Tag Archives: auckland

Shining, not raining

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I went to the Grey Lynn Park Festival yesterday. It didn’t rain, which is a remarkable achievement. Nice one, the weather.

The park was full of people and entertainment, but in a way there was nothing special. A lot of it is the same sort of stuff that is found at other festivals and market days.

My favourite thing was finding a stall that had a number of people I’d seen at the last Craftwerk I went to, including the DIY badge-making lady. Among the badge-making materials was a copy of the Alphabetical Spelling List book, a classic New Zealand primary school textbook. In that, next to the entry for “no” was a bracketed example that provided me with an ideal badge material:

No good

I had a nice time. It was a lovely sunny day, and the park was full of happy people, from Grey Lynn teen gangs to young mothers to dudes with Movember moustaches to little kids running around.

More photos can be found by clicking on this lady:

Stylish lady

Character building

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I finally got around to filling in my ballot for the Auckland City Council elections.

With so many different things to vote for and so many different people to vote for, I went through the candidate profile booklet and started eliminating candidates based on their little blurbs.

I will not vote for candidates who said the following:

  • “I call for the withdrawal of US and ‘coalition’ troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.” OK, but what about plastic-bag recycling?
  • The anti-abortionist who says that, if elected, he will “use the office of mayor solely in this battle.” Sorry, the mayor can’t help you. He’s busy stopping a 15-year-old rape victim from aborting her unwanted foetus, etc.
  • The candidate who who “understands company reports as NZX investor.” This sounds like she sat down with a Work and Income CV consultant and learned to maximise her potential.
  • Regarding Queen Street being “a mess” – “I will encourage those concerned to wake up.” Yes, you Queen Street retailers had better wake up or there’ll be trouble.
  • The candidate who has no conflicts of interest with the “(insert name) District Health Board”. Yeah, me neither.

It looks like the mayoralty is going to be between the incumbent mayor and the previous mayor. Neither of them really excite me.

Sometimes I like to go into the Auckland Public Library’s Auckland resource room and read old city council propaganda publications. This is what I have learned – there are always going to be mayors who have really amazing plans for the city that never get to happen.

Mayor Robbie’s idea of a rapid rail system is often hailed as an example of this. I found the 1974 district plan that had this detailed in it. It was bit weird. There would have been an underground concourse running from Hobson Street (where Sky City is now) down to Queen Street, and up to Kitchener Street. Why? What’s wrong with walking down the street? And there would have been all sorts of peculiar tunnels and escalators needed to get under and around the hilly inner-city landscape.

But for every visionary idea that never makes it, there are also really horrible ideas that never get approved, like the plan to put a mall and office block on the site of the Civic theatre.

Every mayoral or council candidate that isn’t currently on the council seems to be running on the promise of change. Something is broken in this city, they say, and they’re going to fix it. But why does Auckland’s brokenness have to be fixed? Why can’t we accept the flaws of this city as being what makes it special? Does Auckland actually need “world class” paving stones on its footpaths?

Now I’ll just have to remember to post my ballot off.

Post, poster, posted

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A few weeks ago I noticed some photocopies of a poem had been pasted up on the usual places along Symonds Street and K Road.

I don’t know who wrote the poem or why they pasted many copy of it up in public. Having read it a few times, it seems clunkily written, awkward to read – especially aloud – and the main point in this poetic manifesto seems confused and meanders, distracted by other bits and pieces which must also be shared with Auckland’s inner city community.

But what got my attention wasn’t the poem, but the comments that other people had scribbled them. Two copies on K Road had something like “Obviously this person has never been to Family” (Family = gay bar), and another poster on Symonds Street had, “Yay. Now this poster is my girlfriend!”

I was searching for an intact copy of the poster, hopefully one with some witty comments on the bottom, but by the time I got around to taking my camera to work, all the posters had been ripped off or covered over, leaving only the above fragments.

But finally I found a whole one across the road from work that also had some comments. As well as, “and your point is?” written in faint biro, there was also nice big letters proclaiming, “disco sucks, fuck everything”, which, incidentally, was my life’s philosophy from 1993 to 1997. Ok, so here’s the poem. Click for big.

BONUS: What else do the streets of Auckland have to offer? Why, it’s timely commentary on U2 and their sold-out concert:

Bing bong

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I checked out the brand new underground train station. Having recently travelled on the Paris Metro and London Underground, I now consider myself to be a 100% expert on underground train stations and have made the following observations.

  • It’s cold. This could possibly be due to the fact that the Britomart centre thing is still under construction, so it’s likely that there are great big holes where cold wind can come gushing in. Either that or it’s just a really chilly building. 
  • Automated announcements. Every couple of minutes a pre-recorded announcement would be made. They were voiced by one of those voiceover guys who does television ads and sounds like the sort of person who’d rarely – if ever – travel by train. One message started with a cheery, but very white sounding “Kia ora!”
  • One of the announcements advised passengers that when a train is pulling into the station, that waiting passengers must step back one metre from the edge of the platform. Why don’t they just do what other train stations do and paint a line along the platform and write “STAND BACK” on the platform. Interestingly, that message was nowhere to be heard when the next train pulled in.
  • There were also live announcements from someone in the station. He was suffering from the same affliction that Air New Zealand pilots have, that is, the tendency to waffle on and on when all that’s required is a short and simple message. While repeating the destinations of a train for maybe the third time, one of the automated announcements came on, so there was a cacophony of polite yet unintelligible information echoing around the station.
  • The station’s decor looks like an old warehouse that’s been converted into a gay nightclub. I don’t mean that as an insult. I think it’s the most accurate way to describe it. There’s lots of bare concrete but also concrete surfaces that have been covered by a stainless steel mesh. There are a bunch of cone-shaped skylights along the middle. At the top of every cone is a silver ball, which resembles a disco mirror ball, just smoother. But the gayest thing of all is the lighting along the side walls. The bare concrete is lit up in the colours of the gay rainbow. It looks fabulous.
  • The station is missing advertising. It looks like there are spaces for ads. I think when the ads come in it’ll stop looking less gay discoesque. There are also no vending machines. These are essential for a good train station. But I suspect that there may be small shops opening that will sell drinks ‘n’ junk food.
  • There’s no “bing bong” noise before the announcements are made. They really need to get their act together and get a “bing bong” noise.

I suppose the next step for me is to attempt to catch a train.

What the world needs now

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Ah, yes. Dance for us, dancing monkey girl. Do a trick for us. Sing us a song. Tell us a jolly. Dance for us, dancing monkey girl.

Hi.

I was driving along a road today and suddenly a car shot out of a side street, attempting to do a right-hand turn. I had to slam on my breaks to avoid slamming into the side of that car. I breaked so hard that I burned rubber. The other car ended up positioned neatly behind me. I was shocked and just sat in my car for a while. Interestingly, I’d come to a stop right in front of a pedestrian crossing. I drove on and pulled over so the traffic behind me could follow on. The other car pulled over behind me, but I wasn’t interested in talking to them. Ideally I’d tell them to wake the fuck up, but in reality I’d probably end up being like, “it’s ok! No harm done!!!” So they drove on, then a little bit later I drove on. I ended up right next to that car at some traffic lights. I looked over and saw the driver and passenger embroiled in a fierce argument.

So when shit like that happens I know that it’s time to get out of Auckland. Fortunately such an opportunity has presented itself to me in the form of going to Taupo to hang out with, oh yes, a bunch of teenagers. R@d?