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SocietySeptember 21, 2022

WTF is going on at Bashford Antiques? Where the Mister Organ story all began

Contributing writer
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The trailer for David Farrier’s new documentary Mister Organ is out now. This is the story, first published in 2016, that started it all.

Read the rest of the Bashford Antiques saga here.

The only tweet I’ve ever been “forced” to delete was about Bashford Antiques.

It happened about three years ago, when I was working at TV3. One of my colleagues came into the office in tears.

I just got her to recount the story to me again, because my memory was a little fuzzy:

“It was mid-morning on a week-day. I parked for less than 10 minutes in an unmarked park in the car park outside Bashford Antiques – an area they share with another business.

I was visiting the place right beside it to get a new ear-piece for work, only to find my car half-winched onto the back of a tow-truck when I walked out.

Such a heartwarming memory of two grown men – one a large burly tow truck driver (who called me a “Ponsonby wanker” for having a coffee in my hand), the other a small, mean little man from Bashford Antiques.

Both stood over me as I sat in my car, verbally abusing me at very close range – the little man threatening me with trespass notices – while I wept and shook uncontrollably (admittedly still breastfeeding and hormonal as hell), refusing to pay the $250 cash they were demanding before releasing my car from the truck.

They eventually wore me down and I paid up. I was a total emotional wreck and I have never ever been in a situation like it before or since.”

After hearing this story back in 2013, I tweeted something along the lines of, “Bashford Antiques made my colleague cry, stay away from this awful place”.

Shortly afterwards I got an email from management, telling me the CEO of Mediaworks wanted me to delete my tweet, immediately. I stuck my feet in, but eventually backed down. Job security and all that.

‘He mea tautoko nā ngā mema atawhai. Supported by our generous members.’
Liam Rātana
— Ātea editor

Why did he want me to delete it? I don’t know. He probably loved antiques.

But I’ve always been a bit annoyed about it.

Bashford Antiques can do what they want on their own property I suppose – including towing. They can tow, tow, tow all day long. But it was more their behaviour around the towing that I thought was a bit odd.

Three years later: Bashford Antiques is still going strong

Bashford Antiques came crashing back into my consciousness last week, when TV3’s Story ran a Story story about them.

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It focused on a driver who says she parked in one of Bashford’s four carparks, which was unmarked (two of Bashford’s parks have no-parking warnings, two do not).

The driver got clamped, and was approached pretty quickly by a clamper demanding $220 cash.

This sounded an awful lot like what happened to my colleague three years ago, but with clamping instead of towing.

Now technically, Bashford Antiques can clamp. They can do pretty much whatever they want to do to cars on their property.

They can, for example:

  1. Cover the cars in chocolate sauce
  2. Take a big poo on the bonnet
  3. Tow them
  4. Clamp them

Thing is, I found myself not really caring about the act of clamping itself… I was more curious about who was doing the clamping. That’s where Story went next:

“The clamper said he worked for Premiere Clamping Services but when Story investigated there was no company registered with that name and we were unable to get hold of anyone using the phone number on the clamping sign.”

So, “Premiere Clamping Services” may or may not exist.

On top of this, Story reported that Bashford Antiques denies any link to the clamping company, which potentially isn’t real.

It’s worth watching the whole video, as things get increasingly feral. A tow truck is called in. Then the owners of Bashford Antiques decide to chuck some road cones across the parks of the neighboring business, which apparently doesn’t mind people parking there after hours.

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A cynical brain might ask: surely they weren’t trying to divert drivers into their parks where they could clamp, clamp, clamp and tow, tow, tow?

The story ends with this guy – someone associated with Bashford Antiques – saying “Bully, bully, bully!” to Dale, the reporter.

I wasn’t sure he was saying “bully” to the right person.

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The follow-up

Stuff.co.nz decided to follow up Story’s story by inviting the owner of Bashford Antiques to speak her mind. She appeared in a video, which is primarily notable for featuring what appears to be the world’s saddest dog.

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SOMEONE HELP THIS DOG. SCREENSHOT: STUFF.CO.NZ

She talks as if her Ponsonby carpark has turned into a kind of modern day Sodom and Gomorrah:

“These people have defecated here, there’s been drug dealing, prostitution, and vandalism.”

