When I phoned my mother to tell her that I'd found a flat she said "great, anywhere but Ponsonby", but like most students in those days, Ponsonby it was.
At that time Ponsonby was best described as run-down with a large Pacifica population, many retired working-class pakeha and a lot of student flats.
It didn't take long to settle into the suburb and I rapidly developed affection for four local institutions, Ray Bindon the "Friendly Butcher", Ivan's Restaurant, the Gluepot and Bhana Brothers.
Ray Bindon was indeed friendly and had a faded Auckland Star article on his wall which recalled the day his shop was supplied his truly excellent pork sausages to the Royal Yacht Britannia when it brought the Queen to Auckland in 1963.
Getting Ray into conversation was easy; all you had to do was ask about that occasion.
He was a gossip goldmine.
He sold his shop many years ago and the new owners must have inherited his pork sausage recipe. Sadly rent rises drove them out a year ago and the shop remains untenanted.
Ivan's restaurant served vast steak and fish meals accompanied by mountains of chips and, uniquely, a plate stacked with buttered white bread.
It was not a place you visited to impress a new girlfriend, but it was a godsend for impoverished students.
You could get a week's calories for a very few dollars.
Ivan's Restaurant closed when the owner, presumably Ivan, retired in 1995 and a series of unmemorable and short lived bars and cafes failed to fill the yawning gap left behind.
The Gluepot's real name was the Ponsonby Club Hotel, though no-one called it that and there were many theories as to where the Gluepot name originated.
This was really two pubs, a sprawling public bar which supplied then price-controlled beer and spirits. Asking for wine in that as my fancy Canadian mate and his exotic French girlfriend did one evening invited and got loud guffaws from both the bar staff and the assembled drinkers.
Upstairs was a slightly more salubrious venue where you could buy wine and which was an important music venue.
For a reasonable cover charge you could see performers who often later became successful and well known.
The Gluepot seemed to be regarded as some sort of den of iniquity and I recall one Friday evening when "Gideon Tait's Task Force" arrived.
This was a large group of policemen who'd taken to hanging out as a gang and was a short lived experiment in what was euphemistically called "team policing". My memory is that everyone ignored them that night and they went away.
Patronage dwindled and the Gluepot closed in 1994.The building was gutted and turned into apartments.
That just left Bhana Brothers as my fourth favoured Ponsonby venue, and I have been going there every week for decades to buy flowers.
Three kiwi-born Indian brothers took over dad's green grocery which was established eighty years ago and turned it into a local landmark.
They had the widest range of flowers pioneering such exotica as peonies and Colombian roses at affordable prices.
The Bhanas also moved with times and expanded their shop into the vacant space next door to offer gluten free produce and other specialist lines designed for the new Ponsonbonians delicate palates and digestions.
Alas to no avail, and this week when I went to lunch nearby, Bhana Brothers was closed, another victim of landlords who saw property values skyrocket while rents stagnated.
I suppose that it's inevitable that places change over time, but it's hard to see that two million dollar plus houses and forty dollar main courses have improved Ponsonby.
I won't be the only one who now has no reason to go there.