A city to be proud of? on Home Services

Jan

A city to be proud of?

posted by admin in Window Cleaning

I have never been here before, except in transit, but it has a familiar feeling. I suppose in many ways cities are all much the same. I met a number of American tourists on the way over, and they all commented on how lovely Christchurch is. I think it is, too: a city to be proud of. There are many things that mark Chicago as distinctively American. The hotel cafe where we go for breakfast was the first one of many greasy-spoon diners of its kind that pump up the cholesterol level of Americans. On the menu is always streaky bacon, eggs cooked any way you want, a steak if you’d like it, homemade hash browns and strong coffee from a filter. Yesterday, at least, I passed on the eggs, and went for what they call an English muffin and thick toast. The toast was wonderful, with the texture of angel cake. The filter coffee wouldn’t be tolerated in trendy New Zealand, but it was hot, strong and came with endless free refills. The bill was about $NZ6. As we sat there, we suddenly heard a noise like machine guns going off in a Bruce Willis movie. The man next to us fished in his pocket and pulled out his cellphone, the source of the noise. Only in America would cellphones carry the sound of all-out war. I wonder if that ringer is popular in Iraq? Telecom now has 20-cent text messages even while a person is overseas. This worked well for me in Los Angeles, but by Chicago it had stopped. I was told to phone Telecom collect on a landline to try to sort the problem out. I got hold of an operator who told me that it was not possible to phone New Zealand collect. When I queried this, she said the message came back that New Zealand was on a list of countries not covered by collect calls. I am puzzled, both at the fact of this (a New Zealand colleague confirmed the same experience) and that Telecom apparently did not know. Anyway, the joys of cheap international communication have bypassed me. The Americans I have met are anti- war and vehemently anti-Bush. They are embarrassed and enraged at their government’s foreign policy. Mind you, that’s only in Chicago. In this part of the US it is easy to forget the other America: the land of the gun-totin’ racist redneck fundamentalists who believe they have God and the constitution on their side. Chicago was a frontier town in the 17th century; a dividing line between the known Midwest and the unexplored Wild West. If you look on a map, it is well into the eastern side of the US, but at the time, the extent of this vast country was unknown. The bridges over the river commemorate the explorers who first crossed over. America likes to celebrate its history in a way that we seldom do in New Zealand. It is a scrubbed-clean city, with a distinct modernist art-deco look. Many of the important buildings were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who excelled in complex geometrical shapes. Nearly all the buildings are attractive in their own right. Older men and women are employed all day to pick up litter using hand-held contraptions with long metal handles. Seeing this well-run city raises questions about what we are doing with our cities in New Zealand, and especially Auckland. Last week, I had a long drive around the central city there, where in the last decade many high-rise apartment buildings have been built. These are, in the main, cheap-looking, with tiny windows and functional cladding. Many of them have been allowed to block out views of one of the most beautiful harbours in the world. The Auckland City Council is trying to beautify the city around these eyesores, but I think and hope that they will eventually have to be pulled down. The lesson from Chicago is to make the most of one’s natural surroundings, and enhance them with interesting and excellent architecture, great amenities and a good dash of culture and history. I think we do it all, except possibly the history, quite well in Christchurch.