Mayor Bob Harvey

Top picks for 2009

Every year I give a list of the top movies, books, restaurants and movies I have found out West. My job has never been tougher than in 2009. Everyone from blockbuster movie directors to part time local bands has been producing quality work.

Atop an outstanding crop of non-fiction books are the autobiography of celebrated Kiwi artist Dick Frizzell and the biography of photographer Marti Friedlander. Frizzell is famous for creating counter cultural work using pop culture icons, while Friedlander's mix of social activism and artistic instinct has cemented her among our most celebrated photographers. Author Hillary Mantel deserves credit for her outstanding Booker Prize winning work of fiction, Wolf Hall.

I'm a movie lover and this year's films have been inspiring. Up, Woodstock and Kiwi offering The Strength of Water were engrossing, original, illuminating and humane. Chinese film Red Cliff was simply epic.

All too often the best music goes almost unnoticed. I've tried to give some deserved credit to some under the radar local artists producing spectacular work. Praise has to go to cowgirl turned Westie Lori Crandall for setting her life saving fight against family violence to stirring country music.

Runaway winner of the best restaurant title has to go to Bunga Raya Restarant on Great North Rd. Its food selection and service are unparalleled. Chapati Indian Restaurant deserves a special mention.

I've never been more grateful for great culture, entertainment and eating than in 2009. They have provided a welcome break from the gloom of economic recession and super city reform.

Let's hope for more of the same in 2010.

See the full list of awards below:

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Full list of awards (Size 54K)

What I've been thinking

2012: A doomsday flick with Super City links

You all need to go and see the film 2012 which is running at West City and Westgate. It's a perfect film following those Norsga marathons that you have been attending lately. But spoiler alert for those of you who haven't: I'm about to give the ending away. Mind you, even knowing the ending won't spoil this one. The world ends. But it's not as they say the destination that matters, it's how you get there.

It seems that about 5,000 years ago the Mayan empire, who were serious astrologers and mathematicians, created a calendar which has rarely been wrong. It's predicted all the planets, comets and galactic heavenly spins and positions. Pretty hard to do without binoculars or a good telescope. Unfortunately for us the calendar finishes abruptly on 10 November 2012 (so at least we get to see the Rugby World Cup) and then says the Mayans, the earth starts heating up. Not warming but seriously boiling. If you are serious about this and I'm sure you are not you could look at the excellent Mayan calendar site on Google.

But now back to the movie. This is the disaster movie to end all disaster movies, more outrageous than Independence Day, and certainly a long way from The Towering Inferno or Battlestar Galactica's rag-tag battlefleet, even The War of the Worlds. The whole of the crust of the earth is pulled apart piece by piece, and then of course there are huge alterations in the earth's crust causing waves over a kilometre high that swamp everything, including the Himalayas. I guess little old New Zealand would be swamped very quickly, in fact even Mt Cook would be under water. Doesn't leave much hope for the Piha and Karekare folk. But wait the good , the bright and the super rich including the Queen, the Whitehouse staff and every head of state - I guess that will include John Key and Phil Goff - are given a ticket and a berth to join a bunch of saviours of the human race bunked down on a fleet of concrete and steel "arks" built in China in the years 2010 and 2011. They are ready to go like rockets and when the waves hit they float up and the gates open and there's triumphal music with powerful chords and the sea is beautiful and it's a new day dawning and oh wait 7 billion people are dead. To be honest the movie is certifiably nuts but then I often think Local Government falls into that category too - now and then.

For those of you working in local government in little old New Zealand, this will be a familiar scenario. We know there aren't enough lifeboats for the elected members, let alone the staff toiling away in the engine room. I smell doom. The institutions that we have built up carefully over the last twenty years are being systematically pulled apart. They had been built to last for a century, and they are simply being ripped this way and that as the governance reforms simply sweep us all away.

If we were really honest, these reforms were not just about efficiency and transparency and the usual bureaucratic nonsense. No, it's much more than that - it's because we all know what goes on inside these massive institutions. We have known for the last twenty years.

What is in here is a code for living together as human beings. It's filled with people who try and give you the time of day. Who try and get things right. Who form plans that try to improve things for everyone. Who don't live as if profit and power and selfishness and survival were the only way of dealing with each other. We're like an alternative to the entire banking system.

It ain't utopia. But it's a place where there are ideals about public service still held. It's a best shot at making things right with the world.

We are now right in the midst of the rage over Copenhagen. We know it will all possibly end in failure, and with that the end of the world as we know it will occur and there is not a damn thing that any of us can now do about it. Because we were all given a chance to get it right, to unify and turn the damage that we had all caused around. Truly, to save the world.

