[See all Notional Significance posts] After my detour, I head back to the motorway’s edge. My route takes me along Mexted Terrace—a name that is engraved across Tawa’s skin, and with its twin associations of car dealerships and rugby it encompasses two dimensions of the suburban mythos. On the corner of Tremewan Street, with the […]
Are you one of the increasing number of cycling daredevils who spend mornings and evenings dodging the traffic on Riddiford Street, outrunning buses in the Adelaide Road bus lane, and watching in dismay as cars try and overtake you on the downhill stretch into the Bay when you’re already doing 50km/h? If so, you might […]
[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, […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] Another bend; another ending. I cross into Tawa, which was a separate borough until 1989, when in the words of a former Mayor it was “just tacked on” to Wellington. Topographically, and perhaps in sentiment, it still leans more towards Porirua than to Lambton Harbour. But as the old track […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] In memory, my feet are weary as I leave the Halfway. My present tense seems strained now, an affectation of immediacy undermined by the distance between walking and writing: years since I was here in the flesh; almost as long since my words last travelled this road. But I must […]
During the last week, I’ve been out on my very first multi-day cycling tour, and it was an awesome adventure, seeing all kinds of beautiful parts around the Wairarapa and the Southern Coasts of the North Island. Since I’ve been back a friend mentioned this great website, BikeEverywhere, whose Facebook page can be found here […]
Not sure if the Ohiro Road bus-stop bookcase and sofas have survived the weather and/or vandals (reports, anyone?), but, either way, here’s a lovely video by Dan Adams documenting this fantastic urban enhancement… Waiting from Dan Adams on Vimeo. via Eye of the Fish
Here at the Wellingtonista we are generally in favour of the bicycle as a stylish and useful means of transportation. It’s true we don’t all cycle, but as proponents of livable urban spaces we can all appreciate that one less car trip is a good car trip. Along those lines, Cycling Wellington is a great […]
Sometimes you see them: dignified, terribly cool, impeccably dressed, and upright, making their way through the rush hour traffic on their old-fashioned bikes in a manner poles opposite to the more common fluoro speedsters. A beacon of bicycling style, and also: fairly damned hot. Yes, you think, now that’s certainly one mode of commuter cycling […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] On one side: the beige of townhouses; the hermetic whiteness of Fletcher Construction’s offices; the twee comforts of a garden centre. On the other: a wall of greenery, smugly settled exotics looming over dense indigenous undergrowth and the raw-cut clay below. Hard-won colonialism congeals into aspirational heritage, but with a psychogeographical […]