When we first arrived in Christchurch from SA, I registered with a Manchester St house rental agency, but we got our first rental house at Sumner through The Press vacancy column. Our other associations with Manchester St were business and music.
2008. Pak 'n Save carpark, Manchester St view of Old Station & Hoyts, Moorhouse Ave. 4 Sept 2010 quake: Clocks stopped on the station clock tower, which was later reinforced against aftershocks with wooden bracing. Post 2012, the station was demolished
In the CBD, Manchester St began at a T junction with Moorhouse Ave where Pak 'n Save traded at the corner. Hoyts cinema was on the opposite side of Moorhouse Ave, with a railway line behind. The old brick station was converted to Science Alive, Hoyts cinema and Salvation Army workshops. I'd attended interviews at the latter, and my sons Jake and Luke found productive pursuits at Science Alive and Hoyts movies.
Besides Pak 'n Save at the beginning of Manchester St, there were various furniture shops and car dealers like Nissan, Honda, BMW, Triumph, Archibalds, and motor bike dealers like Harley Davidson, Suzuki, and also bicycle shops.
Manchester St, busy with business by day, became the Red Light District by night. Besides other shops, sex shops, massage parlours, pubs and restaurants adorned Manchester St.
2008. Alice in Videoland (old Post Office) cnr Tuam St & High St, Christchurch. Alice in Videoland survived the quakes
A detour off Manchester St took us to Videoland to hire videos from a building on the corner of Tuam St and High St. A block away, Jake had flatted in an old brick building, "Poplar Mews" in Poplar St, a lane parallel to Manchester St, between Tuam St and Lichfield St. While Jake flatted on the third floor, "Lichfield Lanes" around his flat were converted to upmarket pubs and restaurants. I was glad when Jake left his Poplar St flat, as I thought the old brick building was a fire trap, with little chance of escape from the top floor where Jake had flatted.
2008. Poplar Mews, Poplar St, Christchurch. Poplar St was damaged by the 22.02.11 quake. Poplar Mews & most Poplar St bldgs were demolished post quakes
2008. Manchester St / High St / Tuam St intersection, Christchurch. High St was badly damaged by the 22.02.11 quake and 13.06.11 quake
Up Manchester St, Jake moved to a flatting house beyond Bealey Ave at 464 Manchester St, which was leaky and grungy. We observed that Jake's "cheap flats" were badly maintained by landlords, who were quick to evict if rent payment was tardy, but slow to do needed maintenance. That rental house was near Edgeware Rd, where in 2007 two street-partying school girls were run over by murderer Sila, who also injured other party-goers with his car on Edgeware Rd.
2008. Manchester St Rental House, Christchurch. Survived Christchurch quakes well
2008. White Elephant Clubhouse above Dick Smith, cnr Manchester St & Bedford Row, Christchurch. The bldg was demolished post 2010-2011 quakes
In 2008, once a week I took Luke and his drumkit to White Elephant Clubhouse on the corner of Manchester St and Bedford Row, where Luke practised with his Galaxy Stampede band mates. There I bumped into fathers doing "Dad's Taxi" lugging amps, guitars, rock music stuff into an old lift and up rickety stairs.
2008. Rock Shop, Manchester St, Christchurch. 4 Sept 2010 quake: Manchester Courts behind was quake damaged & demolished post quake. Post 22.02.11 quake, Rock Shop relocated to Hornby & all the bldgs in the pic were demolished.
Up Manchester St, Luke popped into the Rock Shop to buy music scores and music kit.
2008. Octagon Restaurant / Trinity Church, Manchester St, Christchurch. 4 Sept 2010 quake: Octagon Restaurant / Trinity Church was quake damaged & post quake aftershocks braced with metal bracing. Post quakes, Octagon tower was gone, but the rest of the bldg survived, but stayed closed for years awaiting restoration
Up Manchester St, at The Civic Luke played drums in one of the Smoke Free Rock Quest elimination rounds, and also frequented teenager dances at The Civic. In the City Hall, Luke's lead singer and guitarist mate got best musician award in the Canterbury Rock Quest competition.
2008. The Civic, Manchester St, Christchurch. Damaged by 4 Sept 2010 quake aftershocks. The Civic was demolished post 22.02.11 quake
2008. The Civic Staircase & Chandelier, Manchester St, Christchurch
Up Manchester St, we'd turnoff at Oxford Tce along the Avon River to swim at the council pool. (The Avon was full of E. coli bacteria stopping swimming in the Avon). Across the Avon at the old bandstand Rotunda restaurant, off Manchester St, we'd feed ducks and watch punters on the Avon and trout cruising the Avon.
2008. Verkerks Butchery, Manchester St, Christchurch. Verkerks was demolished post 22.02.11 quake
Up Manchester St, we'd pass Saint Lukes Anglican Church with its white wooden bell tower, separate from the church bldg.
After 2010-2011 quake damages, St Lukes was demolished.
2008. Saint Lukes Anglican Church & Separate Wooden Bell Tower, Manchester St, Christchurch. 4 September 2010 quake: St Lukes gables were damaged in the quake. After subsequent greater quake damages, St Lukes was demolished post 22.02.11 & 13.06.11 quakes
Up Manchester St, Luke bought his second second-hand piano from an old man. (He'd bought his first second-hand piano in Halswell). The piano-tuner who tuned Luke's first piano had found the second walnut piano, which Luke kept despite his drumming passion. He sold his first piano to a Chinese girl.
Up Manchester St, Leah borrowed school books from the National Library of NZ. Behind the library, Leah liked browsing at Briscoes and shopping at the Asian Food Warehouse.
2008. National Library of NZ & Asian Food Warehouse behind, Manchester St, Christchurch. Both bldgs were damaged by the 22.02.11 quake & demolished
Up Manchester St, early days I went for a couple of usless training / job interviews at the Christchurch Academy, a gloomy but photogenic Victorian bldg. Next door was livelier Saint Marys Catholic Church School.
2008. Saint Mary's Catholic Church School Playground & Christchurch Academy, Manchester St, Christchurch
Coda: Manchester St was badly damaged by 2010-2011 quakes. After the deadly 22.02.11 quake, Manchester St was fence cordoned for months with the rest of quake trashed Christchurch CBD. Cops and soldiers guarded cordon access checkpoints into the CBD forbidden zone. Manchester St cordoned businesses stopped, some relocated elsewhere.
Most of the photographed bldgs in this post were quake damaged, some were demolished.
Content & pics Copyright Mark JS Esslemont
2 comments:
In reply to your question on "Death of Durban" blog - the following:
Genocide is not the same thing as ordinary crime carried out mainly for greed - although the ANC government propaganda insists that it's all 'just ordinary crime'.
This has become their much-cited mantra: but top experts disagree with this ANC-mantra:
These murders during more than 1,000 armed, militia-style attacks targetting white Afrikaner farmers since 1994, are being carried out in a very different way to those ordinary 'crimes' committed against the majority of South African citizens: and this was not my conclusion I am just the archivist of these events -- it's the opinion of the top expert on genocide in the world -- Dr Gregory Stanton, of Genocide Watch -- has examined the evidence of these farm attacks -- (he studied SA police forensic videos of farm murders; police reports, eye witness reports; photographs of the murder victims and their surroundings and a report of interviews carried out with arrested farm-attackers) -- and concluded since 2004 that these specific murder attacks targetting Afrikaner rural dwellers are indeed part of a very specific genocidal process countrywide targetting this one specific ''ethnic minority.
He's the world expert on genocide and his bona-fides are beyond reproach. Please read his report he drew about this conclusion at
http://www.genocidewatch.org/BoersSlain01.htm
A lot of people misunderstand the exact nature of genocide - check out the definition of genocide (UN Genocide Convention) here:
http://www.genocidewatch.org -
and to which definition Dr Stanton, a former US State department lawyer, also contributed greatly.
Also google ' YouTube Gregory Stanton Genocide Watch Eight Stages of Genocide ' to hear from his own lips exactly what the genocidal process entails.
