Day: September 23, 2004

Thing Number One: the other night I watched Charlton Heston read the lyrics to Body Count’s Cop Killer. (Sorry, Pearce, I didn’t record it.) Cross that one off the ‘to do’ list then.
Thing Number Two: This dude in NYC made a store/cafe/thing. “affordable art + shoestring media + zines & comics + obscure bands…..open wednesday through sunday……..noon till dark”
Wellington should have one of these. He goes through the whole process of how he made it happen and its interesting reading. Wellington people – take note. Spread this url around. Maybe someone will take a hint…

Like Chuck, Bradles has suggested to me that I might write a bit about the proposed motorway extension (the “bypass”) in my homebase of Wellington, in the context of the upcoming local body election there.
There’s a website called Heartbeat that looks at the election with a bypass focus. If you’re in Welly, check it out.
I’m heartily opposed to the bypass. There are so many reasons why I almost don’t know where to start.
I think the biggest thing that gets me is the blindness evident in those demanding such a massive change to the city’s infrastructure. To the bypass backers, the only choice is between a Wellington that is backward, clogged and inefficient, and a Wellington that is forward-thinking, free-flowing and efficient.
They seem blind to the fact that a more fundamental choice is embodied in the bypass project – a choice between one kind of Wellington and another.
In my head, from a distance, I understand Wellington in terms of its three streets – Lambton Quay, Courtenay Place, and Cuba Street. They all reach out (more or less) from a central core in Manners Mall. They embody three different aspects of Wellington.
Lambton Quay is the seat of the city’s productivity, its economic strength, its political significance. It is, if you’ll indulge a clumsy metaphor, the city’s mind.
Courtenay Place is the seat of the city’s nightlife, its theatres, its nighttime. It is the city’s body.
Cuba Street is the seat of the city’s creative energy, its endless innovation, its diversity. It is the city’s soul.
Wellington is a city with a rare balance, and of a size where that balance is felt. It is a city where that balance is embedded in the streets themselves – these are concrete symbols of what Wellington is. It is the balance that makes Wellingtonians feel at home.
The bypass will impact on Cuba Street. It will carve a symbolic wall through Cuba Street itself and cut it off from the extensions of the Cuba-Street-idea – places like Aro Valley, Brooklyn. It will have a huge effect on the city.
Now, I’m not saying that the bypass will definitely change everything or will definitely be the tipping point. There’s no way for us to know that. But it will cause significant change, of that we can be certain. If it comes to pass, Wellington will not feel the same. The balance will be shifted. If worst comes to worst, the balance will be completely upset.
This is, in itself, a huge and important reason to oppose the bypass.
But that’s not the reason I’m getting at here.
The reason you should vote anti-bypass councillors is this: those who support the bypass don’t understand any of what I’ve said above.
It isn’t even that they do understand but think differently. They simply don’t get it.
A city is more than its component parts. A city is also the relationship between everything within it. It is the ideas we hold about it. It is the way we move through it. It is the way we see it when we are part of it. It is the way we remember it when we are on the far side of the globe. A city is a network of ideas, it is an impossibly complex system, it is a bubble always, always bursting.
A city is more than its component parts. This is hard fact. This is how our brains work. This is how we see and believe and know the world. Things connect. This is what it is to be a human being.
Any person who cannot understand that a city is an idea more than a place should not be trusted with its care. Those who support the bypass fail to understand this. Do not support them.
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And on a less cod-lyrical note, what the hell is it with that stupid pro-bypass argument that it will save thousands of work hours each year or whatever, by making sure workers get into work a few minutes earlier each day?
This is *absurd*. It’s the dumbest thing I’ve heard in the whole bypass argument. Dumb, dumb, dumb.
Workers who get in a few minutes earlier are gonna spend a few more minutes checking email, having a coffee, going out for lunch, and leaving a few minutes earlier to boot. I mean, hello? Human beings, remember?