1 Captions by Ashlee Scholefield and Ingrid Lauder. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016 SMOOTH ELECTRONIC MUSIC Karangahape Road, or K Road, is one of the oldest roads in Auckland. It was here well before the Pakeha, and it was a route used by Maori to reach the Manukau Harbour. That's why up until the mid-20th century, it was still the only street in Auckland Central that had a Maori name ` because, I guess, it was here first. And that's what I dig about it. SMOOTH ELECTRONIC MUSIC CONTINUES I am takatapui, which is the Maori equivalent to the GLBTI whanau. I'm also a trans woman, and I've been part of K Road culture since I was 18. I've loved and lived on the strip. It was and still is my spiritual home. It's an accepting and diverse community like none other in Aotearoa. Come with me as we get to discover some of the characters that make K Road unique. In this episode of Neighbourhood, we'll explore traditional tattooing with a contemporary edge. If our ancestors had access to the electric machines that we use today, of course they would've used them. It makes total sense. We'll explore the history of the strip through an exhibition celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. This work's never been seen in Auckland ever. And exactly now it's coming the same day as` It's` Yeah, it's the same week. March in 1976. 40 years ago. The police intervened. But then the works went mysteriously missing. We'll share some vegan treats with the crew from Amnesty International. Growing up, it's like a fast food, but it's not greasy or unhealthy. Because it's baked, you don't need to add any oil. And a K Road local reveals what connects him to his Samoan culture. I immediately think of, uh, Dad and, uh, Samoa... and the way that they lived their life. I'm Ramon Te Wake, and this... is my neighbourhood. UPBEAT MUSIC INTRIGUING MUSIC Growing up different was tough. I was bullied a lot and felt out of place for most of my childhood. Transgender wasn't a word that people knew or understood back in the day. Not like it is today. My family, well, they hoped I was just different, that one day I would grow out of it. But, of course, that never happened. Despite that, some of my best memories as a kid were still centred around whanau and friends. I was a complete show-off, constantly dancing and expressing myself. But I still believe that that's what helped me get through some of the darker times in my life. Music was important to me. In my moments of despair, I would quite often turn the music up really loud and wish that I would older so I could make adult choices in my life about how I wanted to live, how I wanted to define myself, and most importantly, what I wanted to create. INTRIGUING ELECTRONICA MUSIC When I came to NZ, I had no English. Tongan was my first language. So I was dropped into primary school and basically had to figure it out pretty quickly. My mum is Tongan, and my dad is from Norway. I think the main thing for me was just, um, sort of arriving at a place where it was` you know, it was quite comfortable to be within two cultures. You know, cos that's something, growing up, that I sorta struggled with for a time. I guess my relationship with K Road really started back in the` in the, uh, sort of, early '90s. Um, as a student, I was living over there at the House of Flackson with a couple of good friends. And, uh, that's actually where I met my partner, Chantelle. And, uh, yeah, we sorta` we fell in love on K Road, so K Road, in a way, is sort of, uh, I guess, responsible for bringing us together. We actually moved back to K Road in 2013, and we took all our grown-up kids back to K Road and lived there, uh, for a while. And it was really, um` it was really choice, really awesome to sort of, um,... I guess, show the kids around the old neighbourhood. SMOOTH MUSIC I've always had an interest in tattooing, and it was initially just generally, you know, just interested in the idea of putting art on skin and having artwork that's permanent and having artwork that enables you to tell some of your story. Tonga's a really stratified society, so tattooing was done to signify your place within community, your place within family. Tongans were tattooists, um,... but certain people within Tonga, like certain chiefly lines, would only go to be tattooed by Samoans, because there was this idea that, uh, because they were chiefs, they were tapu, and being tapu, they can't be touched by other Tongans. So the process was to employ Samoan tattooists to carry out that work. INTRIGUING MUSIC Currently, my daughter and I are part of an artist collective at a tattoo studio on K Road called Karanga Ink. The first thing that makes it distinctly Tongan is that it's being done by a Tongan. (LAUGHS) Those old patterns are really important, but there's also an opportunity to create new work, new patterns. I look at my work as, uh... for me, it's Tongan tattooing, and it's based on a lot of, um` a lot of the older patterns. But I'm also interested in creating new patterns and new work that sort of acknowledges our past. It's very much a collaborative process. It's around, um, you know, creating the work` creating work