I hasten to add that no, this does not mean that the Eye of the Fish has 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 Fast forward a few centuries and the Old Bank Buildings are now superceded by Stephenson and Turners steel-framed black box, which by a curious quirk of history was now sitting on the most expensive, heavily trafficked piece of land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…!
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.
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!
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.
Initially it held the potential to be the genesis of a whole alternate off-street Wellington. From half way up Plummer’s Steps through to the Grand, up to Boulcott Street or down to the BNZ Centre food court or past the pub to the Old Bank and the prospect of a new tie at Rixon Groove.
If only they could have opened a second-storey branch tunnel from Plummer’s Steps to McDonalds, thereby shielding the citizenry from the horror that was and is Lambton Quay!
Plimmer’s Steps Henry, not Plummer’s.
Relevant to Nemo’s story – John Plimmer – often referred to as ‘the father of Wellington’, though many people contributed to the early city of course. Anyway, that’s him and his dog Fritz at the bottom of Plimmer’s steps. He was also the owner of the Inconstant that Nemo refers to – the boat that was beached and became an early trading place – some remains of which are visible in the basement of the Old BNZ.
Of course we also have Plimmerton, not Plummerton!
Incidentally John Plimmer’s son (I think) Charles bequeathed the city a large amount of money held in trust for beautification of reserves which has contributed over many decades to the betterment of the city. Oriental Bay Beach, Scorching Bay Beach, Central Park walkways etc, Otari Wilton’s Bush, upgrades of parks and reserves – like Grasslees in Tawa.
Best wishes
Andy
Thanks Andy, good to see you here. Just wondering, as you have been around Wellington politics for a while, was there ever a mandated plan for underground linkages between buildings and under roads? Was that ever WCC Policy? Or was this whole undergrounded corner just a quirk of the developers at the time? Just wondering where the effort came from…
Hi Nemo – always good to have a moment to join in the discussions!
If there was a subterranean strategy I don’t know anything about it – however if we’d been discussing it say on Tuesday (1st April) then perhaps we could have created a rumour that there was! Clearly though plans for the immediate locality have gone underground – but as you say – it has only worked on and off. Anything needs a real drawcard. JB Hi Fi seemed popular for a long time.
I remember that Filth eco-system in the early 90s: Windows on Wellington up top of the Williams building with a hotel below;; Quilter’s second-hand books on the Plimmer Steps landing; left turn through to Lambton Quay first-floor mall and another connection along to James Cook Arcade; or carry on to Alberts (?) record and CD shop at the entrance to the AA arcade; inside, down the escalator, past the fabric store, down again and emerge underground by the instrument repair place; then, into the food court for a slice of pizza or a Croix du Sud croissant (although they swapped choux pastry for sushi soon after). Instead of the 00s’ aspirations of being Portlandia South, 90s Wellington seemed to be aiming for a downtown Minneapolis feel – all under cover and easi-wipe surfaces.
Yeah! A whole weather-independent ecosystem providing blessed refuge from the diesel-sodden maelstrom raging above.
The blessed refuge also is a very good place for people to have a wee, out of the rain.
Sorry – out of the diesel-sodden maelstrom raging above….
And weirdly, and interestingly, all the words in your sentence there are very northern European, i think.
Diesel – german parentage
Sodden – must be British or Viking ?
Maelstrom – oooh, so Norwegian !
By contrast, I think that Holey Moley is perhaps Australian in origin?
Origin of maelstrom – late 16th century: from early modern Dutch (denoting a whirlpool in the Arctic Ocean, west of Norway), from maalen ‘grind, whirl’ + stroom ‘stream’.
Origin of diesel: also Diesel, type of internal combustion engine, 1894, named for Rudolf Diesel (1858-1913), German mechanical engineer .
but
The meaning of SODDEN is dull or expressionless especially from continued indulgence in alcoholic beverages. (Mirriam Webster)
Sodden -1250–1300; Middle English soden, sothen, past participle of sethen to seethe. (Dictinary.com)
Sodden – The etymological sense is of heating, not immersing. The city in Somerset, England (Old English Baðun) was so called from its hot springs. (Etymology online)
Sodden – The earliest known use of the word sodden is in the Middle English period (1150—1500). OED’s earliest evidence for sodden is from 1382, in Bible (OED).
There’s an odd pathology at work here.
First, obliterate large tracts of an authentically urban environment in order to replace it with a smoothed over and windswept no-walk zone. Next, burrow under the smoothness for an aspirational idea of how to inhabit and navigate a city. Eventually, paper over the rather frayed surface with fake urban veneer – referencing a time and place that never existed.
Disneytown.
I think that of the 25 years I have lived in Wellington, I must have crossed that road at least twice a day, so about 12,500 times – yet only twice have I crossed below ground. It is just not necessary.
Aaah, so Frank Stark is actually Starkive then…?
Who’d a thought?
I think they’d be happy* with Disneytown’s visitor numbers Frank.
*like dangerously ecstatically dementedly happy
So what I want to know is: Has anyone apart from me, ever gone into the most recent incarnation of the underground lair? ie has ANYONE been to Holey Moley? Did they really ever / never have any customers?
I have had friends go, and they say it was extremely claustrophobic, and even moreso when there was another group of people trying to play the greens.
Duck Island is the main drawcard for me and my troupe of wee seamonkeys. Maybe Behemoth, and a few of the eateries? But Cirque Electrique is a copy of the cancerous video faux-cade that is Timezone.
Give me a good old spacies parlour like Wizards or Time Out instead, where you at least play a digital game, as opposed to participating in updated, overstated carnie sideshows that have some extra bells & whistles.
Never went there or knew it existed
BTW the rusting steel frame of the building standing there during the boilermaker’s strike was known as the Rusting Tower of Visa at the time
There is a prominent house on the Khandallah hillside that was built with BNZ bailout money, never proved, of course
Never went there 60? I thought you would have been there every lunch time, every weekend, and every time you came into town?! Or… could it be that this was the most stupid, least appropriately targeted, biggest waste-paper basket of “pouring money down the drain” since someone last suggested investigating whether “NZ should build a tunnel between the two islands?”
Rusting Tower of Visa – that’s a good name. I remember flying into Wellington back then and seeing it for the first time, bright orange with rust, for all the world looking like a children’s erect-a-set toy. Couldn’t quite believe it was really true. Wish I had taken some photos of it back then !