In celebration of being the Art Deco Capital of the world (Napier: Art Deco City) Napier holds two fun weekends each year – the summer one (3rd weekend in February) is more like an Art Deco week, the winter one (some time in July) is called Deco Decanted, because it is smaller and we live in a wine-grape-growing region. Those who like fashion have a great time. Those who like engines, aeroplanes, cars and trains have a blast. Those who like to party – party hard, 1930s style. Many people get dressed up and our boys even get a short-back-and-sides hair-cut – tricky for the Butterfly having not much hair but luckily we have a hairdresser in the family: Aunty Kellie managed to tidy him up a bit.
This year the focus was on honouring the services, without whom the people of Napier would never have managed during the aftermath of the earthquake 80 years ago, and the re-building process.
The great thing is, anyone can join in because so many activities are free or gold coin ($1, $2) donation. With the Butterfly being so young still we chose not to do the night stuff, but here’s some images from our weekend…
Here’s what the local newspaper says about things deco:
Friday Night For the love of a Motorcycle
Events sold out: 40,000+ in Party Mode (Usual population not quite 60,000!)
The Red Checkers are back Biggest Weekend Yet
That looks like great fun! We love local festivals too.
It was great fun. Now we all need to sleep and someone needs to do all the jobs, which didn’t get done all weekend…
That looks fantastic! I wish we had things like that here!
It is such fun! The boys love it, and automatically dress-up – it’s just part of who they are. We never had anything like this when we were growing up – in fact they were tearing down Art Deco buildings at one stage!