that, uh, tells the story of the wearer. So there's a lot of backwards and forwards dialogue, um, sharing of images, sharing of stories, and from there, we start to sort of formulate what the finished piece might look like. Yeah, Terry and I has been working together for the last month or so. Um, yeah, it's in response to one of my Pacific poems that I've written, and, uh, my first book's called The Underwater World. So, um, hence the sea creatures on my arm. I saw` I saw the squid design first, um, which was earlier this year, and I was like, 'Bro, I need that tattoo. I need that ink on my skin.' And then, yeah, we just took it from there. TATTOO TOOL BUZZES We underestimate how sophisticated our ancestors were and how they were very much about innovation. You know, the hand tools as we know` that we now call traditional tattooing tools would have one point been incredibly cutting-edge tools, you know. Prior to those tools, maybe it was just hand poking. I don't know. If our ancestors had access to the electric machines that we use today, of course they would've used them. It makes total sense. I tend to refer to the practice` the old practices as` more as, um, say, customary tattooing. But tattooing is a living art form, and for it to stay relevant, to stay alive, it needs to be allowed to grow and evolve and change and adapt. Um,... and that's the thing I find really interesting about the practice now. SOFT ELECTRONICA MUSIC A couple of weeks ago, I saw the same man sweeping the streets that I used to see as a teenager on K Road. It was really weird, and it brought a tear to my eye. He must've seen so much. K Road has been the city's red-light district since the '60s, and it has a bit of a bad rep. But I feel like I can walk down the street any time, night or day, and feel really secure. Usually when trouble goes down, it's people from out of town that don't perhaps understand the power and energy that K Road has. K Road has so much history, and there are so many stories to be told. CURIOUS ELECTRONICA MUSIC K Road is, for me, like teenager, like a teenager that changes every moment. Mm, I know it has a old history, but this is more like a psychological character that I attribute. So all the subcultures, entertainment industry, sex workers, bars. It is very important, and I think K Road is the right place for a young, contemporary art centre. I am Adnan Yildiz. I am born in Turkey, in the middle of Anatolia, lived in my almost whole life in Europe, and then I can say since a year and a half, I am based in Auckland. Artspace job brought me to NZ. I use the word curator. It's a common word to understand what exhibition making means. The Bill is an exhibition and events programme that marks the 30th anniversary of Homosexual Reform Law in NZ. And it happened 30 years ago, but the exhibition starts earlier, with artistic works and historical material. Actually, it's composed of three exhibition projects. REFLECTIVE MUSIC Fiona, why do you take photos of, uh, drag queens and...? And` And gay people. < And gay people. And lesbians. < And lesbians. And homosexuals. You name it. < And homosexuals. My community. This is my whakapapa. These are my` These are the people that I, um, belong to. So it's my community, and I belong to it, and I've recorded them, and I've recorded my friends, and it's been going on now since I was` 1973 are the earliest works in this show. This work's never been seen in Auckland ever. And exactly now it's coming the same day as` It's` Yeah, it's the same week. March in 1976... 40 years ago. ...that these works` we tried to show them, and the police intervened, and then the works were taken out of their frames. But then the works went mysteriously missing, so there was no prosecution of indecency, because that's what I faced at the time. What were the words used to define yourself and others? We didn't` You didn't use the word homosexual, cos that was defined as illegal, so nobody was ever called personally` you'd never say someone was a homosexual, because then they were illegal. You had to be either gay` You were gay, camp, you were a queen. In Fiona Clark's work, you see she has photographed her community, and this meant she's always engaged with them. She knows what are they doing now. She knows where are they now. It's a continuous recording, documenting and understanding of a community. This is Tina, and Tina is in this image from 1974, and it was at the gay lib dance at the university. Well, I remember this time, because it was, sort of, pretty close to when I first arrived in Auckland, and I was working the streets of K Road and Queen Street, being a prostitute and everything and... But it was a lot of fun. It was brilliant, because I had found my identity. To me, it's really sad, it's quite emotional, because as you can notice that all these friends are deceased. Quite a` Most of them ` the images of these people ` are deceased. Cos it's Auckland's history. It's part of Auckland. You can't deny it. Look around the walls. This was history in` of Auckland. SENTIMENTAL MUSIC Carmen is Carmen Rupe. She's incredibly important for me culturally and artistically, cos she created clubs; she's the