Selfie stories

One of my best memories from a school field trip to an art museum is of a series of drawings by Picasso. He started out with just a few lines, then added more and more details until he had a nice picture of a bull.

The punch line is that we were shown the drawings in reverse order. The magic of Picasso was his ability to distill that bull’s essential qualities down into a couple of strokes.

Flipping through pictures from our recent hike on Rangitoto Island somehow brought all that to mind… I wish I could say that my ‘artistic process’ went deeper than struggling with the timer feature and the selfie stick while trying to capture a bog standard view, but it didn’t.

Still, if you squint your eyes and add just a pinch of irony you can pretend I planned the whole thing… so look at the images again from bottom to top. Ponder the essential emptiness of frittering away even one summer moment fussing with the camera for the sake of an unmemorable image…

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Dr. Rudi’s Rooftop Brewing

We made a pilgrimage to Rudi’s while Frank and Monique were here. The place is billed as a serious beer bar, and they did have a bunch of beers. But they also had about as much ambiance as Costco on Saturday afternoon.

I’ve spent ridiculous sums of money on ‘the best’ beers over many years in many countries and will keep on doing that. But when push comes to shove I’d rather chat with a neighbor or a bartender over a can of Ranfurly than be slung an expensive pint of Panhead but unable to talk over the classic rock station.

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Why indeed?

The Auckland Maritime Museum is having an exhibition about immigration…

We picked ‘all of the above.’

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Wow-heke

Our second visit to Waiheke Island was way better than the first time. We took a winery tour, so it helped to start drinking at 11:00 AM. In the picture above we are pointing at the helicopter that’s landing just over there. Below, toward the end of the tour we got pretty mellow and just enjoyed the views.

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Uncle Tetsu’s

Uncle Tetsu’s famous fluffy cheesecake is all the rage. So we tried one. Delicious and not a bad value. I would buy one again, but I wouldn’t make a special trip.

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Mural morals

This cool mural adorns an otherwise below-average building in Auckland. I wonder how many people have stared at it long enough to find the naughty bits?

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There’s a fine line

between being a famous architect and being an eccentric crank. But apparently Friedensreich Hundertwasser stayed on the right side. His gift to Kawakawa, where he spent a lot of his adult life, was this fancy public restroom.

If a bunch of other architects looked at the plans before it was built, would that be a pee review?

I’m relieved to have this moving attraction wiped off my bucket list. The tiles sometimes reminded me of a fast-flowing stream. Some people might poo-poo the significance of this installation, but i wash my hands of such critics. If you plumb its full depth you’ll find Hundertwasser to be #1 or #2 in his field.

Hmmm, I suppose that last might be a little close to the line that separates respectful tourism from snark. You be the judge…

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Flagstaff Hill

On our way out of Russell, we stopped off at Flagstaff Hill.

In 1840, the first Union Jack in New Zealand was flown from this very spot. But a Maori chief cut it down in protest. The Brits put up another, the Maori guy chopped it down. Three times, and then they started really fighting. The town was sacked.

Supposedly some of the original timber is still inside the heavy iron standard that now only flies the flag on ceremonial days.

We also got to see a whole family of weka, who were pretty cool. Although in point of fact the feral chickens we have complained about on Caribbean islands are more colorful and make more interesting noises. Go figure.

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Far from the madding crowds

After our day on the water, we had a really nice dinner on the waterfront. It did fill up eventually, but you don’t come to Russell for wild street parties any more. Apparently back in the day, like the 1850s, things were quite different… Nantucket whalers, British colonists, and even some of the locals got together to make this “the hellhole of the Pacific.”

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