Brigid says that arriving at Auckland’s airport always feels like arriving at the farm after any time spent overseas. Of course that’s rather unfair but it did make me laugh at the time, and mostly it’s defined by the cheery folks from MAF, in their overtight walkshorts, or the Waikato families waiting for cousin Reena or Aunt Mini.
And to be clear this ain’t a criticism or a snide way of saying that New Zealanders are not sophisticated or are overly parochial. It would be both untrue, and for reasons of personal safety, very unwise to suggest such a thing. But it would also be absolutely untrue to suggest that you can’t spot a New Zealander in crowd without hearing a word or an accent, regardless of how sophisticated they may or may not see themselves to be.
A few weeks back I received, via an email link, a promotional video for Auckland. It was, I’m told, made for other New Zealanders to see, to entice them to come to the big smoke, and wasn’t aimed at we expats at all, but despite that, and having not been told that, I was sent the link by an expat site that added me (without asking me, mind) to their mailing list.
I liked it, and said quite nice things about the way it made me feel. It warmed me, made me feel a bit fuzzy and, yes, homesick. Not because it was particularly good or great, although it was pretty well executed, but mainly because it looked like nowhere else on the planet. I’ve mentioned that to a few folks in NZ and mostly they’re bemused. One friend said something to the effect that ‘but Auckland has grown up a lot in the past few years’, which was pretty much what people said to me when I came back in to NZ in the 1980s after a few years away.
We’re a defensive bunch, are we not?
You get the same sort of reaction when you dare to opine that, an hour or so a day, and only if you are on the wrong bit of road, Auckland doesn’t really have any major traffic issues. In fact, when put next to just about any city in Asia, the roads are pretty much empty day or night. But instead of being rather glad about that, such an observation is usually met with a rather clear ‘but you don’t drive over the bridge or to Manukau’.
Well yes, but I have many times and I’m still of the opinion that it’s rather light. And, just to cap the offense off, you’re all, with the odd exception, rather polite and generous drivers. I like driving in Auckland, although the roads outside the city are another matter altogether and I found my trip a couple of weeks back to middle of the North Island a bit harrowing.
I’m rather unsure what people mean by ‘growing up’? Are we talking about the much touted Gucci store in Queen Street. If so, I gotta say I don’t think that hi-end Postie Plus, as found in every two bit suburban mall in Asia really counts as ‘growing up’. Maybe it’s the food..yep, big range, wonderful wine at incredible prices, and lotsa places to eat, some very adventurous, but Auckland has been punching high in an epicurean sense for years, once you leave the fine dining end which is mostly dull, as sadly are the high end attempts at Asian (like the awful Soto‘s sad overpriced Japanese…yes I know it wins awards). But other cities the world over also have great things to eat (and I write this having just arrived from Singapore, one the great places to indulge in most things).
The thing is, I don’t want Auckland city to grow up, or feel the need to grown up, whatever that is. I just want it to be Auckland. It’s wonderful: wonderful people live there, you hear wonderful things everywhere, smell wonderful smells and roll over wonderful lush hills to wonderful and quite extraordinarily vistas, wonderful things happen there every bloody minute of every day and I rather like it as it is, even with it’s shitty architecture and rather clumsy attempts at being Sydney or LA, and it’s garish try-hard moneyed set. And it has the most beautiful harbour in the world….EOS.
I love Auckland and I love the way that I could look at that three minute promo thing and ten seconds in, know I was looking at no other city in the world.
And it’s not always particularly sophisticated, although it’s easily the most urban precinct in NZ and our only real city, or quite as cosmopolitan as it’s inhabitants may think but neither is it the rustic backwater that Australians, for example, or many New Zealanders offshore like to imply. It sits quite comfortably in a vague space between the two descriptions.
Earlybirds on sale from Monday 11 May ONLY from Marvel Menswear 143 Ponsonby Rd and Strangely Normal 19 O’Connell St CBD.
Then available from Real Groovy, Conch Records or buy online from iTicket
It took massive amounts of juggling, and a few international airfares and work to get this happening but Tom & I think we’ve done it. Gonna be a night…..
I like Auckland a lot. That’s the first thing that hits me whenever I return. I can be as cynical as I like, and I find myself succumbing to cynicism a little too often these days, but I’ll never forget that feeling as I flew back to New Zealand on my first extended (almost 3 years) time away from home back in 1985.
As we circled above the Manukau Heads, I felt a huge swell, and, yes, some tears. Twenty three years later and god knows how many circles above those Heads, I still get it, although without the tears these days. It’s my nest and it’s the city I know better than any in the world.
Then, this time too, was a little more: my Dad was 80 (that’s not him above BTW) and my sister had hit 50, and the mass gathering that implied added just a little bit more emotion to the landing.
And my best buddy Peter (that is him above BTW) was doing his last show on George FM..a gig that I played a big part in getting him 7 years back.
A lot of the time, despite the incredible and wonderfully exotic places I find myself fairly regularly these recent years, I ready do miss it, and the people who live there.
Over the past half-decade though my visits have become less and less frequent, distance, time and finances being what they are. When I first moved offshore I was back there every three months or so but the gap between trips this year has been some eleven months, so, for the first time I feel less a resident offshore than a visiting alien in very familiar and warm surroundings.
But familiar they are, and the one thing that came back to me time and time again these last two weeks is that Auckland has changed little in real terms over the past 40 or so years. Sure it has more people, and of a slightly wider mix (although not much), it’s got better food and coffee, a pleasant and sophisticated wine culture, but for all that it remains a middle size rather grey and mediocre city set in an incredible landscape the equal of any city in the world.
But it’s a city with flashes of extreme brilliance and pockets of quite astounding people doing rather wonderful things, and even the best efforts of the Auckland City Council, which has worked tirelessly for generations to destroy much of the city’s soul, have been unable to take it’s natural beauty away, although incompetent (and corrupt) city planning over generations have played their part in blocking the vista for many of it’s inhabitants.
Last time I was in the Auckland, in late January, 2008, I scribbled down a few off the cuff thoughts and it feels appropriate, if only for my own reference rather than any attempt to provide a travelogue or make any definitive statements, to do the same again.
This trip was, for me at least, overshadowed by the near death (in that he was hit by a bus and was very lucky to survive.…I think getting a bash from a link bus qualifies as a near death experience) of one of my best mates a couple of weeks before I arrived. Happily Tom looks likely to be home in a week or three and was lucky enough to avoid any long term head or disabling physical injuries. However the accident drove home what an incredible thing the New Zealand health system is, when put up against almost any country in the world, and for that matter, what pretty good shape Labour left it, and many other cornerstones of the nation in. For a nation of 4 million to have the sort of maintained infrastructure like that is nothing less that astounding.
But New Zealanders love to whinge. I guess it was another thing, like our laws and the Westminster system, that the British passed on to us. And whinge they do.
I thoroughly was taken aback by the level of national negativity. Yes, we all know there is an international economic crisis, but New Zealanders are reveling in it. Everywhere they groan, but the roads are full of BMWs and the natty new (overpriced..I know what they sell for in Asia) motor scooters. The media is full of it, with TV polls asking ‘are you worried about losing your job?’. Gosh, how to load a question to produce a happily negative result (40% were worried BTW).
And you have to conclude that the nation talked to itself into a change of government for no good reason beyond the fact that they talked themselves into a national malaise. Two people told me they’d voted National but now couldn’t really work out why since it was increasingly clear that the new lot had less idea than the old lot, and rather less experience. But for all that I encountered a fair smattering of the vile ‘lesbian’ slurs so beloved of the intellectually bankrupt. They think they sound so fucking clever but it’s the moment I walk away from any conversation. Sadly there was a bit of it at our family functions from people I though would know better. It’s a pretty sad indictment of the national (with a big N and a small n) conversation.
I loved the music. Auckland is full of it and the city is as musically curious and innovative as it’s ever been. For a country as small as NZ to cover such a range and for music stores to both stock and quite clearly sell so much music from the edge is something to be proud of. And, hell, Billy T. James had the number one selling album over the Xmas period. He may be dead but he’s my kind of comedian, and his TV show is still much missed after all these years.
In fact, perhaps it’s my memory but TV is much missed in NZ, full stop. There may be 2000 channels on the air but, god, it’s truly awful. Maybe the good stuff was wound back for the break but the state of both public and private broadcasting was grimace inducing and you wonder what a visitor must think when they turn on the box in the hotel room as we did. It all looks a bit like it’s just off the farm.
I love the quiet. Aucklanders love to think they are a busy cosmopolitan city. Happily such is not really true. The much vaunted Auckland traffic is, by any reasonable international standard, pretty light, even in the work peak times (we arrived a week before most people went on holiday). It moves. Be glad. Big sweeping roads full of not very much and drivers who are so bloody polite. Yes, I know Aucklanders will tell me that it’s the exact opposite, but it ain’t.
I went to the ‘mega mall’ at Sylvia Park a couple of days before Christmas. It was substantially quieter than a normal Saturday night in Kuala Lumpur and comparatively deserted when put next to a normal week day in Orchard Road or Causeway Bay. Once again, be glad. I know I was. Auckland might not have the same range of high end shopping you find in larger overseas centres but it’s often more pleasant to shop in and the low key-ness allows a broader range of edgier outlets. I’d rather have a Strangely Normal or a Karen Walker than a Gucci or Prada on every corner (although the option is nice). I’ve walked the streets of Singapore and Hong Kong looking for interesting menswear but still my shirts are made by Claire and Michael in Avondale.
There were a couple of things that I’d add as a proviso to that though. Firstly, what happened to retail design? Most shops look like they were designed in the mid 1990s. We wandered through the much vaunted Nuffield Street and grimaced at the likes of Trelise Cooper Kids…oh dear….it won awards apparently with it’s odd display units and it’s, how-many-times-have-you-seen-it-before glass floor.
Secondly, for all the range of music, where are the books and magazines? Do Aucklanders not read anymore? The bookshops are half empty and the mag shops’ shelves are ridiculously sparse. Maybe I’ve just become used to the bookshops of Asia, but I don’t remember it being like that before I left. I wandered around with a couple of Xmas book vouchers and left Auckland with both in my bag still. Maybe Amazon killed it. I dunno but even Unity was a bit ‘oh, that’s it?’.
I was pleasantly surprised by how inexpensive Auckland has become. Whilst the rest of the world has rocketed ahead, lots in Auckland remains fairly reasonable. There seems to have been a readjustment of sorts and things like coffee, eating out, and transport are, by world terms, a bargain. It’s a shame housing is such silly expensive, even with the downward slip in recent months. Electronics though, are nuts. A camera or phone or computer can be twice the price you’ll find the same thing in Asia. A standalone harddrive I paid about NZ$120 for in Hong Kong was over $300 at JB Hi-Fi, and a Canon lens worth $380 in HK was $988 in Queen Street.
The buildings….the architecture…seems to have gone the same way as shop design. Perhaps it always was this shocking….perhaps I’m just seeing it now with different eyes but can someone raze most of Nelson, Symonds, Hobson and large parts of Queen and K Rds and start again. Can someone point me in the direction of an interesting new building that’s gone up in the past 5 years? The harbour and many of the ‘burbs are quite gorgeous, the city and it’s inner surroundings are a monstrosity.
And finally, the food. I’ve said it in the past, the high end food in Auckland simply isn’t that good. We get taken or take ourselves every now and then to the places around the harbour and the likes of Dine in SkyCity, but they’re bland places with overpriced formless food sold with a ‘name’ chef tagged onto it.
But move away from that and one of the overwhelming experiences of Auckland for me is always the food, and finding the time to fit the places we wanna go in. So, I’m going to roll out of this post, having no doubt pissed a few people off, with a few places we need to go to when in Auckland:
Grand Harbour: not for the evenings but the Dim Sim which is fresher, less fatty and better tasting than anywhere else in Auckland, and, for that matter, most of Asia including Hong Kong.
Mekong Neua: there’s a place in Bangkok called Vientiane that Brigid and I love, with Northern Thai / Southern Laotian dishes and Mekong Neua is almost there. Four words: Gung Che Num Pa
KK Malaysian: the little hole in the wall in Greenlane (now with coordinated tables and chairs) that brings together the sort of things you need to travel to half a dozen places in KL to find. We used to do this place once a week which played havoc with my belts.
Little India: yep, it’s a chain but it’s the best Indian food in Auckland and as good as anything you’d find in Singapore’s Little India. And they understand the meaning of hot.
The Belgian Beer Bars: Which have done what the Auckland City Council failed at, and preserved a few buildings. The one in Vulcan Lane performs exactly the function it was built for in the 1880s without destroying the building. We go for the green lipped NZ mussels….which only taste as they do in NZ.
El Bucco: the short shots of hot chocolate with a slice of Johnny’s various pizza.
Prego: Prego is Ponsonby and it’s been a local for years. So much so that we arrived in Auckland and we went almost directly from the airport, pausing to hug the parents and drop off a bag or two, pick up a car, to a birthday party at Prego. I have always ordered the Caprisosca pizza, taken off the artichokes, and added chili oil.
I wonder how many of those I’ve had over the decades…..
Hearing that I knew I was back in Auckland. The joys of Ponsonby Road are sometimes every bit as insubstantial as Wellingtonians love to suggest they might be, especially when sitting in Bambina, café de-choice of swathes of young (ish) wanna be designer types who have their designer shades firmly on their foreheads despite the fact that it’s grey and pissing down outside.
It’s easy to be smarmy and condescending about Auckland. There are the overdressed bright (and as I said above, often no longer, like myself) young things who wear overpriced clothes they can’t afford (unlike me, I wear live in jeans and some old t-shirt most of the time), live in houses they can’t possibly afford (but the bank is happy to lend them money to buy…been there, and perhaps will be again), and drive cars that not only can’t they afford, have no practical day to day use beyond impressing the other clientele at Prego or Blake (ditto). Then there is Metro. I asked myself a week or two back if Metro had improved. Ah, no it hasn’t sadly. If anything it’s worse, much worse, if that’s possible. Fortunately Auckland really is not the vapid, grasping, overly pretentious swamp that you would think it is if that was your only stick to judge the city by. The odd worthy arts and music review aside (and yes Auckland has some of all of that…just remember when Kane Massey’s DeepGrooves was inventing the NZ downbeat that Wellie boasts about, most of the rest of NZ, the capital included, was still producing post Seattle cock rock), there is rarely anything between it’s cover that relates to Auckland in any fathomable way…and never has been.
This period, nine months, is the longest I’ve spend away from the city of my birth since, I guess, 1985 when I returned after 2 ½ years in London. I didn’t quite know what to expect, it’s a funny little town (and that’s all it is…where in gods name are all the people, the footpaths are deserted…how do shops pay those rents) but I love big slabs of it a lot. I so love its soul and the spirit and humour that I can find nowhere else in NZ. It’s the only town which doesn’t feel either dour and self important, with no good reason, or like some redneck hick town. It has elements of both of that still and it is far too self important (Fashion Week anyone?), but nothing on this planet feels as good as sitting with a bunch people I’ve known for twenty or thirty years, over coffee or wine at some hole in the wall café (not Bambina) on Pons, or in a penthouse overlooking the urban inner west; or talking shit about obscure German techno, and reminiscing with Nick D until 5am. I did all that and could do it forever. There are lots of people I love in Auckland town.
So Ak07, some thoughts, from an Asian visitor:
· Damn, it’s expensive.
· There is no traffic, get over it. The roads, by any reasonable international standards (and I include the motorways at rush hour) are deserted. Auckland’s traffic problem is the same one that afflicts the nation as a whole…anger. Contact ball sports are my theory…
· Talking of which….moving the school terms for the rugby…that’s truly fucked up….
· I love the infrastructure…unlike much of the rest of the world, everything works. The roads, the taps, the power. I guess you pay for it with stupid sized property taxes and regulations, which brings me to…
· The rules, the regulations, the rules and more rules…there are so many. Everything is regulated and half the population, when they are not discussing a contact ball sport which encourages young men to do GBH to each other, are, face to face, on the airwaves, and in forums, discussing ways to increase the regulations. Wellington exists for no other reason. I hate the phrase nanny state, but driving along the waterfront seeing signs and lightings for over a kilometre warning me about a looming closed shoulder (which I didn’t notice when I got there) makes me wonder how much all this bullshit costs. There are so many fucking rules. Now, I understand, you need a seltbelt for your dog otherwise your insurance is void. You could not make this stuff up…seriously…..the number eight wire is now only sold in metre lengths with a permit.