My version of that, our version, Waitakere's version, was called the eco-city. We worked at it for 20 years. That in a sense is our contribution to Copenhagen. I t came from a conference they held 20 years ago about sustainability called Rio. From that, we made changes and united people and healed the land and tried to turn people away from roads and cars towards rail and reducing waste and saving the forest and the water and everything good. We stood for peace. Not everything worked, I'll grant you that. And there are always those who jeer and cross their arms and say good honest selfishness is a lot more efficient. Do nothing.

But the point of the world is to engage with it, to try and change it for the better. To try and be something more than a tiny little cork on a great capitalist ocean where there are no landscapes to enjoy, no way of navigating a better future. Our job as human beings is to try and set out a course and take people with you, because sure the journey really means something. But so does getting there.

I really have no idea any more whether our central government really gets it. Not even the entire world's governments can see it though the facts are plain as day to their faces. I'm not sure I care any more. My own attempt at railing against the destruction of the world - together with thousands of Mayors and cities - is being systematically taken apart and there is not a damn thing I can do about it.

This is the way the world ends for us. We have done our best. We have nothing to regret or to be afraid of any more because there is nothing more that they can do to us.

West City has a deal where for a reduced price for staff and for those of you who are of Senior Citizen status - you can get in for half price. It's about time you get in a movie before Christmas - treat yourself. I think it could help you understand that 2012 is going to be a difficult year. In the meantime I urge you to ... Launch your lifeboats.

What I've been reading

Puketutu and its people

Paul Goldsmith and Michael Bassett
116 pages

A mystery island to most Aucklanders - Puketutu on the Manukau Harbour has a rich history. Paul Goldsmith tells its story engagingly and accurately. After years of being badly treated by quarry farming and foresting, the Island that was home to beer baron Henry Killiher has a new future. Supported by Watercare, this is a rich and handsome publication. Beautifully illustrated, rich in maps and watercolours - a finely researched gem.

Remember me

Derek Hansen
Pub: HarperCollins
390 pages

Like Hansen I grew up in the Ponsonby/Grey Lynn area. Same age. Same people. This book rings true. It begins with its young hero being told a terrible secret that changes his life and those of his family and neighbours. The tale is finely woven and brilliantly told. It unfolds its web from Great Barrier Island to Berlin and then back again. Hansen brings the insular and conservative culture of 1950s Auckland to life in this truly authentic adventure. A clever, thrilling tale from a master story teller.

The Human House

Tony Watkins
215 pages
Karaka Bay Press

In some senses this book is a catalogue of a man railing against a bureaucratic system that seems to make less and less sense as the years pass. It is such a simple conception: to be able to take charge of your own land and your own building of your own house and to do to it what you will without constant interference. It's also a world away from the boom-bust cycle of real estate capitalism that we have seen over the past decade. Tony Watkins still writes with an innate faith in the sensible-ness of ordinary people to make straight decisions.

It's also a meditation, with illustrations and aphorisms to guide any weary soul. It tells you to pay attention to the place that you are in, pay attention to how you turn a shack into a dwelling. The built qualities that make a house a home. At every turn he encourages us to make things ourselves. To make mistakes and to really turn against the alientation of professionalisation that comes with hiring squds of builders, engineeers, architects and the like.

I am going through the full house-building process myself. It is truly hideously over-professionalised. There has got to be no point in history in which modern humans are more alienated from our own capacity to make something our own way in our own time and exactly the way our hands made it.

You don't have to read this book all at once. In fact I recommend that you wait until you are ready to address a change in where you live. Think again about whether you really need to go into debt about it, hire consultants, rack up tens of thousands of professional fees. Pull your own autonomy back to yourself. Recycle more. Make the finished textures under your own hands precisely the way you want them. You don't have to put up with the temporary, the quick, the shiny and impenetrable. Your house should be the favourite jacket that you wear.

If it isn't, read this book again.

Castles in the Sand

Raewyn Peart
Pub: Craig Potton Publishing
276 pages

Roadhouse Days

Drew Harre and Dave Harre
Pub: Little Island Press
140 pages

This piece of Westie folklore manages to capture the heart of a family and the raw essence of a restaurant. You can almost smell the food as it is rushed from kitchen to table in Oratia’s former Town and Country Roadhouse. The bustle of the kitchen is set against the dynamic of the Harre family as they revolve around the central figure of matriarch Marge Harre.

Though in its essence a piece of family history, the book succeeds in its ability to immerse you within the Harre world. Reading it feels like having a conversation in the kitchen of the Roadhouse of old. Stories, from the scandalous to the ordinary, echo through its pages. They are accentuated by recipes which give flavour and smell to this excellent account of a family, a house and a restaurant.

What I've been viewing

Woodstock

Michael Wadleigh
Running time: 185 minutes

Go see what we looked like 40 years ago before KFC and McDonalds wrecked our lives. Didn't we look young, brown and skinny? We were free and in love. It was the age of flower power. Vietnam raged outside, but for three days on that dairy farm near New York, peace reigned. Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Jimi Hendrix provided the music. It was the sound of a generation staking its claim in history.

