Thank you to those at the Christchurch City Council who saw some sense in an otherwise silly situation and granted me a Certificate of Public Use. I am now allowed to open and have six weeks to resolve my urinals being 90cm too close to the neighbour’s car-park. While I still think this is silly, [...]

Dearest Council, My name is Johnny and my business was destroyed in the February 2011 Earthquake. Since then I have been working day-and-night to try and reopen. It has been a long, hard road and I am now nearing the end of my journey. Throughout this process I have come across good and bad people [...]

I thought I’d like to do an update on our current position. I’m sorry I’ve been slack with the blog. I was terribly bummed out about the situation in which I found myself; I’d spent most of my insurance money before I’d even been paid out, I was butting my head against the wall with [...]

I went to the protest at the City Council yesterday. For me, it wasn’t about the CEO’s pay rise, it was about an institution that is so inept and damaged that none of the different parts are talking to one another. I see this as a failure of leadership and therefore hold Clerk Tony and [...]

I’m looking forward to 2012. I was getting worn down by 2011. Bar falling down, insurance scraps, non-stop trouble with finding a new site, the Council saying the right things in public then finding nothing but obsticles in my way when I tried to get back into the central city… Nothing seemed to be easy. [...]

It’s Rosie’s birthday today. Happy birthday Rosie. At our new bar, Rosie will be all grown up and operate her own caravan. I will wait ’til she has finalised her menu etc. before announcing too much, but I thought I’d let you all know that we have gone and picked up her caravan off the [...]

In bad news Waterfront Auckland has pulled the pin on the Auckland project. I was really excited about the prospect of getting out of town and representing Christchurch during the Rugby World Cup. In preparation for the event, Waterfront Auckland has developed a bunch of hospitality tenancies on the North Wharf. At the last minute [...]

A couple of weeks of little activity, a bit of bloody snow, and then this week it’s all on. My house got a red sticker which was exciting. This meant it was illegal to enter the property. They slapped it up and drove off without even ringing the buzzer and telling me that I was [...]

Since February, there has been a plus side to the whole disaster situation. I’ve been hanging out way more with Juliet, my old friends and my family.You see, I used to work most hours of most days and then I’d sleep my way through Sunday and “bang” it’s Monday and you’re back into it. Now [...]

Since the quakes, I have been spending a lot of time in one garage or another, the new cool place to hang out with your buddies and drink cheap beer. I thought I’d introduce you all to a couple of my favourite garages. Today we start with Malcolm Cameron’s garage. In the Vintage Car Club, [...]