04/03/07
Text: Scott Indrisek
Journey to another dimension
New Zealand is on the bottom of the world, which means the seasons are backward and upside down, toilets flush the opposite way they do here in the Land of the Free, and flying there will literally cause you to travel through the space-time continuum, depending at which angle you skip over the International Date Line. The country—which is not, repeat not, some sort of Puerto Rico-style annexation belonging to Australia—is also home to Peter Jackson, a dude who made weird, obscene art house fare before bringing the CGI treats of Hobbiton to the silver screen. It’s also lung-ticklingly, heart-thankingly clean, i.e., the act of breathing feels like huffing pure, unadulterated oxygen, so it comes as no surprise that the official Kiwi public-relations slogan is “100% Pure,” with its intimation of the virginal and ecological.
Under the rampant generosity of New Zealand’s board of tourism and Air New Zealand, creative director/EIC Dustin Beatty and I boarded a massive winged bird for the twelve-hour Los Angeles-to-Auckland flight (what I’d refer to as “a breeze” when you factor in business-class bed pods, gourmet grub and borrowed sleeping pills). The transition, to be fair, is something of a colossal, albeit pleasant, mindfuck. For example: As I’m writing this sentence, it is 11:32 a.m. on Saturday in New York, which means it is currently 3:31 a.m. on Sunday in New Zealand. A scientific, technical mind might be able to parse this sort of thing; for me, it results in a lot of slack-jawed stumbling around.
We arrived in Wellington, the diminutive (population around 160,000) Kiwi capital, the downtown of which rings the harbor. Our hotel (Museum Hotel de Wheels) had literally been picked up and moved across the street thanks to some feat of pulleys and genius engineering in the year 1993—they relocated the place to make room for the Te Papa museum, Wellington’s cultural center, which focuses on local, mainly Maori, history.
In a far too constrictive nutshell: the Dutchman Abel Tasman came to New Zealand in 1642, followed by the intrepid Captain Cook in 1769. While interaction between the Maori and the new arrivals was never easy, the following years weren’t nearly as gross as what happened to our own Native Americans (not to mention the Australian treatment of the Aboriginal population, technically a genocide, thanks to their charming habit of kidnapping and re-educating children). Maori culture has left a wide stamp on the current face of New Zealand, and not just in those vaguely off-putting, Epcot Center-style “cultural re-enactments.” It’s in the place names (Waitara, Rotorua, Taupo), and there is a genuine atmosphere of respect, sprinkled with a healthy amount of guilt. One in seven Kiwis are Maori.
The Te Papa museum enshrines this vibe of cultural tolerance and throws it all together into a densely informative, interactive, multi-floor superdome that would probably change your life forever if you visited it on psychedelic drugs. There’s a marked emphasis on Fun for Kids, which means a virtual sheep-shearing exhibit, a virtual bungee-jumping machine and a big, incredibly freaky animatronic baby donated by Peter Jackson. (The latter has absolutely nothing to do with Maori OR New Zealand. But it will haunt your dreams.) Factor in a comprehensive survey of national art, historical artifacts and enough charts/graphs/timelines to satisfy the wonkiest history nerd, and Te Papa is one hell of a schizoid, overstuffed fun zone. Highly recommended.
Wellington itself is a cozy, semi-insular enclave whose central business area can be mastered in an afternoon. The main action revolves around two streets—Cuba Street and Courtenay Place—the former having a more (for lack of a better word) “alternative” flair, as opposed to the latter’s distinct yuppie-thug vibe. Dustin and I had mixed success chasing the midweek Kiwi nightlife (the crapulent Gomez, on tour at the amazingly named San Francisco Bath House; a mix of mellow Elvis and early Fugazi on the stereo at the inevitable low-lit hipster spot, Mighty Mighty). Unlike in our mutual home bases of New York and Los Angeles, the Kiwis appear to do the sensible thing, i.e., work during the week and save their drunken debauchery for Friday and Saturday. (We went out on “student night,” which evidently means getting insulted for wearing tight jeans, and received some obscure slurs involving My Chemical Romance.) Dustin and I were met with confused stares when we tried, a few times a day, to explain the bicoastal Yankee habit of getting soused and dancing like a lunatic on a Tuesday, leaving the weekends for the B&T set (in Kiwi parlance, see BOGAN).
