Monday, April 05, 2004
Downtown Auckland Getting All Spruced Up
This is pleasing news.
I'm all for reclaiming CBD space for the little man and woman. God knows cities can be an alienating kind of place at the best of times. This may also mean people stop blaming those dirty Asians for everything. Well for a while at least.
This gets my attention in particular. "Traffic would be discouraged by reducing the number of traffic lanes from two to one in each direction, banning private parking along much of the Queen St mile and moving taxi ranks to other streets."
But it makes me wonder why they don't just ban traffic altogether. Traffic will become heavier than it is now and we will still have to wait to cross the road just as long as before, if not longer since there will be cars backed up further needing to be 'released'.
Also since the improvements to the Grafton area cars can drive along Stanley Street and up the back way to Symonds Street in order to avoid Queen Street from that direction and they can go up past Victoria Park and through Ponsonby to avoid it from the other direction.
They could ban all traffic from Queen Street but keep an area wide enough for delivery vehicles to use after they have shown some id and a purpose for entering the area to some kind of 'gatekeeper' at either end of the street. Of course they would also need to keep the area available for floats during parades so we can celebrate that All Black World Cup win in 2068.
What did I do this weekend? Well thanks for asking. I went to the first round of the 2004 K-League and filed a match report for this wee site. Mine is the Incheon v Chonbuk game. And a boring arse of a game it was indeed.
It was played in a WC stadium. Used for the Korea v Portugal game if you can remember that far back where Korea won 1-0 to book a place in the second round after Portugal ended up with 9 men (and deservedly so). They built a bloody running track around the stadium (Korea has as much interest in athletics as NZers do in Sumo wrestling). This track has now been sealed over and will never ever be used. So the fans are 30 metres from the edge of the pitch and they will be lucky to fill 10,000 seats once the season starts proper in a 45,000 seater.
10 white elephants sitting in Korea serving as the respective cities penis.
You can check out a few pics from the game.
Notice the fearful Incheon supporters club "TNT", or "Terror N Trembling" in full. God if you're going to use English all the ruddy time at least check to see it doesn't sound so bloody ridiculous.
And Joseph Romanos calling a spade a spade in the Listener.
"Warne is in a race with Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan for the honour. There's an irony. Warne is one of the finest cricketers ever, a pioneering player who has introduced a generation to the art of leg-spin bowling. Fancy being away from the game for a year (because of his drugs suspension) and on his return taking four successive five-wicket test bags. That sums up Warne's class as a bowler.
Muralitharan, on the other hand, has reached 500 wickets by throwing his off-spinners and being allowed to do so by the spineless world cricket body. I hope Warne can behave himself and that his body holds together long enough for him to establish a record Muralitharan never reaches. Such a major test cricket record should belong to a great player."
Everybody that has faced the guy reckons he chucks it. It's so bloody obvious that it's absurd that millions are in denial simply because he's gaining the wickets for their country. It's a real shame that it became a race issue when it should have been all about sport and keeping it clean.
I'm all for reclaiming CBD space for the little man and woman. God knows cities can be an alienating kind of place at the best of times. This may also mean people stop blaming those dirty Asians for everything. Well for a while at least.
This gets my attention in particular. "Traffic would be discouraged by reducing the number of traffic lanes from two to one in each direction, banning private parking along much of the Queen St mile and moving taxi ranks to other streets."
But it makes me wonder why they don't just ban traffic altogether. Traffic will become heavier than it is now and we will still have to wait to cross the road just as long as before, if not longer since there will be cars backed up further needing to be 'released'.
Also since the improvements to the Grafton area cars can drive along Stanley Street and up the back way to Symonds Street in order to avoid Queen Street from that direction and they can go up past Victoria Park and through Ponsonby to avoid it from the other direction.
They could ban all traffic from Queen Street but keep an area wide enough for delivery vehicles to use after they have shown some id and a purpose for entering the area to some kind of 'gatekeeper' at either end of the street. Of course they would also need to keep the area available for floats during parades so we can celebrate that All Black World Cup win in 2068.
What did I do this weekend? Well thanks for asking. I went to the first round of the 2004 K-League and filed a match report for this wee site. Mine is the Incheon v Chonbuk game. And a boring arse of a game it was indeed.
It was played in a WC stadium. Used for the Korea v Portugal game if you can remember that far back where Korea won 1-0 to book a place in the second round after Portugal ended up with 9 men (and deservedly so). They built a bloody running track around the stadium (Korea has as much interest in athletics as NZers do in Sumo wrestling). This track has now been sealed over and will never ever be used. So the fans are 30 metres from the edge of the pitch and they will be lucky to fill 10,000 seats once the season starts proper in a 45,000 seater.
10 white elephants sitting in Korea serving as the respective cities penis.
You can check out a few pics from the game.
Notice the fearful Incheon supporters club "TNT", or "Terror N Trembling" in full. God if you're going to use English all the ruddy time at least check to see it doesn't sound so bloody ridiculous.
And Joseph Romanos calling a spade a spade in the Listener.
"Warne is in a race with Sri Lankan Muttiah Muralitharan for the honour. There's an irony. Warne is one of the finest cricketers ever, a pioneering player who has introduced a generation to the art of leg-spin bowling. Fancy being away from the game for a year (because of his drugs suspension) and on his return taking four successive five-wicket test bags. That sums up Warne's class as a bowler.
Muralitharan, on the other hand, has reached 500 wickets by throwing his off-spinners and being allowed to do so by the spineless world cricket body. I hope Warne can behave himself and that his body holds together long enough for him to establish a record Muralitharan never reaches. Such a major test cricket record should belong to a great player."
Everybody that has faced the guy reckons he chucks it. It's so bloody obvious that it's absurd that millions are in denial simply because he's gaining the wickets for their country. It's a real shame that it became a race issue when it should have been all about sport and keeping it clean.
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