The Wrong Side of my Car

The blog that wants to go obsolete

A stroll on Hobson Street, in 2025

A recurring theme around here is walking in places where you’d not normally walk as a tourist, and today we revisit Hobson Street, which is basically the origin story of this blog.

It is always interesting to see if anything changed. Is it still all just parking? Well it is not Antwerpen so it must be, right?

First, Vogel lane, which we visited back in 2018.

Uh, well, the parking lot degraded a bit — contrary to popular belief parking is not cheap, and I suspect many commercial body corporates are painfully aware of that.

But if we keep walking on Hobson Street we do find a change.

A newly renovated footpath. Who would have thought?

But, what if I tell you nobody actually lives on this city block? Indeed, on the left we have uh… whatever that thing with the intercity bus stop is, and on the right, a convention centre that may or may not remind you of a certain Bloodhound Gang song.

So we continue, and across Wellesley Street we find another densely populated couple of city blocks. You may remember a Music Works shop here, but that is now gone. Instead we have a very welcome open space here where people can enjoy some open spa—

Just kidding of course. It is parking.

And will someone please explain this to me.

The view of those motorway gantry signs between all those apartments never gets old. I’m not sure if whoever is in charge here knows how city streets work.

So now for those wondering what footpaths look like in city blocks that do actually have population: It is not good.

Some more open space between the apartment buildings, which of course is car parking.

We will end the walk on Nicholas Street, which we have visited a couple of times before.

Looking between two buildings towards Hobson Street we see what could be a nice pedestrian lane, not unlike Freyberg Place (including stairs), but of course it is car parking.

You can now walk from here straight to Wellesley Street, across this open space (which of course is car parking). Auckland city blocks are annoyingly large if you’re on foot. It can take a while to walk around a block, especially if you are not young & fit enough to walk the prescribed 5 km/h. So here we see some interesting possiblilities opening up.

And looking back, those two little cottages are still there. Behind those cottages is also a walkway to Nelson Street. Two is incidentally a good number of cottages to heritage protect. On the left is some extra open space, which of course is car parking. Hey at least we’re consistent.

And that concludes our walk.

Overall it is quite disappointing that, despite having had apartments here since the late 1990’s, and despite so many people living here, so little care is taken of the streetscapes around here.

Postscript

If you’re a contractor and you need to bury some pipe or wire, put the damn pavers back when you’re done.

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