AK03: What's new pussycat?

By JANET McALLISTER

We begin with Finale. The ex-Jones Bar, drag queen cabaret is hosting two birthday parties tonight. Performers are doling out fluffy halos to delighted young women. Their accompanying boyfriends sit still, hoping they're invisible, scared they'll be the next victim of MC Felisha's innuendo, tortured to a state of blush.

Tina Turner appears behind a galaxy of disco balls, her frame draped in white netting. She opens her mouth wide and we hear: "We don't need another Hero ..."

That's as wink-wink nudge-nudge as the girls' cruder jokes. For the days of tottering over to Ponsonby Rd on 18cm heels for the Hero Parade are over. Now K Rd is hosting its own day-long Karnival, climaxing in a diversity parade at 9:30pm tonight, celebrating not only sexuality, but art and culture as well.

"Auckland's so hungry for a parade," says organiser Kerry Mountstephen - aka Mistress Dominique- of the K Rd business association, who was kicked out of the Hero parade two years ago for being too controversial.

On this road, she's the boss, so her bondage float will ride again, with floats from various K Rd businesses, scores of Brazilian musicians and a fashion parade from animal activists SAFE.

"At first, SAFE wanted to show videos of animal torture," says Mountstephen. "But I told them, 'no, this is a happy parade!"'

And K Rd has lots to be happy about. New shops, new nightclubs and a new footpath - slippery, but good-looking. Music has diversified; the screech of electric guitars at Paradise Bar, K Rd Ballroom and even the Naval & Family Pub now competes with the oonst-oonst of house music elsewhere.

The glue sniffers, moved on in case Bill Clinton fancied a visit to Myers Park while at Apec, have never come back. To the joy of their tenants, old buildings such as St Kevin's Arcade are being renovated, although, more controversially, some buildings have disappeared.

It boils down to Auckland's favourite party conversation topic - the real estate boom, which has caught up with the CBD's uptown border.

The sex industry's moving on to Fort St and out to the suburbs. In its wake come fashion, art (Michael Lett Gallery and Alleluya's Gully Lounge, to name some arrivals) and a rumoured six new apartment blocks.

The old Pink Pussycat building is being done up and now houses fashion tenants Cherry Bishop and Maw and who would have thought? - a model boat shop. Even Leo O'Malleys menswear store (established 1935) has been renovated for the first time in 40 years. Could - gasp - K Rd become respectable? And will that mean K Rd's personality gets bleached into blandness? Bishop thinks not. "We'll finesse the funk already here," she says.

Not that the street's imminent respectability is out of keeping with its history. It is named for Hape, a tohunga who gave a karanga (call) to guide his people to the ridge. In the mid-19th century, Governor Grey's Government House stood where St Kevin's Arcade stands now. In the 1950s, when K Rd was Auckland's shopping centre, women sipped tea beside a sweeping marble staircase, chandeliers, and a grand piano in basement tearooms at Rendells.

Malls were the road's undoing, and in the 1970s massage parlours and streetwalkers moved in.

Your average K Rder isn't old enough to remember any of this. They know the strip only as alternative, fringe and edgy, or as a great nightspot. K Rd residents leave when they're having children. More than one has moved to a west coast beach, exchanging urban excitement for rural bliss.

Back in town, the two volunteers behind the bar at the Covert Theatre on K Rd's east end tell us Covert's inclusion in the massage parlour section of last year's Yellow Pages was a mistake.

The only massaging they do is of punters' funnybones.

Crossing Queen St, we pass a prostitute dressed in white, a shaven-haired barefooted African woman in a voluminous black dress, and Chris Knox.

We also pass "Jesus wept", pasted on the building on the corner of K Rd and Queen St in protest against its demolition ordered by the owner and neighbour, the Baptist Tabernacle Trust. The upper stories have been unusable for 22 years, because of fire damage, and days before the demolition they still contained 1981 calendars. The basement used to be a cafe, circa early 90s, judging by the menu still chalked on the blackboard: muffins, $1.90.

The Tab is putting a new office and retail block in its place, complete with 112 underground carparks. Other retailers on the carpark-starved road are happy about this.

Nearby, crimson-walled Verona, along with Alleluya and the Terry Gilliam-inspired Brazil, is a hangout for the street's entertainers.

The staff alone are a talented bunch - you could be served organic steak by Paul Barrett, lead singer of rock band Pan Am, or by "Green Dean", environmental reporter for 95bFm and National Radio, or until recently, by Justine Smith, winner of this year's Billy T comedy award.

