Where the streets have a face
Philip Matthews observes some new traditions.
Bumper holiday puzzle
Out on the streets
Buskers and graffiti artists used to be the worst kinds of urban pests until Christchurch wisely gentrified them, repackaged them and created festivals around them. New street art has become a summer tradition in the city that does something with those unsightly, blank concrete walls. Of course some philistines and killjoys claim to prefer unpainted walls but they can’t be helped. The latest batch of 10 street murals have gone up or have started in the central city, Lyttelton and New Brighton. The latter neighbourhood especially benefits from some imaginative sprucing up. While the Street Prints O¯ tautahi festival creates a free, open-air gallery that lasts, we still wonder why, all these murals later, no one has made a heroic, larger-than-life Gerry Brownlee, perhaps on horseback or Soviet Realist style.
The tills are alive
Here is some further good news for the still recovering central city. The annual Boxing Day shopping frenzy was not limited to the malls, which resembled a cross between the Running of the Bulls and a medieval image of the damned in Hell, but also hit the new shopping precincts on Cashel St, where there is actual fresh air and open space. ‘‘The vibe is really amazing,’’ Rodd & Gunn store manager Rebecca Woodham told reporters. ‘‘It feels like there’s a city centre again,’’ agreed Sharna McQuoid from fashion shop Superette. ‘‘People are choosing not to go to the mall and shopping in town instead,’’ a third store manager said. Shopping will save us.
On the roads again
Another, much sadder perennial story from this time of year is the road toll. And there is of course the regional variation which is the story about foreign drivers woefully unprepared for New Zealand roads. Senior Constable Bruce Francis of Twizel told the Timaru Herald that complaints were lodged about rental vehicles and tourist drivers on State Highway 8 in the Mackenzie District in the days after Christmas: ‘‘Don’t assume that they [tourists] know the road rules. They are supposed to know but they often don’t.’’ Eighty percent of tickets he was giving