Sometimes, just sometimes (ok, almost never) I wish I lived in a big city. Not a big city like Auckland (I have no desire to be a JAFA) but in an old city, old in memory if not in chronological age.

Not an old European city, they are in a league of their own and deserve an exclusive post, but maybe a big old American city like New York or New Orleans. Why? Cos things are boring here, that's why. I'd kill to see New Orleans during Mardi Gras.

We don't have interesting billboards, we don't have old, rundown buildings with ornate trim murmuring of a bygone grandeur. Our decrepitude is hidden behind modern facades designed to hide the visual pollution of an aging (quasi)edifice.
Translation: "the building are cheap and ugly crap"

I remember standing, many times, on the top floor of Bongard, just looking down on the CBD and visualising the contrast; the immaculate frontages of the buildings whose motley backages were so carefully hidden from all view - unless you happened to be standing on the top floor of the tallest building on the ridge above.

A fascade it truly is, two opposing faces joined by corrugated iron rooves sprouting air-con units and antenae.

But although Tauranga is only 150 odd years old, already most of our buildings have been torn down and replaced, or had their facades altered so much to "fit in" that the no longer carry even an echo of their former style. Maybe because we started so late, we jumped the whole permanence thing and went straight into expedient.


Devonport Rd

Ok, so we have some modern sculpture dotted about (not many though) and a few original buildings have been preserved (The Elms, Taiparoro, Maungawhare, the Post Office).


The Elms

But our downtown is boring, modern-looking in the cheapest way and thoroughly expedient. And I think this is our greatest crime - to modernise for today, redo it tomorrow, not preserve our yesterday.

I guess all cities face the same drive to modernise and if they are a big city, a decent amount of the old will hopefully survive. But when you are really a small town in comparison, you don't have to lose much to have lost it all.

To compensate, we end up with this stuff being erected...


Waka, The Strand


Grey St/Spring St corner.


BOPPoly Windermere campus (not actually in town, but hey).

They all carry some merit, but leave me cold just the same. The traditional Waka speaks of the warlike nature of the people who claim this land as their own, despite quite possibly NOT being the first inhabitants. The Blob on the corner of Spring St is, for me, a modernisation of the cultural symbolism of their past but still made of natural stone. The stainless steel tower at Windermere, whilst being extremely lovely to look at and to touch, is the ultimate modernisation of what we have come to expect, both in materials used and the method of fabrication.

Maoritanga is moving with the times.

But, meritorious as they all are, they speak nothing of the history of me, the 40 year old woman standing downtown taking pictures; a 6th generation, European extracted citizen of this town. One who knows where "home" is.

This is what tells me my history, 20 kilometres away in a quiet pocket of Oropi.



I can touch this. Shit, there's that tactile-dependency again :-)


I've been perusing this site, Satan's Laundry. It's a photoblog carrying images of major edifices and minor effluvia, signage, adornment and jetsam of big cities, real cities mostly around America.

Tauranga is too shallow and just doesn't quite cut it.

"My teddy likes purple, too" - UberZip