The Library’s book sale is on from Monday 12 to Sunday 18 April, with most books priced at $2. Special items will be priced up to $10, magazines will be 50c, childrens’ books $1, and they will also be selling CDs.

New stock will be added to the sale tables every day, so get on down there and buy up large. Oh and if you see a short curvy brunette fighting for the science fiction, that’s me. Don’t mess with me, I have a mean elbow jab!

So to celebrate my impending move, I am writing a list. All the stuff you say ‘I should totally do that one day’ – goes on the list. Thanks to my Wellington list, I’ve eaten dinner at the restaurant with Wellington’s best location and worst food (Fisherman’s Table), dragged flatmates on day trips (Somes Island), attended my first sports game (Phoenix) and investigated Welly’s urban legends (the trippy tree).

In return, I may provide vaugley interesting reports back on my list-based activities. So let me know! What needs to be on the list?

One market I have visited (more than once even), purely by virtue of it being close to home, is the Avondale Market. Held at Avondale Racecourse, Avondale Market has been running since the early 1970’s, and averages 15,000 to 20,000 visitors most Sundays.

All the things you’d expect to find at a market are there, from second-hand clothes to handmade arts and crafts, bric-a-brac to natural remedies, small clothing labels to cheap imported tickety-tack.

Avondale Market’s strength, however, lies in its fresh produce. The sheer number of stalls selling fruit and vegetables is almost overwhelming, and the multicultural nature of Avondale Market is evident in the produce on offer – next to the potatoes and carrots you’ll find gorgeous Asian greens, fresh coconuts, taro and plenty more, including a few things you may not be able to identify. Once you’ve seen the quality, prices and range of produce on offer you’ll wonder why you ever bought your fruit and veg from the supermarket.

During the hotter months it pays to do your shopping at the market as early as possible in the day – once the temperature rises and the humidity sets in being jammed amongst those crowds can start to feel a little like being in a sauna with the temperature turned up and all the exits blocked.

Avondale Markets run from 6am to midday every Sunday at the Avondale Racecourse. Carparking is available at the racecourse for $3.00, watch your step as you walk through the carpark, sometimes the horses have ‘been’ there before you.

The new range of oh-so-pretty ladies’ wear takes over where Misery Boutique left off.

(Amy nicked this pic off of Illicit’s myspace page).

She has all kinds of modern lit, classics, poetry, foreign language books and non-fiction, and it’s all reasonably priced. I just scored Final Cut, the story of the Heaven’s Gate debacle – five bucks. Hunter S Thompson’s bio Kingdom Of Fear – five bucks.  Graham Greene novel – five bucks. Can you see a pattern emerging? Get in there, Lily says she has new books every week.

In Family Guy Season 4 Episode 1: North by North Quahog (2005), Peter Griffin walks into the “Beyond” section at the Bed, Bath and Beyond store and finds himself in some kind of space/time-warp vortex — where, happily, this turns out to be where the coffee mugs are displayed.

At Sylvia Park Mall, you don’t get anything even remotely as much fun:

No bizarre floaty vortex-place for you, matey. No coffee mugs, even. (Probably.) Nope, at Sylvia Park Mall you got you your Bed and your Bath, and your and er.. Table. Woot.

See, not even a pretty hanging print of a spiral staircase that looks like an ammonite or perhaps as if it’s being used to illustrate the golden ratio can rescue this. Look at how fed-up and disgusted the guy who looks like my Embedded Microcontrollers lecturer from 1992 is. He can’t even bring himself to finish his latté. He’s had enough, and rightly so.

I chose this tale of average-ness to illustrate the resoundingly disappointing experience that was my visit to the Sylvia Park Mall. In Auckland for a few days, I dragged my gracious host out there all bright-eyed, bushy tailed and keyed-up for a shopping expedition of awesomeness. This is when it all started going wrong.

For ever, I’ve held onto this (in retrospect, ridiculous and naïve) ideal that at Malls, you get Deals. That is, Malls should be places where shops sell things at lower cost than their usual High-Street equivalents. That Malls are where you find stores that you indeed don’t even find on the High Streets, whence you get even better Deals. Bargains. That’s what Malls should be all about. In fact, all Malls should be DressMart Malls, where you actually do (mostly) get stuff more cheaply. Basically, Malls should reward you for the crappiness of their user-experience by saving you money.

Turns out, malls are just cluster-bombs of chain stores, selling everything at exactly the same prices as any other branch of the franchise. Buh. Colour me disenfranchised.

Basically, I was wanting the Most Amazing Shopping Experience Known to Mankind. I was failed. Oh well, at least we got to play at Britomart and ride on the trains.

