Karangahape Road leans hard into its gritty reputation

20 July 2024

Auckland’s Karangahape Rd – or K’ Rd, as it’s affectionately known – has a storied history as a shopping precinct, and the city’s seedy underbelly. Today, it’s somehow both, and neither, thanks to those who live and work there. Sapeer Mayron reports.

For Jamey Holloway, there’s no use pretending K’ Rd is something other than what it is.

The drag queens, sex workers, displaced, and underground music scene: they’re part of the strip’s identity, sewn into its fabric like sequins on a gown.

“This is what the street is,” says Holloway, general manager of the Karangahape Road Business Association.

“It’s constantly morphing into different things, but there’s a certain heart to it that is retained.”

These days, K’ Rd isn’t just accepting that grittiness, it’s gone on the offensive to promote it.

In 2023, the business association released ROAD: “beer infused leather/warm aromatic spice/nicotine/green heat/fog machine haze/dance floor armpit/bar waft…” – a fragrance unique to Karangahape Rd.