Karangahape Returns is a pop-up store, meets souvenir stand, meets art installation that refuses to take your cash. Madeleine Crutchley visits for a window shop.
Could you boil the spirit of Karangahape Rd down to a single item?
A new pop-up store on the strip makes an attempt: bottling
Come the end of September, this treasure will belong to a devotee of Karangahape – but it will only be acquired with proof of true loyalty.
Karangahape Returns will open its hole-in-the-wall window to patrons on September 11, to flog a collection of curiosities from the vibrant inner-city hub.
However, the store will refuse all cash payments.
Receipts, providing evidence of recent spending in the surrounding neighbourhood, will be the only currency of value for the store (you’ll need four of them to nab that iconic pasta water).
Tony Downing, who has been a part of the community for over 22 years, will be the shopkeeper for Karangahape Returns. Tony will oversee the 17 oddities on display, which include some true icons of the strip.
There’s a three-piece Leo O’Malley suit from the 1970s, available for 57 receipts; original prints from photographer Fiona Clark’s portrait collection Go Girl for 11 receipts; and keyrings depicting the watchful Las Vegas showgirl, for three receipts.
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There are pieces that have been made especially for the pop-up too, including packs of playing cards featuring familiar Karangahape faces (two receipts each) and number plates that read “KRO4D” (200 receipts).
The most niche offering? That would be a cardboard cutout of Sir Richie McCaw and Gemma Flynn, volunteered by Lambs Pharmacy, that stares staunchly from the back corner.
While the collection of ephemera pulls from the past and the present, it also projects into the future.
This is affirmed by the most ambitious item in the window: a certificate of deed for a month-long lease at the address. It will set an aspiring tenant back 583 receipts, but they will be able to do as they please in the vacant space.
Sam Stuchbury of creative agency Motion Sickness (which previously concocted a perfume with the scent of the street), says each item can find its grounding in the surrounding community.
“What are some past anthropological parts of the street? It was a lot of knocking on doors and seeing who would want to be involved.”
The idea materialised from the endless – and annoying – task of gathering receipts for accounting purposes. The wider team hope the campaign will encourage people to approach spending at local businesses creatively.
“I think how people gather those receipts will become an Amazing Race-type thing.”
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For Karangahape Road Business Association chief executive Jamey Holloway, the scheme distils the creativity of the culture on the strip.
“These are little physical manifestations of the culture.”
Perhaps thinking of the jar containing Fort Greene’s bubbling sourdough starter (10 receipts), Jamey adds, “Borderline dangerous.”
The store will accept receipts returned for any purchase in the Karangahape neighbourhood, including the titular strip, Cross St, Pitt St, Mercury Lane and more – a district map provides clarity of the qualifying surrounds. However, the receipts must reflect purchases made after Karangahape Returns opens on September 11.
The pieces from the collection can be picked up the day after it closes.
Jamey says Karangahape Returns is reflective of the creativity that has sustained the strip for so long – right now, you can find an example in the Room Ā showroom run by emerging designers from Te Wiki Āhua o Aotearoa.
“Absolutely wonderful ... They’re so punk in every best sense of the word, all the fire that suggests,” Jamey says.
“That’s a nice [metaphor] of the experience of working with this community. You’ve got these creative people and you’d be an idiot to bet against any of them. It’s a community where problems are just the framework for creative projects. We’ve got people doing amazing stuff all over the street and it’s quite a privilege to work for them.”
The Keep’s Lela Jacobs, who agreed to be featured in the pack of cards after hearing the unique pitch, says there is a rising energy in her immediate surroundings.
“This block feels quite activated at the moment.”
Jamey also feels a rising energy in the opening of Coastal Signs, Falafel Studios and relative newcomers like The Lebanese Grocer, Open Late, Pie Rollas and Double Whammy (of course, the estimated 2026 opening of Karanga-a-Hape Station as a part of the City Rail Link is another hopeful change for the area).
“The rocket is about to launch, and it’s probably a good time to be on it ... There’s a bit of a renaissance coming.”
Karangahape Returns is open at 490 Karangahape Rd from 10am to 5pm, September 11 until September 20.
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