Their eyes glaze over like a Dunkin donut and they the subject soon changes to Superbowl half time shows. The whole idea of a salary cap in the land of the free is a concept about as foreign as universal healthcare or nationalised public broadcasting.

In Melbourne too, no one probably cares. I bet it's on page 14 in The Age, next to the ad for a new slow-core, shoe-gazing post-folk gig at the community cafe latte gallery (with potato cakes) - accessible by privatised public transport.

Rugby League is a predominantly New South Welshmans infatuation (the league itself was called the NSWRL up until as recently as 1994), and the rest of the country is pretty much Aussie Rules dominated (except with the World Cup is on, and then we all love football football - or soccer as Americans call it).

And with a second Sydney AFL team on the way, the Melbourne Storm fiasco could possibly send a lot of League converts back to other codes in all the southern states. So get ready for a return of the North Sydney Bears! And heaven forbid The Footy Show and Matty Johns might have to actually say something for a change!

Keep loving your Rugby League Sydneysiders, you're the only ones.

The best thing about Rugby League remains Tina Turner's brief infatuation with the sport in 1989/1990 as demonstrated in this spontaneous show of appreciation:

And Rugby League player aren't known for their political stances either, as Mal Meninga shows us:

While Melbourne had Nadal and Federer battling it out in the final of a sweltering Australian Open Tennis final this summer - Sydney invented a brand new type of sport. A craze that for two days at least, was sweeping the Harbour city: Shark Fighting!

In early February there were two near-deadly shark attacks in our fine city, two days in a row. One was actually in the harbour, against a navy diver who was believed to be involved in a counter terrorism exercise. If anything, having live sharks in the harbour will arguably protect our battle ships against USS Cole type attacks better than anything the navy could possibly come up with. I don't see Al Qaeda wanting to fight sharks anytime soon. The diver punched the shark a couple of times and escaped needing surgery to his thigh and hand.

The very next day Sydney's iconic Bondi beach was the target of a daring dusk attack which left a surfer with a horribly wounded arm, and he was rushed to hospital. As the attack happened at 7:30pm, i.e. well past "beer o'clock" for Aussie film crews, we unfortunately have to assume that the Bondi Rescue documentary crew had already gone home and it won't wind up on next season of the hit show.

So, take that Paris, Tokyo, New York and London - we invented a new sport this summer!

Say what you will about the road closures, flag waving tourists and very un-Australian outward displays of public religion, I'm taking inspiration from the thousands of visiting pilgrims and like them, I'm not paying for public transport this week.

Free public transport? Hallelujah!

The birthplace of the Tropest film festival, this cafe symbolises all that is soul-less and generic about modern Sydney. During the day, it's packed with obviously unemployed people in designer clothes slaving over their masterpiece screenplay on their laptop, pretending to be talking to their "agents" on their mobile phones, all the while a dozen or so plasma screens blare bad 90s music. The coffee is not bad, but the food, a rather generic and small menu of mediocre foccaccias and pastas, makes McDonalds or Subway look like a home to individualism.

I had a mate who used to love this place and would constantly be dragging me here. Why? I worked out he wanted to be "somebody", and where was he spending his time? Sitting crammed in a cafeteria full of other wanna-bes pretending to be somebody.

For the record, my favourite Sydney cafe is Cafe Berardo of Glebe (RIP), which was full of unemployed musicians and writers who at least knew they were nobodies... and the coffee was sublime.

Tropicana Cafe is at 227 Victoria Road, Darlinghurst.

Lock up your DVD players and laptops - cheap heroin is back in Sydney! First we had grunge, then recently it seemed like House music is back, and now it seems like one more early 90s retro kick is back - cheap smack.

The dirtiest of the skank drugs, heroin has always fit in nicely in Sin-City - we just aren't rich enough New Yorkers to enjoy coke habits and despite the beaches and climate, aren't chilled out to be a weed culture. If Sydney were a drug it would be this or ice really.

How do I know? My lady friend and I discovered a junkie passed out in the grounds of Glebe Public School the other day, lying flat as a tack with hit fit next to him. Awesome, they leave dangerous needles lying around for kids and then vomit. And i learnt a valuable lesson that day: let sleeping junkies lay.

Expect to see more tracksuits on the streets of Sydney soon - just not in the Urban Style columns.

EDIT: I saw a guy "on the nod" over a plate of calamari at the Shakespeare in Surry Hills the other night - Sydney's new millennium junkies sure have come a long was in sophistication since the chicko rollls of the 1980s, that's for sure!

Congregating around the more affluent suburbs of Balmain and the Lower North Shore, Sydney's Yummy Mummys are recognised by their designer maternity wear, their industrial strength strollers that cost more than most second-hand cars, and the fact they aren't at work during the day.

Are these the model wives of multi-millionaire bankers and stock brokers? Or just the model wives of millionaire lawyers and solicitors? We'll never know.

And if you work in a cafe, they'll order a coffee in a way you've never imagined possible before: with half the milk soy and luke warm, half cold skim and the coffee half decaf, with the foam not too thick.

We love Sydney buses. If you ever need to get to Bondi Beach or travel down Parramatta Road and you're a poor ass and don't own a car, then chances are you've traveled by a Sydney bus. In fact you can travel anywhere you need to get to, so long as it's on the lower North shore, Eastern suburbs or Inner West. These areas are extremely well serviced by buses due to the lack of other transport infrastructure and low income in these areas. But please note, travelling between these places, like from say Bondi to Newtown, is ill-advised as it will probably involve going through the city, changing buses and walking, all of which is scary at night.

Bus tickets can be bought on board from a grumpy dwarf known as the driver, or you can pre-buy tickets known as "Traveltens" or "Travelpases" which are dipped in the green ticket readers on board. On mass, these tickets cost more than similar quantities of street drugs, and are often harded to obtain on Sydney streets at night.

Some people say Sydney buses are over-priced and over-crowded. Well move to friggin Kempsey or Canberra then, those buses are plenty empty, you just can't get home at say, 3am on a Saturday morning like you can in Sin City.

The reason I Sydney buses comes in at number one on our list of things to love about Sydney is their speed and efficiency. On Tuesday I saw a woman lying unconcious in the middle of the Parramatta Road bus lane the other day, hit by the L38 - which proves it really is an express. It doesn't even stop if a pedestrian jumps in front of it! Don't believe me? Well a recent rumour has both the Butcher of Bega and Bundaberg's Doctor Death applying to be Sydney bus drivers, to quench their thirst for strangers blood.

Related Upcoming topics: The Nightride, the 370 "round the world" all stops and Sydney trains.