Colliding worlds: Karangahape Road leans hard into its gritty reputation

Sunday, 21 July 2024

Auckland’s Karangahape Rd - or K’ Rd, as it’s affectionately known - has a storied history as a shopping precinct, and the city’s seedy underbelly. Today, it’s somehow both, and neither, thanks to those who live and work there. Sapeer Mayron reports.

For Jamey Holloway, there’s no use pretending K’ Rd is something other than what it is.

The drag queens, sex workers, displaced, and underground music scene: they’re part of the strip’s identity, sewn into its fabric like sequins on a gown.

“This is what the street is,” says Holloway, general manager of the Karangahape Road Business Association.

“It's constantly morphing into different things, but there's a certain heart to it that is retained.”

These days, K’ Rd isn’t just accepting that grittiness, it’s gone on the offensive to promote it.

In 2023, the business association released ROAD: “beer infused leather/warm aromatic spice/nicotine/green heat/fog machine haze/dance floor armpit/bar waft…” - a fragrance unique to Karangahape Rd.

“It’s like, let’s lean into the bits certain narrow parts of New Zealand don't like about Karangahape Rd, and to say, almost, stick it,” Holloway says.

This month, its first-ever restaurant month ‘Eat It’ pays homage to the red-light ancestry of the strip.

Participating restaurants offer filthy-sounding specials: Latin restaurant Tempero is making sugar tongues (churros), and Coco’s Cantina has a ‘sexy slice of tart’ on offer. At Fort Greene, try a ‘Morning After’ grilled cheese lasagne, and at Bar Magda you can order Lily’s Special, which is meant to be shared between two. “Or bring a third,” they say.

“It’s no accident that the way we talk about food intertwines with sex; words like silky, or gentle, temptation,” Holloway says.

“In reality these worlds are constantly colliding, and they’re usually doing so on K’ Road.”

Those collisions are on show every first Thursday of the month, with a regular market and gig night aptly named First Thursdays.

Hosted by the Karangahape Road Business Association with the Link Alliance - the seven companies delivering the City Rail Link tunnels and stations - First Thursdays is a celebration of K’ Rd hustle: of the business owners who refuse to give up on their corner despite challenges (a pandemic, the rising cost of living) and of creatives carving their mark on Auckland’s history.

First Thursdays organiser Anya Vitali, who is also the founder of Cross St Music Festival, says the goal is to support youth, community and local creators by exposing them to a larger market.

Knitting together K’ Rd businesses and artists was easy, Vitali says.

“I landed here because of the culture, and feeling that hopefulness of the creative community that obviously lives and breathes around here.”

At the end of June, organisers were able to close K’ Rd to traffic between Queen St and Pitt St for a Matariki festival and block party.

“We had 70-plus businesses involved across the street and that's only going to grow,” Vitali says.

“It’s that thing of pulling everyone tighter together as a community and letting them do their own events.”

‘Always a little bit seedy’

With a storied and eclectic past, Aucklanders love to talk about Karangahape Rd like an old friend or aunty.

She’s had some rough years, but a creative and determined streak saw her come right – without losing any personality along the way.

The road is named for Hape, who legend tells was left behind by his iwi when they sailed for Aotearoa, but he beat them here by travelling on the back of a taniwha in the shape of a stingray. Karanga a Hape is his call, lilting over the Manukau Harbour to his iwi as they finally arrived in Tāmaki Makaurau.

History professor Peter Lineham, who has extensively researched Auckland’s past, says in some respects, Karangahape Rd “was always a little bit seedy”, largely thanks to rent being cheaper than in other parts of the CBD.

After an immense fire on Queen St destroyed much of the shopping centre in September 1873, attention moved towards sunny Karangahape Rd. Stand-out malls were built including St Kevins Arcade and George Court, and by the 1920s K’ Rd was the city’s premier shopping district.

When major retailers drifted back downtown in the latter half of the 20th century, K’ Rd’s economy, along with police attention, also petered out. It meant marginalised groups could leave the shadows: sex work, and also the city’s growing gay community, which fought for the passage of Homosexual Law Reform in 1986.

Caluzzi Cabaret opened in 1996, with now-legendary drag queens Felicia Porget and Courtney Cartier working the floor and grill. The service morphed to include a regular drag show for diners, and Caluzzi’s popular drag dinners still continue today.

Drag queen Ling Ling has been performing at Caluzzi since 1999. She had just arrived from Malaysia to join her Kiwi partner, and got work there as a kitchen hand.

