Christchurch hangouts of the 80s 90s &

Feeling homesick for lost Christchurch places? There’s a word for it. Vicki Anderson explores her own solastalgia.

Recently, an academic friend pointed me towards the word solastalgia. Solastalgia is a kind of homesickness for a place that no longer exists, a ‘‘place that you did not leave but that somehow left you’’. Finally, a word for the Christchurch spaces, hangouts and quirky moments and places in our region’s history which are now confined to memory.

Coined by Glenn Albrecht in 2003, solastalgia also describes a form of existential distress caused by environmental change. It was apparently formed from a combination of the Latin word solacium (comfort) and the Greek root – algia (pain).

Author Fiona Farrell uses it in her excellent book The Villa at the Edge of the Empire: One Hundred Ways to Read a City.

A recent house move prompted my solastalgia, with photographs and memories of Christchurch in the 1980s and 1990s leaping into focus.

Remember when Cantabrians wore Bata Bullets, sucked on Sparkles and washed them down with a box of ZAP chocolate milk?

We left our (glass) milk bottles at the gate. People left their doors unlocked and weren’t robbed. We bought Golden Kiwi tickets, MC Hammer and his silly pants ruled the radios and cassette players of the nation. We watched Alf and the Dukes of Hazzard. We were wowed by tricks and bought stink bombs from Delano’s magic shop in that curiously dark central city arcade which was also rich with an eccentric mix of religious ephemera, barber shops and cheesy nightclubs.

These are not the most important places Christchurch has lost, by any means. They’re not even my favourite places. The below are just some of the many Christchurch places and landmarks that I sometimes think about which leads to a dose of solastalgia.

Some were felled by the earthquakes, others were gone long before that but they were all, at one time, part of life in Christchurch.