Sideswipe: October 12: A real back-breaker

Writer of sign, did not read sign

On the road to rack and ruin

"Imagine describing car ownership to someone who had only lived in a dense, walkable, transit-rich city," tweeted Patrick Traughber (@ptraughber). "So it's like the Tube but everyone has to buy their own car and maintain it themselves and fuel it and store it when they're not using it, which is 95 per cent of the time and oh, we removed the tracks, so be really careful and you have to buy insurance and don't forget to wear a seatbelt." "But isn't that expensive and dangerous?"

"Yeah. I spend 30 per cent of my income on driving and it kills more than 1.2 million people a year."Acting out the rebel within

David writes: "Older readers will remember this, from about 1989 or 90. On a hoarding at the top of Wakefield St, some wag wrote (of Transport Minister Richard Prebble) "Prebble without a cause". Richard Prebble made a publicity stunt of amending that to "Prebble with a cause". Some time later he was dumped from the Cabinet. The graffiti was further amended that evening 'Prebble without a caucus'. That last amendment was mine."

Two Kilometre Bay doesn't have the same ring to it.

Graffiti dialogue

1. As a stressed out student nurse, I used to love the fire door in the Auckland City Hospital staff cafeteria that read "This door is alarmed", under which someone had written "I'm a bit worried myself".

2. At the garden centre just south of Warkworth the owner at the time had painted in huge letters on the roof of the garden shop: "All our plants are well rooted". You couldn't miss it.

3. Seen on an Act billboard during one of those elections - "zero tolerance for crime" neatly overwritten as "zero tolerance for graffiti".

4. In the 1970s for many months the graffiti which read: "Workers unite, beat the bosses" remained written on the wall of Soviet Motorcycles at the top of Franklin Rd, Ponsonby. This eventually disappeared, replaced by "Workers ignite, burn the bosses".

5. In the 1970s an electoral sign was erected on the Onehunga waterfront at the corner of Normans Hill Rd, promoting National's Sue Wood. Some wag added the words "if she could".

6. While using the urinal in a bar in Los Angeles, I noticed some arrows painted on the wall in front of me. The arrows went up and across the ceiling and down the wall in the left corner behind me to where there was a sign which read "you are now peeing on your left foot" ... I was too, dammit!

7. My favourite pieces of graffiti were on Ponsonby Rd, many years ago: "Waitangi - trick or treaty". And, I once saw a car with a sticker "DIE YUPPIE SCUM". Being a graphic designer, I made an addendum next to it "... BUT I WILL DIE IN AN AUDI".

Fanny Face?

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Listen up: In his RNZ podcast, Pay Day is Broke Day, John Campbell asks workers on lower wages how they're getting by in Auckland. (Hope he does a follow-up on the exodus from Auckland - I know so many people getting the hell-outta-dodge)

Video: People come back from vacation in China and try to get into Beijing...

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Got a Sideswipe? Send your pictures, links and anecdotes to Ana at ana.samways@nzherald.co.nz??