That first Halloween, she joined the other queens to go partying after work. Everyone went in costume, but Ling Ling doesn’t do horror: “I’m not ugly,” she laughs.

“I just dressed up normal, like pretty, or whatever. The boss saw me and offered me a job to do the show, and from there I’ve had a job for 25 years.”

Over the decades, she’s watched as homophobic incidents on Karangahape Rd dwindled from near-daily occurrences to next-to-none.

Ling Ling is 52 now, and thinking about retiring. Her shoes are a useful proxy for when it’s time to stop performing: she started off with nine-inch heels, dropped down to six, then three, and nowadays when her shift is over she goes out dancing in jandals.

“The show is over, so there’s no need to be glam – just to be comfortable.”

Crime on K’ Rd: overcooked?

It’s hard to ignore the looming spectre of danger on K’ Rd. Business owners have repeatedly called for help from the Government, council and police to defend against robberies and violent assaults.

In 2023, stationery store owner Andy Xu told RNZ he’d had prospective staff decline job offers because they’re scared to work on Karangahape Rd. Dairy owner Haytham Akil says he’s running out of window space to display all the printouts of thieves he has caught on CCTV.

Last month, residents told Police Minister Mark Mitchell they don’t feel safe walking down their street, and some even blamed the Auckland City Mission accommodation on the corner of K’ Rd and Day St.

“We're seeing a lot of aggression, a lot of anti-social behaviour, that can include violence against ourselves, the community, as well as each other,” gallery owner Melanie Roger said at the meeting.

“I don't think the high-needs tenants are getting wrap-around support at Day St, not from what I see and the conversations I've had with the people at the mission.”

But others believe perceptions of crime and grime on Karangahape Rd are greater than the reality.

Lim-Muy Chhour, landlord and business owner of the Lim Chhour Supermarket and Foodcourt at 184 Karangahape Rd, says crime and anti-social behaviour affect all parts of Auckland, not just K’ Rd.

The difference, she explains, is that on Karangahape Rd, life buzzes all day, and all night - so there’s just more going on.

“There are people everywhere,” she says. After all, “we’re a 24-hour business precinct.”

Karangahape Rd may be home to old pubs and strip clubs, but it now also houses a Tesla showroom and a bridal boutique whose dresses are rarely priced beneath four figures (although Tesla is soon to move on).

Developer Nigel McKenna, whose new hotel Abstract opened this year just off K’ Rd on Upper Queen St, doesn’t think crime rates are anything to write home about, especially compared to some international cities.

“This is a genuine community. The people who live here wouldn't live here if they weren't happy and safe.”

Vitali says the worst thing that has happened in six years of Cross Street Music Festivals is that someone got stung by a bee, once.

“It’s ticketed, so it’s different, but we’ve never had any trouble inside the event.”

The business community in particular wants to work together, Vitali says.

“There's a lot changing at the moment, obviously a lot of places closing down and new places being reopened, so it’s a real interesting time.

“There's just this huge shift going on so, as much as it feels dismal, it's actually quite exciting at the same time because there's a new generation coming through with different ideas.”

Doing things differently

K’ Rd’s food scene is exploding, and it’s why there is finally a K’ Rd restaurant month.

And though it’s only July, businesses are already looking ahead to October: the annual Halloween party awaits. Luckily for the First Thursdays team, October 31 falls on a Thursday this year.

Meanwhile, the residential population of Karangahape Rd and neighbouring Queen St and Aotea Square is hoped to grow exponentially in the coming years.

Expected to open in 2026, the Karanga-a-Hape City Rail Link station, which will have entrances from Mercury Lane and Beresford Square off Karangahape Rd, will bring people from all over Auckland right to the heart of the precinct.

It will also bring them onto Nigel McKenna’s hotel doorstep – one of the major reasons he picked this corner some six years ago.

“K’ Rd is one of my favourite streets in Auckland,” McKenna says. “It has a wide diversity of people, the area has a very strong artisanal component and it’s on top of a ridge – it has amazing views and gets all-day sun.”

And, adds Chhour, beyond the location, the road has another major asset: its people.

“One thing I love about K’ Rd is we embrace all cultures,” she says. “It doesn't matter what walk of life you come from, what orientation, we embrace however you want to come.

“I think people that choose to come to Karangahape Rd, it's a very decisive reason why they come.

“They are looking to do something differently.”

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