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.
Riding the bicycle from Birkenhead to Takapuna
A while ago I filmed my ride from Birkenhead to Takapuna. You can do this ride mostly on quiet streets. Mostly, but not entirely.
Loitering around in Northcote Point
Northcote Point is a bit… special. There is not many places in Auckland where you’ll find this sort of landscape.
What's wrong with Aotea Square?
Aotea Square is often described as barren and wind-swept. A hole in our city. Why is that?
The pink path
There’s a new cycle path in town. It is very pink and called Te Ara I Whiti or LightPath. The path starts at the end of Nelson Street, where it goes from what is now the only proper cycle path in this part of town, to Upper Queen Street, where you can then continue on the Grafton Gully cycle path and the NorthWestern Cycle path. It takes you right over the spaghetti junction.
The Tow-Away sign, the measure of success in Auckland
In Auckland, the way to show you have successfully established your business, is by displaying a Tow-Away sign:
A stroll on Hobson and Nelson Street
Well, I can hear you thinking already. If you’re going to the city for a stroll, you’re supposed to go to Queen Street. With its little pedestrian alleys on the sides. Its Barne’s dances. But it doesn’t mean it always have to be the same street stealing the limelight, right?
So on we go. These two streets are well known as where you go on or off the Southern motorway.
We’ll start on the South. The southern end of both streets is one of the main entries to the city, where streams of cars from the South and West exit the Spaghetti Junction. But believe it or not, in a few months a bicycle path will emerge from the junction as well, right here, in the middle. More on that later.
