In addition, this week is the last week of phase-one of the life of my local, Lie-Low; on Saturday night they're closing and moving on. The building they're in will presently be dust. Frankly I'm petrified at the thought that rather than having to perambulate 100 metres home after downing two Long-Island Iced Teas and a bunch of Headless Mexicans, I'll have to make my way across town.
I'm scared and more than a little angry. Speechless. I expect to have plenty more to say shortly, but for a start I thought I'd republish an article I printed in Looking for a fish-drying plant #1 in 2002, under the title Let's Build a Road.
There's already been a lot said about the proposed "bypass" across Te Aro in central Wellington. (The quotation marks used to indicate the propagandist linguistics of describing the project as a bypass. It's a motorway extension for fack's sake). There's been a lot of noise in favour of the road and a lot against it. All concerned have heard and presented the arguments over and over again and I'm not concerned with regurgitating them here.
So is Te Aro worth saving? "Hell yes", the people say... or do they? Actually a lot of them are probably saying "Hell no - that's where all the artists and junkies and the hookers and students and the bands and hippies live" (a veritable catalogue of the dregs of our polite society) ... "bulldose the lot and we'll be rid of those freaks and leeches once and f'rall and... 'One day a real rain's gonna fall, gonna wash these scum off the street'"...
We've got a real problem with perception. I know someone who's drawn a mental line along Ghuznee Street (the "Buller-Taranaki line") and will not venture any further south on foot, for fear of... something. I know people who still hold on to the opinion they formed of the area in the early 1970's, when Holloway Road was the "red-light district" and full of sailors and maniacs and commie spies; they sniffily avoid the area at all cost. To these people, and to the others out there who think like them, where's the problem? We'll just sweep up all this mess and filth and put up some nice townhouses and apartment complexes instead. And, presumably, fill them with nice respectable people who'll work hard and wear nice clothes.
Predictably, I think Te Aro is worth saving. I live there, as do many of my friends. Bands live and practice there; many local artists, including myself, have studio space there. After dark we go there to drink. For a lot of people who want to, or need to, be located in the hub of the local culture it's the only place they can afford to live. For others it's simply the only place to be. But most of these locations will just disappear, these homes will be destroyed, and those that aren't will have a multi-lane arterial road laid right outside their bedroom windows.
Cyclic arguments ensue when someone points out that it is only due to the proposed motorway extension that the area has been able to exist and thrive in the manner that it has. Transit holds the leases, sets the low rentals, and patiently waits to fire up the heavy machinery.
And so as we meander inexorably on towards a decision of some sort... the only thing I've left to say to those who would uproot a community and replace it with a bandwidth-inducing pipeline ostensibly in order to enable suburbanites to criss-cross us marginally more quickly is.........
f o o l s! d a m n f o o l s! Have you been to Auckland lately?
[Tips for beating and defeating road-mongers? Email me]
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