Best front garden statue,1047 Dominion Road. Photo / Michael Craig
Best front garden statue,1047 Dominion Road. Photo / Michael Craig
Steve Braunias reminds us what's great about living in the place desired by everyone.
1. BEST FRONT GARDEN STATUE
House, 1047 Dominion Rd, Mt Roskill. I absolutely love the two gigantic American eagles on either side of the front gate at 32 Sarsfield Rd, in Herne Bay — hundreds of thousands of motorists coming off the harbour bridge will surely have seen these two stone birds — but nothing beats the incredible sight at the front of 1047 Dominion Rd, a redbrick house just past the Mt Roskill shops heading away from the city. A great and original artist has sculpted a black panther. Its back is arched; its tail is out-stretched; it's about to pounce. There is so much movement and beauty in this big cat. Plus there's a statue of a guy wearing red togs around the side of the house! Give this artist a Creative New Zealand grant immediately.
2. BEST RETAINING WALL
Gillies Ave, Newmarket. Another work of art, also a work of what must have been really hard work. It's incredible to behold — you'll have seen it, surely, from your car that's crawling along Gillies Ave towards the city, just past the Badminton Hall and just before the Southern Motorway exit, opposite Highwic. It's a big, black, nightmarish wall of stone and concrete, with four iron bolts at the base; there's a stucco home with blue window frames stuck high on top of it. It's epic and brutal, and it looks strong enough and ugly enough to hold back the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
Hillcrest Rd, Orewa. Auckland has some magnificent bridges as you would hope and expect on the leaky isthmus. There's the space-age one in Ormiston, the elegant one beside the Parnell baths, and the one that's due to open at Hendon Ave as part of the Waterview connection may well soon be the best of the lot. But a bridge is a message between two lands. Those messages speak loudest when you leave the land of Auckland. And so there's the much-travelled, slow as a wet week Kopu Bridge, towards Coromandel; and there's the very best, the Hillcrest Rd bridge over the toll road near Orewa, a thin, highly improbable, spirits-lifting reddish twig laid out between two ridges of clay. Better known as the Pukeko Bridge on account of its spindly red legs, it tells north-bound travellers they're leaving Auckland; it tells them they're on their summer holidays. Merry Xmas, bridge architect Jeff Wells!
Hillsborough cemetery, 250 Hillsborough Road. Photo / Michael Craig
4. BEST VIEW OF WATER
Hillsborough Cemetery, 250 Hillsborough Rd. Hardly anyone ever goes there so you'll have the place to yourself apart from, you know, dead people. It offers sweeping, panoramic views of Manukau Harbour, with its curious assortment of islands and sandbars, its low, brown tides and its blue, full tides — verily, these are views to die for. Pack a picnic, coffin optional.
5. BEST VIEW OF EDEN PARK
Kingsland Old Station House Lodge, 516 New North Rd, Kingsland. Dude! Forget your stupid corporate box view at Eden Park. It feels miles away and anyway the room is full of idiots, warm beer and stale peanuts. The best view of the rugby or the cricket is at one of the park-facing rooms at this magnificent Georgian Revival masterpiece built in 1936 as a fire station. It's now an 18-room boarding house. Room rates are from about $300; get in a bunch of your mates, and watch the action below like an all-seeing god.
6. BEST LIBRARY
Parnell Library, 545 Parnell Rd. Now this is what you call a library. It's a handsome old redbrick monster with a high ceiling and dark, serious wood panelling, and the range of books appears to be skewed towards people who actually really like literature. It's as quiet as a grave — Parnell is the Tauranga of Auckland, with its enclaves of elderly ladies — and the staff are super-nice and the whole place confidently affirms that is not quite yet closing time in the gardens of Western thought.
7. BEST BOOK
My book. Every Christmas I do my level best to create something that will make a good, literate gift idea — Madmen in 2014, Scene of the Crime last year, and this year it's the really rather lavish production, The Shops (Luncheon Sausage Books, $40), a collaboration with Wellington photographer Peter Black. He's shot 44 colour images of shops looking beautiful, strange, ordinary and extraordinary; he's caught them off-guard in small towns throughout New Zealand, and I've written an introduction about family shopping. You ought to buy it at once. Plus it's about shops, and who doesn't like shops?
8. BEST SHOPS
Blockhouse Bay. I love the ridges of Auckland, those high plateaus with awesome views. There are good ones in Lincoln Heights, Greenhithe, and in Avondale up by the train station. The best is up high in Blockhouse Bay at the town shops. It feels so good up there, in full sun, with nice little shops, a weird statue of a sail, and a view towards water. It's the Riviera of suburbia.
Northcote. What do we mean by a town centre? Do we mean that cramped little park in Newmarket with a fountain that looks like a men's urinal, or the plaza at Pt Chevalier, which is as boring and expansive as the Gobi desert but with some chairs on it? No. We mean a town centre like the awesome one at the Northcote shops. The shops are basically a Little Asia with a range of cheap, very good restaurants, and they're on either side of a huge old oak tree in the middle of a courtyard, with seating all around it; there's also a playground and a library. Stay classy, Northcote.
10. BEST OPSHOP
Salvation Army Family Store, 215 Rosedale Rd, Albany. It's got everything and it's cheap and spacious and — get this — it's surely the only op shop in Auckland, perhaps in New Zealand, staffed by young people. As in, not over 80. As in, there are very helpful, very agile staff there who are about 20 years old. Radical.
