THE SUPER CITY

We send our reporters and photographers to suburbs across Auckland to capture a snapshot of two hours in the life of the city. The rules: Sit. Watch. Take notes or pictures. Don't talk to anyone, just observe everyday life.
Village peoples
REMUERA VILLAGE Debrin Foxcroft
An elderly woman stands at the traffic lights, waiting to cross. Her brown nylon jacket is wrapped tight, the collar pulled up to protect her ears. Wispy silver hair peeks from beneath a red woollen hat. With one hand, she steadies a plaid shopping trundler. With the other she steadies herself.
Opposite her stands another woman. She is just across the road yet she couldn't be further away. She is barely 30, a modern three-wheeled pram in front of her. Sunglasses perch on her nose despite the lack of sun. At her side is a little blonde girl, a three-year-old cherub in tight blue jeans and Chuck Taylor sneakers.
The lights change. The two faces of Remuera Village cross paths, heading in different directions, wrapped up in different worlds.
Remuera Village, a set of shops stacked along the intersection of Remuera and Upland roads, sits at the eastern end of this well-heeled eastern suburb.
Between the PostShop and book store are restaurants offering kebabs, Indian meals, Italian cuisine and fish. Everyone walks quickly. The wind sweeps up Remuera Rd, chilling the few who brave the cold. Doors to cafes, the flower shop and pharmacy are opened quickly and closed just as fast.
But for the rumble of the vehicles, all is quiet. Balloons hang from one shop awning, emitting hollow thuds as they bang together. Most of the village has yet to wake, to get moving or to come out and play.
Cars roar past, speeding up, slowing down, stopping. For the thousands of people who fly through the village, this is just another set of shops on the way to their destination. Just another set of lights to go through.
If anyone slowed and looked, they would notice something. For all the cars on the road, the footpaths are almost empty.
It is just too cold, too windy to venture outside. For most. A handful beat a path to their favourite destinations.
There are young mothers with designer prams making beelines for the cafes, children observing the world through a protective plastic sheath. Older women shuffle through bitter wind to the pharmacy or dairy. A smattering of men duck out of their cars to pick up a coffee, takeaway sandwich or chips.
A man walks by. In his early sixties, he wears a faded grey sweatshirt, a pair of track pants and a blue baseball cap. His once-powerful body has softened around the middle. At the end of a leash is a tiny white dog dressed in a black, yellow and orange hand-knitted jersey. The critter rushes towards every passerby, every lamppost, every pot plant. It is trying to say hello or trying to take over small corners of a large world.
As the morning shifts into afternoon, the restaurants open. Waiters pull out tables and chairs. The tables and chairs remain empty.
A few more people shuffle in and out of the cafes. A family goes into one of the restaurants. Two young mothers push prams while clutching paper cups of coffee.
Cars drive by, speeding up, slowing down and stopping. Here, in the middle of a city, a tiny village.
Ambassadors, a united nations
MANUREWA Joseph Barratt
It's like a meeting at the United Nations; if ambassadors wore jandals or ugg-boots.
A steady flow of traffic streams past Manurewa's Southmall as people go about their daily shopping. It's the last week of school holidays and stressed-looking parents muster over-excited children.
A heavyset Maori teenager wearing a leather jacket drinks a morning dose of an energy drink called Mother as he walks by.
His swagger stops when he sees an older Maori woman shaking her head at him. His proud head lowers to a furtive glance around as he quietly takes her grocery bags and carries them to her car.
Behind him, on the other side of the road, a mobility scooter trundles by carrying an elderly European man. A fraught mother with three children in tow grabs the youngest just as the scooter hurtles past.
To one side, two middle-aged men, dressed warmly, one white and the other Indian, stand talking excitedly. Waving their hands. After several minutes, they stop talking, shake hands and continue on their way.
Two Manurewa street ambassadors in distinctive red jackets walk to the mall.
A Mitsubishi stationwagon slows as it drives through, pictures of flames down the side. It pulls into a 30-minute parking space opposite the dairy.
A dozen people are waiting to cross the road at the lights. There's a slim, elderly Indian woman with grandkids; an overweight white woman, also with kids around her. These are making more noise, hands clenched around bottles of Coke. A Pacific Island woman in a business suit moves to one side to avoid being struck by the children's flailing arms.
