What are the top 10 things everyone should know about Melbournians?

Vote #1 Alistair Smith: He’s got the most important stuff. Alistair Smith’s answer to What are the top 10 things everyone should know about Melbournians?

We are coffee snobs, we (well not me) are sports mad. We dress in black, and we wear layers because of the volatility of the weather. We (and I guess South Australia) are more lefty than the rest of the country; right wing shock jocks are much more a Sydney thing.

Alistair did #1–#6. I’ll add these as #7–10:

• We dislike Sydney. This is a fairly commonplace kind of city rivalry, and takes the form of sneering at their lack of culture (yes, they have the Opera House, we try to forget that). The worst thing we could say about the generic sitcom Hey Dad..! was “What do you expect of a comedy filmed in Sydney”. TV stations will try to keep the Sydney origins of most Australian TV shows quiet here.
• We have geographical divides. There is an impoverished West and an affluent East. There is a North of the River/South of the River split. People living in hipster Brunswick (such as, oh, everyone I knew at Melbourne Uni) would never venture any further south than St Kilda. Which is not very far south.
• There is an old stuffy class-conscious elite in Melbourne, though you really have to dig deep to find it. My one experience of it was being introduced to the venerable old historian Geoffrey Blainey, only to be asked by him whether I was related to the Nicholas family of Nicholas Aspro fame. (Australian Dictionary of Biography)
• Then again, Googling for links to them, maybe it’s just as well I’m not: Bloop, bloop, bloop – another one bites the dust.

Didn’t the Nicholas “Aspro” family write the book on the intergenerational pissing away of the family fortune?

• You will learn very little about Melburnians from watching The Real Housewives of Melbourne.

Oh. Vote #1 Alistair Smith.