I hasten to add that no, this does not mean that the Eye of the Fish has not gone bankrupt, nor has the entire city of Wellington (situated on the edge of the great fish eye of the harbour), but instead, completely predictably, the stupid underground location of Willis Lane and Holey Moley beneath the BNZ tombstone / State Insurance building / What is it this week Tower? / Darth Vader’s pencil case… it has inevitably sent the thing into liquidation. Is it just the Willis Lane Wilson BBQ that is now bust? Or has the Moley also gone all Wholey? How could it survive? Who even knows? It’s all just so much stupidity. Is this really the best location for teenagers on holiday to hang out? I mean, honestly, who gave the green light for this idiocy in the first place?

Let’s have a closer look at the BNZ basement throughout history, or at least a decent chunk of it – if we skip the era pre humans, it was a beach, or more simply, sea-bed, until the Maori and Pakeha turned up and decided to build houses. It was a crazy corner, with eternally bad weather, then the remains of the ship Inconstant got stuck fast on the beach. After some reclamation, i guess the level of the beach must have got built up a bit. BNZ built banks, and amalgamated with others, so we got Old Bank 1, Old Bank 2 and probably Old Bank 3. Architects like Thomas Turnbull I believe. Fast forward a few centuries and the Old Bank Buildings are now superceded by Stephenson and Turners steel-framed black box, which by a curious quirk of history was now sitting on the most expensive, heavily trafficked piece of land in the country. SO many people crossing back and forth every day, that for some crazy reason, someone at WCC / BNZ felt that mere pedestrian crossing signals would not be enough, and nothing but a subterranean foot tunnel would do. And you all know about the malarkey that constructing the BNZ took, don’t you? Nine years…!

Very false brickwork, laid by very poor workmen, pretending to be an arch. Just: NO.

There must have been a time when this made perfect sense, but honestly, for the last 30 years this just seems like a fraud. It is, after all, usually sunny in Wellington, albeit sometimes a trifle windy. The corner is busy with traffic from buses and pedestrians alike, but not that busy, and frankly I’d rather take my chances crossing on foot at ground level, than having to go down some stairs on one side of the road, through underneath the ground / at sea level to the other side, and then back up to fresh air again. Along the way underground were of course situated several unique retail opportunities, staffed by a semi-human equivalent of mole-rats, that never saw daylight. An underground cobbler mending underground shoes, a sunless salon selling underground tanning sessions, uniquely subterranean Subway subs for sale, and once upon a time even underground newspapers selling underground news. Sadly though, there was never an underground railway, nor an UndergrounD railway.

Yes indeed, bent steelwork, because that’s how buildings are really held up.

More recently, as in the last two years, the underground burger bars and sushi salons have been supplanted by an underground golf course, underground clown show, and underground amusement arcade, because if there is one thing that this city needs more of, it is bankers and financiers who think of themselves as clowns and want to play underground putt-putt with an over-priced sandwich at lunchtime while sitting below ground in a bunker, while outside the sun might be shining. The mole-rats have probably departed since Wellington has become Predator Free (the only predators here are the human kind), and no one has leather shoes any more on which to cobble their souls. Or soles. Oh, cobblers!

Peak hour at the Underground Fun Fair. Just look at all the people having fun!

Luckily, before this place went inevitably bust, as it has been promising to do so since Day One, I went in and took some photos when it opened. There was bugger-all people there then, and just as it is today, there are bugger-all people there today. I mean, there are bugger-all people working in Wellington at all these days, and bugger-all people in all the buildings right now, and certainly bugger-all people with the time, money or inclination to go sit underground and play putt-putt with a clown at lunchtime. Especially as the world now has a golf-playing clown with bad make-up, a silly wig, and a badly comical extra long bright red tie, leading the world into World War Three on the news every day.

No, instead of all that. I’d just rather go to sit beside the beach and talk to the fishes, as you do.

Farewell Willis Lane, we barely knew you at all, you never had a chance at all…