Standing further back, two middle-aged Middle Eastern men are deep in conversation. A quiet, older, Asian couple, arms loaded with groceries, look at what's going on.
The red man turns to green and this mixture of people cross the road. The melting pot is completed as a group of young Africans run to catch the light.
A girl in her early 20s, wearing baggy jeans, lags behind her friends, smiling as she reads her texts. She looks up to realise the red man is flashing. She and her friends have to wait for the next phase.
The flame-painted wagon pulls out, its space taken by a ute also with flames running down the side. The street ambassadors return, McDonalds in their hands.
The nearby Coin Save store has racks of Pacific-style shirts sprawling onto the footpath. It's a popular choice this morning.
A Maori woman with five children crosses the road and heads towards the store. The oldest child decides to stay outside. He's in his early teens, wearing a hoodie with jean shorts, socks and loafers. He totes a Just Juice carton and pushes a pramful of toys for the youngest kid.
A girl of similar age, cap precariously balanced on her head and wearing ugg-boots, starts to talk to the boy. He seems shy and is sparse with his words, doing his best to act cool. He's probably hoping his mother doesn't come out of the store. The girl smiles and waves goodbye. He watches her go, most likely thinking about what he should have said. She turns around and sees him watching. He blushes and quickly looks away.
A siren goes off in the distance. No one pays attention as it draws closer. The red man turns green again but no one is in any hurry to cross although a police car is bearing down on them, lights flashing and siren blaring. It slows and waits for the road to clear before it speeds off again.
Their beautiful laundrette
RANUI John Landrigan
First impressions count. This West Auckland shopping strip is a drive-through takeaway. Second impression: a drive-through takeaway with laundrette.
Look further. The laundromat is not so much a side-dish to this impromptu food hall but the centre's bread and butter.
Peoplemovers and SUVs mingle in a large carpark with mangled Datsun utes, the odd souped-up and magged-out Holden and a mix of damaged Hondas and Nissan Skylines.
Many are full to the gunwales of large families with large blue plastic bags full of washing. The vehicles quarrel in a wheeled cha-cha for space closest to the laundrette. In and out, backwards and forwards, double-park while others wait in line. No one honks.
Six or seven people sit in cars waiting for the wash cycle to end. There are no toilets, no public seating and no place to congregate ... unless you're in the laundrette, separating the whites from the coloureds.
People are mostly Maori and Pacific Islanders who have or have not gone through life's rinse cycle, with an Asian and the occasional knee-booted bottle-blonde.
Despite bitter cold, barefoot children play around cars. Mum is in shorts and jandals, too.
One long-haired, red-toed, four-year-old in shorts and T-shirt walks from the laundrette, climbs onto the bonnet of a car and inches to the roof using windscreen wipers for footholds.
No cooking smells waft from this Indian, Chinese and European smorgasbord. Nor from the three bakeries or Leroy's Roasts, which also fries fish and chips.
A car does a burnout down Lenoch Rd. A cloud of smoke, a single tailspin and it's gone. An ageing man gets into a Morris Minor with what looks like a bottle of Kahlua. He pays no attention.
This seagull-stained shopping centre has been purpose-built with an 80s' kitset feel in a semi-industrial stretch between Henderson and the Waitakere bush.
The carpark is large, open and clean; the shops graffiti-free. The scribbles are concentrated across the busy intersection and further down Lenoch Rd.
One of the two shops, selling car audio, is closed, a note advising staff are sick, but Nick and L's is serving southern fried chicken.
All the essential food groups might be found on the toppings at the burger, pizza and kebab joint next door to the laundromat, 4-Square and video store.
A flat-screen TV fixed permanently near the superette door shows clear images of "thieves wanted by the police". The picture is perfect but the baseball cap-wearing teens look like many baseball cap-wearing teens straddling low-rider pushbikes outside.
The impressively large King Dicks Liquor Mart's roadside sign advertises a litre of Jim Beam for $38.99. Thirsty punters lured from busy Swanson Rd would be surprised to find they get a free bag of chips with that deal. More food.
An old man in a Datsun ute looks apologetic for his long-haired chihuahua in the front seat ... and for loving it.
