As the new citadel of Melbourne’s gay and lesbian ascendancy raises its concrete facade to prove that, no, the artists’ impressions on the hoardings did not lie, this will be one of the ugliest buildings in Australia, one obstacle persists. On its doorstep, and for some distance either way along what used to be cosmopolitan Fitzroy Street, formerly Melbourne’s most ‘European’ avenue and now drugs and squalor central, homeless representatives of our ‘first nations’ lie asleep, swathed in grubby blankets, day or night, come rain, hail or shine.