ur methodology for how we research and verify." cover_alt: “Fitzroy lifestyle” cover_credit: “wikimedia_commons” figures: [{“position”: “Who Actually Lives Here”, “url”: “https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Fitzroy_Rainbow_Hotel_003.JPG”, “alt”: “Who Actually Lives Here”, “credit”: “wikimedia_commons”, “score”: 70}, {“position”: “The Gertrude St Divide”, “url”: “https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Fitzroy_Rainbow_Hotel_003.JPG”, “alt”: “The Gertrude St Divide”, “credit”: “wikimedia_commons”, “score”: 70}, {“position”: “Café Politics: The Real Power Structure”, “url”: “https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Fitzroy_Rainbow_Hotel_003.JPG”, “alt”: “Café Politics: The Real Power Structure”, “credit”: “wikimedia_commons”, “score”: 70}, {“position”: “The Cycling Wars”, “url”: “https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c7/Fitzroy_Rainbow_Hotel_003.JPG”, “alt”: “The Cycling Wars”, “credit”: “wikimedia_commons”, “score”: 70}] —
FITZROY VIBE SCORE: 84/100 ⚡️ ICONIC (+2 this week)
Let’s get one th…"
Fitzroy: The Suburb Roast — Every Hot Take, No Apologies
FITZROY VIBE SCORE: 84/100 ⚡️ ICONIC (+2 this week)
Let’s get one thing straight before the inner-north defenders show up in our DMs with pitchforks made of reclaimed timber: Fitzroy is good. It’s genuinely, annoyingly good. That’s what makes it so insufferable. When a suburb gets everything right — the food, the culture, the walkability, the nightlife — its residents develop a superiority complex that could power the entire Melbourne tram network.
This is the roast Fitzroy deserves but has never asked for, because nobody in Fitzroy has ever admitted they need anything from anyone. They’re too busy curating.
Who Actually Lives Here
Fitzroy’s population is a Venn diagram of three circles:
- The Old Guard — artists, musicians, and single-speed cyclists who moved in during the 2000s when rent on Brunswick Street was $180 a week and nobody south of the river knew what a natural wine bar was. They’re still here. They’ll die here. Their apartments haven’t been renovated since the Whitlam era and they wouldn’t have it any other way.
- The New Money — tech workers, UX designers, and product managers who discovered that living in Fitzroy means they never have to explain their postcode at a dinner party. They rent warehouse conversions on Gertrude Street and spend more on oat milk in a month than most people spend on groceries. Their rent is obscene. They know it. They pay it anyway because living in Fitzroy is an identity, not a housing decision.
- The Students — RMIT and Melbourne Uni students sharing houses with six strangers on streets they can’t pronounce (it’s KEER-ak, not “Kye-rack”). They subsist on $12 banh mi from Smith Street and complain about gentrification while being the gentrifiers of tomorrow.
The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Fitzroy currently sits somewhere between “you’re kidding” and “my parents would literally pass out.” Expect to pay $450–$550 a week for something that’s been described as “cosy” in the listing, which is real estate code for “you will touch both walls of the bathroom simultaneously.”
The Gertrude St Divide
Every suburb has a fault line. In Fitzroy, it’s Gertrude Street.
The East Side (towards Smith Street) is where things get real. This is where you’ll find builders grabbing a flat white at 6am, old-school pubs like the Evelyn Hotel still kicking, and the kind of honest chaos that reminds you Fitzroy was a working-class suburb before anyone thought to put a deconstructed tiramisu on a slate board. This side has grit. It has soul. It also has significantly worse parking.
The West Side (towards Nicholson Street) is where Fitzroy goes full performance art. This is gallery territory. Boutique territory. The kind of place where you can buy a $400 hand-thrown ceramic mug and the shopkeeper will tell you with a straight face that “each imperfection tells a story.” Sure it does, mate. It tells the story of someone who’s never heard of Kmart.
The divide is real. East Gertrude thinks West Gertrude is pretentious. West Gertrude thinks East Gertrude is trying too hard to be authentic. And everyone on both sides agrees that the stretch between Brunswick and Smith is actually the best bit, but nobody says that out loud because it’s too mainstream.
🔥 FIGHT US: Which side of Gertrude Street has the superior energy? East or West? Drop your answer in the comments and prepare to defend it. No fence-sitters allowed. Tell us why we’re wrong →
