Absolute Positivity About Hamilton

12 March 2004

I WONDER what you'd really think if you stumbled into Hamilton to stay for a couple of days?, writes Denise Irvine. If you had no knowledge of the city, no pre-conceived ideas, had never heard the words bland, foggy, featureless cow-town, "Where The Grass Is Greener", Rocky Horror Capital, whatever?

If you'd stumbled across us in the past couple of weeks, you might have wondered what on earth you'd struck.

You'd have found this newspaper full of people going at it hammer and tongs over whether or not the city should have a statue of legendary Rocky Horror Show character Riff Raff as a salute to the show's creator Richard O'Brien, who spent some of his formative years in Hamilton.

The "againsts" were banging on about the fact that we were "honouring sleaze", and that city morals were in a state of collapse.

The "fors" were talking it up as a "defining moment for Hamilton". The statue would increase the city's stature, they said, the Hamilton "brand" could do with a lift, and dodgy little butler Riff Raff was just the bloke to do it.

Some of the "fors" argued that many unkind people apparently still have a bad case of Hamilphobia, and actually laugh when you say you're from Hamilton. This would change post-Riff Raff. In the words of theatre director Mark Servian, whose brainchild the statue was: "I have thought for years that I wanted to do something that in one fell swoop would allow sophisticated people to confidently say `I'm from Hamilton, got a problem with that'?"

Well, I certainly haven't got a problem with Riff Raff, he will be a colourful addition to the south-end. But I have got a problem with the accompanying message, from the pro-statue lobby, that this will suddenly make us proud of our patch, that finally we have found our saviour, and we will be reinvented as the Rocky Horror Capital of the world.

It's as if we're suffering from a terminal case of low self-esteem, and must be constantly on alert for a cure.

In the past few years there have been more city branding slogans than most of us have had hot brunches. It's like we've swallowed the myths that Hamilton has few redeeming features, and any new bit of riff-raff is something to cling to.

I MEAN, what would you really think if you happened upon us for a couple of days? A salutatory answer lies in a line from a Waikato Times column by Helen Brown a couple of weeks back.

Writing from Melbourne, Brown mentioned an Australian friend who'd toured the North Island over the summer and had fallen in love with Hamilton.

Good God, surely not!

A couple of phonecalls later, and I had a very pleasant chat to Karen Kyte, who teaches French at a Melbourne secondary school, and in January spent two nights in Hamilton with her husband and two daughters:

"We stumbled across Hamilton almost by accident on a two-week holiday in the North Island. We'd been up north visiting the Bay of Islands, Doubtless Bay, and Cape Reinga, and stayed a night at Kaitaia. The woman who ran the motel there said if we were driving to Rotorua, we should look at staying in Hamilton where her parents ran a motel, and could offer accommodation.

"So we did, and we were really impressed. I said to my husband Rob, `I could live here'. It's got so much going for it, but it's not so big that it's impersonal.

"We loved the natural beauty of the river, the walks, and the gardens, and we thought it was a very lively place. It had so much going for it, plenty of variety.

"There was a great range of restaurants, which we hadn't really expected. We spent ages choosing a place to eat, and we had a good meal at an Indian restaurant.

"We were there on a Saturday night, and went to the cinema complex; there were lots of people out having a good time, and we saw posters and flyers advertising a range of entertainment.

"For its size, Hamilton offers so much; it is a beautiful, compact city, friendly, and easy to get around.

"We drove to Cambridge, which we also loved, and went to a local pony show in Hamilton where there were local families attending.

"We also liked the multi-cultural nature of the city; coming from Melbourne, we cherish that. We had thought as a provincial city Hamilton might be more Anglo-Saxon or monocultural. But we were wrong.

"We stayed in Auckland for three nights, and I must say I found it pretty dingy."

Um, thanks for that Karen. I'm glad you were impressed. Come back and have another look when the CBD and Garden Place have had their makeovers. It'll be even better.

MOST CITIES and towns have their myths and labels: Auckland (Jafas/traffic jams); Wellington (Positively Windy); Christchurch (Positively Stuffy); Dunedin (Positively Remote); Mt Maunganui (Hoons/high-rise); Dannevirke (Where?); Hamilton (Cow-town). Doesn't look so bad in that line-up, does it?

The trick is not to take the labels too seriously. Because, as Karen Kyte would no doubt tell you, they're only a small part of the story.