first person who really walked the streets openly in NZ in full drag, really. And you dedicate the show to Carmen? I did, yeah. Cos she is` < And called the show? For Fantastic Carmen. < Yeah. We owe a lot to people like Carmen and Nicole Duvall for our nightlife, for our` you know, our expression of who we are. I mean, this really challenges the rugby field. It really does. BOTH CHUCKLE The response, I think, has been pretty good. Lots of people have reconnected with the work, or people have come in and said they've known somebody, and that's fantastic. Yeah, people have a connection with that history, and they're proud of it, and so we should be. LIVELY MUSIC I arrived on K rd when I was 18, and it was love at first sight. I was hanging out with these amazing drag artists and performers and queer club kids, and for the first time, I felt like I belonged to a community that understood me. My childhood friend Rafael and I were in a dance group called Pure Funk. We were doing shows at home since we were 11. We'd wait till my Mum would go out, we'd go into her wardrobe and pull out all her fabulous costumes, and we would hit it. We'd find all our favourite tapes, and we would give it everything. We'd mark each other out of five for dance, mime and performance. OK, so it's a little over the top for kids, but creativity should be. Suddenly, we were all grown up and doing it for real on the strip. There was music, dance and attitude everywhere. Soul, funk, R & B, hip-hop ` you name it. K Road has always been a place with its own distinct soundtrack. RELAXED MUSIC As a kid, my parents had records, and we had a record player, and they used to listen to, you know, Elvis; my dad used to love Freddy Fender. So I own Rebel Soul Records on K Road, in Samoa House Arcade. And, uh, always wanted to open a record store, was always a dream of mine, cos, basically, I always loved record stores. And when it came to deciding about where to have the shop, it seemed a natural fit to be in Samoa House Arcade and next to the Fale. The music that I mainly stock is music that I've always loved, so it's jazz, blues, funk, soul, disco. Punk, alternative and hip-hop as well. RELAXED MUSIC CONTINUES My father was born in Mulifanua Village in Samoa. He loved, uh` loved his music. Didn't like, um, partying so much, but when, uh` when he was around his friends and family, you know, the guitars would come out, and the singing would come out, and, uh, he'd be having a` having a good old time. We were close, uh, but Dad was always working. He was a` He was very much a worker. So he came to NZ in the early days of, uh, that big wave of migration from the Islands to work in the factories of, uh, NZ. But when he did have time off, he was definitely a family man, and, um, yeah, I do have fond memories of my father. This is my dad's 'aluga, or pillow, where he used to sleep with a` on a sleeping mat, a woven sleeping mat. Um, and this is where he used to rest. So he'd do it for... Often I remember after church on Sundays, he'd have his little siesta, after he'd had a big feed of fish heads he'd used to bake in the oven, his favourite, and, uh, fresh Sunday bread. He'd often have a sleep on his 'aluga on a sleeping mat and just with a lava-lava over him. Obviously quite special to him. It was his father's as well. And his father,... Tafa, lived to be 93. Um, so as you can see, it's well used, as the shape is not just a regular groove, it has kind of a bit of a lower profile on that side. You can see it's been used for lots (CHUCKLES) of other things. You can see it's been hand-carved, but also maybe used as a chopping board. It's still got the remnants of` the black glue hasn't been tidied up or anything. It's original state. So it would've been Samoan hardwood. Dad moved back to Samoa,... uh, it was mid-to-late '90s. Something he always wanted to do. Um, so he,... um, wanted to build a house there, so he` he built a big house in the village. He had pretty much completed it, and where the family was all coming over to spend Christmas and New Year. Two weeks before we were supposed to arrive, uh, he died suddenly of a stroke or heart attack. It was a real shame that we were going there, uh, for a funeral rather than to celebrate what he'd achieved, um, being back with his family in the village. SENTIMENTAL MUSIC It's very comfortable, actually. Yeah, can either have it in the nape of your neck, or you can have it on the top of your head, um, the side or back. I immediately think of, uh, Dad and Samoa and the way that they lived their life. It's, uh, obviously where he and our grandfather dreamed all their thoughts and passions, I guess, that were in their brains at the time. It'll be` It'll stay in the family, definitely. Uh, all the family, uh, love it, and all the family will continue to love it. My son, Leon, and nephews, they'll all be enjoying it. CURIOUS ELECTRONIC MUSIC K Road is constantly shifting and evolving. Last year, St Kevins Arcade was sold to a developer, which had everyone worried, but then again, we were all really worried about the attempts to 'tidy up' the strip back in the '90s. And, of course, that never happened. The spirit of K Road is