You may have seen the cov­er of March issue of Metro mag­a­zine. Madeleine Sami, hang­ing off the Sky Tow­er, look­ing all glam while hold­ing a minia­ture Peter Jackson/King Kong. “Auck­land rules OK! How Welling­ton’s los­ing the cul­tur­al wars” the head­line reck­ons. 

Oh noez! Is it true? Are Bats the­atre and Te Papa and the City Gallery and the Cuba Car­ni­val mere pif­fle in the face of the mighty Auck­land?
 
Can’t we all just get along? Find out after the jump.
 

 
Inside, the sto­ry “The Cul­ture Wars” attempts to stir up some con­tro­ver­sy by declar­ing that Auck­land — not Welling­ton! — is the “cre­ative cap­i­tal” of New Zealand. What­ev­er that means.
 
Now, the last time Metro opined on the cap­i­tal, in the form of Dami­an Christie’s arti­cle list­ing all that was rub­bish about the cap­i­tal, chaos ensued, so I thought it was impor­tant to check out this new arti­cle — at least to com­ply with the Welling­ton­ista’s health and safe­ty pol­i­cy.
 
How­ev­er, upon read­ing the arti­cle, it becomes obvi­ous that it’s not real­ly about Welling­ton. It’s more about how Auck­land has all these great and var­ied cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions and events, but some­times has trou­ble attract­ing audi­ences and does­n’t have the same rep­u­ta­tion that Welling­ton does.
 
Com­plain­ing that Welling­ton’s “cre­ative cap­i­tal” label is noth­ing more than coun­cil-gen­er­at­ed spin is all very well, but you can’t blame the 04 for the des­o­late feel­ing of Aotea Square.
 
The arti­cle does end on a fair­ly upbeat note for Auck­land, and has some good sug­ges­tions about what can be done to cham­pi­on the arts in Auck­land. So it left me feel­ing real­ly dis­ap­point­ed that it had been styled as an “Auck­land ver­sus Welling­ton” bat­tle. Because — let’s be hon­est — when has any­one in Auck­land ever giv­en a damn about Welling­ton?
 
The arti­cle’s author, Simon Wil­son, is not­ed as being a “for­mer Welling­ton­ian”, and I won­der if that’s the crunch. There’s noth­ing like mov­ing to a land of oppor­tu­ni­ty to make your for­mer home seem ter­ri­bly inad­e­quate.
 
Metro is always at its best when the sto­ries focus on Auck­land; whether cel­e­brat­ing Auck­land, inves­ti­gat­ing a social issue or cham­pi­oning a cause. But when it starts to play the “We’re bet­ter than [oth­er New Zealand city]” game, then it’s no bet­ter than, say, a Gore res­i­dent with a chip on her shoul­der about the North Island.
 
Though, giv­en the nation­al dis­tri­b­u­tion of Metro, per­haps it was a delib­er­ate move to stir up Welling­ton read­ers into buy­ing the mag.
 
Relat­ed read­ing: