Howe Bizarre: Signs of scarfie life
Fun, puns and pop culture collide in the Dunedin student habit of naming their flats, writes Hamish McNeilly.
There are many hotels in Dunedin, but there is only one Hoe-Tel. That sign hangs proudly in front of a Castle St villa, a famous party street in the heart of the student quarter, where visible scorch marks on bitumen still show evidence of past couch fires.
The street is extremely quiet apart from a local street identity drinking from a bottle in a paper bag, but in a few weeks the street will turn into party central for thousands of students.
Many of them will move into flats for the first time, eager to embrace the infamous scarfie lifestyle. The term scarfie first emerged when students began wearing scarfs in the 1960s, but has since evolved to mean those who attend the University of Otago.
The street is an ideal place to meet Sarah Gallagher and Ian Chapman, authors of the newly published Scarfie Flats of Dunedin, which delves into the colourful history of student flat names.
It was while studying at Otago University in the 1990s when Gallagher started – and then stopped – noticing the often humorous flat names. It wasn’t until years later when working at the university while studying for her Master’s degree she had an epiphany.
‘‘I re-saw them and thought this is really interesting, I’m going to take photos of them and map them.’’
Armed with a Pentax ME Super, she did just that.
Fast-forward almost two decades and that work by Gallagher, who now works as an advisor at Heritage New Zealand, has documented the phenomena which is largely unique to Dunedin.
Her Dunedin Flat Names Project now boasts more than 600 weird and wonderful names – including Peasmouldia, The Virgin’s Retreat, DSIR, The Early Learning Centre and The Cock Pit.
The combination of older rental housing inhabited by a large number of young people – many living away from home for the first time – had helped fuel the flat-naming trend, she said.
Chapman, performing arts head of programme at the University of Otago and David Bowie expert, said those students ‘‘want to recreate a new home – it is still a hangover from that Kiwi quarter-acre thing’’.
‘‘It is about ownership, trying to create their own space. And it’s also such a Dunedin thing; because of the history here, students want to keep that going.’’
And it is a history which can traced as far back to the 1930s, when a flat in nearby
Leith St was dubbed The Bach. By the 1960s-70s flat names, including the
Purple Orgy, House at Pooh Corner and The Piggery, were becoming increasingly common and ushered in the era of mixed flatting.
Some of those older signs, such as a homage to cartoonist Murray Ball’s Footrot Flats on Clyde St, remain and have become part of Dunedin lore. All Black and proud former scarfie, Marc Ellis, wrote in his autobiography, ‘‘Footrot Flats was a fairly wellknown flat in Scarfieville and even though it should have been condemned, we fell in love with it.’’
Some signs offer a glimpse into popular culture: The Hobbit’s Hovel, The Shire, Moe’s, Scoring Ryan’s Privates, The Drunken Clam, the War on Terror, and Adventure Time. Many flats included the street name, particularly popular in locations such as Hyde St – home to the annual street party, and Howe St. Examples include: The Mile Hyde, Hyde and Seek Kindy, Hyde Yo Kids, Howe at the Moon, Howe Bizarre and Howezat.
Newer signs can disappear just as quick as they go up, with students pranking each other, Gallagher says. Another trend was for the University of Otago to buy flats – however those were unlikely to feature unique signage, she says.
One of the most famous student flats of all is at 660 Castle St, where charttopping stars Six60 slummed it during their university days.
Gallagher urged all students to think about naming their flats and create their own legacy, but also to ‘‘check with your landlord first’’.
In her experience, property owners are unlikely to complain with Chapman’s research revealing named flats were more popular to rent than unnamed ones.
‘‘Especially the iconic ones, there are waiting lists to get in.’’
Perhaps that explains a more recent trend of landlords naming their flats – although many of them ‘‘are so lame’’, Chapman says.
‘‘Those landlord-ordered, landlord-named, professionally made signs are the anthesis of what naming flats are all about.’’
A good student flat sign was usually home-made – sometimes out of material such as a bed-head – and captured the spirit of the time and place. Names such as The Fridge and Fridgette appeared on student digs that looked like fridges (or possibly felt as cold as a fridge).
‘‘There is also the Pantry and the Oven, so you get flat communities speaking to each other.’’
Chapman says his favourite student flat sign was The Greasy Beaver, which had the look of an old fashioned hunting lodge sign.
‘‘The words are perfectly innocent, but it is what everyone does with those words.’’ Gallagher is a sucker for any Harry Potterrelated sign, but gets excited whenever she sees any new flat name, regardless of the theme.
‘‘It just shows that it is still alive and evolving.’’
Scarfie Flats of Dunedin by Sarah Gallagher with Ian Chapman is published by Imagination Press and available at the recommended retail price of $49.99 at Paper Plus, Paper Plus Select and Take Note.