· Auckland Airport….when you criticise the unfriendly, over (yes) regulated quagmire that is Auckland Airport people defensively compare it to LAX…when that’s the standard you compare yourself to, you are seriously in trouble. From the smartarse Immigration guy making derisive comments about Bali, to the only in NZ, women who harass you about cabin bag weight on the way out…seriously, in my experience, nowhere else in the world…you feel like you are leaving Wanganui International. Sell it to the Arabs, they could not, and won’t, do a worse job.
· Where in gods name is the wi-fi. Y’know the sort of thing that any café, airport, food-hall, or mall in Asia offers as a free, or ludicrously cheap, service. Not in Auckland though. There is a clear and growing technology gap. Where are the IT stores and malls? And don’t tell me it’s population…
· Conch Records may well be the best record shop in the world.
· Ahh, the food…the good stuff is fantastic, and the good stuff is almost always at the bottom end of the scale price wise. Little KK in Greenlane offers the best Malaysian outside Malaysia, and indeed is very much better than much of the stuff you find there. And wonderful Indian, Dim Sim (we meet Chinese gourmets in Asia that rave about Grand Harbour), Thai and all sorts of other things found in cheap and cheerfuls across the isthmus. It has to be the ingredients…despite moaning, the nation is so damned clean and green, and its impossible not to taste that. New Zealand, however, does do high end dining very, very badly. Let’s leave that to the twats that put together Metro…..
· The Steak and Cheese Pies; the mussells and the scallops…and the chocolate and the ice cream…
· “Have you seen Sylvia Park??”..uh yes, and why would you bother. Bit sad innit….KL also has a cinema that claims the biggest screen in the (non IMAX) world…somebody is not telling the truth.
· George and 95bFm are the best radio you’ll find anywhere.
I had a lunch with Pauly today, which we do from time to time and we’d both been forced by our offspring to go to the Easter Show on Monday last. Now the Easter Show is an Auckland institution (160 odd years it says). When I was a lad I remember the show as something special. It was vaguely magical and I remember being given bags of magazines by the Russian comrades at their impressively large display. Loads of photos of tractors and heroes of the revolution…it had an effect on a ten year old. There were boats and racing cars and planes and gadgets and competitions and happy people…
No more…don’t let false nostalgic pangs fool you
I’ve been a few times over the intervening years with diminishing results, but now, sad to say, the poor old Easter Show has no redeeming features whatsoever, and Pauly agreed. We were both shell-shocked.
From the terrifying amateur artworks, which defy any description…I’ve never actually seen anything quite like them anywhere (and some have GOLD medals…the one with the naked maiden chained to the rock in the river with a knight riding over the hill to rescue her …all for $1800…was pretty special)…to the guy who, for some inexplicable reason advertises himself as New Zealand’s Own Michael Jackson (is he serious…what exactly does he do each day at 7pm, and to whom?)….to the sick looking, sparse in number, farmyard animals who look like they are looking forward to the works as some sort of relief…to the sad numerous Chinese massage and junk stalls which fill the space where the Soviet (and no doubt KGB) displays once sat (the cold war had its upside)…to the game sideshows complete with the sorts of prizes on display which haven’t been manufactured since 1980, with good reason- technology has moved on since plastic AM transistors…to the stall selling cat food (who on earth goes to the Easter show to buy bloody cat food)…to the rides which no person with any concern for their or their loved ones safety would even consider…..at least I don’t get hassled as Mr Bizarre as poor Paul does!
But the worst part (and I’ll get tagged as some sort of snob for this) seems to be the humanity and their poor kids (who don’t stand a chance sadly) that the show attracts. Parents with a fag hanging out..flicking the fag onto the ground still burning….screaming at Shervaughn or Jaedyn to come here then slapping them….spitting on the ground….aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh.
I think Brigid was the only shelia there without white boots or tassels
It costs a fortune, it’s unbelievably ugly and complete low rent- both Paul and I said, over our Yum Char,…..”never again…………..”
