Cuba St: Where memories are made
It’s seen parties and protests, people at their best and their worst. Felix Desmarais and photographer Rosa Woods take a walk down a unique street in Wellington.
Going through old papers and cards to chuck out recently, I stumbled across a photo of myself – a proper, printed one, even, glossy and dog-eared.
It was from 2007, when I first moved to Wellington.
In it, I’m sitting atop the tuatara sculpture in Cuba Mall, caressing the head of the ancient reptile, rendered in perspex.
Cocked eyebrow, pursed lips. I’ve posed for the photo. It’s a novelty.
I wondered how many times, in the 12 years since that photo was taken, that I had walked back and forth past that tuatara.
The Cuba St Tuatara – a silent, unblinking and no doubt traumatised witness to my 20s. Unenviable.
This little street, just a kilometre long, is a significant place to me, and I’m not even Wellingtonian born.
I know I’m not the only, nor the first, person to adore Cuba St.
Its importance is well documented. Indeed, it is an official historic place all of its own. Books, plays, poems, songs, and many other articles have been written about it.
It has its own annual festival and an unofficial mayor – the second of two.
It’s seen parties and protests, people at their best and their worst.
It’s a place of oddities and contradictions, at once edgy and alternative, modern and grimy, a place where the smell of marijuana is unremarkable, but where you take your parents for dinner when they are in town.
Thought to be one of the most vulnerable places in Wellington in a significant earthquake, it’s difficult to imagine Wellington without Cuba St, or at least without the Edwardian architecture for which it’s known.
So visual journalist Rosa Woods and I took an afternoon this week to catch an insight into the character – and characters – of Cuba St in 2019.
The first place we pop into is 288 Cuba St, near the top of the street, in between Li’s Charcoal Chicken and a tailor. It’s the first – or last, depending on how you look at it – art gallery on Cuba St.
Kiwi Art House Gallery is cool and clean inside. We’re greeted by the friendly owner, Alan Aldridge, who has run the gallery for 10 years.
Aldridge is as proud of the heritage of his gallery’s location as the contents within, which he says are works mostly by Wellington artists.
Around us are depictions of the city from all angles and perspectives, both literal and metaphorical.
Aldridge opened the gallery after he was made redundant from a job in administration.
‘‘I’ve always been involved in art at some level. So I thought, why not open a gallery?’’
The place was owned by the famous Carmen Rupe in the 70s, he says.
‘‘It was called Carmen’s Curio Shoppe. It had all sorts of knickknacks and trinkets.’’
Originally a house built in the 1890s, from 1905 the front became a shop that sold dyed calico.
The upstairs is still a flat. After proudly showing us his favourite works, including a mural outside the shop, he waves goodbye, now genially chatting with the neighbour from the upstairs flat.
Next we meet Hannah McGeorge, retail manager of Sweet Bakery & Cakery at 268 Cuba St.
The 25-year-old has worked at Sweet for two years, and been its manager for one.
‘‘Basically I got really obsessed with cakes and cake-making. You know how you can watch videos of it on YouTube?’’
I don’t, but take her word for it. She discovered a zeal for the art of cake-making and decorating from the videos. When a role came up in the shop, she leapt at it.
Now, she works at Sweet on Cuba St most days. It’s the town base for the business, which has its main shop and kitchen in Karori.
‘‘It’s a different vibe than our other shop. There’s lots of cool characters. There’s more students and tourists.
‘‘We have a few regulars who are obsessed with our cake.’’
One of them is a PE teacher at a nearby high school. She comes in a couple of times a week.
Sweet is wedged between old and new – on one side is Tonks Grove, named for the early colonial settlers in the area, some of the first residents of Cuba St as we know it.
On the other side is HeyDay Beer brewery and bar, one of about 10 breweries in a 2kmradius.
Rosa and I scuttle out before we slap the sweet-smelling cupcakes on the company expense card.
We’ve barely traversed a third of the street and I’ve worked up a sweat already.
It’s one of those ‘‘you can’t beat
. . .’’ days.
We approach what I consider to be Wellington’s – if not New Zealand’s – most dangerous crossing.
The four-way intersection of Cuba St and Abel Smith St.
As per tradition I am nearly hit by three cars at once.
It’s shameful, but the truth is Kiwis don’t know the give-way rule, and that crossing proves it.
