Robyn’s Secret Passage

The day I flew into Hamilton Airport, there was a photo of me in the Waikato Times. These two events were not related (the photo accompanied a story originally from the Dom Post on the popularity of traditional pastime activities, including the bowling league I was part of) but it was a little spooky to find this unintentional welcome back to the city where I was born.

I left Hamilton in 1997 and after my parents moved to Raglan in 2002, I haven’t really had any reason to go back there. But one of my all-time favourite Hamilton bands, Mobile Stud Unit, were having their 15th anniversary/final show, so I decided to spend a couple of days in Hammo, revisiting.

Growing up in Hamilton in the ’80s, it was pretty bleak. In the classic science fiction film The Quiet Earth, the only man and woman left on earth end up in Hamilton and there’s a brief shot of Bruno Lawrence wandering around a totally deserted Garden Place and Alexander Street. At the time, I remember thinking, “Oh, they must have filmed that on a Sunday,” because that’s what town was like on a Sunday - as deserted as a post-apocalytic landscape.

But Hamilton got better. By the time I left, the centre of town had a lively strip of bars, cafes and restaurants. There was a good live music scene and Hamilton was a fun place for its size. So the whole time I’ve been living away from Hamilton, I just assumed that stuff would have kept on progressing and improving. Sadly, though, it hadn’t.

Something strange has happened to the core of Hamilton. All the main shops are now focussed around four malls - Centreplace, Downtown Plaza, the K Mart plaza and the new Warehouse. But strangely when the malls close at night, the streets of Hamilton seem to close too. At 5.30 on a Thursday, town was eerily deserted. Does no one even want to see a movie?

And it gets worse - back in the ’70s, Hamilton dubbed itself “Fountain City”. Not so much because it had a lot of fountains, but because it sort of wanted a name and, uh, if you name it, they will build them? Well, the fountain in the middle of Garden Place has just been ripped out because it was leaking, but with no plans to repair or replace it. No one cares.

I bussed out to Westfield Chartwell, né Chartwell Square, which has been turned into even more of a mall than it used to be. I caught the wrong direction Orbit bus back and ended up going on a journey past The Base, a giant big-box shopping complex that has been built to car scale, not human scale. There’s even a shuttle bus that will drive you around the place because it’s evidently too big and unfriendly to pleasantly traverse on foot. Damn you bone-machine humans and your puny stamina!

At a time when people in cities are moving back to the city centres and away from far-flung suburbs, it seems that Hamilton is still sprawling. It feels like a city that’s been allowed to grow with a really strong focus on suburbs. It’s as if a bomb has been dropped in the centre of the city, causing everyone to flee to the outskirts, only to return to the city on the weekend, after dark as boozed-up zombies.

I get the feeling that if you want an effortless existence in Hamilton, you’d have to be sort of person who’d enjoy settling down and getting married and living in a house in the suburbs with your kids, Bella and Jack.

The people I know in Hamilton who aren’t playing by that script, they’re the ones who are doing really cool creative stuff. Some of them end up leaving, but others stay on and hopefully make the city a better place.

I’ve always liked the idea of never living somewhere where you’re too comfortable - a bit of geographic grit in your oyster to help form the pearl of your character. Hamilton provided me with enough grit, but then it got too gritty so I got out.

But even after being disappointed with Hamilton’s lack of life, my visit was all suburban oppression. On Friday night at the Mobile Stud Unit gig, I caught up with some old friends and had a brilliant night out as MSU gleefully rehashed their classics. It was sad to see the end of MSU, but perhaps that’s a good enough point to finally close the Hamilton chapter of my life… if that’s possible.

The first time I heard of Barack Obama, I had three thoughts about him:

1. That as he was a dirty filthy chain-smoker, I had no respect for him.
2. That as I couldn’t relate to the “Obama Girl” video, he was obviously not up my alley.
3. That there was no way a guy with the middle name Hussein and with a surname one letter different from Osama would get elected president of the United States.

But 1) he quit, 2) everyone has crazy fans, and 3) oh, so I was totally wrong about that one.

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008. One of my workmates and I were in his car, driving along Victoria Street, towards Taranaki Street. He turned on Radio NZ National. Their US election coverage was playing. It was mentioned that Obama had reached over 270 electoral college votes and was therefore going to be the president-elect. We both said woo-hoo and continued on to our destination, the American Ambassador’s election party.

At the Michael Fowler Centre, the room was full of celebration and excitement. It was very American, with cardboard cutouts of McCain and Obama, and paddles, badges and stickers for both Democrats and Republicans - though it should be noted that while the McCain/Palin badge bowl was still quite full, the Obama/Biden bowl was nearly empty.

CNN’s election coverage was playing on a projector. McCain made his speech and the room was quiet for it. It was so gracious and humble, and I got that horrible feeling that, dammit, if he’d won the Republican nomination in 2000, things would have been so much better.

Before I went to the party, I joked that I hoped they’d be serving hotdogs. Well, they did - mini gourmet hotdogs and hamburgers. Slowly I started to realise a feeling was coming back; something I hadn’t felt for years - America was OK. America was slowly moving back to being a cool country.

Then Barack Obama made his speech; the speech. The room feel silent and everyone listened. It was awesome. People were crying and sniffling a little.