Read the Eight Definitions of Genocide http://www.genocidewatch.org/8stages.htm
In fact these genocidal attacks are not limited to rural Afrikaner dwellers: white Afrikaner families on the smallholdings and cities are often also attacked in a very similar genocidal manner which have all the markings of such hate-crimes, especially from about five years ago in an ethnic-cleansing campaign of the rural areas around Greater Pretoria including Brits, Magalies, Krugersdorp - in fact whereever Afrikaner smallholders still manage to eke out a living.
These aren't 'rich' people being attacked, and often very little of value is ever stolen, but usually the breadwinner is gunned down. At the same time, in spite of their own protesting, the traditional Afrikaner-built towns such as Pretoria are also undergoing 'architectural ethnic-cleansing' with the name-changing programme - this also forms part of the genocide campaign targetting this one specific race-group by the ruling authorities of South Africa.
Their historical presence in the landscape is being eradicated from the map of South Africa, and Afrikaners are fully aware of what is happening in this regard.
These murders and ethnic-cleansing campaign targetting Afrikaner families in the countryside are not the only feature of this genocidal process - these events also are combined with other actions by the SA government with are mainly aimed at removal all means of survival for Afrikaner families, even when they have fallen into destitution and homelessness.
For instance specific laws have been drawn up barring whites - and the majority of whites in SA are Afrikaners, so it mainly affects them -- all access to the labour market; denying them the right to own rural land where they could still have grown their own food; there is also a persistent pattern of denying the Afrikaner poor the right to public housing (read the two recent surveys undertaken by Solidarity trade union's Helping Hand charity in this regard) --
http://www.helpinghandfund.co.za/report/White%20Poverty%20-%20English.pdf
White poverty report to Cape Town mayor Helen Zille Nov 2008 (in English, with pictures)
This report also describes how Afrikaners are being pushed out of traditionally-Afrikaner working-class suburbs such as Ruyterwacht by an official policy of denying them access to public housing and pushing them into marginal squatter sites:
http://www.helpendehand.co.za/images/report_helenzille.pdf
Video: The silent Afrikaner poverty - Zuma visit to Bethlehem squatter camp May 2008:
Afrikaans news programme - 660,000 Afrikaner whites are now destitute, homeless
Zuma was reportedly 'shocked' to discover that these Afrikaners were being denied all food-aid and goverment benefits:
During his second visit, he brought along government officials who recorded the applications from residents at Bethlehem squatter camp.
By November 22 2008, there is no recorded incident as yet that these applied-for benefits were received.
Solidarity records similar denials of the basic survival-rights to Afrikaners countrywide.
http://www.helpinghandfund.co.za/?p=99
THEIR PICTURE GALLERY:
http://www.helpinghandfund.co.za/armoede/gallery.htm
These surveys carried out by top officials and skilled investigative reporters of Solidarity Trade Union describe an emerging pattern in which rural Afrikaners are leaving the countryside and moving massively to Gauteng and Western Cape urban areas; where ANC officials often very rudely and with crude racist language, deny even the most destitute and desperate of these rural Afrikaners the right to government aid-funding or food-aid parcels; often also won't treat destitute Afrikaner whites in public hospitals (we have records of deaths of babies and adults have already resulted from this refusal of access to medical care); deny many destitute Afrikaners access to food-aid and public housing (we even have a picture of an East Cape public housing project with the words 'No Whites" daubed on the wall and a statement from the ANC-manager of that housing project that he didn't wasn't being racist but the residents simply did not want any 'whites' in these public housing projects, and similar documented proof );
and often, SAPS and metro-cops also have shown a pattern countrywide in which they arrest young male Afrikaners, often farmers, on a huge variety of on trumped up traffic-violation charges, dump them in overcrowded helding cells where they are gangraped all weekend and then released due 'to a lack of evidence'.
(Note: The observation by the teenaged mass-murderer Johann Nel who killed four people in the Skierlik squatter camp located on his father's farm, was an accurate statement of fact: as a six-year-old boy he questioned why the black people were killing the white people so much'.
