I was downtown on Sunday, strolling along The Strand, and I started to feel good about Tauranga again.

It can be easy to get disillusioned with this city, especially if you're involved with the music scene, so it was good to be reminded that, despite several factors pretty much knackering the development of music here, it's still a pretty pleasant place to live.


There really are problems. Here are a few things just off the top of my head: there's no radio station that plays Bay music and broadcasts throughout the Bay; except Brewer's Bar, which many people will not go to, there are few proper venues; Baycourt has now been priced out of the range of local acts; many of our young people leave town to study elsewhere; and that's just scratching the surface...

There are many other factors of course, one being the unusually high resistance from Tauranga's often elderly ratepayers to council supporting the arts. Hence regular whining about the Art Gallery, the lack of a museum even after all these years, and – unlike many other centres – very little funding for music in the community. There are many cities that partially fund concerts over summer to attract visitors and entertain locals. Not here.

But a stroll downtown on Sunday at least reminded me what a beautiful locale this is. The sea was sparkling and blue and my view of it was unimpeded by a seventy five metre plastic waka. We can only hope it remains that way and the latest, and possibly stupidest idea I've heard from the council this millennium gets quietly dropped.

And it was nice to hear so much music - within a couple of blocks there were four different acts. None of them were exactly pushing boundaries, and generally the music was so middle-of-the-road you could have painted white lines on it, but on a sunny Sunday it made life seem a little sweeter and kinder.

Brew had a solo singing guitarist (some original songs), Comida had a 4-piece jazz band (covers only), The Phoenix had a duo (some original songs) and the Cornerstone had another duo (covers only). And, with the sun shining and a bunch of kids playing on the reclamation, I couldn't help thinking that there are worse places in the world to be.