Fruit and vegetable stalls at Avondale markets, just a small taste of what is available to buy. Photo / Russell Brown.
Treasure trove of fresh finds and almost-rotting vegetables, Avondale Markets are key to understanding the city of Auckland.
As I lock up my bike, a man in a tea-cosy hat is gamely but recognisably playing 'Don't Cry for Me Argentina' on a clarinet. He's only metres away from the bustling entry lane of Avondale Markets, but in a world of his own. When a passer-by drops him a coin, it almost seems like an intrusion.
Saturday's filthy weather has abated overnight, but there are still some big puddles out in the car park. It's been a nice ride, though. It usually is, since the smooth, winding Waterview shared path opened. Even on Sunday mornings, Avondale via Great North Rd on a bike had the spice of personal survival about it.
I come here at least a couple of times a month, but Avondale Sunday Markets, as the market is properly called, has been operating a lot longer than I've been going. Its slightly mad website touts it as New Zealand's Biggest Sunday Market and says it was founded by the local Labour Party in the 1970s:
"No one is sure exactly when it started but there was a need as the cultural groups moved into Avondale and the surrounding suburbia for a market point to sell fresh vegetables and handy craft."
Nowadays, 20,000 people might converge on Avondale Racecourse on a good Sunday. It's vastly more popular than the racing itself.
I unzip the back panel of my pannier bag to convert it to a backpack and set off the same way I always do, up the damp, shady north-side lane. There's rarely anything good here – lots of Chinese-made reggae tat – but, as usual, I look at the man selling Ezy-Up instant shelters from under an Ezy-Up, and think his prices are pretty good, if one happened to be looking for an Ezy-Up.
The market brightens and the fare improves further up, where a lane of bric-a-brac runs alongside the fenceline with Ash St. There's a green velour tailor's dummy, looking slightly surreal, and the strong-featured lady from Serbia is there with some goods laid out. I bought a brilliant set of French tempered glass Vereco cups, saucers bowls and glasses from her a few weeks ago. We settled on $17 for the lot. But I can see she hasn't got much today, so I nod and move on.
The old Dalmatian man with his home-made olive oil isn't there. He never is. He's only been there the once, when I had a chat with him and bought 350ml in a plastic bottle. It turned out to be unctuous, fruity and amazing and if he's ever there again, I will buy at least a litre. But he never is. Wonders can burn bright and brief at the market.
Another vendor has been working through a job lot of what appears to be gear from 1980s TVNZ. A few weeks ago, he had a vintage Trinicon studio camera (he reckoned he had another one in actual working order) and a lighting control panel, and last week what seemed to be the machine they printed their access cards on. This week, nothing much.
John Tamihere's mayoral campaign team is set up, with his red, white and blue campaign truck. The smiling Maori kids handing out leaflets give off quite a different vibe to the grumpy old men who advance his case on social media – or, indeed, the candidate himself. I take a pamphlet headed "JT IS COMING". The first policy point on the back is "Sack the board of Auckland Transport", who are to be replaced by directors who are not "an ideologically driven group of anti-car bureaucrats". He's really not winning me over.
A little further on, the red-haired child from central casting is busking with a violin. I toss a coin in her case and she frowns theatrically as I take a picture of her.
There's a good turnout of stallholders given the previous day's weather, even along the western fenceline, which has its own, haphazard culture of clapped-out toys, clothes and occasional treasure. A six-foot long floppy teddy bear is sprawled on a blanket like a binge drinker who never made it home.
"That's free," says the woman. "I can't get anyone to take it. My kids had so much fun with it growing up with it and I'd like someone else's to, too."
I observe that binge-drinker Ted is clean and in pretty good nick and wish her luck.
The next leg is, as always, the rough asphalt terrace overlooking the racetrack, which offers everything from ugly Chinese vases to cheap electronics. I picked up a dozen old whisky miniatures there once, got sick of looking at them and decided to actually drink them as an experiment. The Cluny and the Ainslie's had held up surprisingly well, the Suntory Gold tasted like burnt plastic. Today, there are DVDs, three for five bucks, from some deceased video store. A little case full of toys is inscribed "James Martin, Ward 9".
But here's something. Two rectangular pictorial ashtrays depicting Auckland harbour bridge. No one in the house smokes any more, but I do like ashtrays. They have a weight and a history to them. We have heavy glass ones whose colours blaze along the windowsill in the afternoon sun, a giant, glazed Japanese one with grooves for 22 cigarettes, a cool, amber one with a TWA logo, from the old days of inflight smoking. These aren't that cool, but … how much?
"Three dollars each," says the vendor, adding that "I've had 10 people look at those today. And none of them wanted to pay $3. The Chinese bloke before you wanted the two for $3. I told him $3 is the price – it's the principle of it."
