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Eric Holowacz

New Zealand

(Arts Programmes Manager - Wellington City Council)

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• Get to understand the properties of film and light

  Leica

  30 December 2004

  There it is. The Leica M3. Object of desire, and device of unsurpassable wonder. Feel it. Heavy and solid, and crowned with a peerless compound of glass. There is no rangefinder, indeed, there is no camera quite like this. The world of man and his technology have rarely climbed so high a pinnacle. Load it with care. Aim it at anything. Get to understand the properties of film and light, of people and their places. There it is: the Leica. It contains the record of our existence, and a visual imprint of life as we see it. Unsurpassable wonder.

• Made from a flesh and bones of steel

  Raleigh Bikes

  06 January 2005

  Hop on. The Raleigh 3-speed is a real bike, made from flesh and bones of steel. The proportions are almost perfect for commuter, Lady, recreationalist. The saddle, covered in leather, was crafted by a man called Brooks. The three-gear Sturmey-Archer hub is a quiet marvel of elegant engineering. 'Made in England' used to mean something. It's heavy and built to outlast the generations that follow. Forget the latter-day aluminum frames, the mountain bike craze, the choppers and cruisers. Hop on. This is a true, gentlemanly machine. This is a bicycle.

• Something special in this city

  Wellington, New Zealand

  12 January 2005

  There's something special here, in this hilly, windy, harbourside city. Maybe it's the birth of a nation, a people, a world capital. Maybe it's the rich underpinnings of Maori and South Pacific culture -- layered and interwoven with more recent arrivals from India, Ireland, Brazil, Iraq, or Canada. Perhaps it's the bustling film industry, or all the buzzing cafes, or how creativity seems infused in people, places, things. I'm talking about the capital of the Antipodes and a singular city in the blue South Pacific: Wellington, New Zealand.

• The first real skateboard I owned

  Logan Earth Ski

  14 January 2005

  Damn I loved my Logan Earth Ski. It was the first real skateboard I owned. Heck, it was the first real skateboard made. It's 1977, and every boy in the neighbourhood is trying to find a way to buy one for himself. Solid wood, and rustic by today's standards, this was the plank that launched the craze. It launched me, and my friends, all over Hempsted Road, right through puberty, and past many a bump and bruise. Like yesteryear, that ride is long gone.

• From 18 time zones away, a guy can dream...

  Duke's Mayonnaise

  10 July 2005

  Amen, brother. I grew up down the road a piece in Columbia, then lived and worked in Charleston, then ran an arts council in Beaufort. For most of my life, Duke's was taken for granted, and a large jar always stood in my fridge. It was slathered on every sandwich, dolloped in every tuna or pasta salad, applied with great liberty to all edible concoctions. Alas, I now live in Wellington, New Zealand, in a land bereft of even the weakest egg-based mayonnaise; a country unacquainted with the majesty of pulled pork bbq; a nation whose brunches know not the blessings of grits. One has to look quite hard in a New Zealand supermarket to find anything close to the Southern-born grace of Duke's. From 18 time zones away, a guy can dream.

• The magical fumes of that timeless blue bottle.

  Vicks

  13 July 2005

  Ah, the magical fumes of that timeless blue bottle. Burning with Camphor, Eucalyptus, Turpentine, and who knows what else. Nana used to rub a glob of the stuff on my chest, when the winter cold came on, or it sounded like the croup. Ah, there's no smell quite like that pungent ointment: sweet, harsh, and eye-watering. Concocted in the days when salves were cures, and remedies grew from small towns and backyard chemists. There's something to be said for mysterious unguents and time-honoured balms. Ah, Vick's VapoRub, you are smeared on my memory forever. You make us breathe easier, make us all the better. There's only one word for an open bottle of the Vaporub: Ahhhhhhhhh.

• I'll have another Antarctica, please

  Antarctica beer

  05 August 2005

  Um chope estupidamente gelado. Say those words, and you are in Rio de Janiero, about to fill your gullet with an ice cold beer. Perhaps your shoe-less feet are planted in the sands of Praia Vermelho, in the shadow of Sugarloaf. Or maybe you are among old men in the Restaurante Manolo on a corner of Botafogo. At night, wherever you are, the schools of samba pour their batucada down the hills. I'll have another Antarctica, please. And another. And make it stupidly cold. This must be Rio.

• Lovemarks, you genius website.

  Lovemark (The)

  05 August 2005

  Invite anecdotal gushings based in a sense of the real. Take the common and familiar in all its packaging, then tell about the extraordinary. Pour endless consumer elements through the advertising agency filter, and distill a sense of the cultural. Reveal cherished things as real human beings know them. Ignore the sly methodology that captures the abstract intricacies of microeconomic actions. Concentrate on the alchemy. Embrace the feelings that make us people, and peel away the soft onion skin that covers places and objects. Lovemarks, you genius website. I offer only a tiny meta-cognition in a sea of on-line blurbs. Humans are, after all, chronically self-reflexive. Your quest is undeniably recursive. Your invitation to gush forth anecdotes is, again and again, readily accepted. What does it mean to love the Lovemark?