23 Comments

Great read. I moved up to Auckland from Christchurch a few months after the 2011 earthquakes and that building legitimately terrified me. The dizzying heights from the top, but it always felt so exposed with the route to the ground so easy to see.

The number of times I'd got lost in there, taking a stairwell I thought led somewhere else and ended up on a different floor, or taken that godforsaken bridge to nowhere.

As a near inner-city dweller, the iMax building was my closest cinema but I never really loved it and stopped going there unless necessary, especially after the building report stories.

Moved closer to the Event Newmarket (and Rialto Newmarket) a few years ago and don't think I've stepped foot in the IMax building since.

The Auckland inner-city deserves a quality blockbuster cinema, but this isn't it. I'd be looking to something like EntX in Christchurch as the way of the future. The current building is bizarrely futuristic, yet its a relic.

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Thanks Elliott - it's a nightmare to walk around for sure. I've just found some unsuccessful revamp plans so will get to work on a follow-up...

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Hi Chris, how can I contact you? I can add alot of significant details to your story. Thanks

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Hi TK, feel free to email me at iamchrisschulz@gmail.com

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spent many hours at Borders reading books and drinking chai lattes in between Uni classes, best book shop ever.

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Yes Lucy! My mother-in-law mentioned last night that it was the first bookshop that trusted you to drink coffee and browse in store... that magazine selection was insane too. Loved it!

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It really looks like the council are trying to kill Queen St too.

Also, I have a friend in a wheel chair, you should try getting out of that building in a chair after the last late film...

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There are plans to spend a bit of money on Queen Street. Sadly that won't include the iMax building or the St James - it seems they're both in limbo. I'm working on a follow-up now.

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You know that strange effect when celluloid film gets stuck in the gate of a projector and the heat from the lamp melts the stuck frame and it bubbles psychedelically like some manic 2 dimensional cellular creature? That happened ON THE QUEEN STREET IMAX (!!) SCREEN when I was watching a Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Definitely a top 3 movie experience.

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Wtf? Did they fix it for you?

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Best movie experience there is either Gravity on the iMax or that time we went to the media screening of Jackass 3D and had to hand in our phones beforehand.

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now I'm remembering all that jackass male nudity, in 3D no less...

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Good read (BTW the jet engine is a smoke extract to the atrium)

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July 13, 2021
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This sounds intense...

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If you think that’s depressing you should try being a tenant there.

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(Or feel free to email me at iamchrisschulz@gmail.com)

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Tell me more please :)

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There used to be a sick net cafe downstairs tucked in by the foodcourt I used to come down to Auckland and head straight there every time. Diablo 2 and downloading anime godamn

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Thanks James - was that tucked in behind the pillar on the left as you walked in the front doors?

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That depends which set of doors to this hypercube ass building you consider to be the 'front'. It was on your right as you came down the spiral staircase from the arcade.

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Oh yep - there's a place selling cheap iPhone cases in there now I think....

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yep that's the one. I walked around there the other night before Marlon Williams show at the town hall and I honestly thought it was condemned - just a security guard and heaps of open space in the dark.

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Yes! I had 45 mins to kill before Che Fu's gig and was so sad afterwards.

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