Fear and loathing in New Christchurch

Many months ago, the minister for rebuilding Christchurch, Gerry Brownlee, stated that the 'old dungers' (heritage buildings) had to come down as he perceived them to be dangerous, regardless of the fact that the greatest number of fatalities were cause by the collapse of buildings that were relatively new.
     Well, now we have the fruit of that attitude. The new Government plan for the rebuild came out yesterday, and makes somewhat grim reading. The govt. have decided the shape of the new Christchurch will include a rugby stadium, a conference centre, etc etc, all erected with money from the ratepayers of Christchurch. (Yes, the government makes the Plan compulsory, but does nothing to fund it - is this democratic? they will force us to pay for their monuments to their own posterity).
      The CBD will be "framed" by a green swath on either side of the city, which sounds wonderful, but anything left standing in this designated green area is to come down regardless of the condition of the building. The NG building, the darker building in the photo behind the bull, was one of the buildings that withstood the quakes. It's owners have reopened their jewellery and design business here, and the city art gallery is using part of the space for displays. The building is both safe and functioning. But now it will be demolished to make way for a sports stadium. Yes, just because it's in the way of the almighty Plan. Way to go, NZ govt. - destroy anything left standing to "align with the Plan". The NG building is like a little rock, and I feel for the owners. They've done all the right things, strengthening the building, refitting the interior, and now it's to be bulldozed for a bloody stadium, which ratepayers can't pay for and don't need. The government will offer them a price, and if they don't take it, it will be 'compulsorily acquired", i.e. taken off them. This is Big Government bullying at its best. As if we haven't had enough destruction! Christchurch has become a real-time Lego-land for big boys to play bulldozers in.
      Oh, bugger, bugger, bugger them. Take your stadium and shove it.

Going round the Red Zone

Decided to make a trip around the Red Zone today, around the barricades. For those of you reading this outside NZ, the Red Zone comprises the area devastated by our earthquake in February 2011, mostly the central business district. I went to see what's happened and what's new and what's survived.

Parking my car at the Botanic Gardens, my first stop was the posh private school, Christ's College. Christchurch Cathedral services are now being held in the chapel at the school, so the quad was open, but deserted. Most of the buildings here have survived. The morning service was just ending, and I stood outside in the sun listening to the voices of the chior, the sound of a  tradition stretching from the medieval church to a little shaky island in the Pacific. "That, my dear," said Otto, "is the sound of continuity".

  Original school hall. Wooden buildings generally stood up better to the quakes than masonry.

 Front porch of the Chapel

Then on to the Arts Centre, a group of Victorian Gothic buildings badly damaged in the quakes. Here a salvaged gable end and stonework sit waiting their re-erection at some future date

At the end of Worcester Boulevard, a blossoming Prunus frames the deconstruction of Clarendon Towers.

Shands Emporium, one of our oldest wooden buildings, still stands, but is seriously damaged.

Many of the surviving brick buildings are industrial in origin. This is PD Duncan's foundry, built to withstand heavy machinery and vibration. Buchanan's foundry, right next door, (below) also survived.

  Along the eastern edge of the Red Zone are some of the most damaged areas of the city. This is what's left of MacKenzie and Willis' furniture store.

The emergence of "secret Christchurch" from the rubble, the bits we never saw before or didn't know about, has been fascinating. The rear of this building sports add-ons to add-ons, boarded up doors, a mural and a garden chair. Further up the line of buildings was a tiny terrace on the second floor, with potted plants in terracotta pots.

And these bulls by Michael Parekowhai were wonderful. (What I was aiming for all along). They are outside NG Gallery in Madras Street, and were first exhibited at the Venice Biennale. Titled "On first looking into Chapman's Homer" they carry the weight of the classical tradition. Sitting on the stools and looking at the bulls' faces makes you feel quite strange.

Once again, secret Christchurch emerges, this time with vistas that could not be photographed before. This is the old Government Building in Worcester Street, a facade that is now exposed to more sunlight than its probably seen in the last 60 years. It's quite grand, almost like Buck House. Rock solid because it was built by the now defunct Ministry of Works, way above specification.

Ghosts of vanished buildings appear etched on the survivors.

Rubble from a demolition in progress chokes the end of Chancery Lane.

My favourite inner-city cafe, Cafe Roma, the building dating I think from the 20s or 30s. Hopefully this can be rebuilt. It has beautiful dark-panelled wood and open fires, the perfect place to go for a winter lunch.

So, some things are lost, some remain, albeit with an altered appearance. And the life of the city is continuing, with new ideas and new forms.

