Eye opening

While Our Tim got to take a sneak peek at Tuatara’s new Te Aro brew­ery and bar before it opened, I had the oner­ous task of drink­ing free beer rep­re­sent­ing The Welling­ton­ista at the offi­cial open­ing func­tion. It was a suit­ably illus­tri­ous crowd, packed with the doyen(ne)s of Welling­ton’s craft beer com­mu­ni­ty, includ­ing the LBQ team, Shig­gy tend­ing the bar, and Stu McKin­lay (who is sad­ly about to depart Welling­ton in order to get Yeast­ie Boys up and brew­ing in the UK).

Descartes believed that the pineal gland was our “third eye”, the prin­ci­pal seat of the soul and the elu­sive con­nex­ion between body and mind. Some of the bar’s mar­ket­ing plays on the par­al­lels between this and the tuatara’s ves­ti­gial pari­etal eye, with a mur­al fea­tur­ing astro­log­i­cal glyphs and the tagline “Tem­ple of Taste”. It’s easy to go over­board with such theosophistry, but thank­ful­ly the allu­sions are restrained, and the main theme is just “micro­brew­ery and casu­al bar in a taste­ful­ly ren­o­vat­ed brick build­ing”. Per­haps Bataille’s phi­los­o­phy, which saw the pineal gland as an organ of deliri­ous excess, might be more appro­pri­ate giv­en alco­hol’s time-hon­oured role in free­ing humans from the shack­les of pru­dent ratio­nal­i­ty and con­scious­ness.

“The eye, at the sum­mit of the skull…plays the role of a fire in a house; the head, instead of lock­ing up life as mon­ey is locked in a safe, spends it with­out count­ing, for, at the end of this erot­ic meta­mor­pho­sis, the head has received the elec­tric pow­er of points.”

— Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess

But The Third Eye looks far too respectable for this sort of malarkey, and I’m sure all rev­el­ry will be with­in the bounds of good Welling­ton mid­dle-class decen­cy. Host respon­si­bil­i­ty is ensured by the Goose Shack­’s truck in the ram­shackle out­door space, and while snacks such as deep-fried black pud­ding evoke a cer­tain bucol­ic deca­dence, they will also help line the stom­achs of those enjoy­ing a few qui­et post-work pints.

With this and The Bresolin, the last of the dis­placed bypass build­ings have final­ly become occu­pied, eight long and des­o­late years after the dread­ed road carved through Te Aro’s heart. Upper Cuba St and Willis St are final­ly return­ing to a sem­blance of urban life, but Arthur St has not improved much since our ven­er­a­ble col­league Alf trekked past four years ago, when all he saw was “‘tem­po­rary’ grav­el traps, seg­re­gat­ed sli­planes, Chi­nese can­teens, light-indus­tri­al broth­els”. The Tem­ple of Taste is a bea­con of life, beck­on­ing you to pause for a drink and com­pa­ny rather than per­pet­u­at­ing the con­stant grind; the high­way always urg­ing you onward. It still feels marooned among vacant lots and carparks, but per­haps it will inspire oth­ers to turn these left-over spaces into some­thing worth stop­ping for.