Ricky’s been in and out of the Frankston courts so much lately that the judge has run out of community service tasks for him to do. She’s at a loose end so she suggests he thinks up his own charitable vocation. Ricky thinks of the people on the Frankston line who always ask him for a ciggie or a bite of his sandwich… they must be hungry, so why not feed them? Like a true lad, he decides that he could serve the community by cooking the commuters a meal: which is documented in this pure encapsulation of a facet of Australian society – Cooking on the Frankston Line.
Fitted out in an eloquent expression of eshay culture – jail shorts, short sleeve polo, Ralph cap, sidebag, and TNs – Ricky says people often wonder how a guy who spends so much time on the streets can afford such nice clothes. But his frequent visits to the court house explain that; “We don’t pay for shit. Everything we get man – straight down the dacks”, he says, adding that he enjoys being “esh… because I’m always fresh.”
Setting out to make the folks on the Frankston line a nutritious meal he forages for extra crispy dim sims and and spaghetti; “all ingredients you can find from IGA, Coles or BP.” And, equipped with a stack of milk crates and a gas burner, he delivers a Michelin-star worthy cooking class on a rocking carriage.
At first the commuters are unsure of his traditional Australian cuisine, but Frankston liners are a special bunch so more than a few are curious about his take on bolognese. Cans down the best (if not most enlightening, or the most worrying) part of Ricky’s tale is the squad of youth who berate him when he leaves the line. Their first question: “Can I have your TNs?”
But then, maybe they’d just seen this picture of Drake:
The video champions (and lampoons) Australia’s unique lower-middle class lad subculture in a sartorial ode that is superior to any cartoon. Witness (above) his royal grousness, Ricky, cook on a train for the the first time.
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