Posts by Rob Stowell
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There was a certain something about the Harris gang. The oddest/funniest moment I witnessed (apart from the lotto thing, of course) was one day they spent at tvnz in chch, waiting for an interview with Holmes. They sat around patiently for hours: a couple of ginger-beerded zz-top looking hoons, one big, one little. The closest I got was sharing the lift- there wasn't much small-talk...
But then, about 5 ish, it became apparent the i/v with holmes wouldn't happen (i think it might've just been a link issue) and it was suggested they be interviewed by the local reporter for the holmes programme. They were quite indignant. It was holmes or no-one. They were incredibly sure of themselves- and I felt at the time, of their semi-"mythic" stature. They marched out of the building strutting with self-righteous indignation. -
Emma, you knew the harris gang? We should get a wiki entry going. Ok I've got no real insights or anythin- but it's a great story.
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yeah, I've very rarely and only in the distant past felt endangered either. and in fact only been beaten up at home (when I called a scungy flat home) a very long time ago.
i've seen the odd incident, some of which involved crazy guys/road rage/and a couple of tangential/sideways encounters with the harris gang (who deserve their own wiki entry).
but as emma has wisely noted- we live in a different city from our kids. -
Snap. My partner thought my laughter was cruel, and she was right.
all the freedom she earns with our trust
The problems arrive as the trust leaves, that's for sure.
But it's not entirely simple then, either. When the kids hit 16 you're conscious there's only a couple of years left that parental opinions/rules will have any material impact. And I'm conscious that in some ways what my parents didn't know was a biggish factor in their trust for me. And that teenagers need some space/privacy/secrets.
You have to rebuild trust in little blocks here and there sometimes. Trust in their good sense or self-preservation in a general way. And sometimes just cross your fingers and hope. -
With an ageless Michael Laws as Snake Plissken
He's more likely to be the comic relief sidekick don't you think?.
Only if you equate vomiting with laughing. 'Tho his brief appearance on "Dancin mit der Tzars" was amusing, in a train-wreck kind've way.
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I "seem to remember" <early alzheimers! what does that mean?> the chch police chief saying on the radio last night that 85% of arrests in Chch have alcohol as a factor. Makes "p" seem like a wussy pre-school drug! (nb: I am not advocating, defending, nor indeed selling, p!)
Can you imagine a "dry" NZ? And how entwined with a drug can a culture get before things turn a little nasty?
I've never been a "good keen drinker" but enjoy a drink or three in the right circs. More, I like a lot of the laddish, round-the-barbie, down the bottle-store carry-on: its part of our national identity.
But I'm a bit scared of how keen kids are on getting plastered. Our daughter decided she didn't want a 15th birthday party 'cos we wouldn't serve alcohol- so none of her friends would really want to come. I supported lowering the drinking age, and now think it was a mistake. I buy all my beer at the supermarket, and I'm not sure that's such a good idea either. But the roots of that drink/culture embrace go a lot deeper. -
Ditto re: sadness about Deborah. Cue the final curtain. Darkness in the th*ar*e.
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Skinheads- yeah, I asked some (auckland) skins to leave a party once- they were wandering around openly looking for stuff to steal- and ended up getting a bottle of beer (back in the day of decent-sized bottles) smashed over my head. Luckily the top of one's skull is quite hard. I just kept on trying to push them out the door, and they had run out of tricks, and skedaddled (?).
OTOH I still have a chipped tooth from a chch bootboy who actually knew how to fight (I didn't- and was befuddled enough not to have another exit strategy) and didn't mind kicking a dork who was down.
I think it was primarily about boredom. Teaching kids how to deal with boredom (entertain yrself!) is very worthwhile. Like anxiety, there's constructive boredom.... And maybe that's part of the issue too: teenagers live for excitement. And while that often means doing things that aren't exactly safe, there are degrees and ways of being unsafe- and most of them don't involve endangering others. -
There seems to be a feeling that chch is a particularly violent city. I've lived most of my life in the area, and I've felt that vibe plenty of times. Not lived in Auckand, but Wellington and Sydney after dark seemed safer.
On the other hand, I don't think the statistics bear this out. From the (few) I've been able to glean, Chch has a slightly lower rate of violent crime than NZ as a whole. Interestingly, the councils own "safer city" strategy finds while most people feel safe in their homes and neighbourhoods, only 29% feel safe in the centre city after dark. (That'd be the teens and twenty-year olds that flock to bars?)
There's a feeling after dark on chch weekends of slightly mad, out-of-control male aggression. Guys who are looking for it. Incredibly tense people you might be able to talk out of hitting you- or not. I've seen a little of it- moments when the "social contract" just dissolved, and fight or flight became a reality.
The casual racism of the text message is chilling- not just because it's nasty, but also the way it plays into a racist chch narrative- a very easy one to slip into. (My 15-year-old daughter got the party text- many 1000s of kids who didn't go, surely got it too- if she's still got it I'll check the wording. If she'll let me near the phone...) If racism in some form triggered the killer- perhaps made him snap- that's shocking too. Chch is still quite insular and white- though that has also changed a lot in the last 15 years.
There's also a social disconnect here: priveledge and poverty aren't seperated by, eg the mangere bridge: a street or two from Fendalton you're in amongst the state housing. People sometimes talk about high-schools as if where you went matters (one of the bigger racial changes has been to see a lot of asian kids at the "elite" private schools.) There's snobbery and "in-crowds" a-plenty- but then I don't think that's unique.
There's also a biggish "underworld"- prostitution, a fairly big drug culture, some nasty gangs. And "binge-drinking" in spades. It's never been as "respectable" (nor as conservative- we consistently vote well to the left of Auckland) as the stereotype- and maybe the stereotypes do some damage.
It's flat and we have a fohn wind... but it's also not the "rural" city some commenters seem to describe: big enough to have some "big-city" problems- and to be a major (in nz terms) manufacturing and it centre.
Yet I still think the city is taking a bit of a bad rap here. The stats don't come through with a portrait of a city in deperate thrall to out-of-control violence- and that's not the experience I get from inhabitants, either. -
NOT that I'm suggesting you'd ever do that... wouldn't want to add insult to injuries.