Rich, slightly insecure cities often build ostentatious, practically useless skyscrapers - skystabbers? skyjabbers? - just to have a crack at a Guiness Record, and to give the information vendors at the airport something to recommend. (And, in the case of a few of these monster buildings, a place for slightly retarded but fun-loving Germans to jump off for two-hundred bucks cash).
Auckland is a beautiful city, like a mix of Melbourne, San Francisco and Alaska, but the locals still seem a little reticent to go buckwild about it. The city isn't jammed in your face like Sydney - we pack the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the pool at Milsons Point (made semi-legendary for the ludicrous amount of world records smashed there) and Centrepoint tower into a pretty small area, just to be sure no one could possibly miss our most frequently ballyhooed icons, and there isn't the palpable pretentiousness of Melbourne (there are artists everywhere, you know, and music, and... culture, man). Sometimes you'll ask Aucklanders what activities they recommend, and they'll get all shy, as if they don't want to go on about how great their town really is.
(This modesty does not extend to Peter Jackson. Seriously, New Zealand, we get it. The dude made some epic movies. I don't need to see pictures of him everywhere, and I don't need a story a day on him in the paper. And can't we stop saying 'the new, slimmed-down Peter Jackson?' -- if he gets back on the bacon later in life, will he be constantly referred to as the 'recently rotund Jackson?')
Auckland is just a lovely little city with amazing vintage shops, relaxed pubs you wouldn't mind sleeping in, and the best gyoza anyone has ever eaten (and if any Japanese food experts who would actually know what they're talking about disagree, they're no doubt stuck-up elitist dickheads desperately out of touch with the tastes of the common man. Credit due to Rupert 'the Dirty Digger' Murdoch and the Daily Mirror for that instant-win argument).
It's a bit of a mystery why such a top-notch city would want a tall pointy building; weren't people wary of the tackiness? did they wonder if the money was worth it? ('can you do it for less than a million? No? Maybe we'll just fund some schools then'); any concerns about the rank little casino at the base of the tower becoming a hub of lonely-looking tourists and drunks wearing sunglasses during midnight poker games? (There should've been concern -- it's bad even by bad casino standards. It's the kind of place that has a car out front and 'Win This Car' in flashing lights underneath it, but no way of actually entering the contest. I asked a Korean slot freak how to enter and he told me he was waiting for them to tell him. He didn't say how long he'd been waiting).
This is the view from Ponsonby (you know the people will have money when a suburb name can be shortened to 'ponce.') looking out at the Skyjabbertower. If you're walking down this street, with a youth hostel on the corner where a shedding cat is driving a French houseboy genuinely mental, there's a slight chance you've just eaten at Gyoza King. You lucky bastard.
And here's the Skytower up close, both at night and at day (either way it still looks like a first draft of a lightsabre with a hypodermic needle on top. 'The bayonet of the future, today.'):
Despite the tackiness and the waste of money ('do kids really need books when they're just going to be on MySpace all night instead of doing their homework?'), big stupid buildings are kind of awesome in that big stupid way. Not when you're on the ground, of course (most people say 'it doesn't look that tall' when they see any supertall building, right?), but when you're up the top, looking down on the little skyscrapers beneath you, and the tiny cars and people, and the mountains far off in the distance, you can kind of see why a massive building costing tens of millions of dollars might be a good idea.
(This is about the time when one of the two year ten guys with jet black crazy scissors haircuts - who've jigged school to smoke joints in the Skytower toilets and get weirded out a third of a kilometre in the air - will say 'fuck, we're so fucking insignificant' and the other will say 'I know').
I have to rate this about the Skytower: big glass slabs of glass looking straight down to the hotel pool below (a sign nearby says 'this 30mm glass is as strong as the cement you're standing on,' which reassures some people, and further freaks out others who think 'jesus, is the cement only three centimetres too?'):
Tomorrow: it's true, New Zealand is a good looking country.