Within the realm of Nga Tuahuriri,

Welcome, intrepid newcomers,

Gather with tenacious fortitude,

Under the mantle of peace and goodwill.

(Mihi for Christchurch, inscribed on an exhibition of views of the old city, currently in Worcester Boulevard)

Idiocy in Christchurch

I am so pissed off. It's a cold wet night in Christchurch. Got home, turned the new heat pump on - nothing. Odd lights flickering that shouldn't be, played with the remote until I came to the reluctant conclusion that the beastie is stuffed. Poked. Had it. Verkunft, verknoeked, verfallen. Vaffuncted.
Oh goody, I have bought a $3,000 lemon. If the sodding ECAN (our local environmental council of well-meaning busybodies) had allowed me to put in a logburner, I would be nice and warm by now. I would have a basic technology that would not break down. But no; logburners are verboten because they pollute the air, people die of asthma and emphysema from the "particulate emissions". In Europe, local councils are swinging back to woodburners; the fuel is from a sustainable source, and new stoves can be 99% efficient and emission free. But no; this is New Zealand and we are always 20 years behind the times. So instead of choking to death on "particulates" we can all die of hypothermia instead! I just love being cold. It makes me feel like I love everybody and everything.
  The horrible irony of ECAN is that they have allowed some cowboy to dump dangerous demolition waste in the middle of the city, and authorized the operation of a crematorium in the same suburb. Locals didn't like the idea of a crematorium. They want cafes and smart shops. Do you really want to sip your latte while someone's Aunt Jemima goes up in smoke? asked one correspondent to the local paper. ECAN assured the populace that this would not happen. The crematorium would be so well operated that locals wouldn't even know it was there. Well, about a week ago a malfunction at the crematory resulted in a very large corpse being inadequately consumed; black smoke issued from the chimney, the locals were not impressed. The question is; if someone can burn bodies in my backyard (well almost) why the hell can't I burn wood? If someone can dump dangerous waste in my backyard why the hell can't have a logfire? Why are the rules different when a person is not a businessman, not a profit-making enterprise? Oh bugger, I am so, so angry.

Decadence in Christchurch

Driving to work this morning, I was passed by a somewhat aggressive driver. Swearing under my breath changed to laughter when I saw that his/her numberplate was DCK32. Does this mean that someone is CCK or CNT?  I think so. Best of all, we've reached F in the registration sequence. This must mean that someone somewhere has FCK.
   
    Now the Christchurch winter is all but here, the inhabitants have donned their habitual black, as if in mourning. You'd think people would want to jazz up their dress in this dark time, but no, black is winter de rigeur for the trendy office worker. With the ruined buildings, bare trees and dark clothing, Christchurch is starting to look like Berlin after the war; the Bridge of Remembrance is our Brandenburg gate, the steel barriers around the Red Zone our Wall.
     Or perhaps more like Berlin in the Weimar Republic days. For under the darkness, people crave colour and novelty. Proof of this is that the gay bars are doing a roaring trade in Christchurch, apparently attracting so many straights that the gays are getting annoyed. No longer can you, a gay man, stride up to a pretty boy at the bar and grab his arse; he's probably straight and won't thank you. He's only here for the ambience and to show his girlfriend how liberal he is.
     Personally, I've started to hum songs from Cabaret - wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome - and talk in broken German with a bad accent. ("Vere do you come from? A little spa town in Bavaaria called Bad Accent") And I'm starting to develop a fetish for things that lace up; corsets and  black ankle boots with vicious heels. I love the steampunk look, all black and red (oh! those are Canterbury colours!) top hats and whips and strange gizmos in metal.
     We've always had a reputation for being a dull city full of bourgeois worthy types. It's just not true; under our dark winter clothing we may wear red satin bustiers and jewelled and furred suspender belts.
      And as a parting comment, and further proof of our descent into decadence, I've noticed some very styly women lately, well-cut, well-tailored garments but with something edgy about the whole ensemble, like thigh-high stockings or a studded choker, a kind of extremely wealthy dominatrix look - as if she does it for fun, not for the money. Anyone else notice this? Is this the universal human response to difficult times? Escape it all by embracing one's inner kinkiness? Is this the new "Christchurch Look?" Hope so.

