Yesterday marked 91 years since Alcoholics Anonymous was founded. "Melville celebrated with a quiet night in", says absolutely nobody on the strip! Welcome to Melville Untold, where you get the news before the group chats finish arguing about it.

In this week’s newsletter:

— Aubrey Moloto,

That was the question that opened the first Melville 130 planning meeting, and nobody in the room quite had an answer. One of Joburg's oldest suburbs turns 130 this October, and you can't exactly buy it a card. So Melville is doing the next best thing: throwing itself a party, and inviting the whole world to help build it.

Here is what makes this one feel different. Around a single table, for the first time in longer than most of us can remember, sat the Residents' Association, the Business Association, the Security Initiative, the Melville Art Mile, Friends of the Melville Koppies, the Artisanal Market and Snaps On Seventh, all pulling in the same direction at the same time. The last time the suburb linked arms at this scale, the old-timers will tell you, was the legendary Melville Mardi Gras. Well, Mzansi, that spirit is back!

It's back, and this time inside a bigger story. After some genuinely hard years, Melville's last two have felt like a real resurgence, and in the past nine months, ablaze: shutters going up instead of down, residents back out after dark, and the suburb taking its place in the wider push, alongside Jozi My Jozi, Wits, the water campaigners, civic groups like JoburgCAN, and now UJ, to drag Joburg back towards being a world-class city again.

of The Happening on the Saturday, market stalls and live music, and a special Saturday opening of the Melville Koppies with a heritage hike and storytelling. Threaded through all of it, we hope the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation, alongside Snaps On Seventh and other tour guides, run walks across the suburb. It lands just before Melville's actual birthday, Monday 5 October.

The organisers are firm on one thing: this is for everyone. No fences, no velvet rope, no exclusivity. "It's 130 years, it belongs to everyone" was the line in the room, and the funding follows our suburb's tested playbook, community crowdfunding and local sponsors rather than one big corporate banner across the street.

The heart of the whole thing is a project called My Melville Memories. The idea is simple and rather beautiful: anyone who has ever lived, worked, studied, performed or simply misspent a weekend here, whether you are still on 7th Street or these days in a flat in London, can send in their stories and photographs. They will be gathered into a memory wall, shown on the day and online, with a prize for the entries that make us laugh, cry or gasp.

If you danced at Roxy's Rhythm Bar when it was one of the launchpads of South African live music, ROFL'd with Jon Vlismas at Cool Runnings Open Mic, or maybe you have a shoebox of photos from a Melville that no longer exists, this is your moment. We'll be running submissions through a dedicated portal on the MRA website, so start digging now.

Two of the most exciting pieces reach back far further than 130 years. Up on the Koppies, a 500-year-old Iron Age smelter has been digitally resurrected in augmented reality by UJ's Metaverse Research Unit and the Friends of the Melville Koppies. Stand on the hillside, hold up your phone, and watch the furnace burn as it did centuries before this suburb had a name. The experience travels to Museum Africa for Heritage Day and forms part of the Koppies celebration in October.

Down in the streets, there is a plan by the Melville Art Mile Association to bring one of Melville's long-closed staircases back to life: repaired, then painted or mosaicked, with residents pledging a step at a time, your family's step to keep. The stairs were shut years ago over real safety worries, and reopening one properly, for everyone who uses it, is half the point.

Then there is the storytelling, which is where it gets special. We're hoping to set Merle Grace, the Koppies' own storyteller, up with our neighbourhood favourites, Zimtoti Bakery, Wild Jasmine and Exotically Divine, to build a heritage experience rooted in African history, indigenous food, and the kind of gentle unlearning that helps a city remember who it has always been.

Melville 130 is being built in the open, and it needs hands. You can send a memory or a photo to My Melville Memories, pledge a staircase, volunteer for a working group, or, if you run a business, put your weight behind it as a sponsor. Artists, musicians, storytellers and historians, the call is out for you especially.

So, what do you say on a 130th birthday? Maybe just this: thank you, Melville, and many happy returns. Join the committee group, trust, you want to be a part of it!