A middle aged Maori man tries crossing the road outside the busy centre. If the laundrette shuffle was a vehicular cha-cha, this is a sweaty, tired moshpit. There's no turning bay into this mall. One lane becomes two heading westwards and two lanes become one heading east.
A 10-year-old lad decides to run the gauntlet with an inattentive man behind. The kid fakes a run between cars, once then twice before dashing for the centre line. The man follows the boy before looking up from his bills to see if anything is coming. There is. He steps back and then looks to see if the boy made it.
Who knew a commercial wash-house could be an economic staple and that the cold does not affect everyone the same? Who knew fluffy dice were still key to decorating a rearview mirror?
Eyes wide smiling
OWAIRAKA Valerie Schuler
It's 11am on Richardson Rd. Richardson's Sports Bar and Outlet Liquor Store slowly eases into life. An elderly woman in a tatty trenchcoat is today's first patron.
Across the road, a red-faced man in David Bain-style jumper waddles by. His green eco shopping bag slaps against his thigh.
Mohammad's Halal Meats - "a name you can trust" - is popular. Walu slice $9.99kg, mutton shanks $4.99kg, lamb flaps $6.95, muscovy duck $16.99. The doors swing open as customers exit, carting large bags.
Next door it's Asma yoghurt, $1.99 a pot. Outside the dairy a teenage girl stuffs a bag of pineapple lumps in her pocket. Her braided hair springs up and down as she bounces down the street.
Vans line the stretch outside the shops - Toyota Previa, Mistubishi Estima, an old Bedford. All three could do with a wash.
A young boy zooms along on his bicycle. He barely avoids a head-on collision with a teen twice his size.
Another van pulls up. Its driver, a generously-built middle aged woman, steps out and heads to the pawn shop. She peeps in the window, tries the door and shakes her head. The shop is empty. All that's left is a scattering of letters beside the door.
Dark eyes peek suspiciously from van windows. Around the corner, on Stoddard Rd, three bearded men sit outside the $2 Shop. Their heads huddled close, they laugh and exchange the day's latest gossip. Turbans bob up and down.
A burqa-clad woman walks past, her black eyes scanning the street. She heads for Khoobsurat Hair and Beauty, perhaps for some eyebrow-shaping.
The constant hum of traffic drowns out all other sound. Trucks and vans queue at the lights, impatient engines revving. A small, old-model Toyota comes screaming around the corner, brakes screeching ominously. Road workers look up.
Another van pulls in. This one is immaculately polished. A bumper sticker proclaims that "Prayer changes stuff".
Two small girls argue over the price of lollies. "You just didn't have enough for that one, okay?" Her little sister utters a sound of disapproval.
Noon. The sun comes out.
Two jovial men with moustaches jog by, pink limbs flying. They stop at the lights, chests heaving.
A Somali woman in traditional dress adds a welcome splash of colour. Her sunflower skirt matches the yellow road markings.
Beaded garments in rich ochres, turquoises and magentas line the window of Makayee's Ladieswear. Black and white Bollywood beauties smile from shop windows. A man walks by, a bag of onions tucked under his arm.
Outside the $2 Shop, tartan suitcases - $39 each - are held together by a metal chain. The entrance to the chemist's is lined with stacks of nappies.
An olive-skinned man with piercing green eyes heads for the ATM machine.
Sparrows scavenge outside the fruit and vege store. Tindokis $1.99 a kilo, taro Tonga $1.99, Fiji white taro $2.49, Yum Yum noodles $9 a box. A truck takes off, leaving a cloud of heavy smoke.
More beards, more burqas, more vans. A bleached mullet. Socks and jandals. Sparrows. Green bananas and coconuts. An exotic beauty with black curls and kohl-lined eyes. Smiling eyes. Not-so-smiling eyes.
The hum of traffic continues and so does the steady flow of day-to-day life in Owairaka.
Baywatch babes ... and their grandmas
BROWNS BAY Ewan McDonald
Free parking. On the beachfront. Two hours. Three parking wardens on a bench, two with takeaway lattes for smoko. Two chartered clubs, Indian and Italian restaurants to one side of the short street into the main drag; realtor and English pub on the other. "$10 steak night Wednesdays" in chalk on the pavement sign. It's Tuesday.
