First weekend

My rugby coach in the United States, Wayne, is the entire reason I've been able to go on this trip. A Christchurch-native and Christchurch Football Club old boy, he was able to coordinate my housing, work, and rugby in New Zealand while I was still in Seattle. I owe him much.

After picking me up from the airport, he took me to his parent's house in the Christchurch neighborhood of Fendleton, apparently the Newport/Mercer Island of Christchurch. He also stays with his parents when in town since his permanent home is back in Seattle. He knows the workings of the family mine better than anyone, so he came back to help in March when they were on severe backorder.

The house was my first sign of the earthquake damage: doors don't close, light bulbs lack the expected level of decoration, every room has a draft, and there are cracks everywhere. I didn't think too much of them when I first arrived, as I was too busy meeting his lovely mother, Betty, and being exhausted from the plane. I barely had time to shower and drop my bags off before Wayne took me on a tour of the City Centre.

Keep in mind, I am a city kid. I like hanging around in downtowns. I love density. I lived on Capitol Hill, of all neighborhoods, in Seattle. I'm moving to New York.

There is no longer a City Centre in Christchurch. There are more empty, gravel lots in the City Centre than there are buildings. And most of the buildings that are still standing are slated for demolition because they are structurally unsound. I could tell there used to be a city centre there, but the operative phrase is "used to be." Every block seemed to have backhoes and asbestos suits. I wish I could do this scene justice, but it's practically impossible on a quick travel blogpost. The closest things I'd suggest is to go to google maps and search "City Centre, Christchurch, New Zealand." Note the number of empty lots. Now take the remaining buildings and mentally block out 3/4 of them. The remainder is the amount of active built environment left.

The highlight, of course, is Re:START, commonly called here "container city." This area, for those of us who follow the built environment, is an acclaimed example of temporary architecture, activating the aforementioned empty City Centre with a mall built out of a series of shipping containers. Each container is painted brightly and houses some trendy clothing store or cafe. They've stacked them in some places, which results in a pretty cool view. Obviously, I geeked out pretty hard. Hopefully, as Christchurch gets rebuilt, this mall will be unnecessary.

What I didn't realize before visiting (and I apologize for the grad school vocabulary I'm about to use), however, is that the shipping containers represent a colloquial architectural language in post-quake Christchurch. Shipping containers are used often as structure to hold up historical facades that were preserved in the rebuilding process or as a barrier to keep rocks from falling onto streets. They are everywhere. Re:START then represents the sort of critical regionalism preached by Kenneth Frampton (who I saw lecture three weeks ago) — it acts as a comment on the present, very temporary state of the city in a positive and, if I may, life-affirming way.

The still under construction cardboard cathedral was a couple blocks away. Wayne had no idea that it receives praise praise from the architectural community. Apparently Christchurch views it as a waste of money to build an expensive, temporary structure. Go figure. Wayne warmed up to the whole concept when he actually saw the building.

It was at this point that Wayne took me for a pie. These have been revelatory. They contain meat and sauce in a 4 inch diameter pie crust. All for $1.50NZD. You can get them hot at gas stations. Why we have spinning hot dogs in the United States I know not, because pies seem to be one of the best inventions of the modern age. Somebody get on this.

Wayne's brother, Phillip, who acts as CEO of the family company, picked up a set of tickets to the Crusaders v. Waratahs (Sydney) game that night at the new AMI Stadium. For those of you that don't know, these two teams compete in the Super Rugby competition. Think the NFL for rugby in NZ, Australia, and South Africa. These are the games that I stream late at night. The whole affair was a great deal of fun for me, obviously. I took a few pictures, some included below.

The Crusaders play in AMI Stadium, a, of course, temporary stadium built on a former horse show ground. Pre-earthquake, they also played in a stadium called AMI Stadium, but on the other side of town, permanent, and seating 45k. The temporary version only seats about 15k, but it made for a more intimate setting. Naturally, any time I see something live that I'd only seen on TV, I'm a happy man. Add rugby and the whole night was great. There I got another pie and watch the Crusaders win uncomfortably, as the Waratah's first five-eights missed a game-winning penalty attempt. It really shouldn't have been that close.

Amazingly, I lasted the whole first day without a nap, but I crashed pretty hard after the game.

Saturday was also a rugby day. This time Wayne took me to a few games of my new club Christchurch Football Club. We watched the Div 3 and Div 1 teams take on High School Old Boys at Hagley Park South. Each came away with a win, which was especially significant since HSOB were at the top of the Div 1 table. There was a pretty massive difference between the two in terms of quality of play and athlete. At the park, we met Mike O'Donnell, the Rugby Development Office for CFC. He is a full time employee of the club, making sure everything runs smoothly. He placed me on the Div 2 side, one of the club's two competitive senior teams. This is pretty exciting considering I just got off the boat from the USA and it's halfway through the season — I was expecting to play on the Div 3 side. Big honor.

Later than night, we went to the CFC clubhouse for team speeches. It was like nothing available in the USA, as it includes a hotel, a restaurant, squash club, physio, two buildings of changing rooms, and a two story bar. I had some expectations after playing in the UK, but this out does everything there. After games, all the teams assemble in the clubhouse for speeches from each side about their game. Each team has a table to themselves, including the kids' teams, whose players run around between everyone's legs. There is even a table for the club's booster group of old boys, the Axemen. Their table is marked by the picture to the right. My club in Seattle is also called the Axemen, so this gave me a good laugh.

Later, Wayne's nephew, Derrick, picked me up and took me on a night out. We met a couple of his mates from New Brighton Rugby Club at a pub and made our way out to Christchurch Casino. Like most everything else, the nightlife of Christchurch was devastated by the earthquake. The best bar scenes are now at malls. MALLS! The final stop of nights out appears to be the Christchurch Casino, which is exactly how I imagine the Snoqualmie Casino looks. Very lame.

The next day Wayne took me out to the southern part of Christchurch towards the "hills." An old volcano formed a sort of hilly point at the southern end of the City. Most houses on the hills were badly damaged in the earthquakes from landslides. However, the little town of Sumner was beautiful. It's a small beach town with nothing but surfing, a few beachfront bars, and a rugby pitch at the center of town. A further excursion lead to Taylors Mistake (yes, no apostrophe), a small beach front community made of eight, one room-ish houses that were only accessible by walking on the beach. The view was gorgeous and I could imagine myself there in the summer spending all day surfing and hanging out on the beach. I don't even surf. It's probably a good thing I didn't grow up here, because I would have been a beach bum.

The plan was for me to start work on Monday, but due to issues with the mill at the plant, it was pushed back to Tuesday. Monday is a holiday, anyway in NZ. That got pushed back, again. But I'll mention that later.