Uncle Man’s Ding Dong Lounge

March 31, 2023 | Auckland NZ

I wasn’t staying in Auckland long and, beyond wandering around and seeing a sight, I had two major activities on the docket

1. Meet up with a distant work colleague
2. See the actual queer spaces and meet some people to learn more about how it’s like here

Meeting up with Keith and his son was a delight. Part of this is because he’s a great guy and knows the country well. Another part is that we meet up at a breakfast place that, still, is the best I have been to on this trip (Scarecrow).

But maybe the very largest delight was the friend Keith brought with him: Dr. David Hall. I’ll spare this more general audience the details, but it had been about four weeks since I really nerded-out on climate related topics - particularly policy - so this was a delight. He may already know, but  certainly has some avid listeners in New Zealand. One of the main things we talked about was the efforts by the NZ government related to negative emissions. Incentives have been lined up in such a way that faster growing non-native trees are preferred over, say, local manuka.

The efforts to continue to create market-based incentives to generate negative emissions with nature based solutions (like tree planting) have had to become so complex - to avoid stuff like pulling out native plants as above - it has started to increasingly resemble what a straight-up top-down command-and-control style policy might. And worse: the bottom has apparently fallen out of the market for the carbon offsets in New Zealand - a problem so common with said markets you could basically bronze it.

And that was sparing the details for the benefit of this audience.

With my final night in town, I wanted to see what queer life was like in Auckland, apart from the works presented in their art gallery. The LGBT venues in Auckland are clustered in and around Karangahape Road (or simply “K Street”). I headed that way, passing a dozen bookshops of some kind:

One thing to keep in mind is that there is absolutely no way in New Zealand to know if an establishment is LGBTQ oriented by the name:

• Ding Dong Lounge: not gay
• Family Bar and Grill: maybe the gayest bar in town?
• Madame George: nope
• Uncle Man’s: guess (no)
• Eagle: Yes

I started my evening at Eagle. In my taxonomy of LGBTQ-oriented drinking establishments I would put this firmly in the “chill with your friends” category - similar to Union Bar in Seattle. But it was far from boring - the video jukebox was free and there was plenty of singing along and dancing. This evening a big Dolly Parton fan was in a great struggle with a doja cat aficionado. Even the bartenders tended to get into it, both dancing and drinking a bit - something you don’t see in Seattle but appears to be cool in both NZ and Aus.

At Eagle I befriended a couple of folks and heard about the local scene a bit. A particular gentleman I met was named Therron.

As I spoke over in a previous post, the collection of cultures that make up Auckland was greater than one might presuppose from a casual glance. Therron talked about this, and in particular, the impact of Polynesian and Asian culture after the place NZ was opened up to more immigration. This was especially noticeable in the music and dance at Family, the next bar we visited.

Family was much more of a party atmosphere with a large outdoor dance area. There was a very mixed crowd - not just queer men, but several folks that in-conversation identified as lesbians, bisexuals, etc. The music was even higher in tempo and drinks slightly more expensive. On the latter, the national drink of Brazil - Caipirinha - and it’s off-brand version popular in the rest of South America - Caipiroska (using vodka rather than the unique-to-Brazil Cachaça) appeared to be fairly popular.

The next morning I jumped on my flight to Sydney, which was substantially less brutal in duration than every other flight so far.