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

O, 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

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

They 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

Remem­ber 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

You 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…