[See all Notional Significance posts] I set off along Taylor Terrace, and into the slow, steady heart of the suburbs. So far my path has traversed urban, edgelands and rural landscapes, with occasional tangential encounters across suburbia’s ragged edges. But here I am engulfed, flanked on both sides, striding out its loose domestic rhythms: hip, […]
Today’s guest post comes from Heather of Foodie Gems of Wellie. Yay, we love guest posts! We all love a secret. Especially one that delivers pleasure. A jaunt around the recently launched Secret Art Walk uncovered all sorts of Wellington treasures. From the magnificent rata cone architecture of the Supreme Court to the holographic display […]
Today we have a guest post from Suzanne over at Observations. Yay guest posts! Last night I went to the fascinating Wellington Lux lighting event on the Wellington Waterfront. (Runs from 6pm to 11pm, 1 to 9 September) This “teaser” event consists of four lighting installations, using new and interactive technology. The idea is to […]
If you’re in the market for a real bona fide “Holy shit, look at that!” experience, try heading down to the eastern end of Abel Smith Street, opposite the Southern Cross. Where on the corner of Wigan Street there was once a Tattoo Museum (or this), with an imposing moai on the street front (image), […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] The offramp leads me down into what, for want of a better term, I will call the heart of Johnsonville. The local RSA greets me with a Bofors gun and an ad for its eponymous restaurant (“Family Friendly Environment”). Along with the Salvation Army, Super Liquor, a service station and […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] The stretch of Hutt Rd from Kaiwarawhara to Ngauranga is a long, dry slog through an artificial valley. The western side is almost natural, covered by tenacious regeneration, but often cut, buttressed and battered to keep the slope from failing, occasionally sliced by gullies and roads that scrabble up to […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] Kaiwharawhara is a node, a knot, a tangle of paths and histories. It’s where the eponymous stream meets the harbour, though quakes and reclamations have long since nudged the mouth seawards from its original position at the fault line, engulfing foreshore, shipwrecks and shellfish beds in the process. It’s where […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] The stretch of motorway that leaps out from the bluff was known in the Sixties as the “Kaiwarra-Thorndon Skyway”, incongruously combining the Jetsonian optimism of the term “skyway” with a mangled contraction of “Kaiwharawhara” that today would only be used by Pakeha blokes of a certain age. Both the skyway […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] The path bends with the motorway, peeling away from the hills, presenting a widescreen panorama of residential Thorndon. I can see what remains of the gullies into which the highway has wedged itself: from the all-but-vanished Honeyman’s Gully (once a duelling ground for lawyers, then filled in for the less […]
If you sometimes wonder what the hell Alf Rune is going on about (and to be honest, we all do at times), a link or two might help. When he recently posted about conspiracy theories regarding the “all-seeing eyes throughout Civic Square”, we had to ask him where the hell he heard about that. The […]