Lately I keep thinking about visiting various towns and cities in Aotearoa New Zealand, but then it’s like, oh yes, the dark shadow of omicron is looming. So instead I stay home and look at maps.
There’s not much room in Wellington
One thing the protests in Wellington have shown is that there’s not a lot of room in Wellington. Block one road, and there aren’t a lot of other roads available to pick up the slack.
Sometimes I’ve wondered what it would have been like if New Zealand had taken its cue from the United States or Australia and built a capital city from scratch. But that’s kind of what happened with Wellington, just without the grand city planning.
Wellington was a not a booming city when it became the capital back in 1865, so most of what’s happened to the city since then has happened under the lens of it being the capital.
I also like to wonder what Wellington would have been like it it hadn’t become the capital. I think the answer is a slightly larger version of Nelson. Maybe the Hutt Valley would just be a series of small towns, the kind of places people go for weekend adventures.
And if Nelson had become the capital, we wouldn’t have the brutalist gem that is the Civic House building, which everyone hates and wants to demolish or adorn with an artistic mural.
It’s always about waiting
Kaahu’s Nest — the shop at the Raglan recycle centre — is really good. They’ve recently turned the art gallery room into the book room.
This is slightly disappointing because the art gallery room was my favourite space. It was full of unwanted artworks, which generally were:
art based on seaside themes that people use to decorate their beach houses, can I interest you in this triptych of pohutukawa trees?
amateur art, most of which is done on small canvas blocks and usually involves seagulls
commercially produced artworks that include poems about how someone is the best grandmother ever and don’t think too much about why the granny in question is separated from the artwork
vision boards, with collections of keywords cut from magazines, power, goddess, get and and go, CEO, shake it.
But the new book room includes this masterful selection of “Novels that fit in your handbag for when you have to wait around in Hamilton”.
This is such a specific demographic but one that I can relate to. Even if you aren’t waiting around for the Hamilton-Raglan bus, there just always seems to be a bit of waiting around in Hamilton. That Dawn French novel looks pretty good.
Unexpectedly, I am having mixed feelings about Spotify
A few weeks ago, there was a lot of discussion around Spotify. Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and a few other artists took their music off the streaming site. And various music lovers were boldly declaring that they were quitting Spotify.
I didn’t do that but I’ve realised I’m unintentionally yet slowly moving away from Spotify.
About a week ago, I happened to read an article that praised Apple’s Podcast app, which I never normally used. I took a look at it and realised that the desktop version was a million times better than Spotify’s equivalent, so I switched over. (Except all the Spotify exclusive podcasts, which include a lot of really good music-related ones but oh well.)
Now I’m even contemplating moving all my music listening to Apple Music! I’m not sure I can fully do that though because a) Spotify’s algorithm is very good with its recommendations (while Apple Music wants me to listen to the Doobie Brothers?) and b) Spotify’s playlists are also 🔥.
But maybe I’ll figure something out. Maybe Apple Music will have something even better than the Oyster, POLLEN, Lorem or — my fave! — Soirée playlists.
Ugh, I can’t believe I wrote about podcasts.