Enjoyed this week’s digest? Consider buying us a coffee – It keeps the newsletter going.

For more updates as the week goes on, visit our Instagram page @snapson7th or our Melville Pulse event calendar

We can confirm it: Confluence is officially open on Main Road, and it looks brilliant. We popped in and finally met Charmaine in person, and heard something that made our week: the head chef is a seafood specialist. If you've ever asked us where to get proper seafood in Melville (and so many of you have), you'll know the answer has always been "a few places do a dish, nobody specialises". That drought is over.

One note before you charge down there with a chilled red on your mind after a long day, the liquor licence is still in the works, so for now, it's bean brews and food only. Go for the food, watch our socials for a look inside, and we'll bring you the full story soon.

This one is big, and it is happening on our corner. SPACE.tm, the TikTok-native production company behind ERF350 Melville Studios (corner Main Street and 4th Avenue), is launching SHAP LIVE, South Africa's first 24/7 structured live broadcast channel on TikTok. It goes on air on Tuesday, 16 June, Youth Day, timed to the most culturally loaded date on the youth calendar, right as the World Cup pulls the globe onto screens.

The numbers behind it are not small; they have a verified TikTok audience of 500,000 followers, a pilot phase that pulled 2.3 million organic views in 60 days with zero ad spend, and a daily broadcast schedule running five named show blocks from 08:00 to 22:00, Morning Drive through Prime Time. All of it beamed from a studio you can walk past with a coffee.

"Launching on Youth Day is not a marketing decision," says Morne Ebersohn of SPACE.tm. "It is a statement about who this channel belongs to. SHAP LIVE is South Africa's broadcast. It launches on South Africa's most significant youth date."

We visited the studios, met the team, and there's a much bigger story here about the building, the people and what a content house does to a high street. That's next week's feature. For now, industry and media types can ask about today's soft-launch event via [email protected], and everyone else can point their phone at shaplive.co.za next Tuesday morning. Broadcast TV from Melville. What a time.

The Confluence opening is not a siloed event. Up and down Main Road right now: signage has gone up at the old "OH" building on the corner (something is coming, we're watching it), The Coffee Stop is open and pouring, and the Central African kitchen in the old Video Town block (the spot on the right, not the red one) is one of the most underrated plates in the suburb, plantains, veggies and traditional cooking and theres murmmers about Shoprite. There's movement where Cat's Pyjamas used to be too, and with Great Dane and Scooters settling in and the Shisa Nyama back open, Main Road is starting to look like a strip again. Now, about that Muchachos block... somebody brave, please.

Love Books turns 18 this month, and Kate Rogan's institution in the Bamboo Centre is celebrating the way booksellers should: with a birthday sale, running now. Eighteen years of putting the right book in the right hands deserves a queue out the door. Go say happy birthday.

The water story has national eyes on it now. Helen Zille visited Melville and attended last week's MRA meeting, saying she came to see "first-hand how the water crisis is affecting residents and businesses". It follows the DA filing court papers in the Johannesburg High Court over the city's handling of Joburg Water, arguing the utility is being starved of the funds it needs to stabilise the system, a case the city disputes. We're chasing the minutes of the MRA meeting and will bring you a proper summary of what was said, what was promised, and what it means for our corner of the Commando System. As always, we'll report it straight, whoever is talking.

Last Thursday's Cosy First Thursdays edition of the Melville Art Mile had every reason not to stay home. Joburg was doing its best impression of a deep freeze, and the Ville answered with braziers, gas heaters, free warm shuttles running the longest stretches of the route, and more than 25 artists showing on every single mile. To every participant and venue who held the space and kept it warm: thank you. You made an art walk feel like a living room.

The biggest hits of the night? The Assembly Improv crew at the Amphitheatre had people crying with laughter,turning 27 Boxes into the most exciting corner in the suburb. Speaking of 27 Boxes, the night market was the fullest we've seen it in a very long time, the ir markets together with Joburg Child Welfare are really gaining steam!