Other things of note:

• It’s not Nearly As Big As You Would Think.
• Wagamama — weird but good.
• The Warehouse — sells liquor? Has a ‘clearance’/’special’ bin? 700ml Pernod for $32? Need I go on?
• Actually the Warehouse now apparently sells fresh fruit and veges. Honestly, this is getting out of hand.
• Asian Supermarket at the entrance: yes, you win. Red Bull-alike taurine drink that smells a little bit like cow piss and is called “Bacchus” on special for $1.99? Thank you. I’ll take several.
• Cute staff raise shopping-for-men’s-Elle-MacPherson-underwear-at-the-Bendon-outlet experience ^4. At least.
• It was really weird running into a guy from my cricket team back home almost as soon as we arrived, literally only hours since we’d been boozing together 700 km away. We were both all “duuude! what are YOU doing here? LOLz!!1!!one”

We live in a very pretty city, team, so how come there’s no catchy pop hits proclaiming sunny late afternoons on Ponsonby Road, driving around Tamaki Drive at night, or even a sea shanty to getting pissed down the Viaduct and jumping in the water? Surely we can do better?

To get us underway, I’m nominating ‘Silverdale‘ by ex-Bressa Creeting Cake guy Edmund Cake as my top Auckland song. Recorded in a secret Gore St lair, Silverdale is an bubbly ode to the joys of tripping around the shops on Saturday with your loved one. The whimsy-ometer goes off the clock on lines like “Driving to Silverdale – Bendon has a sale”, and “I’ll put my hand in your pocket, I’ll keep that docket.” Even Rendell’s gets a special mention.

Between us, we must be able to expand the Auckland Canon – what’s your top Auckland song?

From their website:

The Medieval Shop is New Zealand’s premier supplier of authentic medieval and custom made costumes, props, jewellery & accessories, arms, suits of armour, swords, shields, daggers, chainmaille, historical replica, candles & candelabra, gifts, toys, books, collectables, celtic fashion, genealogy, family history, clubs and information.

You know the sort of person who shops here, right? The sort of person who has a goatee and owns at least one 12-sided die.

But while the Medieval Shop will soon be no more, it can be remembered for its part as a location and prop supplier “Phairytale”, Team Haynes/Ow’s rather good entry into the 2006 48Hours film competition. It’s described as “a short MMORPG romance” and is just lovely.

Oh, and speaking of the 48Hours film competition, it’s on again this year! I’ve done it for the previous four years and it’s so much fun. If you have a vague interest in film-making, even if you’re not very good at it, then you should enter. Registration’s open now. Shooting weekend is 16-18 May. Check out the official website for more details.

But, sadly, a sign has appeared recently advising customers that the shop is closing down. One more piece of old K Road is going.

It’s not your average plastics shop. It feels like that at one point it may have been quite ordinary – perhaps at some stage in the ’70s, when Newton was a dying, working class suburb, decimated by the newfangled motorway and trying to find itself again. Back then, people needed to be able to buy cheap plastic goods, cos they surely couldn’t afford anything pricey.

Even though the Plasticware Centre gets plenty of light from the Mercury Lane side windows, it still feels a bit damp and dodgy, but that just adds to the charm.

What I like best about the Plasticware Centre is that some of the stock appears to be decades old. I found a set of kitchen scales just like the ones I grew up with. My mum bought those in the ’70s. I could buy a “new” pair from the Plasticware Centre if I wanted.

If you were wanting to deck out your kitchen in a ’70s or ’80s retro style, forget Iko Iko – the Plasticware Centre has all your needs, including a ye olde spice rack full of spices that probably aren’t so spicy anymore.

There’s 10% off everything now, and stuff is pretty cheap there anyway, so there are sure to be bargains to be had. It’s worth a bit of an explore anyway, just to enjoy its quirky character.

UPDATE: I made another trip to the strange K Road plastics shop today.

• A starter spice rack filled with a selection of commonly used spices – yours for $39.95. This isn’t so unusual, but the spices were King brand – a brand that hasn’t graced supermarket shelves for years and years. Perhaps a good buy for people who don’t like their spice racks to be at all spicy.
• You know that grotty flat you used to live in? The one that was really cold in winter and the toilet didn’t stop flushing? And remember how all the drawers in the kitchen were lined with that adhesive vinyl with the garish 1970s-style brown flower pattern? Well, you can recreate that look at a mere $2.50 a metre.
• Now, I don’t know all that much about retail, but I imagine in an average shop, someone looks at the stock and figures out which stuff has been sitting on the shelf unsold, and then that stuff gets put on sale. And if it still hasn’t sold, then you sell it to someone like Geoff’s Emporium. But the Plasticware Centre seems to never discount non-selling stock. In fact, it’s almost as if they keep putting up the prices of the old stuff to keep up with inflation.

What a strange shop. I’ll miss it.