just far too strong. My love for K Road will still exist, no matter how it evolves. Sure, it's a little different today, but the energy is still the same. However, the food and cafe culture has exploded, and thank God, because you get to have places like Coco's Cantina, all about food, service and community. That true K Road spirt. Add to that organisations like Amnesty International, and you have a neighbourhood with heart. Cheers. REFLECTIVE PIANO MUSIC Working in face-to-face fundraising is quite, um, a thing. It's really really exciting. I really love it, because you talk to people. Try up there. Greg, you and me on this corner, yeah? Sweet. Let's go! Boom, boom, boom. And, yeah, you have no idea who's gonna open the door. You have no idea who you are stopping, you know, in the street. And you need to be able to connect with them in so many different levels. And the thing is you end up having so many wonderful conversations with people from all different backgrounds. Do you guys know how many refugees and displaced people we have today alive in the world? No. 60 million. 'As a child, I was pretty much disgusted by social injustice, 'so being young, I started being a volunteer for local NGOs. When I started, I was around 15, 16,' and I would go to parks and talk to grown-ups about energy and,... yeah, deforestation and stuff. Um, yeah, but, yeah, I just got involved that way. I actually quite enjoy it a lot. Doesn't matter the colour of your skin, sexual orientation, the right for you to wear this T-shirt, and no one can come and tell you anything, and you agree with me on that one, right? Yeah, man. So I came to NZ two years ago. Kind of exactly two years ago. Uh, I came... firstly as, kind of, like, I need to start a new life/escaping from... Like, I just finished uni, but then I didn't want to work in what I studied. Like, I didn't want to work in a business or in a company. I didn't want to work for money. ELECTRONICA MUSIC We have such a great team at Amnesty that it's sometimes really nice to share food with them. So today I'm making empanadas, which are,... like, the South American version of baked dumplings. Um, so we're gonna make them from scratch, so we're gonna make the dough from... from scratch, and for that we need, of course, flour. We're gonna need butter. We're gonna need a bit of sugar, water, salt. I like cooking. And also I had to learn, because I` I was living with my parents, so everything was really easy. Living by myself in a new country, I, kind of, like, had to learn. Like, I didn't really have a choice. But I did it with a twist ` I'm a vegetarian. I became a vegetarian when I came to NZ. I do understand that I might be one of the only Argentinians who doesn't eat meat. (LAUGHS) When I went back home and I told` Like, everyone was waiting for me. They were like, 'We're going to have a massive barbeque, right?' And I was like, 'Well, you know, I kind of became a vegetarian. I don't eat meat any more.' Um, so at first it was a bit of a shock. I could hear some laughter and people mocking me and stuff, but then they got used to it. The ones we're making today are onion and chives. Um, we're gonna add a bit of spring onion as well so we can make it a bit more South American in the flavour. The very best thing about my job... (SIGHS) is changing the world. I know it sounds cheesy, but it's changing the world. Like, the fact that I know that me and my team and my co-workers, we wake up, we go to work, you know, we're stressed as everyone else, we go through the same things, but at the end of the day, someone somewhere has freedom, or someone somewhere has life because of, like, someone in NZ signing a petition or someone in NZ just saying, like, 'Hey, I wanna help.' Yeah, so this is the fun bit, which is the folding, which is where you can make a` make a mistake. But the first thing you have to do is just stick it all together. (CHUCKLES) And then you just pinch and fold, pinch and fold, pinch and fold, pinch, fold. Growing up, it's like a fast food, but it's not greasy or unhealthy. Because it's baked, you don't need to add any oil. RELAXED ELECTRONICA MUSIC Hey. Empanadas! EXCLAIMING, CHEERING Mmm! Yum! Yeah. Yeah. As a fellow Argentinian, what do you think of meatless empanadas? They're pretty wonderful. Like, I'm pretty impressed that you made the whole pastry yourself. They're really yummy. They are, aren't they? Yeah. They are. > Yeah, part of why I maybe don't miss home so much is because I just love working here, and, like, this is my family away from home. So thank you, guys. And we should do this more often. Yeah. Do Cornish pasties next week. Yeah. LAUGHTER INTRIGUING ELECTRONICA MUSIC K Road has taught me so much about life. What it means to be takatapui, what it means to be a performer, and what it means to be a survivor. I've met some of the most incredibly brave souls here on K Road. This neighbourhood embraces the fact that everyone is human and everyone has a place. Open, accepting and encouraging. And you know what? Everyone deserves a little K Road in their lives. Mm-hm. Captions by Ashlee Scholefield and Ingrid Lauder. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2016