Hamilton, City of the Future

Every time I drive past I am fascinated by this sign. Not only is it textbook irony – the sign site is an incredibly popular informal dump – I’m always trying to puzzle out what on earth is going on with the slogan. You might – with effort – make the case that Hamilton is New Zealand’s most beautiful large town, but large *city?* No. Not even close. Auckland is spectacular even by world standards. Wellington has that astonishing windswept harbour. Even post-earthquake Christchurch has its gardens and a kind of broken grandeur. Tauranga is framed by mountains, the beach, and the Mount. And Dunedin looks like someone transported Edinburgh to the utter ends of the earth. Anyway, today I finally took the photo I’ve been threatening to take for years and I couldn’t be happier with it. I hope they never get rid of this absurd sign and that people keep using the site for overt drug deals and illegal dumping.