KEY POINTS:
It's not often I'm rendered speechless - thank heavens, given my night job as a talkback host - but it happened this week. For about 10 minutes, all I could manage was a series of splutters as I read, with increasing incredulity, of the Auckland City Council's intention to ban billboards in the CBD because they conceal Auckland's beauty.
It was the breathtaking hypocrisy that did me in, for if there is one group to blame for Auckland's despoiling, it's successive councils. Remember the 1980s? Beautiful heritage buildings were razed to make way for phallic monuments to property developers' glory and Aucklanders were too busy drinking Bolly and bonking one another to care. The destruction of these buildings is beautifully commemorated in the sculptures of John Radford in Western Park. The 90s saw the transformation of Queen St into a cheap imitation of Chinatown and now, in the new century, the horror continues with the erection of ugly apartment buildings with no redeeming features.
In my studio at NewsTalk ZB I used to have a clear view from the central city to the North Shore with a vast expanse of sea and sky to delight the eye. Now, I feel like the chap in Edgar Allen Poe's story the Cask of Amontillado, who was bricked into a basement and left to die. Yet another hideous apartment building is being constructed next to our studio and slowly but inexorably, the dull grey concrete slabs have risen to block out the light. It's claustrophobic and soul destroying, and it's happening all over Auckland. How anyone can live in them is beyond me. I'm only surprised that I don't see bodies hurtling out of the top floor windows of those already built as the poor tenants wake up and realise they cannot face another day of staring out their window on another grey building, barely six feet away.
And the greedy bloody council has been handing out permits, hand over fist to these bloody developers, and they have the temerity to complain about billboards?! Give me the tanned lean torso of Daniel Carter in his Jockeys or a series of lovely young things sporting their matching bras and knickers over another day of staring at a drab concrete wall.
To be fair to this administration, they have at least instituted plans to protect parts of the city - but it's all too little, too late. I have fantasies of inventing some widget that the world can't do without, and having more money than Bill Gates.
In my case, before I went off to do good in the developing world, I would buy up every last one of these ghastly apartments and blow the suckers up. It would be a citywide day of celebration with free sausages from the Mad Butcher, pony rides for the kids, and then at night, after the apartment buildings had been reduced to rubble, there'd be a fireworks display and an open-air concert with Dave Dobbyn and the Finn Brothers. We would all dance into the night and then the next day, I would commission bright young things to design new buildings with parks and light and air incorporated into their construction. Who says apartment buildings have to be ugly? What bylaw is enshrined in Auckland City Council's statutes that says every single apartment block constructed within the CBD has to be soulless and lacking in any aesthetic value whatsoever? The idea that billboards are making Auckland ugly is absolutely laughable.
There are pockets of beauty around Auckland, certainly. High St is an oasis of charm and idiosyncrasy in a grey, boring city. And there's certainly hope for the Britomart area with its open spaces and old buildings rented to artists. Probably, like any old tart, Auckland looks its best by night, and from a distance. If you're out on the water and sailing into Auckland, she's a beauty. But by day, the relentless march of apartment buildings will sap your spirit. And for the council to claim Auckland's beauty is being besmirched... I wish a bolt of lightning would strike the whole damn lot of them - and take a few of those apartment buildings as well.