When asked about whether she profits from the $220 clamping fee, she seemed a bit more unsure than in her statement to Story, this time saying it’s “neither here nor there”.

The Bashford backlash

Soon afterward, people started flooding Bashford Antiques’ Facebook page with negative comments.

Bashford had flown into full damage control mode. Their main technique appeared to be telling everyone to piss off.

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The line that really stood out for me was, “all accounts of Bashford Antiques Ltd are certified by the prestigious firm of Marsden Robinson Chow”.

It’s seemed like quite a grandiose way to describe an accounting practice. Also, I wasn’t sure why they were bothering to describe it in the first place.

It reminded me a lot of the language I encountered when I first met Jane O’Brien Media, a company in America that took great pride in talking about its giant legal team and wonderful ethics, and would often spontaneously ERUPT into capital letters.

I felt like I was in familiar territory.

The lawyer

After seeing comments like that, I was curious to see what Bashford Antiques had been like in the past.

It quickly became apparent that Bashford’s Facebook page was riddled with interesting comments and reviews.

This 1-star review, and accompanying allegations, from June 2016 stood out:

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I got in touch with the reviewer’s sister, Jessica, and was told that she’d emailed owner Jillian Bashford-Evans directly – and that Jillian had replied:

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There were those capital letters again, shouting.

This time, there was talk of defamation, which was signed off by a lawyer.

I don’t know who was wrong and who was right in this exchange, but I was definitely drawn to the words MDA ORGAN MA [HONS] LLM [HONS].

The legalese reminded me again of the run-in I’d had with people making legal threats.

I remembered the lack of clarity over the nature of the clamping company patrolling Bashford’s Antiques, Premiere Clamping Services.

So what about the person behind this letter, MDA Organ? Who is MDA Organ?

While I have no reason to doubt this person’s credentials, no Organs can be found in the law society database:

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And the only “Organ” lawyer I could find anywhere else was Dean Organ, of Dean J Organ & Associates. I e-mailed him asking if he had ever had anything to do with Bashford Antiques. He replied:

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Now, there is a “Michael Organ” on Facebook who has commented on some of Bashford’s bad reviews, and left a review of his own:

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Could Michael “Low Class People” Organ be our mysterious “MDA Organ”? Or is Michael simply a man with the same last name and a passion for antiques?

Or was he made up by Jillian?

That would be quite weird.

Or is it even weirder? Had the owner of Bashford Antiques once employed the services of a sex-shop owner who masqueraded as a blue-blooded prince, and was eventually jailed for stealing a yacht?

MDAORGAN

Michael Daniel Albert Organ.

AKA Count Michael Andrassy-Organe.

AKA Prince Michael Organe-Schirinksi.

AKA… MDA Organ… of Bashford Antiques?

What the fuck is going on here?

Who is MDA Organ? Who is Premiere Clamping Services? WHO IS REAL?

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The Bashford Antiques Saga
Keep going!
Badly hand-drawn cycle detour safey sign with word-art meme overlay
Vision Zero is about caring for more vulnerable road users like people walking or cycling, children and the elderly.

OPINIONSocietySeptember 20, 2022

How one broken underpass represents everything that is wrong with Auckland

Chief technology officer
Badly hand-drawn cycle detour safey sign with word-art meme overlay
Vision Zero is about caring for more vulnerable road users like people walking or cycling, children and the elderly.

A surprise underpass closing led to mayhem, frustration and danger for non-motorist commuters.

There’s an underpass on Auckland’s cycle superhighway where it intersects Te Atatu Road. Only made possible through relentless lobbying by bike advocates, this underpass is a wonderful bit of infrastructure allowing people on bikes to glide safely beneath the traffic, neither interfering with the other. Riding past the artwork in the underpass feels like the future – a future where active transport is valued at least equally with motor vehicles.

When I say “an” underpass I really mean “an”. Just the one. The other intersections on the 15km-long SH16 shared path are less futuristic. Lincoln Road is a particularly heinous case, requiring anyone walking or biking to press (and then wait for) four separate beg buttons to cross no fewer than nine lanes of busy overbridge and off-ramps.

If the Te Atatu cycleway underpass is a glimpse of what’s possible, Lincoln Road is the meagre compromise we inevitably end up with, and nothing illustrates this better than when the underpass was suddenly closed overnight.