Other staff members are tattooists, published writers, florists, hip hop MCs and fashion designers. Co-owner Hilary Ord is vice-president of anti-GE group Madge and was one of the pink bra-barers in parliament this month. Now Verona has been immortalised in Elemeno P's hit song of the same name.

"Have we become icons now?" asks Ord hopefully. "We need to shout the band a few rounds, that's for sure."

Sitting outside, Goldenhorse guitarist and singer/songwriter Ben King tells us his mum went into labour with him on the steps of St Kevins Arcade during the 1975 Santa Parade.

At the K Rd ballroom - star of the chinhead ads and a Good Charlotte video - the diverse crowd includes everyone but the drag queens, barred because they preen too much and try to use the women's toilets.

At the Naval & Family, middle-aged people, all dressed in jumpers and trousers, sway in front of a keyboardist called Helen, who's belting out hits from yesteryear.

Down the road, there are more pokie machines, and fewer nightclub queues than there used to be, back when the Viaduct wasn't happening, when Crowbar was a lonely outpost on Wyndham St, instead of the meat in a Centro/WBC sandwich.

But once you've paid your $5- $10 entry, everybody's still cheerfully jam-packed inside. Apart from the Staircase that is, where tonight only a few skater types are visible in the green laserlight.

Is the road safe? There were 11 police cameras in the precinct at last count and two weeks ago a man was charged with the manslaughter of Sheryl Brown, whose body was dumped in Pitt St last December.

Locals hint at ethnic tension, and one resident is sick of seeing vans parked in the side streets all night, obviously dealing something to the people who walk up. They even had pizza delivered. Still, if you stick to well-lit K Rd, there are always other people around, no matter what the time.

The road's nightclubs are diverse - as in voluntarily segregated. Elmo karaoke bar is predominantly Chinese; Club Polynesia is hosting a Tongan Marist Rugby Club social; the Indian crowd at Scorpio includes at least one turbaned Sikh; the Excited Beer Factory caters to Korean students. The bar's former manager, Jin Kim, 28, likes New Zealand because here, unlike in Korea, he's not too old to go out dancing.

There is some cultural overlap: the new Kiss attracts Asian as well as Caucasian house devotees; hip-hop bar 4:20 mixes Pakeha and Polynesians; Africans and Polynesians dance together to reggae and R&B at lion-themed Roots. Brazilians have been spotted at Khuja Lounge, while the Galatos venue is a chameleon.

Divides aren't always along ethnic lines though. The tight T-shirt wearing brigade at Urge includes no females, while Blend (formerly Bed) is R22 catering to the more sophisticated crowd.

"People who usually go out along Ponsonby Rd have said, we felt excluded, thanks for letting us come back", says Angela Crook, who owns the club with her husband Scott.

If Ponsonby is drifting south, the road is indeed attracting a more respectable crowd or a more moneyed crowd at least. The Fix entertainment guide joked last week that in 10 years, the K Rd Business Association will have made prostitution illegal again as the area was losing all its sleazy charm.

Mountstephen doesn't think that will be necessary. "You can pull our buildings down, you can legalise prostitution, but K Rd's blood is thick."

The charm, if not the sleaze, will be around for a while yet.

Today's K Rd Karnival details

* From 9am the street has all-day markets with street performers and sponsors events.

* From 9.30pm it's the K Rd Karnival parade celebrating "the culture, art, and sexualities" of the street.

* From 10.30pm it's Uptown Sounds, a free dance music event in Beresford Square.

* For more information: www.kroad.co.nz or ph (09) 377 5086

K Rd: A tourist guide

* As of February, the precinct included 53 restaurants and food outlets, 30 bars/clubs, 30 clothing stores, eight art galleries and design shops, and 13 adult shops.

* The K Rd markets are on the motorway overpass every Saturday from 10am until 4.30pm, selling clothes, books, plants and tapa cloth.

* The crumbling headstones at the historic Symonds St cemetery are well worth a look. Here lies James Maxwell who was killed by a fall from his horse at the Wade River, aged 37. Boast not thyself of tomorrow for thou knowst not what it may bring. The Jewish section is identifiable by the Star of David gates.

* The oldest building on the road is the Kamo Hotel, built in 1860.

* The road has its own multilingual radio station 106.8 KFM, which broadcasts music programmes to a 3km radius from St Kevins Arcade.

* A Club Physical gym is moving into the old Rendells building and a 140-bed backpackers is expected soon on the Mercury Lane corner.

Herald Feature: Auckland Festival AK03

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