Ultimo local, Kitty, reminds us that the narrow little Hackett Street in fact used to be called Bulwara Lane. Its status as a lane proved to be a problem for the lane's inhabitants in the 1950s: a lane's slummy associations made it tricky to get hired for work.
Labor MP Charles Hackett pushed for all Lanes to be renamed Streets, to give lane dwellers the respectability they deserved. Thus the name change from Bulwara Lane to Hackett Street. The Powerhouse Museum verifies this random neighbourly chatter.
What is kind of stupid about this is - there is ALSO a Hackett Lane -- albeit a pedestrian thoroughfare only, but it's a lane. Curiously, that's where the state government subsequently chose to set up a stack of public housing.
One Penultimite knows Hackett Lane rather well - when she was a teenager she had a boyfriend, N, who lived there with his tarot-card reading mother, 5 cats and a Staffordshire terrier. N lived in an amazingly tiny sandstone cottage (see above) on Hackett Lane - which made for a pretty quirky subsidised housing experience. This would have been idyllic, had it not been for the Staffie's incredible dog farts, farts with olafactory powers so overwhelming, they could actually be sensed down the road on Harris Street.