After Nel 's horrific attack on the Skierlik squatters, trauma-counsellors in the Afrikaner community are now focussing much more attention on the young survivals of such farm attacks to try and avoid such horrid reactionary, fear-based events in future.)
http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2008/11/rawsonville-farmers-in-news-again-but.html
Whenever racist abuses against Afrikaners are recorded and reported on in the news media, local-level ANC-officials promise 'an investigation' but nothing is ever done to pursue the people carrying out such racist practices. And none of their top-level leaders ever speak out publicly against such abuses targetting Afrikaners.
ANC local-level leaders have recently even been recorded citing death lists and incited murder and violence against specific groups of Afrikaners, from public platforms in Badplaas - and the country's ruling political authority figures are not seen to intervene very actively and publicly to stop these incitements to genocide of one specific minority at once: Young Communist League secretary Sibusiso Radebe and ANC Youth League town councillor Pro Khoza of Badplaas publicly read their deathlist at a meeting of their followers in October 2008: naming two specific Afrikaner cops; and also calling for their followers to 'kill all the racist whites of Badplaas'.
This was recorded by a number of well-qualified journalists including a black SA journalist, as well as by Badplaas police- and municipal officials.
Importantly, the national leaders seem to condone (i.e. APPROVE THROUGH THEIR SILENCE -- as I see no activity indicating that the national government - none, not even the acting president or Zuma - is ever denouncing these events targetting Afrikaners from public platforms, and they are not actively warning their followers to stop doing this, preferably by use of public TV and radio to stop this growing hatespeech.
I have heard no denouncements of this hate-speech campaign targetting Afrikaners, also not from the good archbiship Desmond Tutu.
The SABC has even played hate-speech music CALLING FOR THE MURDER OF WHITES and had to be rapped over the fingers by the national broadcasting agency before they stopped playing it: i.a. with the hugely popular music of the rapper Zubz, his song "Get Out", which was ruled hate-speech as it called for the murder of all whites with machetes and machineguns. It is still heard all over the townships and is hugely popular, it can be bought everywhere in SA.
No efforts are made to stop publication of such hate-speech targetting one specific ethnic-minority - and these songs greatly contribute to the growing atmosphere of hatred in which all-out genocide can eventually take place, says Dr Stanton.
See all the links and source details on
http://censorbugbear-reports.blogspot.com/2008/11/tsunami-of-anti-white-hatespeech-sweeps.html
Thanks Censorbugbear. For the record, my "Death of Durban" blog question after "The Beach was a Supreme Mess" was:
"If selected figures of 3000 white farmers + 35 000 whites murdered out of 300 000 South Africans murdered since 1994 represents white genocide, what does the balance of the 300 000 represent?"
I acknowledge SA white genocide, which you are so admirably recording, but you haven't answered my question viz. What does the balance of 262 000 murders in SA since 1994 represent?
Surely you have the same horror and revulsion for the 262 000 black, coloured, Indian murders since 1994?
Having lived through apartheid, I note that many of the dirty tricks, denial etc, which the ANC now uses were learnt from apartheid Afrikaners and their Engelse lackeys: like the blurring of 'political' and 'criminal' murders, if any, which the media pumped us with during apartheid?
Your contention is that white Afrikaner 'genocide' is being blurred into 'criminal' murder statistics, and ignored by cops and the ANC.
It's the blurring / denial / bias of figures and statistics which also repels me. That evil also happened during apartheid.
It's the wronged people behind the stats who concern me - black or white in our beloved country SA: like my brother brain damaged in 1987 near Verulam during a state of emergency (or was it a state of terror?); 2 friends carjack murdered before and after apartheid; a cousin raped and murdered in Cape Town in the 70s;
two family members recently raped in Durban; family members recently escaping carjackings, and being carjacked in Durban; there's more, but I'll stop. Like you, I'm white and feel for my kith and kin in SA, but there are also other people who live / lived in SA who were / are also wronged.
I think the post apartheid black regime thinks: "You had your white time in the SA sun during apartheid, now its our turn. We learned many rotten tricks from you whiteys."
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