Auckland is a beautiful city, like a mix of Melbourne, San Francisco and Alaska, but the locals still seem a little reticent to go buckwild about it. The city isn't jammed in your face like Sydney - we pack the Opera House, the Harbour Bridge, the pool at Milsons Point (made semi-legendary for the ludicrous amount of world records smashed there) and Centrepoint tower into a pretty small area, just to be sure no one could possibly miss our most frequently ballyhooed icons, and there isn't the palpable pretentiousness of Melbourne (there are artists everywhere, you know, and music, and... culture, man). Sometimes you'll ask Aucklanders what activities they recommend, and they'll get all shy, as if they don't want to go on about how great their town really is.
(This modesty does not extend to Peter Jackson. Seriously, New Zealand, we get it. The dude made some epic movies. I don't need to see pictures of him everywhere, and I don't need a story a day on him in the paper. And can't we stop saying 'the new, slimmed-down Peter Jackson?' -- if he gets back on the bacon later in life, will he be constantly referred to as the 'recently rotund Jackson?')
Auckland is just a lovely little city with amazing vintage shops, relaxed pubs you wouldn't mind sleeping in, and the best gyoza anyone has ever eaten (and if any Japanese food experts who would actually know what they're talking about disagree, they're no doubt stuck-up elitist dickheads desperately out of touch with the tastes of the common man. Credit due to Rupert 'the Dirty Digger' Murdoch and the Daily Mirror for that instant-win argument).
It's a bit of a mystery why such a top-notch city would want a tall pointy building; weren't people wary of the tackiness? did they wonder if the money was worth it? ('can you do it for less than a million? No? Maybe we'll just fund some schools then'); any concerns about the rank little casino at the base of the tower becoming a hub of lonely-looking tourists and drunks wearing sunglasses during midnight poker games? (There should've been concern -- it's bad even by bad casino standards. It's the kind of place that has a car out front and 'Win This Car' in flashing lights underneath it, but no way of actually entering the contest. I asked a Korean slot freak how to enter and he told me he was waiting for them to tell him. He didn't say how long he'd been waiting).
This is the view from Ponsonby (you know the people will have money when a suburb name can be shortened to 'ponce.') looking out at the Skyjabbertower. If you're walking down this street, with a youth hostel on the corner where a shedding cat is driving a French houseboy genuinely mental, there's a slight chance you've just eaten at Gyoza King. You lucky bastard.
And here's the Skytower up close, both at night and at day (either way it still looks like a first draft of a lightsabre with a hypodermic needle on top. 'The bayonet of the future, today.'):
Despite the tackiness and the waste of money ('do kids really need books when they're just going to be on MySpace all night instead of doing their homework?'), big stupid buildings are kind of awesome in that big stupid way. Not when you're on the ground, of course (most people say 'it doesn't look that tall' when they see any supertall building, right?), but when you're up the top, looking down on the little skyscrapers beneath you, and the tiny cars and people, and the mountains far off in the distance, you can kind of see why a massive building costing tens of millions of dollars might be a good idea.
(This is about the time when one of the two year ten guys with jet black crazy scissors haircuts - who've jigged school to smoke joints in the Skytower toilets and get weirded out a third of a kilometre in the air - will say 'fuck, we're so fucking insignificant' and the other will say 'I know').
I have to rate this about the Skytower: big glass slabs of glass looking straight down to the hotel pool below (a sign nearby says 'this 30mm glass is as strong as the cement you're standing on,' which reassures some people, and further freaks out others who think 'jesus, is the cement only three centimetres too?'):
Tomorrow: it's true, New Zealand is a good looking country.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
I would really like to go back to New Zealand at some point with some sense of purpose and no friend's relatives to be all conservative and act like assholes every hour they're awake. See, you're changing my mind about the whole place, cuz bro.
I'll get a hard copy of the script to you when you're back in town. You're the man with the van, remember?
Drinks also; I believe it's being referred to as a 'rowdy Christmas' yeah?