Piss Royalty
In summary Auckland is a land of contrasts, thank you
29 March, 2023 | Auckland, NZ
Both Auckland and Sydney have “sky towers” that are the kind of tourist trap that I feel was really pioneered by Seattle’s Space Needle in 1962. In principal the Stuttgart Tower proceeded it, but it ostensible had a greater purpose than bilking visitors.
Yet upon subjecting myself to said bilking I saw that the Space Needle did not even rate as far as the kiwis were concerned:
Unlike the Space Needle, the Sky Tower in Auckland has been intentionally left as the tallest viewpoint in the city and does in fact have some lovely views. Here is an wholly unnecessary selfie to prove I am still alive.
The brief attempts at color on some of the buildings was, I believe, not entirely well thought out.
Visitors to Seattle will sometimes find its topography jarring: to be surrounded on no less then three sides by water and some silly number of islands. But we are like babies, look at this:
I keep comparing this place to Seattle because there are a lot of similarities that seem to stack up with you squint a bit. It has about the same population, and the State of Washington has a population similar to the entire nation of New Zealand. It’s lousy with coffee shops and used bookstores that are just elaborate excuses to never throw/give away any of your book collection:
But I think it is worth calling out some key differences that I discovered as I wandered around.
First: routine and commonly available free public toilets
Two: I haven’t even seen a cop? So far, this is the only city where I haven’t seen any reference to, or street art of, ACAB. Maybe they have a different saying about how their cops are universally pieces of shit that I missed??
Three: places to just sit or lie down.
Finally, despite a relatively similar climate, public health efforts around allowing a lot more outdoor venues and ventilation, and other measures seem to have been widely adopted:
