Gabi Lardies is here to reflect on the week as Mad Chapman is on leave.

Sometime last year, I decided I was going to rediscover my hometown, Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. I’ve lived here for so long that my groove of a few well-frequented streets and spots had become a bit of a bore. It was inspired, really, by jealousy. Friends with more means, or perhaps fewer responsibilities, were off on overseas adventures without return tickets, and I was wearing down my paths between home, work, Karangahape Road and Dominion Road by foot. Boring!!!

Enough of the same old smelly underground bars I’ve been going to for nearly 20 years, I thought. Enough of ordering the same cold noodles from the same restaurant for the millionth time, even though they were yum. Enough walking up Maungawhau like it’s the only good maunga in my vicinity! Auckland, I decided, could be a new city, just as cool as those in Europe. Off I went to the Lido cinema to delightfully discover its leopard print couches. I had a cocktail at Hotel DeBrett – at the art deco bar inside. I felt like I was in a Netflix 1920s period drama. I navigated the industrial part of Onehunga to get my blood racing while watching robots fight. I flew my new kite from Puketāpapa on a windy evening. Last weekend, I even went to the zoo. Just as Lyric Waiwiri-Smith was looking around Newtown Festival and thinking, “Maybe Wellington is a city, after all,” I was watching a mum point out spider monkeys to her toddler, thinking, “Maybe Auckland is a city, after all”.

Exploring a city is a skill I learned in my early 20s when I was stupid enough to move to London. I was fresh out of university, where I’d felt like a big fish in a little pond, likely because I spent far too much time actually doing my homework. I found London to be one big dreary rat race. It was hard to get work, and when I did, I’d go there while it was dark and head home after the sun had set. Worst of all, there’s no beach,  and if you go “wild swimming” in a pond, it’s best not to let your feet touch the slimy bottom where there’s likely to be broken glass. At least I got good at catching the tube to a museum, gallery or park, marvelling at its contents and then spending the rest of the day getting lost in the surrounding area. There’s no reason we can’t do that here. 

I roll my eyes at my past self when people ask me why I moved to London. The colonial view that European cities, places and culture are better and more relevant than what’s going on here was deeply ingrained – how embarrassing! Perhaps I had to go to realise that even though we’re a stupid milkloving piece of shit dumbass mean spirited sale at briscoes sexist racist 40% off deck furniture piss country much of the rest of the world is worse (reference: the news). Still, when the University of Auckland opened its new and ostentatiously expensive rec centre, it was emphasised as being a “world-class” facility to help position Auckland as a “world-class” city. So many of us feel like losers on isolated islands at the bottom of the world, and so we become pick-me girls looking for some crumbs of validation. 

The Auckland Arts Festival opened on Thursday, and a Spinoff posse went along to Belle – A Performance of Air. It’s a gorgeous and monumental homegrown work and a reminder that Aotearoa is definitely a real country with real cities, real people and real talent. In my opinion, don’t move to London unless you want to be cold and miserable.

This week on Behind the Story

When should a journalist tell their own story?

This week we published a deeply researched and reported story by Liam Rātana – The genetic gamble: Having children when you carry a hereditary condition. It takes an inside look at what many people face when they are considering starting a family – tricky ethical choices and less than ideal medical and legal systems. When Liam pitched the story in our weekly editorial meeting a few weeks ago, it was a personal experience, but he chose to focus the final article on others’ experiences and interviews with experts in the field. I wanted to know the thinking behind his approach, and what process of reporting the story had been like for him.

The stories Spinoff readers spent the most time with this week

• Ben Gatting survived doing all of New Zealand’s Great Walks back-to-back and is here to rank and review them
• IRD has called thousands of New Zealanders to raise awareness about a new security system. Unfortunately, many confused the call for a scam. Shanti Mathias explains.
• Hayden Donnell is stoked that he can finally get back to hooning past schools at dangerous speeds
• “Just go make a Marmite sandwich,” said Luxon, inadvertently revealing a Mite-y rift within the highest ranks of government. Anna Rawhiti-Connell weighs in.
• Fifty thoughtful and fun reflections from Lyric Waiwiri-Smith after nearly 80 hours of submissions on the Treaty principles bill

Comments of the week

• On The genetic gamble: Having children when you carry a hereditary condition
  “As a same-sex couple the choice to do IVF felt obvious, then our fertility doctor told us that with my genetic condition, we could get government funding for our IVF if we chose to do PGD. Despite knowing about my diagnosis for 15 years, I never knew this was an option, and when we agreed to do it, it took almost 18 months to see a genetic counsellor, which was a requirement of the process. This is such a great article because so many people with serious hereditary conditions have no idea that there are even options to explore when having kids. If we had the option to conceive naturally, I doubt we would have ever even known to pursue it.”
• On Huge win: I can finally go back to hooning past schools at dangerous speeds
  “The other way to reduce speed is to narrow the road or make it appear narrow. There was a group trying to stop racing outside their homes, the council wouldn’t/ couldn’t reduce the limit. A roading engineer recommended flower boxes randomly placed on the road side. This solved the problem. For more information on this strategy see on YouTube ‘Not just bikes’.”

Pick up where this leaves off

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