TAWA5 Most Missed

We loved you… and then you were gone. When will we see you again? When will we share those pre­cious moments? (etc etc.) Here are some great Welling­ton things we miss:

Offbeat Originals

Offbeat OriginalsO, Off­beat! You gave us toasties, you gave us shakes, you gave us burg­ers. And you pro­vid­ed us with a quirky place to enjoy our nomz, with a sound­track of ban­gin’ tunes from the past 40 years. But then you left us. Why did you for­sake us?

Cuba Street Carnival

Carnivale!Hope­ful­ly one of the first things on Celia Wade-Brown’s agen­da is to restore coun­cil fund­ing to help fund this cel­e­bra­tion of Welling­ton’s most colour­ful street. 2009 gave us bands, mar­kets, food on sticks, car­ni­val rides, drum­mers and a night parade – pret­ty much some­thing for every­one. It was a beau­ti­ful thing to watch the streets come alive, and we want it back, NOW!

Manners Mall

Manners Mall / Victoria St 2010They put a bus lane through our heart. It remains to be seen how the re-bussing of Man­ners Street will turn out, but one thing’s for sure — we miss that pub­lic space, along with the loi­ter­ing emos.

Pocket Parks

pocket parkRemem­ber that lin­ger­ing side-effect of eight­ies boom and bust — the pock­et park? Build­ings were demol­ished in a hur­ry, but new build­ings did­n’t always arise, some­times for years. So rather than hav­ing a tooth­less gap a lit­tle park would be built, lit­tle mini-oases of green­ery and seat­ing on the Gold­en Mile. Over time, prop­er­ty devel­op­ers and the gum­mint have had their wicked way with most of them (e.g., the cor­ner of Grey Street & Lambton Quay; the cor­ner of Willis Street & Mer­cer Street etc). Let’s have these back again! We can even help out by sug­gest­ing a few build­ings to make way…

An Actual Waterfront Brewery Bar

Mac's Brewery, WellingtonYou know, rather than, as one read­er put it, a “bar [that] is just a front for beer brewed by Cantabri­ans or Auck­lan­ders”. In a per­fect world, not only would we not think of a stu­pid Aussie bank when­ev­er any­one said “in a per­fect world”, but Tuatara would come forth from their hide­away up the coast and install them­selves tri­umphant­ly in a water­front brew­ery bar as the hop-hand­ed sons of Welling­ton they tru­ly are. And we would sit out front and sip their APA until the sun went down behind Te Ahu­mairan­gi…

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3 Responses

  1. Pooh. These were all just recent, fly by night phe­nom­e­na to us more expe­ri­enced Welling­to­ni­ans. Man­ners Mall was just a flip­ping hin­drance if you remem­ber it as the use­ful traf­fic thor­ough­fare it was for most of its life.

    My top 5 miss­es:
    1 Trams. Except this time we would make them more com­fort­able and put prop­er wait­ing places mid-street, as they do in Ams­ter­dam. We could do with some of the Ams­ter­dam dou­ble-car­riage bendy trams too, for rapid mass tran­sit in rush hours.

    2 Park­ing Places every­where. None of them in stinky bru­tal­ist build­ings owned by Hong Kong bil­lion­aires intent on rip­ping every last dol­lar from our scream­ing wal­lets.

    3 A prop­er Nation­al Art Gallery with some dig­ni­ty to it. The way our paint­ings are dis­played in That Muse­um is a dis­grace.

    4 Old style cof­fee bars with car­pets, and con­ver­sa­tion, instead of stri­dent music to please the staff and uncom­fort­able seat­ing to move patrons on faster.

    5 The annu­al mul­ti-char­i­ty fair at the old Town Hall. It was beaut.

    I have anoth­er five, too.…

  2. Greet­ings folks — just a note that the Coun­cil nev­er actu­al­ly pulled fund­ing from the car­ni­val — I think the over­all prob­lem was that there was a dis­pute over whether we should sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the fund­ing.
    Not sure if this link below will work — but the release tells our side of the sto­ry back in June.
    http://www.wellington.govt.nz/news/display-item.php?id=3996

    cheers
    Richard MacLean — WCC Com­mu­ni­ca­tions