One chooses the area where they live for specific reasons. It might be that there are no young families with strollers and four-wheel drives, no screaming toddlers, no homophobic slurs, no weekend football matches, it might be for the café set and good coffee available. For whatever the reason may be we have all chosen to live in our suburbs… but what happens when all of this starts to change?

Moving into Potts Point over three years ago it was my first experience in the original Gay Ghetto… Grindr almost exploded! It is an interesting area, so close to the city, so many gay men wandering the street, some you know you’ve seen somewhere before but just can’t put your finger on it. The over-priced clothing shops, amazing restaurants and ever so trendy bars. It is a great gaybourhood.

But not so long ago things started to change. On the weekends I’m now quite used to waking up and hearing a little too much from my neighbours. Those in the nearby apartment quite often have sex (nothing wrong with that)… but it seems to be happening in their kitchen, which my bedroom looks straight into.

In my area it’s almost impossible to find a park on a Friday or Saturday night, and if you venture out early on the weekend you are likely to find couples copulating in back alleys or homeless asleep in doorways.

But about a year ago I woke up to something I hadn’t heard in quite a long time and definitely didn’t expect to hear in my apartment complex… a crying baby. I thought okay fair enough a young family have moved into the building and maybe I need to be a little more tolerant as it was 10am on a Saturday. But then I started to notice the baby cried at the most annoying times like 11pm and 5am during the week. Loud sex I can put up with but a crying baby is not something you can tell your neighbours to keep quiet!

I also started to notice that there were more and more strollers in my area. When in a slight hung over state on the weekend and I would emerge from my apartment to go get a coffee from my local café. I would have to step around or in the gutter because a HUGE stroller was taking up the entire footpath and the owners of the monstrous contraption seemed oblivious that the object was disrupting my quest for coffee.

I am used to seeing Muscle Marys with tiny little balls of fluff for dogs or gay couples holding hands on a walk, or older gay men discussing soft furnishing and antiques but so many strollers in a hung over state is just disturbing. Not to mention having to put up with a mother and father changing a dirty nappy at the café while waiting for my coffee… they are seriously lucky I didn’t throw up on their little bundle of joy in my hung over state.

Restaurants in the area that have some amazing cocktails have also started to feature kids menus. When I am ordering a jug of Pimms I do not also want to be confronted with a kiddies menu and crayons to draw!

At a local fashion spot you can now find a nine hundred dollar designer shirt sharing the shelf with two hundred dollar baby booties. When did Potts Point become so child friendly?