Greenwave Beth give us lessons in love with five date ideas for under $5

What tends to be best about side projects is the chance for exploration. Giving the people something outside of sounds and ideas they may be comfortable exploring is just something that feels like the epitome of creativity to me. Not only that, but allowing yourself as an artist to be unconstrained in your creation.

Flowertruck's Charlie Rushforth has gone and done just that, taking a break from the raucous and extremely infectious rock delivered by the band and is instead creating something that feels old world and nostalgic with his new project GREENWAVE BETH. It may feel this way, but I think that's the beauty of it.

Ahead of the release of the outfit's EP People In Agony set to be out on Dinosaur City Records on June 8, Charlie's given us a run down of five date ideas for under $5. Hear the single above and give his lessons of love a peruse below:

My father once told me that finding love was like finding a petrol station in Canberra. I think he meant that to imply there weren’t many petrol stations in Canberra. There were plenty when I went last time. Here are five date ideas under $5 that are accessible to anyone with time, guile, and a heart.

Google Cardboard Date

Going to the cinemas is a long-standing troupe in the world of dating but it’s very heavy on the pocket. Financially it’s similar to a Venezuelan supermarket circa 2011. I once took somebody to a rescreening of ‘Dogtooth” at the Dendy in Newtown. I paid $58 to learn that nobody likes to sit in the dark and watch incest scenes on a first date. However, outside the restrictive and expensive realm of the cinema watching, a movie DOES substitute a good activity; but boy oh boy don’t be a fuck-person and think that you can save money and effort and ‘netflix and chill’ on the first date.  You are telegraphing a future of forgotten birthdays and unsatisfying sex. Surely there is a middle ground between these worlds?

In 2015 Google announced a budget solution for VR enthusiasts: Google Cardboard. It essentially turns your phone into a cheap virtual reality headset. You can print it out for free if you’ve got a printer and some cardboard lying around but you can also buy them off eBay for the low price of $1.60. Why not explore the solar system together with Google Earth like Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in Gravity? Or participate in a live 360-degree performance of Paul McCartney’s ‘Let it be’? None of those activities sound particularly good on their own but I reckon if you did five or so of them while remaining charming you could probably make third base. You’re a modern MacGyver.

Rent a Puppy

Fun fact my auntie and uncle have a real life ‘101 Dalmatians’ story. They met walking their dogs in the park and have been together ever since. Dogs are a natural aphrodisiac as their traits can be misconstrued to that of their owners. A big german shepard can give you authority and power, while a Labrador will endow you with friendliness and empathy.

Dogs however are expensive and difficult to care for in small spaces where you spend your twenties. However, most pet stores offer an overnight hire of puppies to potential customers. It’s a clever trick, they just want you to fall in love with them and hence guarantee a sale. If you’re looking to trick someone into thinking that you’re capable of looking after another living thing/falling in love with you, what I propose is simple. Invite your date out for a walk with your new dog. You’ll be the jewel of the dog park as your superior puppy nets you the respect and awe you never received as a child.

Share a hot lover from Frango’s

Friday night. Boutique burger place. You’re on a date, you panicked and all the other real restaurants were booked out. You are sitting across from a stranger on a sticky table with a menu filled with colourful design choices with prices that can’t possibly be real. You have the window seat; you are facing out to the street. A sea of happy, normal people are walking past. They falter for a second in their stride as they pass your window to look at you with concern. Behind you the manager is yelling. He is yelling because he is scared.

The pleading face of your date meet yours. They were just looking for love. They did not ask for this. But you brought them here all the same. Why?

Don’t do this. Take your date to Frango’s Petersham and order the hot lover. Get it takeaway, it’s $7.5. Make sure you bring cash, the Portuguese staff will crucify you if you get to the end of the line and try to use pay-pass. You’re going to go halves in it so this qualifies as a $5 date, with the change you can buy a small chips. Get ready for the burger equivalent of heroin. Like heroin, you won’t always enjoy your first experience. The restaurant will be loud and the chaotic system of ordering will confuse you. You will ask if it is necessary for that much mayonnaise and peri-peri on your bun. But sometime next week you will wake in the night to a fire raging out of your control. You will be a flayed chicken turning over the hot coals of lust.

Take an O-Bike to Brighton-Le-Sands

The beach is a high-risk, high reward date location. It requires self-esteem, confident swimming and the ability to remove your undies while hiding your genitals with a towel.

It doesn’t technically require money. Class warfare is mostly fought at the beach through UE Booms.  This would be a radical change for dating if it weren’t for the age old problem of transport. You can technically get a bus to the beach, but people get married and raise kids while waiting for the 370 to Coogee. And then have to sit in their wet board shorts on the way back.  Every morning as I leave my house and walk down the street, I am greeted by the brutalized corpses of a different species of rent-a-bike. Sometimes it is a ‘reddy’ bike biblically strewn amongst a tree, or an ‘obike’ broken into almost unrecognisable pieces in the gutter. Like reading the future in goat entrails, herein lies our solution.

Brighton-le-sands is about a 25-minute bike ride away from the inner-west. It is Maroubra’s ugly bogan cousin that goes for St George. Your bike of choice is hopefully going to be an Ofo bike, if they haven’t all been desecrated by time of publication. Ofo bikes cost $1 per 30 minutes and don’t charge a deposit. There is a nice flat bike trail that takes you all the way to BL(i)S. Don’t be put off about the suspiciously warm water temperature, or the severe amount of jet skis that stalk its shores: just take some time out with someone special and watch the sun set out to sea as planes take off and land around you. 

Taronga Zoo

That’s right the zoo. This hot stop has a couple of steps so bear with me (hur hur), also $5 won’t cover your parking in Mosman so get the bus.

To pull this one off you’re gonna have to be dating someone who doesn’t mind forgetting to scan the fetta at the self-serve checkout if you know what I mean. And who also likes zoos.

(Editor’s Note: zoos are weird; all the animals love it apart from the apex predators who feel somewhat cheated living on a sushi train they can smell but never eat)

Taronga Zoo give you $1 entry on your birthday. This should be an article in itself. Nothing spells love like watching lions trying to kill themselves by running into double glazed glass. To make this $5 date happen you either have to date someone who is born on the same day as you OR forge your birthday credentials to be the same as your partner.

To do this you’ll need a printer and an American accent.

Supposedly, the easiest license to forge is the State of Florida USA. What you’ll need to do is find a template online, put your photo in there and laminate it convincingly. As zoos are always popular tourist destinations the staff at Taronga should have no problem accepting an American ID so long as you can fake an American accent properly. Even the most law abiding lovers will appreciate the lengths you’ve gone through to save $25 and provide you with a story to tell for years to come.

And there you have it. Five dates. Five dollars. Complete all five dates and you’ll go in the running to win my upcoming EP “People in Agony”.

Just mail proof to greenwavebeth@gmail.com and you will go in the running. You should also probably get married because if someone doesn’t love you for your money that much then you’re looking a gift horse in the mouth.

Image via Facebook