An Aucklander attends Wellington’s beloved street festival for the first time.
From the outside looking in, Wellington and its locals represent a few unfortunate stereotypes in Aotearoa’s consciousness: constantly drenched and windswept, a bit too politically earnest and artsy for its own good, so broken it could never be a proper, serious city and thus, severely lacking in good vibes. But if you took a walk through Newtown Festival on Sunday, you’d have seen that only one of these things is (mostly) true.
The annual block party, now in its 28th year, is an Instagrammable, bite sized taste of Wellington culture that packs a punch so flavourful and filling you’re knocked back into a food coma, then left to cough down the aftertaste as it goes on. If you could compare it to one of the foods sold onsite, it wouldn’t be tornado potato or a styrofoam container filled with chop suey – it would be one of those fried breads overstuffed with meat and cheese, topped with a sprinkling of veges.
On a day when the weather is at 23C, the clouds are merely wisps and you can catch some of the city’s best local talent for free, it would be pretty rude not to be there – some 80,000 others would agree. By this point, most festival frequenters have the recipe – wear sparkles, carry cash, don’t skimp on sunscreen, memorise the schedule by heart – but as an Auckland expat (Hutt Valley born, but I don’t like to say that too loudly), discovering the festival for the first time is both a stunning and overstimulating experience.
Once you enter the general vicinity of Newtown, a suburb once characterised by its council flats and now considered “cool” thanks to the students and yo-pros who have helped gentrify it, the immediate thing that attacks the senses is the noise. Stretched down Riddiford St and spilling onto the side streets, there were stages positioned at every entrance – that’s 16 in all, amping a mix of jazz-fusion, club beats, RadioActive FM-esque indie bands and protest waiata.
Enter onto Constable St around 12pm like I did, and you would have caught trip-hop band Fruit Loops, playing to Gen Zers who look like copy-pasted clones of their TikTok feeds and Gen Xers dining outside the Trattoria. Squeeze your way through the crowds, stalls and food trucks to the Te Māngai Pāho and E Tū Whānau Tangata Whenua Stage (I think we should stop promising companies to name stages after them to secure funding, btw), and you could have enjoyed the sweet sound of te reo Māori filling the street, courtesy of IWI (yes, they’ve still got it).
Turn away from the music, and you’d be met with rows and rows of craft stalls and food trucks, but very little wiggle room to check out what’s on offer. You’d be looking at seashells-turned-jellewery, steaming dumplings and someone’s dust-gathered antiques when you realised there’s at least five people trying to edge you out of their way so they can get their mitts on a new purchase, and you’ve been standing in front of a slow moving row of people this whole time.
Cynically, Newtown Festival is perfect for people who are fans of walking down a street very slowly, having someone abruptly stop in front of you so they can catch up with a crowd blocking the escape routes in your peripheral, and then deciding you should just grumpily push past a bunch of kids. This feels like one of those really nitpicky things to complain about – why go to a festival if you’re going to complain that other people were there? – but God, walking through stifling heat and having to stop in the middle of your tracks after every few shuffling steps can really wear your patience down.
But if you wanted to get away from the heaving crowds, you could also dip into the brick and mortar retailers advertising festival-adjacent sales – the second-hand clothing stores suddenly seem less impressive compared to the beautifully handcrafted treasures outside, but at least you’re safe from impact. And you don’t even need to spend money to walk away with something you love – a woman named Sue, manning the Labour Party’s stall, shoved 10 vintage protest badges into my hands when I told her she should take them to a museum. I am now the proud owner of pins proclaiming “Stop the War! USA out of Iraq” and “My mum says Johnny Howard is a mongrel bastard”, acquired for free.
Cynicism is also the last thing Wellington needs. Having moved here from Auckland nearly two months ago, I’ve already heard enough “how’s the weather down there?” jabs to last me a lifetime, and winter hasn’t even started. More shocking than the fact that most days since January have been sunsoaked and sweaty, is the discovery that Wellington actually is a city, people live here, and they do so with love and care.
Even if you’re pissed off that everyone in front of you walks like they’re the only one on the block, there’s still an undeniable sense of community power – why else would we all force ourselves into this social anxiety inducing situation? Once you get over yourself, you get into what makes Newtown Festival what it is: the people, who are passionately artistic, community-driven, haters of the bureaucracy north of Cuba Street and yet so politically minded that you can’t walk 10 steps away from a dumpling stall without having five different advocacy groups telling what’s worst for society.
But it’s endearing, because it’s so alive. There is an undeniable vibe here, which means there is a proper city here – this is all Wellington could ever ask for. Now, someone needs to ask Auckland why there isn’t a free block party to shut down Karangahape or Dominion Road. Maybe then we’ll be unburdened by our snobbery.