Tuesday morning Browns Bay. Winter grey with a promise, not a threat, of rain soon.
Around the corner into Clyde St, the main, not quite the only, drag. A dead-straight line of one- and occasionally two-storey shops facing across a fastidiously angled cobblestone footpath, smoothly asphalted road as far as the Salvation Army rest-home under the bluff of two- and occasionally one-storey scrubbed, tidy, orderly homes.
Clean, tidy, orderly shopping strip, too. Winter skeletons of streetside trees; not a leaf on the cobblestones. Nor a chewing gum splat nor a dog disgrace. (Graffiti, tagging? The only paint on a wall a nostalgic rendering of Browns Bay 1949, beachfront 4-Square and phone box, high-topped and running-boarded Vauxhall, or maybe Austin, outside. With the council and Lions Club's blessing.)
Two lines of set-square-aligned parallel-parked sedans, more sedans, shopping-cart cars. A stationwagon. A van, tradesman. Another stationwagon. SUV, Remuera (or Takapuna) taxis? Not a one, let alone a 4x4.
A slow, then slower, line of traffic each way. Now and then a bus. No particular place to go: no impatient plan to stop. No carparks anyway. Every one taken. Free parking, one hour.
The shops: a couple of hundred, give or take. Farmer's, Jean Jones, House of Travel between one-man, more often two-women, brands. Gift shoppes, dollar or a little bit more emporia, clothing, not fashion ("Winter clearance 50% off jerseys, denim").
Bookstores on almost every corner, specials outside (not Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay: cheap today, possibly tomorrow, certainly yesterday: recipes like Grandma used to bake). A spectacular eyeful of optometrists but a noticeably sparse crop of barbers.
And cafes: Sp'getti gourmet Italian, Flavours of India, Isonobe sushi-to-go, Catch 22, South African Caffee, Bernie's Bakery and Cafe Award-Winning Pies. Gaku teppanyaki. Optimism, a new definition: a 60-seat teppanyaki restaurant, immaculate white cloths, doors open, at 11.30 on a winter morning in Browns Bay. McDonald's, Burger King: perhaps out towards the motorway. Starbucks, though, in the prime midtown spot.
Clean, tidy, orderly, flat. More accurately, empty. Shopkeepers on the phone, at the counter with a friend and her pram and her gossip. Gone for a coffee. Or a paper from the bookstore on the corner. From the CD store speakers, something hot from the 60s; in the racks on the pavement, someone hot from the 50s, Edith Piaf. Michael Jackson marked down.
Clean, tidy, orderly, the few Browns Baysiders out today. Snapshot: Gold Card, grey hair, plum winter-warmer sweatsuits. Grand-, or could be great-grandchildren attached. A cappuccino of mums, toddlers. Fortysomethings, fiftywhatevers? None. Tuesday lunchtime, though. Teenagers on school holidays? Four. On the bench outside Starbucks. One mega-major-massive frothaccino. Four cellphones. Five minutes, gone. Bus, Takapuna. Mall.
Sign above small shop: "Diversity". Here? Virtually none, not Balmoral nor Otara nor Henderson. Apart from the cuisine. Just a catchy name for an imported-clothing store.
Accordion music. Around there? Yes. People, baguettes, croissants, tricolour flag, Citroen 2CV ... mais oui, La Tropezienne, the real thing on the real day, a Frenchman's bakery on le 14 juillet, Bastille Day.
Back on the main street, a stripped Doris In Paris boutique. Out of fashion. But one of just a couple of unoccupied stores in the whole street: another new definition of optimism.
Another puzzling sign: "Golden Sands Cafe". Oh, the bay. One around here somewhere. Yes, behind the shops on the other side of the road. Down the walkway next to the Starbucks, past two rugged-up women, trestles of cakes and biscuits. Next to the Community Noticeboard, so ... proceeds to the Guides, the Blind? No: canny entrepreneurs with another catchy name, Sweet Surrender.
Clean, tidy, orderly. Quiet. So quiet. Back to the car, past the pub chalkboard. Playing in Browns Bay on Saturday night, the Recliner Rockers.