OPINION: 'Deco dress-ups and poncing about? It's just not for me'

Art Deco Week is overrated, reckons Hamish Bidwell. Photo / Warren Buckland

Spare me all this Art Deco junk.

Honestly, is there anything more lame or overblown than Napier's claim of being the Art Deco Capital?

Wow, what a feather in this region's cap.

I love Hawke's Bay.

Loved it ever since I started coming here in the mid-1980s. I loved it in the 2000s when I lived here and, in fact, loved it so much that my family and I have now come back for good.

That said, I'm utterly underwhelmed by the buildings of Napier. I get when they were built and why, but come on.

I have no idea if Bertie is still getting about in his boater hat. He was an ambassador of some sort when I last lived here.

The dress-ups and the poncing about? No, it's just not for me.

But it's the promotion that Art Deco week gets that really brasses me off as if it actually is something we should be immensely proud of and which generates untold money for the local economy.

"I'll tell you what brings a few bucks into the Bay. Kids' cricket,'' says Hamish Bidwell. Photo / Paul Taylor

I'll tell you what brings a few bucks into the Bay.

Kids' cricket.

The Hawke's Bay Cricket Camps featured 208 teams last month, from as far afield as Wakatipu in the South Island.

Yep, I know plenty of those 208 sides are made up of locals, but their mums and dads still shell out for coffees and drinks and lunches and activities for siblings while little Jane or Johnny are playing cricket.

But it's the out-of-towners, for many of whom this is their family summer holiday, who keep hotels, motels and B&Bs full.

Who are out for breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, who are forever stocking up at supermarkets and service stations and generally throwing money at everything Hawke's Bay has to offer.

Never mind which players of note once went through "Riverbend'' or how good the cricket is. As a pure revenue-generating exercise for the Bay, these camps are gold.

I was one of those out-of-towners in 2021. My wife and I were out every night and spending a fortune and you know what we did after that?

We went home, put our house on the market and moved back to the Bay.

I nearly died when I saw how much a house cost compared to when we left in 2008, but life isn't perfect. Not even in Hawke's Bay.

It's not just the motels making money out of this month of cricket.

It's the unoccupied schools that now host the visiting teams, whose dining rooms and hostel rooms are full of budding cricketers.

I saw someone or other lament the cancellation of the scheduled Twenty20 cricket between New Zealand and Australia, at McLean Park.

What a wonderful opportunity to promote the Bay it would've been, apparently, and how disappointing it is that it now won't go ahead.

Promote Hawke's Bay to whom? Australians, who'll suddenly come in their thousands? Indian fans? Who?

And the games themselves? Who was going to go to those and what were they going to spend?

Frankly, the folk packing out Frimley Park during the Hawke's Bay Cricket Camps are spending a shedload more than a couple of thousand at McLean Park ever would.

Fair play to the flappers and the duffers who like to perambulate in their vintage cars and doff their caps to the Bay, but the reality is, many of us find it an absolute bore.