Summer reissue: A chain of three cafes closed down and the owner blamed cycleways. But none of the cafes were anywhere near one. What is happening? Joel MacManus investigates. 

The Spinoff needs to double the number of paying members we have to continue telling these kinds of stories. Please read our open letter and sign up to be a member today.

First published September 10, 2024.

Last week, the people of Wellington reacted with shock to the news that Pandoro Panetteria would be closing its three cafe and bakery locations. In a letter taped to his cafe window, owner Tony Beazley blamed cycle lanes for the closure, alongside the economic downturn and public service layoffs. But that begged the question, which cycle lane was at fault? 

The Pandoro on Woodward St is next to a pedestrian laneway, but there’s no cycle lane to be seen. The nearest one is on Whitmore Street, 270 metres away. The Pandoro on Willis St doesn’t have one either. There’s a curb that I once crashed a Beam scooter into while eating a pie with one hand, but no bike lane. The closest thing that could be considered a bike lane is the path around the waterfront, 420 metres away over the City to Sea bridge. 

By process of elimination, the business-killing cycleway must surely be at the third Pandoro, the original site on the corner of Wakefield and Allen St. According to a Stuff article, “Foot traffic had been killed off by construction work, cycle and bus lanes on Wakefield Street.” Finally, a lead! I put on my reporter hat and went down there to question the Wakefield Street cycle lane for myself. But when I arrived, I discovered something chilling: It doesn’t exist. There is no cycle lane or bus lane on Wakefield Street, and there never has been.

Perhaps there was some confusion? In the same article, Baezley blamed “the cycle lane and bus lanes coming off Cambridge Terrace” – but that doesn’t make sense either. Cambridge Terrace is 300m away and the bus and bike lanes don’t go in the direction of Wakefield St. 

This isn’t the first time business owners have reported mysterious accounts of deadly but invisible cycleways. A florist in Newtown has repeatedly told media a cycleway “destroyed” “ruined” and had been a “king hit” for her business – but there is no cycleway outside it and there were never any on-street car parks. Last year, UFS Pharmacy on Courtenay Place closed, blaming the Golden Mile project which includes a cycleway past the shop – but that work had not started and isn’t due to start for at least another year. 

What is going on? Are these bike lanes secretly moving around in the night? Is the ghost of Wishbone involved? The mystery consumed me. I became obsessed. I retreated to my room for days, creating a complex web of pins and twine,  shouting “Pepe Silvia” at random intervals. 

Then on Saturday, I found the answer in the most unlikely of places: an opinion piece in The Post by multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur Luke Pierson. The headline was “Meet Wellington’s new elite – cyclists”. Suddenly, everything fell into place. All these strange, inconsistent claims have a simple explanation. There has been a tear in the fabric of spacetime that sucked some of our fellow citizens into a parallel reality within the same universe, sort of like the Upside Down from Stranger Things. It seems to mostly be business owners, newspaper letter writers, and uncles.  

“It’s time someone said what we’re all thinking: the cycleways have no cyclists,” Pierson wrote. This is a big giveaway that he’s in the Upside Down. In the version of Wellington I am currently experiencing (assuming this is the real Wellington) there are clearly way more cyclists than there used to be. Trying to deny that fact would be absurd, it is obvious to anyone with eyes. Compared to two years ago, cycling is up 118% on Cambridge Terrace, 76% in Thorndon, and 26% in Oriental Bay. In the other dimension, apparently no one uses the bike lanes, and they must be in slightly different locations. 

Pierson, whose house won a Home of the Year award and was featured in Home Magazine, was greatly concerned about elitism from people using one of the cheapest forms of transport. He defined Wellington’s overclass of pedal-lords as: “Tertiary educated, able bodied, professional knowledge workers with end-of-trip facilities, a spare $10k for an e-bike, and flexible working arrangements… quite a privileged group, don’t you think? And very small. I’ve run some numbers, and I reckon they represent well under 5% of the city’s population”.

The version of Wellington that exists in the other dimension must have very different demographics. Here are some numbers from our reality:

• 69% (nice) of jobs in Wellington are knowledge work roles in management, professional services or administration. 
• 47% of Wellingtonians have a bachelor’s degree or higher, the highest rate in New Zealand.
• Only 4.2% of Wellingtonians reported having a physical activity limitation.  
• Oh, and e-bikes don’t cost $10,000. Here’s a brand new one for $1,399 at Evo Cycles. 

Pierson argued anyone outside the “elite” demographic would not adopt cycling. “I doubt it will be busy parents on the school run. With the exception of an incredibly fit few, it won’t be the elderly, either.” This is another clue about the differences between the two worlds. In our reality, baby boomers are the fastest-growing market segment for e-bike sales, and parents with kids on e-bikes are an increasingly common sight around town.

It’s as if the other reality is stuck in the past. Pierson seems to be aware that e-bikes exist, so the timelines can’t have diverted that much, but he thinks they still cost $10,000. My guess is he is living sometime in the late 2000s. 

After piecing all the evidence together, here is my best theory of what has happened: 

It was an early Monday morning at Lake Karapiro on November 2, 2009. Prime minister John Key strode across a grassy embankment smiling and waving at a small cluster of media. He picked up a shiny metal spade and raised it to the sky, the handle gleaming a spark from the morning sun. In one swift, forceful motion, John Key thrust his blade downwards, deeply penetrating the moist, dewy earth. It was the official sod-turning ceremony for the first part of the New Zealand Cycle Trail, the largest investment the government has ever made in cycling infrastructure. The idea of right-wing support for cycling must have created a bubble of confused, undirected rage from talkback radio callers so severe it caused a rupture in time itself. 

When the prime minister separated that dirt from the ground, he was also separating our universes. This explains why so many people are convinced that Sir John Key is still prime minister – because in their world, he is.

I tried to call Key to ask if he knew how to put the fabric of time and space back together but he must have changed his number.