First I need to reiterate that I am seriously out of touch with the city. After the last blog post I've had people ask 'have you really never been to COCA before?' The answer would be: no, I really haven't. As much as this project of mine is about supporting the parts of the city that have been affected by the earthquake, it is also about me literally reconnecting with a city I know very little about, despite having lived here for so long. So these first few weeks are likely to be focused in the central city. Today, for instance, I decided to take a wander along Victoria Street. There were three reasons for this – I wanted to take a look at the Greening the Rubble project, I wanted to visit the parts of this street I haven't spent much time in, and I wanted a close up look at all the holes. That sounds very negative, doesn't it? But it's fascinating to take a closer look at the way the city has changed.
The first thing I remember hearing about, knowing about on the day of the quake, was the loss of some facades on Victoria Street, so it seems fitting that the Greening the Rubble project should start there too. This new garden was really interesting. I found myself wishing that what they are creating could stay there. It really opens up that space and allows you to stand back, take a look around, and appreciate the buildings in that area. Standing on the other side of Salisbury Street and looking across the new garden to Victoria Street there's a lovely vista of buildings from a range of time periods - from what looks like an apartment block from sometime in the thirties, to the older brick shops that line the street, to the modern glass apartments behind them all. I took a picture, but alas it didn't come out. I'll try and get one and add it later.I need to point out that I am someone who has been very concerned about the appearance of the buildings that will go in to replace the ones we've lost. I have been worried about the imposition of a modern 'look' onto the city's character background, and yet I found myself pleasantly surprised by how harmoniously the buildings in that area blend together from that angle. I do hope that in any planned rebuild attention is paid to the look of the buildings going into this mix. Victoria Street, as we all know, has a large number of holes, and even more bits shut off by fences and road cones. However, stand on Salisbury Street and take a look across the road. The damage is not really noticeable from that angle and this view is, like the turret at the Arts Centre, something we won't have the luxury of appreciating once the site is turned back to the developers and a new building goes in there. Take this opportunity while you can – and then pay attention to the garden that allows for that new view. It's a very pleasant spot, flowers have been sown in three large gardens which I'm sure will look fantastic once they come up, and the brick art about rebuilding 'brick by brick' is an inspiration. That's all we can do – but it's all we have to do.
I had my mother with me and she is particularly fascinated by the clock tower that stands on the corner of Victoria and Montreal Streets, so our next stop was to get personal with it; by which I mean that for the first time in my life I went under it and read the plaque that details its history. What I found inspirational about that was the way it has changed and moved over the years while still retaining its character. It may be completely different to the one that was erected somewhere entirely different in the 1800s, but it's still going strong. I like to think the same can be said for the city – that no matter how it's changed or broken it will still retain its character, still be Christchurch.Walking the length of Victoria Street is also interesting. There are the holes, of course, but there's still a huge array of shopping to be done down there. In a quick count I saw shops selling German, Greek, Japanese, Thai and, of course, kiwi foods. I'm sure there were also others that I just didn't pay attention to. It's like its own wee microcosm of interesting food. Then as well as that there were a whole bunch of other shops including my favourite bookshop, the Childrens Bookshop (well, favourite equal if we count Scorpio Books) which I can never resist going into – and which everyone should visit if they happen to be on Victoria Street, even if they're not a child, because the atmosphere in there is just lovely. While you're there pop upstairs and see if the Te Tai Tamariki room is open – at the moment they have a display of the original art from Quaky Cat. Up close those pictures are glorious and they are selling signed prints of them which can be framed. I am very keen to go back and get myself one of those.
What I find fascinating about the spaces where the buildings are gone is just how small they look. This is particularly true of the Caxton Press building, which was remarkably tiny even for an empty space. Even in the larger spaces it feels like buildings must take up more than their allotted space psychologically for the holes left behind to seem so small by comparison. Interestingly, once they put down foundations for new buildings the spaces start to open up again and they don't seem so compact. I find the corner on Bealey Avenue the most depressing, what with all the scaffolding still up around so much down that end, and large number of broken and missing buildings, but a new beginning is already rising down there. There were men hard at work on the damaged buildings on the end and beside them in the hole left by The Daily Bagel etc are the foundations of something new. I miss that part of the street and the way it used to look, but I'm also excited to see what's growing up out of that rubble.
Other places to check into on Foursquare.
My mother's mission for today was to find a particular type of glass in an antique shop, so since I love antiques, I obligingly followed her into several of them. On Victoria Street alone there are at least two. Antique World, where we went first, couldn't help us. The woman who served us was lovely though and showed us how she was blu-tacking everything down now in case of another quake. The next place we tried was Wayne Wright Antiques. This shop has obviously been quite badly affected by the quake and is now squeezed into a couple of small rooms. His entry way is next to The Caxton Press. He has signs up to say you're allowed in but at first glance you'd think it was just a store room and not somewhere to go in and browse. Again, he didn't have what my mother wanted (he deals solely in furniture, which from what I could see looked just lovely) but he told us who would have what we were after. He was extremely nice, very helpful and if you're looking for some older furniture I'd definitely recommend supporting him. We left Victoria Street then and headed to Foragers on St Asaph, where we found what we were after, just like we'd been told. This is a shop filled mostly with crockery, glass etc, a bit of furniture and some old toys that had my mother in raptures remembering her childhood. Its stock ranges from antiques to reasonably modern and we spent a really enjoyable half hour poking around. If you like old fashioned or antique crockery, this definitely looks like the place to check in.
One final note – tomorrow is the Boxing Day Replay sales, so head into the central city and grab yourself a bargain.
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