The underpass was badly damaged during construction work for a half-arsed “interim” bus interchange, being built rapidly to support public transport use in this critical decade of climate action. The entire east side of the interchange is closed to non-motorised traffic while it’s being built.

Actually, it’s not even an interchange but more a set of disconnected bus stops hundreds of metres apart, the best we can hope for because 10 years ago (in the previous critical decade of climate change) local nimbys forced the cancellation of a proper bus station, citing such perils as “kids hanging out”. People will use this “interchange” to more efficiently board buses that will sit in traffic jams on a motorway that was entirely rebuilt without adding a bus lane, because Steven Joyce or some shit.

So yeah, underpass smashed by Auckland doing Auckland things. And lo, a pleasant Monday morning, with the underpass unexpectedly closed and construction blocking other options, traffic continued to glide effortlessly overhead while people on foot and bike milled about on the periphery, confused and trying to work out how to undertake the simple task of crossing the road.

Seems legit (Photo: Ben Gracewood)

Despite Auckland Transport’s oft-cited Vision Zero “ethics-based transport safety approach”, traffic “management” was severely lacking. Detour signs – literally hand-written on the back of other traffic management signs – faced the wrong direction, forcing people to backtrack. Barriers blocked entry to every practical way to cross under or over the intersection that didn’t involve using a motor vehicle.

The bravest bike-folk picked their way through stop-start traffic to cross five uncontrolled lanes, while others managed to find a signalised crossing 250m up the road, where they could wait several minutes for the traffic-prioritised phasing to deign to let them cross briefly.

You’d struggle to find a better example of the disdain for non-motorists held by Auckland Transport, Waka Kotahi, Fulton Hogan and anyone else tasked with making things go brrrm brrrm without delay. There was no one on-site to help commuters understand where to go, or god forbid some stop-go people to help pedestrians cross the road.

It’s moments like this that really remind me where we part-time motorists sit in the grand hierarchy of road users. Watching commuters and school kids gingerly pick their way past moving trucks and double-cab utes, I phoned and messaged Auckland Transport, who “lodged a case number”. I contemplated calling the police, but decided to complete my trip to work, praying no one would get injured.

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An obviously lazy virgin commuter picking their way past well-muscled chad motorists.

Cycling home hours later, there were no improvements to the situation. I stopped to talk to a disinterested chap in hi-viz (after he hung up his phone call) and suggested they might want to get a few more people to help with directions, because commuters were still taking risks by crossing the busy road without any signals.

His response? “They’re being lazy, they should just go down to the traffic lights”.

Yeah those lazy fuckers, am I right? Cycling all the way to the city and back, a cool 30km, and yet not even bothering to use psychic powers to work out the un-signed cryptic detour, instead throwing themselves recklessly across five lanes of uncontrolled traffic purely because the only detectable safe crossing had evaporated overnight.

Indolent layabouts the lot of them.

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I suppose I can empathise with him, stuck out there in the weather at short notice because bloody cyclists can’t even read a hand-written sign. Thing is, people on bikes need signage that’s as clear and legible as people in cars. Signage that differentiates between bikes and pedestrians. It’s a worry that Fulton Hogan’s employees don’t know this, and shows a lack of attention to the needs of people who travel through here every day.

Once construction on the interchange is finished, this will include all the kinds of people who catch the bus, or who AT hopes will catch the bus, and who’ll be transferring from one bus to another in the middle of motorway mayhem. Parents with kids. Elderly or disabled people who move slowly. Students trying to get to class on time. If they too struggle with wayfinding and safety, will they be called “lazy”?

‘Like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, each member is vital to the whole picture. Join today.’
Calum Henderson
— Production editor

Our broken underpass is a perfect definition of transport in Auckland today: baseline cluelessness about what non-motorists actually need, never bothering to put in even the minimal effort required to help people now at risk because the token example of safe infrastructure got destroyed by a half-assed, nimby-compromised public transport “improvement” project making up for decades of lost time and stupid planning. Meanwhile, cars are our monarchy, with road workers effectively doffing their caps as cars pass, careful to never impede the multiple lanes gliding by oblivious to the mayhem below them.

Vision Zero my arse.

Society