Few hobbies have captured the mainstream imagination in 2020 quite like roller skating. Jihee Junn explores the many reasons why. Just down the road from Auckland’s Glenfield mall is the ActivZone Indoor Sports Arena, an inconspicuous-looking building which, many years ago, used to be a Chipmunks play centre. These days though, it’s the self-proclaimed “home … Read more
Netflix’s adaptation of The Baby-Sitters Club makes long-time fan Tara Ward fall in love with the series all over again. When I was 12 years old, my class had to write a letter to a famous person. Some of my classmates wrote to an All Black, Tom Cruise or Hulk Hogan. I wrote a four-page … Read more
As a boy, finance minister and cricket tragic Grant Robertson was given the nickname Jock, in honour of the big-hitting batsman Jock Edwards, by his older brothers. It was a name he carried with pride. It must have been the summer of 1980/81. We were on a family camping holiday in Te Anau. It was … Read more
It’s a Kiwi tradition fraught with outrage, red tape and injury. It’s also really bloody fun. Alex Casey takes a look back at the evolution of the lolly scramble in New Zealand. Legend tells of an impromptu lolly scramble that rocked the Wellington art scene in a matter of seconds. The year was 2003, and … Read more
Summer reissue: What’s it like to wait over a decade for a new record from one of your favourite bands? David Farrier writes about the joys, perils and embarrassment of being a Tool fan in 2019. This was originally published on 3 August, 2019. Before you say it, let me: Tool fans are the worst. … Read more
The greatest show to ever air on New Zealand TV screens, and arguably any screens ever, had a tenure of just three tragically short years. It was on air from March 1997 to September 1999. It had an ensemble of impossibly jazzy New Zealand children and a live studio audience. It was McDonald’s Young Entertainers, … Read more
Lily Richards takes an epic trip to the setting of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – the book that saved her from herself. It takes 23 hours to journey from Auckland to Cephalonia, Greece, island home of the fictional Captain Corelli, Dr Iannis, and his daughter Pelagia. For those 23 hours I was filled with a deep … Read more
What’s it like to wait over a decade for a new record from one of your favourite bands? David Farrier writes about the joys, perils and embarrassment of being a Tool fan in 2019. Before you say it, let me: Tool fans are the worst. “You tall faggot!” a Tool fan yelled at me during … Read more
The Side Eye is a monthly non-fiction comic by Toby Morris, supported by NZ On Air. Read more comics here.
Last night The Spinoff deployed a specialist squad of millennials to the 90s nostalgia fest So Pop. This is their story. It was late last year that several copies of a magazine called So Pop arrived at The Spinoff office, complete with splashy 90s fonts, band profiles from B*Witched to Blue, and even a pull … Read more
The latest entry in the Smash Bros. series doesn’t just cash in on nostalgia, it builds on it. Sam Brooks reviews Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. I write about nostalgia a lot – it’s a fascination of mine. Nostalgia is the process of memory taking up space in your mind and your soul; it takes the … Read more
Remember staying up extra late, one hand hovering nervously over the remote in case of footsteps, waiting to catch a tantalising glimpse of nudity on TV? You were not alone. An anonymous panel revisits the golden era of SKY 1 soft porn. In the years before broadband internet and personal devices, New Zealand teenagers had … Read more
Was Squirt a weird collective cheese dream or did it actually happen? River Lin revisits a favourite childhood show, and takes a walk down memory lane with the key players. As a kid, I devoted most of my Saturday mornings to watching Squirt. It had the best cartoons. The penguin, Spike, was the height of … Read more