Chicken Madness, 399 Great North Road. Photo / Michael Craig
11. BEST NAME FOR A RESTAURANT
Chicken Madness, 399 Great North Rd, Henderson. Last year's winner was the incredibly named Lamb on the Wall, in Dominion Rd, Mt Eden, and a finalist this year is the shop just two doors down the road — Legend of Noodles. Legend of Noodles! What legend? What noodling myth is that, exactly? Tremendous stuff; but it wasn't the equal of the mirthful and hilarious Chicken Madness. It just makes you feel so good to see it, unless you're a chicken.
12. BEST STEAKHOUSE
Stampede, 238 Great South Rd, Papakura. Bound to be the most controversial choice in this list, because New Zealanders, rightly, take steak as seriously as rugby and parenting. Bazza's in Pukekohe is good; Bronco's in Manukau is very good; Tony's, in the city, is Auckland's original steakhouse, and has been very, very good since it opened in 1968. But yee-ha and dangnabbit pardner, there ain't nothin' as OTT cowboy and wild west as Stampede in Papakura. It's got an awesome cactus patch out front, and inside is decked out with saddle seats and horns and that sort of rodeo thing. Meals include big scallops wrapped in bacon, and a really strange onion thing called a cactus flower. As for the steaks: big and good.
13. BEST FOOD JOINTS APART FROM STEAKHOUSES
Radiant Café, Glenmall Place, Glen Eden. Fact: all the best eating is out west. Exhibit A: the Bethells Café piecart caravan out at Bethells Beach, open only on Friday nights and weekends, with good burgers and pies. Exhibit B: Nando's in Lincoln Rd, "deserving of a Michelin star", according to the Man Who Ate Lincoln Rd. But the best of the lot is the wonderfully named Radiant Café, a big, dark tearoom behind West Coast Rd in the Glen Eden shops. It's one of Auckland's best-kept secrets, a great place to relax, nibble on sandwiches or hot noodles, and watch not many people go by.
14. BEST FAIR
Auckland Record Collectors Fair, Freemans Bay. One approached the October fair with trepidation, with caution, with downright fear. Vinyl collectors! Ugh! Bound to be entirely male, very dull, and saying things like, "I have a mint condition Taiwanese pressing of early Prince at home." But there were women, and the whole place was exciting, lively, fun. Stinky Jim had a stall. There were thousands of awesome records. I got a mint condition copy of All Dressed Up, a lousy compilation record of early 1980s Auckland bands, produced by ... Russ Le Roq, the artist latterly known as Russell Crowe. Score! Mind you I could've done with a cup of tea and some biscuits. The next fair is in March. Catering, please.
Panmure Basin. Photo / Michael Craig
15. BEST FITNESS TRAIL
Panmure Basin. There's an okay fitness trail beside Henderson Creek in Te Atatu South, Western Park in Ponsonby is real pretty, and Marlborough Park in Glenfield is good for the elderly — it has an airwalker, a kind of low-impact cardio exercise machine. But the most picturesque and physical is at Panmure Basin. It's one of Auckland's volcanic jewels, with three playgrounds and 11 fitness stations dotted around the lake-like, lagoony basin — yo see you at the chin-ups bro.
16. BEST STREET
Kiwi Esplanade, Mangere Bridge. It's hardly more than a kilometre in length and the walking is easy along this absurdly pretty little waterfront street behind the shops at Mangere Bridge. Shore birds such as pied stilts and royal spoonbills are regular sights at low tide; at high tide, a perfectly flat thin sheet of blue water tucks in the edges of Manukau Harbour, and the view across to the Onehunga shore is poetry.
New Zealand mounted rifleman, Great South Road. Photo / Michael Craig
17. BEST WAR MEMORIAL
New Zealand Mounted Rifleman, Great South Rd, Otahuhu. You know the one — the rider on a horse, sort of in front of the Hangi Shop at 583 Great South Rd, near the Caltex station. It's nearly 90 years old, and that bucking horse still looks active, urgent, up for a fight. It was cast in bronze in 1928 in England, and shipped here as a memorial to the fallen of World War I. It's next to another, earlier memorial, with its archaic wording: "for the brave men who served their Queen and country in the Maori War". Sorry, what war?
Apirana Reserve, Glen Innes. Photo / Michael Craig
18. BEST HORSE PADDOCK
Apirana Reserve, Glen Innes. There you are, tootling along on the train, heading south on the eastern line, minding your own business, and just as the train approaches GI there's a goddamned honest to God horse paddock, with horses in it, horsing around, being all horsey and frisky and four-legged, and it that doesn't make you feel good about life then you're made of stone.
Ellerslie. There you are, tootling along again on the train, and you're thinking to yourself, "Certainly the train station at Britomart is the most expensive station in Auckland, and it's really quite beautiful. The station in New Lynn and Manukau are also fancy and modern, and deserve praise. As for Henderson, it plays classical music at the top of the escalator, and that's nothing short of incred. But," you conclude, and with luck you're not talking to yourself out loud, because that's bad form when you're tootling along on the train, "the station in Ellerslie has the edge, on account of its footbridge. Yes, its footbridge; the stairs and the footbridge are covered in a very nice, very clean white material, and it looks really classy. Hooray," you find yourself thinking for perhaps the first time in your life, "for Ellerslie!"
20. BEST STRIPMALL
Wairau Park. It's got everything. It's got Denny's and Valentines, it's got JB Hi-Fi and Rebel Sport, it's got Mitre 10 and Carpet Court, it's got Noel Leeming and Harvey Norman — it's got the thing we all want and crave and desire, more than peace or wealth or love. It's got Xmas.
