THE young bloke with the striped top and accordion is belting out a typically French-sounding accompaniment to the typically French-sounding girl.
She is even about the same height as Edith Piaf - that is, not very high at all.
It is a French cafe with a French owner, chef and waitress too.
If it wasn't for the fact the young bloke had been slaving away all week in the Australian heat with me on a building site I could have convinced myself, with another couple of French beers, that I was in Paris rather than Smith St, Collingwood.
The old Italian accordion has a strong resemblance to a coffee machine.
His fingers trip across the expanse of buttons at both ends in that impossible way that musicians can manage.
My sardine pizza arrives at the footpath table, delivered by the exotic waitress with just the right amount of nonchalance.
The balmy evening has brought out a good selection of groovy locals to smoke and natter away at the next tables, while the passing pedestrians provide an endlessly interesting form of nature study.
I look up to see John Clarke, the former Fred Dagg and all-round comic genius, chatting to my neighbours.
He's a local here. If Australia ever requires a president, he is on my shortlist, with Dame Edna, to get the job. I'd love to meet him but I stick to my sardines.
Years ago I had a girlfriend living in a haunted house next to a pub in Fitzroy up the road a bit and I decide to wander into the evening with a loose idea of finding it.
The shops and cafes are so changed as to make me a foreign traveller here.
The imagination and humour and style of these strips are what our sons and daughters are drawn to, away from the predictable shopping centres in the country.
This is a great pity.
I find myself engrossed in a hat-shop window and not paying much attention to a fair few blokes milling about a trestle table.
All are enjoying hand-held food and coffees and drinks, like a thousand or so other people up and down this street, but they seem not dressed with quite the casual flare and originality of other locals.
It dawns on me that it is a Brotherhood soup-kitchen set-up.
Then a bloke at my elbow with an apron offers me a sausage. I scurry off up the street. I really must do something about my wardrobe.