Someone put in a roundabout, for goodness’ sake. Just paint one.
Limbs somehow still intact, we continue along past Fidel’s cafe – less locals, more tourists, and a waiting area nowadays.
An older gentleman ambles out of Ellmer’s, chainsaw in hand.
It’s not as ominous as it looks on paper. There’s no hockey mask.
At Grill Meats Beer bi-fold windows are agape, a gentle northerly brushes past as punters angle-park sumptuous, greasy burgers into wide-opened mouths.
Condensation glitters on halffull craft beer, paired specifically with the burger.
Potentially peak Wellington. Just add a cheesecutter, a vape and a unicycle.
The smell inside Alistair’s Music is heavenly. I suck a full lungful in. Fresh, crisp, dry wood. The inside of a new guitar.
Imeet the eponymous Alistair Cuthill and his wife, Catriona. Catriona says she’s seen 14 music shops come and go in the time they’ve been at 215 Cuba St – 18 years. ‘‘It’s hard to make a living in this trade.’’
The secret to longevity?
‘‘We don’t sell rubbish and we don’t sell guitar-shaped objects,’’ comes the reply. ‘‘We’re very fussy.’’
An avid banjo player, has Sir Billy Connolly ever popped in, I wonder aloud.
Does he ever.
The retired comedian is a regular when he’s in town. Alistair’s is part of his village. The Scottish trio are good friends.
‘‘One night when we were here, he was here so late, and we had to say, now Billy, f... off!’’ Catriona says.
I boast proudly about my father, who taught himself to play guitar at 60. I can’t wait to bring him in to see Alistair and Catriona.
‘‘We find homes for our instruments, not buyers,’’ Catriona says. It seems like a ‘‘line’’, but I believe her.
It’s 2pm already and Rosa and I had both forgotten to eat lunch (which helps explain earlier cupcake madness).
We duck into Cuba St faithful Midnight Espresso at 178.
Not much has changed here in 12 years, and all the better.
The coffee is still great, and the cabinet-food-with-no-cabinet hits the spot.
Vegetarian nachos, belly-ache tall milkshakes and mousetraps.
The service is as average as it has always been, and I’m not sure I would have it any other way.
Fed and watered, we are miraculously back to life and ready for the last part of our journey down Wellington’s coolest street.
Cuba St is changing before our eyes. The fruit mart is gone, as is the beleaguered Matchbox Studios at 166, and it looks like Made in Marion Craft is moving in.
I guess it’s Made in Cuba (via Tory St) now, but that might not have the same ring to it.
It wouldn’t be right not to see what’s happening in a Cuba St thrift store, so that we do at Thrift at 162.
There we meet a woman very happy in her work. She’s 23-yearold Augusta Buchanan and she’s been working at Thrift for two years.
She moved from Dunedin to Wellington two years ago, and on her first day in the capital, visited the store. ‘‘I decided, I’m going to work there.’’
Buchanan studies fashion design at Massey University and is in her third year this year.
She’s interested in sustainable fashion, which is part of why she loves to work at Thrift.
We leave the busy Buchanan flipping, folding and grinning at the counter and head down to Cuba Mall.
There we meet Mexican husband and wife Jaguar Mexico and Fuego Milo, selling handmade jewellery in the shade of a tree outside the old Farmers building.
They spend their lives travelling, chasing summer. It’s their second time in New Zealand, and they love Cuba St.
‘‘People are so friendly, and it’s so artistic, there’s always people playing music,’’ says Milo.
A woman approaches and selects a bracelet made with turquoise. ‘‘I made that just this morning,’’ says Milo as the young woman buys it for $15.
Another young woman appears and hugs Mexico and Milo.
‘‘Fuego! Jaguar! I just wanted to say hi!’’
Then she’s gone. Their life seems content, quietly making jewellery, cross-legged, on Cuba St.
The bottom blue bucket of the Bucket Fountain fills with water, and as it buckles and empties, it takes out a pair of unsuspecting out-of-towners.
They aren’t yet familiar with the wide-berth locals allow the begrudgingly loved sculpture.
‘‘How did they ever think that tiny pool would hold any of that water?’’ Rosa says.
I wonder if that was ever the intention.
Perhaps it was always the point, a kind of baptism for all who enter our city and dare to tread the slippery tiles of Cuba St.
And, as always, the tuatara bears glassy-eyed witness to every moment.