Agterplaas joined the mile for the first time, hosting Alice Art Gallery and David Kuijers. We finally met Alice herself, and the exhibition was superb. Honest note: plenty of people never found their way there, and that's on routing, not on the art. They'll be back in July, and we are already working on getting the foot traffic to them.

And then there was one of our tour guests, Michael. Michael saw the Melville Art Mile on social media, in England, and chose South Africa for his holiday because of it. He planned his week around the mile. If you ever wonder whether this little art walk travels, i guess it does! Nine thousand-odd kilometres apparently.

But, realistically, Joburg is having a huge revival, and Melville is no longer the only show in town on a First Thursday. That's a good thing, and it means the mile needs to gets strategic from here. The Melville Art Mile Association

Membership launches in the next two to three months, and if you want in as an artist, a venue, or a neighbour with ideas, email [email protected]. The mile's own website is on the way, and so is the new Snaps On Seventh site (it's part of why your newsletters have been running late, and we'll tell you all about it soon!).

Next mile: Thursday 2 July.

Mark it. Tickets and route here.

Apply to be on the map and program for 2 July and capitalise on our early promo! Apply here.

The cold has turned Ridhwan from Natures WiFi, the free range egg and organic goods stall at the Melville Artisanal Market, into the neighbourhood's most passionate nutritional preacher. "Lentils are tiny but they punch way above their weight nutritionally," he sermonised into the community chat this week, before walking us through seven verses on protein, gut health and budget-friendly winter cooking. "We at Natures Wifi care about your health, nature's way," says Ridhwan, whose stall also wants to be your brown basmati and organic kimchi plug this winter. Find him at the market and tell him the newsletter sent you.

Double-header on the ridge this weekend, and you can do both.

Saturday 13 June: Walk With Dogs at Koppies West. Meet at 07:50 in the 3rd Avenue Westdene cul-de-sac (off Arundel Road, map here), walking at 08:00 sharp. R40 per person, exact cash please, every rand goes to the upkeep of the koppies. Dogs optional, layers compulsory, it warms up as you walk. You are very welcome even without a hound.

Sunday 14 June: Storytelling with Merle Grace at Koppies Central. The rescheduled children's storytelling is on: a live performance from 09:00 to 09:30 at the Lecture Hut, followed by a two-hour guided hike. Beautiful, child-friendly stories for ages two and up. R100 adults, R50 under 18s, free for under fives. Merle's voice is back and we are delighted. Details via the Melville Koppies Facebook page.

You know Shorty. If you've spent any time on 7th Street, you've heard the poems before you've seen the poet. Shorty has published two volumes of poetry while living on the streets of Joburg, and now the story is a film: Just Because I'm a Street Kid: Introducing Shorty the Melville Poet, a 14-minute documentary by director Faith Riyano, selected for the 28th Encounters South African International Documentary Festival.

The film showed at the Joburg Film Festival at Rosebank's Cinema Nouveau last weekend. This Friday, it comes home. Friday 12 June, 18:00, at The Bioscope at 44 Stanley, just down the road, as part of the Thank You For Being shorts block, alongside three other South African shorts (Inyembezi Zendoda, Dear Sikhonkwane and One Last Order). There's a Q&A after the screening, so the neighbourhood can do what the neighbourhood does best: show up loudly for one of its own.

We sat down with Shorty before the screening, and we'll bring you the longer story soon. For now, do the simple thing: buy a ticket, pitch up on Friday, and watch Melville's poet on a cinema screen.

🎟 Tickets: R94.50 via Tixsa | Full Encounters programme at The Bioscope runs until 14 June: thebioscope.co.za/encounters

And that's that, if this week's read was epic (or just gave you somewhere to be on Friday night), consider buying us a coffee to keep the lights on and the stories coming.

Got a tip, a correction, or a Melville memory already burning a hole in your shoebox? Reply directly, we read everything.

Know someone who used to live, love or work in Melville? Forward this mail to them. The 130th birthday is going to need the diaspora.

Until next week, Melville,

Stay bold, stay bright, stay buzzing.

Ma'a salameh✌️