Christchurch - dysfunction central

Things are just getting crazier by the minute. I've written before about how the earthquake has brought out the nutters and single-issue monomaniacs, and (dare I say it, oh whisper it please, not in our clean green sweetie-nicey naive NZ) political corruption, but it's getting worse.
Summary:
1.- We are to have a cardboard cathedral. This will only be temporary (like 20 years) but will still cost around $4 million. (Some say $5 mill., some say it will blow out to $10 mill).
2. - The cathedral leaders wanted to be autonomous, so decided that the old cathedral would be demolished, without requiring any public input or consultation. It's our property, we can do what we like with it they said. Fair enough, I don't have an argument with that. However, two days ago they indicated that they require $244,000 of public money to build the new cardboard cathedral, because there's a "shortfall". They don't want our opinions, but they do want our money.
3. - The person heading the opposition to the destruction of the old cathedral is an avowed atheist. I don't get this, I would have thought he'd be right chuffed at getting rid of the godbotherers from their prominent place at the centre of town.
4.- An ex-All Black (these are thick on the ground in NZ, pun intended - every second middle-aged man claims to be an ex-All Black) has demanded that $144 million be spent on a covered sports stadium so he and his fellow rugby fanatics can watch games without getting wet. This in a city where people are living in cars and garages and have no flush toilets. Or jobs. Or businesses. Nice sense of the real priorities here. Apparently if we have a world-class sports stadium all our problems will vanish overnight. Perhaps he envisages the homeless living there, who knows. He's obviously brain-damaged from too much rucking. Fool.
5.- State houses are empty while people pay $150 a week to live in a garage. The government says a) there is no housing shortage/rent crisis, it's all a figment of the Opposition's imagination and b) even if there was a housing shortage/rent crisis, which we won't admit to, even though there's been a whacking great earthquake which has dehoused 30% of the population of Christchurch, if there was, we would "leave it to the market" to sort it out. "Leave it to the market" is a right-wing economist's way of saying we don't give a shit and we're not going to do anything about it and we hope that all our landlord mates get rich quick on rack-renting to the vulnerable.
6.- Yet another advisory group has been convened to oversee the rebuild. Who did they appoint as the chairman? The guy who's been overseeing the demolition, a very wealthy private individual who will now make megabucks more putting back up what he was paid megabucks to pull down in the first place.
7. - One of the stated aims for the rebuild is to build a "world-class city". What does this mean? Bombay is a world-class city, for bigness and population and poverty. So is Beijing. And Bangkok. But I don't think this is what is envisaged. Or is it?
And so on and so on.  Makes one want to go to sleep for the next fifty years until 'they' get it sorted. Or move to some nice quiet place far away where the arguments of this dysfunctional family can't be heard.

After the big one

Well, here I am at last, after the earthquake. Because I have no web access at home, I rely on the library's free internet to post, and what with one thing and another I haven't been able to get to my blog.
The earthquake was very frightening. As a permanent resident of The Shaky Isles I have experienced a few earthquakes, but nothing like this. At half past four 2 weeks ago, I was awakened by what I thought was my cats having a fight on my bed. Then it occured to me that this was not so, as one of them was outside. The shaking got stronger; it was like being inside a cardboard box with some malevolent person kicking and punching the outside of it. A windchime that I hang inside over the winter was clanging and donging as things fell around me. I sheltered in the doorway, as per instructions, and felt the doorway itself tilting backwards and forwards, like an unanchored parallelogram. So I moved under the table and said several "hail Mary's", the phrase "now and at the hour of our deaths" gaining a new vividness and immediacy. I did truly think that I was going to die, as the shaking just went on and on.
But it did stop. I found the whisky bottle, and glory be, there were still a couple of drops left. (Let me here recommend a mouthful of whisky for the purposes of pulling oneself together). I went outside; it was a glorious night, the stars full on, I could even see the little fuzzy patch of the Pleiades. "Do they know what's happened down here?" I thought. Irrational thoughts for irrational times.
To cut a long story short, I and my house and cats and mother are fine. No one died, that is the miracle. If you're going to have an earthquake, go for 4.30 on a Saturday morning. Parts of Christchurch have been badly affected. A friend in Kaiapoi has been made homeless by the 'quake, the area was devastated.
But do not listen to those media (particularly American) who claim that the whole city has been levelled, that mass looting took place, violence, civil disobedience, etc, etc. All absolute crap. Of 2000 buildings in the CBD, only 80 are too dangerous to enter. The CBD was cordoned off for public safety, not to prevent looters. Much of the city is still as it was.
What amazed me was the number of men in flourescent vests who suddenly appeared out of nowhere, men who knew how and could do, blokes with hard hats and tool-belts, taking down dangerous chimneys and shoring up walls, balancing on dangerous roofs and parapets. Great God of Testoterone, they've come to save the city!
I think I'll stop now.