[See all Notional Significance posts] My narrative has been marooned in Johnsonville for over eight months, a fate that, if not actually worse than death, is perilously close to it. In fact, it is exactly a year since I walked this section of road, and last week’s remembrance was the spur I needed to get […]
The 28th annual Island Bay Festival kicks off tomorrow (Sat 11 Feb), with a heap of events and activities planned for the coming week. All the favourite events are back: Blessing of the Boats, the parade down the Parade, Bands in the Park (featuring Family Cactus, Ryan Prebble, Joe Blossom, and Newtown Sound and MC Israel […]
[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 […]
When I was 15, I had my first ever pash. I was at Onslow, but my best friend’s boyfriend went to St Pat’s (Town) so one New Year’s, we got to hang out with some of the boys from there. There was a party in Strathmore, a New Year’s Countdown in a tunnel, a Haka […]
[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 […]
Remember when Wellington Airport, after the howls of protest and outright mockery, backed off on its cringe-inducing Wellywood sign idea and promised to go away and think of something better to celebrate our film industry? Well, they’ve had a good, long think about it, and this morning’s paper announces that they’ve come up with a […]
[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 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 […]
With the opening of The Roxy cinema, Miramar has suddenly become a rather popular little neighbourhood. And now things get even more interesting with the opening of Mexican restaurant La Boca Loca. It’s a taqueria – a Mexican fast food joint. But the fast food in question is centred around a selection of tortilla-based dishes, […]
If you’ve ever driven from Newtown to Kilbirnie, you’ll know how godawful the intersection with State Highway One is. The problem is that in order to cross the constant stream of traffic, you are forced to rely on the kindness of strangers giving way to you of their own accord. One enterprising young man had […]