I study the ashtrays. The photographs on them are from the decade before 1969, when the clip-ons were added. In each, Westhaven Marina is scattered with perhaps a couple of dozen boats. The green felt backing is nice. My vow to only buy fresh produce this week is duly broken and the man gets his $6.
Last time I was here, I spied a beautiful mid-century Hoganas Keramik oven dish from Sweden, a cool green beacon in a pile of tat. I walked a few metres away, googled it on my phone and circled back, prepared to pay five, maybe 10. The lady wanted $3.
Nearby, an Afghani man is selling second-hand power tools, fake gold watches and some chunky but pretty rings and bracelets, set with polished stones. Next to him, there are small appliances and pans. There is nothing sadder at the market than a clapped-out non-stick pan. So many of them laid out hopefully for sale, but never bought.
Up in front of the grandstand, there's a man singing Christian songs through a small PA. The church that organises the singers usually puts up a different one every Sunday, but for the past few weeks it's been a bear of man with deep voice and a reverby, gothic guitar sound, as if Scorched Earth Policy or The Terminals had unexpectedly come to Jesus. I want to know his story, but I don't want to interrupt his groove.
The market tells you things if you pay attention. You can glean a little of what's happening in the economy from what people throw out; visualise the arrival of shipping containers from what's new and cheap. Ray Mills' boys are always here, hawking whatever there's a surplus of. Lately, it's polar fleece. "It's going to be a cold winter, folks. And I mean COLD!"
Sometimes, the market shows a ripple in the culture. Last year, a trove of history and sociology texts revealed that someone had died in the humanities. His home library had been cleared along with the crockery and it was there for weeks. I wanted to buy them all. I bought a couple.
The produce market, three tight, crowded lanes at the centre of the precinct, has a different narrative, one that speaks more of rhythms and cycles. Avocados are creeping back into season – a couple of places offer three tiny ones for $5. Lemons, for so long a daft $6 a kilo, are suddenly a third of that price. Carrots are good. Courgettes are gone. The Thai herbs are always fresh, but thyme and oregano, we won't see those again until the summer.
The market is a place for patience. Sometimes you just have to step back and wait while a jam clears and the wheelie bag or pushchair at the centre of it moves on. There's music, mostly from the stalls run by Pasifika families. If it rains, the vendors never object to people crowding under their canopies.
People have the idea that everything in the produce market is very fresh, but it's not like that. It's not some prissy farmers' market. Yes, the bok choi at the market garden stalls is shiny white at the base, as if it was cut this morning. But a lot of what's here is distressed inventory: bananas on the turn, softening tomatoes, beans that might have been.
You can't just pick up this kind of produce and shove it in a bag. It needs inspection. I learned how to do it from watching the Chinese matrons, who pick up and eyeball every piece, dropping the good ones into the bag and flicking the others disdainfully back into the pile. You'd be horrified if you saw someone do it in a supermarket, but it's just how things work here.
The single-use plastic bag will die hard at Avondale Markets. They sling them up in bunches first thing in the morning and if you try not to use them, the stallholders might just whisk your vegetables into a bag for you, because why would anyone not want a bag? But in the last few months, it seems like they're getting used to people approaching the scales with what they want cupped in their hands.
The big news today is that two stalls have mountains of shitake mushrooms for $5.99 a kilogram. I'm not really sure what shitake mushrooms should cost, but $5.99 is clearly a bargain, so I wait for a spot to open and squeeze in to the crowd furiously working over the piles and pick-and-flick like I really know what a good shitake mushroom looks like.
With that, dinner is settled. I track back to one of the fresh noodle vendors and get a kilo bag of fresh hokkien noodles ($3.80) and then some bok choi and broccoli. It turns out that one vendor has the only courgettes at the market, fresh and unmarked and only $6 a kilo.
By the time I get back to my bike, my pannier is is heavy and there are more vegetables yet in the shopping bag in my hand. While I'm repacking it all for the journey home, a Chinese man comes up with a second-hand microwave oven. Is he really going to put it on his bike? He is. He walks off, guiding his old 10-speed with the oven secured to the rear rack by a couple of bungie cords. I want to believe he's going to ride it.
I glide out through the carpark, contemplating the fact that there's a chance all this will end soon. There is a prospect of the racecourse land being sold and divided up for housing. Auckland needs land for housing, but the future of the market, which wraps around the course's fixtures as if it were a host organism, would be in doubt.
The truth of any city can be found in its open markets, and the truth of Auckland is told every Sunday at the racecourse. It's where I bring friends when I want them to understand the city. The market could survive some changes, even relocation. But its loss altogether would be a tragedy.
I pedal up the hill and muse that if it came to that, I personally would consider lying down in front of a bulldozer. Because the market is life.
The suit holds significant historical, cultural and fashion importance.