The bit that got me was when he thanked his wife, Michelle. I’d never fully got the way the president’s wife is called the First Lady and gets special reverence of her own, but I suddenly realised. Being the wife of a president would be so hard. You’d almost lose party of your identity and be forced into a job that you virtually couldn’t quit. The whole ‘first lady’ thing is a small compensation for all the crap they have to put up with.

I remember in the ’90s, when I was doing the angsty Generation X bullshit, we used to wail that we’d never had a definitive moment that united the generation, so we were all messed up, etc. Then September 11 happened, and it was like, “Oh, you got something - happy now?” Well, now the Obama win feels like another definitive moment in history that’s brought everyone together in a good good way.

I’d been feeling a little gloomy about the future, but now it feels like that even though things might be tough in the future, there is going to be a future that we will be able to enjoy.

After the party my workmate and I went on to the Backbencher pub for the filming of Back Benches (oh, like anyone was watching!). Just after 9, the Guy Fawkes Day fireworks display started. We ran to the end of Kate Sheppard Place and discovered a magnificent view of the fireworks erupting in the night sky. And that’s a good ending to a memorable night.

Oh, there’s that other election thing going on. Uh, New Zealand, right?

It’s difficult having the New Zealand election happening at the same time as the US election because it makes the NZ one look like a school trustees election.

I’m a little disturbed by the televised debates that have viewer-submitted video questions. Most of them seem to be badly lit, resulting in a shadowy figure, making it seem like most of the viewers were in witness protection and/or internet nutters.

It’s harder not having a clear-cut choice like in the US election. There are no heroes and villains. You have to, like, actually read up on policies and make informed decisions. Though that’s actually not going to stop all those people who are voting National solely because they think Labour have been in government long enough and they think it’s time someone else had a turn, thank you.

But it’s so much nicer being in the Wellington Central electorate than being in Epsom, where things were skewed by the funny little goblin-man in the yellow coat. Now I can actually vote for the candidate I want to vote for, knowing that he’d make an excellent MP.

So to the polling booth tomorrow I go, where I shall wield my orange marker pen of democracy, and hopefully the government that comes out of it will be a good one.

Upper Hutt - part 3 of an occasional series on greater Wellington suburban areas

Saturday was a miserable rainy, gale-force-windy day, so my visiting bro and I decided to go to Upper Hutt. After all, when one goes to Upper Hutt, one ought to take a posse.

I’d never been there before and wasn’t sure what to expect, but after the 45-minute train ride, I found a rather ordinary, slightly rundown town centre.

Most of the businesses were either mainstreet chain stores or curious local niche businesses, complete with a superbly ironically named hairdresser - Urban Hair Studio (if I had a hair salon in Upper Hutt, I’d call it Upper Kuttz).

A block back from the main street was a new mall called Trentham City Shopping Centre, which seems to have invented that moniker to avoid the negative associations of “Upper Hutt”. The mall was strangely empty for a weekend, though this could be explained by the large number of empty shops. It felt like one of those empty subprime mortage crisis homes on the outlaying suburbs of some American city.

We had lunch at a lunch bar called Mr Trans, which was a real old-style New Zealand lunch bar. It didn’t look like it had been decorated for about 20 years, and had a selection of awful landscapes on the walls, for sale. But you don’t go to a place that like for the decor. You go there for the lammingtons and the ham and tomato sandwiches and the savouries at decent prices. Though I did feel a little out of place at one stage when I realised I was the only woman not wearing polarfleece.

Upper Hutt City’s motto is “A great place to live”. This reminds me of when Hamilton named itself “Fountain City” in the 1970s, with the idea that while the city didn’t have a lot of fountains, maybe if they called themselves that, people would start building them. As it stands, Upper Hutt isn’t currently a great place to live. Not when the weird new all is strangely empty. Not when a guy was stabbed in the town centre last night.

But I’m sure Upper Hutt will figure out what to do with itself sooner or later.

Paraparaumu - part 4 of an occasional series on why it’s better to go out than stay in

So we had this all-day train pass and decided to make the most of it by heading up the coast to Paraparaumu. It’s about an hour on the train, and all the way it was rainy and miserable. But with a little imagination, it’s possible to see how it would be quite nice on a glorious summer’s day.

We sought shelter as soon as the train arrived, and the Coastlands mall was there for us. (Curious - Queensgate mall in Lower Hutt is the only mall in the Wellington area that doesn’t have a train station outside its door. It’s also the biggest one. Coincidence?)

Coastlands was full of old people, which makes sense given that the Kapiti Coast is full of retirees. Not that there’s anything wrong with seeing out your golden years in a sunny coastal area, but it just feels a bit strange when the town seems overrun with seniors. Can’t we all live together?

We ended up seeing “How to Lose Friends and Alienate People” at the local cinema. Briefly, while the film had funny moments, I found it was hard to get involved in the story when there were no characters I sympathised with. Everyone was either an arsehole or a doormat.

Heading back to the city, the Overlander pulled in and the conductor insisted that we get on that instead of the Metlink train. The Overlander was warm, the seats were comfortable, and the carriage smelt really nice. Not only that, but I wiled away the time by reading a brochure about the history of the Overlander, including the Raurimu Spiral - a wonder of modern engineering, etc.

We were also treated to a bit of scenic commentary from the conductor, whose charmingly clunky spiel ran into trouble with the weather: “On your right, you’ll see the Tasman Sea. Also, it separates Australia, which is over there further. Also on your right, you will see Kapiti Island, but you won’t be able to see anything.”

You don’t get that on the Metlink trains.