Christchurch – Little City, Big Heart

Christchurch is an awesome city – I know we write that about every city we visit, but Christchurch is a fighter. The place has been the target of recent geographic activity and was hit by a major earthquake a few weeks prior to our visit.

Having zero experience with the aftermath of such an event, Jackie and I had no idea what to expect when we got to the city center. Would there be crumbled buildings? Paranoid newspaper headings? I mean an earthquake is not exactly a minor event.

We made our way to the city centre to find our previously stated guesses to be totally inaccurate: people were out and about enjoying the city square where the International Buskers Festival was underway. For a couple weeks every year Christchurch becomes home to some of the best street performers in the world, some travelling from as far as Canada, Spain, and the UK.

After picking up a schedule of the shows, we decided to check a few out. There were so many to choose from so we had to pick the ones we really wanted to check out. Our selections were as follows:

• Funny Bones – an British and Japanese comedic duo
• MulletMan – a New Zealand local performer, and
• The Evening Burlesque Show

Funny Bones was great – the slight of hand and creativity behind the show was really cool, well practiced and great interaction with the crowd. The zombie bit at the end was definitely the highlight of the show.

Next up: MulletMan. Now I want you to think of a picture of what this performer looked liked. If you guessed slightly overweight, beige Carhartt overalls and a long, blonde flowing 10/90 you pictured right! He was AWESOME and his whole schtick could have been a lame exploitation of the mullet, instead it was an awesome tribute to the days of yesteryear when people knocked back canned Budweisers in parking lots before Judas Priest concerts. To top it off he ended up riding a huge unicycle and juggling a knife, wrench and a flaming baton all at the same time.

Mullet Man in all his glory ripping around on "Possibly World's Tallest Unicycle"

In the evening we swung in to the 18+ burlesque show, I can’t really encapsulate the performances but they were all pretty good. The typical burlesque showgirls were there and a strangely hilarious male/male combo called Freaks in the Box doing a special routine. By far the best part of the night were the clowns: two idiotic and seemingly classic clowns who gradually degraded into the sleaziest and most obnoxious performers of the show.

The festival was really good and Christchurch is a different experience than the other cities we visited, it has a real home grown feel and the city itself has some great old architecture. We never experienced any earthquakes or aftershocks while we were there, but our time spent in Christchurch definitely “rocked”.

To See more Pictures of our Christchurch Adventure, Click Here

This stuffed kiwi is not worried about any quakes...

...and neither are they! STRIKE A POSE!!