OF AUCKLAND STREETS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14691, 27 May 1911, Page 1 (Supplement)

OF AUCKLAND STREETS.

BY FRANK MORTON.

There is a sense in which it is true that Auckland consists mostly of Queen-street; but that means simply that Queen-street is the essential artery of the city of Auckland, and that without Queen-street Auck land is inconceivable. But from the ordinary or human standpoint there are many streets in Auckland, and each street plays its part in an effect of harmony that I find very pleasant. The streets of Auckland differ from the streets of all other New Zealand cities, because there is in each of them (however subdued) a certain note of gaiety. I suppose that this fact that Auckland is always gay, often despite itself, is the fact that is chiefly responsible for one's per-

sistent feeling that, in all this Dominion,

Auckland is the city one would naturally prefer to live in.. Your Auckland street crowd may be languid, and it generally is sleepy ; but always in its expression and attitude there is a certain indomitable and instinctive cheerfulness. In that you arc unique. The street crowds of Invercargill are sad to the point of harshness the street crowds of Dunedin suggest .a wide assortment of irremediable glooms hopelessly attempting play; the street crowds of Christchurch arc banal and dispirited as a tarred hen; the street crowds of Wellington are in turn noisy, irritable, raucous, mischievous, or dissipated; but the street crowds of Auckland are always somewhat, glad—glad I know not why, of I know not what. This fact is especially noticeable with regard to your Saturday crowds. They are riot crowds that specially stimulate or delight the stranger; but in all their own actions and impulses (here is a. certain odd and irrepressible liveliness. They always seem as if they only lack by a mere trifle the energy requisite to make them festive and spry. hey aro untrammelled by municipal restrictions, being of their nature sufficiently listless and slow. They can block the pavements and clog the corners as they will, for no man says them nay. The management of street traffiic in Auckland is at some points altogether futile; every man does pretty much as he choses, and no man seems to- have a very clear idea of what should be done. Your average Auckland police constable is meek as a chilled lamb and placid as a squid in formalin. It would do Auckland much good if it could change constables with Wellington for a time, although the Aucklanders might for a week or two be grievously harried , and vexed. The constables of Wellington are as truculent as bandits in any remote and primitive country could possibly be; but you need something of that sort here. There is no excuse for street . management that allows these everlasting groups of loafers to loiter and spit about city pavements. As to that habits the condition of things in Auckland is singularly revolting. The gayest of the Auckland street crowds, the sprightliest and the mos/fc responsive, is not in Queen-street on a Saturday night, but in the Karangahape Road region. This crowd seems to be composed chiefly of people with red corpuscles, people who might be something permanently good if anything should at the time arouse them, people who really have energy in a city hugely apathetic. Of Auckland streets another very pleasant thing must be recorded. I am a viveur and no anchorite; but I have never pretended that excess of. alcohol can "be justified by excuse. There is less open or obtrusive drunkenness in Auckland than there is in any other city I know of In Australia; and I know most of them rather well. The fact is altogether surprising, and really should. be considered and digestedthe fact fliat there is less visible drunkenness in Auckland than there is in Invercargill. You may see more young men intoxicated any Saturday night in Wellington than you shall see in Auckland in six months. Content to state facts, I offer you no theories. It may bo (as I personally believe), that the hotels in Auckland are scrupulously well-con-ducted ;' it may be that the people are of their nature curiously temperate. Even in Auckland bars you see very little drunkenness among the Aucklanders themselves. The gentleman far gone in liquor is generally a strayed traveller from the outside—Auckland being, in the case of the stranger, oddly productive of an obstinate and scorching thirst. Auckland streets force upon one the conviction that the Aucklanders are a very healthy folk. One comes upon few invalids. The folk look happy, hardy, and comely, the feminine type approaching more nearly to the Australian than in any other city in New Zealand. Auckland street crowds do not dress well. Among the women there is a marked tendency to tawdriness and cheap effects. The sense of harmony is neither strong nor true. .Nine women out of every ten look as though they haunted cheap sales and have never spoken to a tailor in their lives. Jvine men out of every ten seem o have slept m their clothes in uncomfortable beds. In Auckland women there is no suggestion of the exquisite feminine quality or allurement that the French call chic. Ihe plainest Frenchwoman never looks dowdy; the prettiest Auckland pirl somehow proclaims a tendency to the dowd. So far as hew Zealand is concerned, it is only in Wellington that vou shall find women looking absolutely effective and smart in tailored costumes., The Dunedin woman always looks muffled .up in her clothes; the CJiristchurch woman always looks as though she has been rolling hard downhill. °

The trams have their part in the harmony of Auckland streets,- they are so inconsistent and erratic, so thoroughly in tune . with the popular habit and whim I have derided the. Auckland trams; we all do, we strangers, who come in with eyes that bring unaccustomed things into perspective, and detect those faults to which familiarity is blinding you good citizens. But the trams serve an excellent secondary purpose. Without them. Auckland streets would be grim and vicious with the monotony that kills. They break the monotony, and break it absolutely. No man can ever by any stretch of imagination or audacity of forecast say what they are going to do next. Sometimes they stop at a white-splashed post, and sometimes they whizz past it. Sometimes they are stuffed with strap-hangers, and sometimes strap-hanging is fiercely forbidden by the passenger-scorning, farecollecting," all-uncaring autocrat in charge. The trams effectively save you Aucklanders from boredom. Needless to say, you know nothing about the trams in the special sense. Just the other day I was taken all over the Auckland tramway system by the -dear old schoolfellow of mine who manages it. I learned for the first time the enormous expense and fastidious care the upkeep of a big electrictrolley system involves. I learned, with much surprise, that the servants of the company are treated as tenderly as aristocratic girls in .a vastly superior ladies' seminary. At the power-house and factories I was shown the men's bathrooms and dressingrooms. Out at Epsom I saw their shooting gallery and playgrounds. I was astounded beyond measure to discover that your tram conductors and motormen and mechanics arc coddled and cared for in a wav that our municipal tramway folk in the "South have no conception of. I suppose that this, after all, is what makes them so lordly and overbearing on tho cars. They have a sense of their own excessive value and importance. The company is to blame; or, hotter, say the company is the victim of its own circumstances. Of these circumstances, the tram workers take full and uncompromising advantage, in the fashion of the fortunate worker ifi these somewhat impossible islands. However that be, the trams have a part essential in the harmony of your streets; and their defects are of your making, because the meekness of Auckland makes all defects in public services tolerable,.