Eclectic crowd marks ‘biggest’ Newtown Festival
Pop-rockers Hans Pucket are on the last guitar riff of their last song and kids in crocs are grooving behind adults in pink dungarees.
A young boy on a nearby balcony lets the rhythm take him to a place of solo dancing, while on the ground, silver-haired Betty Pringle, boogies with her daughter, Lyne. “I loved it,” Pringle, 89, says. “I’ll be looking them up.”
The air smells of barbecue, fresh doughnuts and sweat.
This is the Newtown Festival in all it’s glory, the way it’s been for three decades.
The much-loved festival saw the Adelaide Rd traffic jams gone for a day, replaced by the colourful crowd of thousands as the 30th annual event took over for a Sunday of music, food and community.
A woman who introduces herself as Show Pony wears a costume of cassette tape earring, pink fluffy glasses and a unicorn dress. “This is the analogue look,” she says.
Young Māori Pasifika artist Te KuraHuia pulls attention with her slick moves and te reo
“Free Gaza” and jazz band processions makes their way down respective side streets and a magician pretends to juggle in the McDonalds car park.
Couple Dipak and Minnie Parmar make their way through the crowd with British bulldog, Genie, named after Barbara Eden’s I Dream of Jeannie. “This is the biggest Newtown Festival we have ever seen,” Minnie Parmar says.
The Brooklyn couple brought Genie down O’Connor shaking hands.
“This is the perk, I love this,” O’Connor says, as we watch the people drift by, from women in Saris to non-binary folks and dads with kids strapped to their backs.
“Take a cross section of any part of this crowd, it looks like the new New Zealand,” referring to the diversity of the crowd.
“If you’re going to be a Martian and drop in, this is where you’d want to go to.”