Strength of water

Armagan Ballantyne
Running time: 86 minutes

Ten-year-old twins Kimi and Melody live on the shores of the Hokianga. A tragedy changes everything and everybody. Beautifully shot and acted, this is clearly the best New Zealand film of the year. A fine piece of work.

Rain of the Children

Vincent Ward
Running Time: 130 minutes

I spent many years on the Film Commission, and one of the sadnesses and also one of the joys was dealing with the hopes and ambitions of Vincent Ward as he would pitch his new films to the commission. I consider Ward to be one of our truly great creative artists in film; multi talented and totally and absolutely committed to his craft.
Rain of the Children is a masterpiece. It takes a timeline from his early short film, In Spring One Plants Alone, probably the best short film ever made in this country. Ward made this film aged 21, fresh out of film school, and the subject of the film, Puhi, is revisited in The Rain of Children. This new feature answers some of the mysteries that the original work held. Returning to the Ureweras and the site of the original film, Ward now enlarges the scope, vision and cast; flashing backwards and forwards as we begin to understand the mysteries and the deep emotional tragedies that were held sacred to Tuhoe and the Urewera community of Maungapohatu in the time of Maori prophet, Rua Kenana. Be prepared for an emotional heart rending epic . Totally amazing, absorbing. Unforgettable.

Soldiers - Great North

The Warrior in Me - Lori Crandall

Sister Moon - Luke Hurley

What I've been listening to

Soldiers

Artist: Great North

In a crowded music industry, where anyone with a guitar or a set of drums can make a CD, it's hard to spot a new sound. Well, Great North is just that.

Hayden Donnell is the voice and writing brains behind this extraordinarily powerful CD. Lyrics make the difference - always have. It's the songs that matter. Black River is an outstanding track in a stunning line up.

Go buy it soon for you and your best friend. Ten stars.

The Warrior in Me

Artist: Lori Crandall

Born in cowboy country but now a Westie, Lori is a woman on a mission. What a voice and what a message.

At a time when New Zealand is being told "It's not OK" Lori tells about the hell and heartbreak of violence and its destructive path. She sings with a pure rich poignancy. Track 2 is astounding - the back up sound rich. Lori is a natural treasure. A singing hero of a massive battle against domestic violence. Every home should have one.

Sister Moon

Artist: Luke Hurley

Hurley is one of New Zealand's finest artists. An insider whose talent is undeniable. His question on the Erebus tragedy is a milestone in New Zealand music. Sister Moon is a brilliant return to his pure essence. Only Love and Nothing in Return are simply brilliant.

A street and concert performer as well as a city busker Hurley is a man who understands the way we work and who we are. Great cover art is by Russian artist Elena.

Where I've been eating

Let's Go Retro

Retro lovers are revelling in the new Retro Cafe‚ on Henderson's main drag.

Not only is the place decked out with fantastic formica tables and Crown Lynn pieces the menu features good old mince on toast and macaroni cheese.

Owner Tom Gardiner now lives in Laingholm and is loving being a westie but his cafe‚ has Grey Lynn and Ponsonby written all over it. Tom did indeed own and run a couple of cafes in town but his move west is definitely our gain.

The coffee is exceptional and the menu billed traditional Caesar salad is just that - traditional - as well as delicious.

For those visiting the cafe‚ who want to tune into their uber cool city selves there's bircher muesli for breakfast and fennel, pea and lemon risotto for lunch.

And speaking of the menu that's another cool thing about this cafe‚ - the menus are copies of old record sleeves.

Really this place is a veritable feast for those into the retro experience and the great food, coffee and service is simply stand out. What's more the bits and pieces that add to the delightful decor are for sale.

I thoroughly recommend this place and it's just so good to see this kind of outlet in Henderson and the west.

And just on that I should mention that some of the fixtures and fittings at the Retro caf‚e are on loan from Let's Go Retro, a fantastic shop now occupying the old Signal Gallery in Swanson which is well worth a visit, on a regular basis.

Groovy.

What I've been saying

Mayor Bob Harvey's Memorable Quotes

• Often the people who slip on banana skins are the ones who peeled the bananas in the first place.
• It's not hard for roosters to quickly become feather dusters.
• You can fill a hall with people who are against something and only a phone box with people trying to cheer something on.
• Westies will do anything if you ask them and nothing if you tell them.
• In politics it's wrong to be right too soon.
• Never mark the spot where you have buried the hatchet.
• My Councillors do all the heavy lifting, I just do leadership.
• The Council propose and the voters dispose.
• If you get a lemon, make lemonade.

Top picks for 2008

Note: You will need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer in order to view and print these documents.  For help opening PDF files or tips on copying information see Helpful Tips.

Top Picks for 2008 (Size 29K)