Here's a wee taste of London's annual Notting Hill Carnival...
Not to be beaten, New Zealand's biggest city Auckland also has its yearly street parade in August, 'Boobs on Bikes'...
Hmmm. Now I'll be the first to admit the music, food and general style and fashion of the Caribbean particularly floats my boat. But that bias aside, it truly disturbs me that the best New Zealand's largest and most multicultural city can muster up for its yearly sojourn is a few Westie strippers riding bareback on the trinkets of the Methamphetamine industry.
That's not a judgement call on my part. Bakers, bankers, lawyers, strippers, journalists, teachers and tilers... there's good eggs and bad eggs throughout all walks of life, and quite frankly that's where any moral panic ends with me. I quite like motorbikes, and as for boobs, well a large part of my brain activity is devoted to them on a regular basis.
It's the event itself I struggle to deal with.
I've been to Carnival in Notting Hill London, I've been to Festival in St Kilda Melbourne, and I've been to Carnival in Cuba Street, Wellington. All involved celebrations of cultural and generational diversity, and inspiring amounts of creativity, unity and love.
Perhaps I've got it all wrong, and these cities need to follow Auckland's example and change the focus of their events. Maybe there is merit in raising the lunch-hour spirits of partition staring, internet-porn addled, tie-wearing office workers worldwide...
That's not a judgement call on my part. Bakers, bankers, lawyers, strippers, journalists, teachers and tilers... there's good eggs and bad eggs throughout all walks of life, and quite frankly that's where any moral panic ends with me. I quite like motorbikes, and as for boobs, well a large part of my brain activity is devoted to them on a regular basis.
It's the event itself I struggle to deal with.
I've been to Carnival in Notting Hill London, I've been to Festival in St Kilda Melbourne, and I've been to Carnival in Cuba Street, Wellington. All involved celebrations of cultural and generational diversity, and inspiring amounts of creativity, unity and love.
Perhaps I've got it all wrong, and these cities need to follow Auckland's example and change the focus of their events. Maybe there is merit in raising the lunch-hour spirits of partition staring, internet-porn addled, tie-wearing office workers worldwide...
