Where are you from? - Ponsonby.
Where are you really from? - Ponsonby.
Did you grow up there? - Yeah.
F***, you must be rich. - Nah my g.
I'm from the '70s Ponsonby,
not the 2000s Ponsonby, bro.
They can't believe that we were born right here.
We were raised in Grey Lynn.
I say Ponsonby just to nudge them even more.
- Really? Ponsonby?
Yeah, motherfucker. Fucking Ponsonby.
Right about now, we're on Dryden Street
right next to Grey Lynn park.
All these houses are, a lot of them are old heritage houses.
And then now some of them are getting renovated
and then a lot of them are getting busted down
and turning into ugly looking fucking houses.
We're just coming up to the house where all the Williams used to live at, the Williams family.
And they just sold this a couple of years ago.
So look at this house, right?
And look at next door.
That's your typical Islander house.
The weatherboards are shit. It's really run down.
There's that crazy colour
that everyone has from back in the day.
Honestly, that house had like fuckin' 50 kids in there.
Every time I walk past an Islander house,
it makes you feel a bit more comfort or a bit more at home.
This is just a look at a past lifestyle,
a community that was here before,
that are no longer here, or that are just slowly fading away.
With all the changes that's happening,
and all the houses being sold.
There's kids like us that are still here.
We're here at my family house on Home Street, Arch Hill, Grey Lynn.
My grandparents came over from Niue in the '50s and '60s.
I live here with my mum, my dad,
my two cousins, my two uncles,
my sister, my sister's partner.
I think someone else, but I can't really remember right now.
These two things over here are umu pits.
So, on Christmas and shit, or big events,
my nan would prep everything
and then, my dad and my uncles and shit would start the fire.
So, all the rocks and shit in there.
Then we just take the rocks out, make a fire,
put the rocks in, heat up the rocks and then on your way.
I think it was one time we had a big event.
So they made two more umu pits. So we got four.
That's so Islander, eh?
Just dig a hole in the ground and make an oven.
There was a time where there was one family to one room.
My aunty and her partner, and then her two kids stayed in one little room.
And then my dad and my mum and us stayed in one room
and another family stayed in another.
So, it's kind of like a Niuean halfway house.
Oh look, that's Ken. Stephen, that's your dad.
Eh?
Oh, yeah.
As a kid you're like, "Fuck, this is mean. I got all my cousins here."
After school we'd just come here
and play tiggy or play go home, stay home. Or go down to the park.
It was more of a neighbourhood.
We had kids out in the street playing,
and it wasn't just our house you know,
it was the whole community.
And now there's very few children,
it's more business couples.
I keep telling my children,
should I ever die and you ever
sell this house, I'm coming back to haunt the whole lot of you.
So, Pop did a good job.
Last wishes eh, and like, always been his mantra,
just to never sell the house.
People come in all the time.
They try and be like, "Oh, we'll give you an offer"
or like, "we'll evaluate your land."
And we're like, we already know the value and shit.
But there's a difference between their value and our value.
It's more than money. It's a culture.
It's a way we live and shit like that.
Because this house has been such a staple in the Niuean community,
there's some things you can't put a price on.
Sup lah.
Up to?
We're going to go get a feed or?
- Yeah, keen.
Ham and cheese.
Thank you.
And we have cream sticks.
It's like a staple for all the central boys pretty much, eh.
So, as basic as it sounds,
it's cream in a French stick.
Yeah, everyone always buzzes out eh?
Because it's weird,
cream in a donut sounds all good but cream in a French stick sounds off as.
But if you wanna be ultra full fatties,
chuck in a steak and cheese
or a mince and cheese in there.
That's like ultimate.
I think it's very important for us Polynesian boys
that are in central, that are in the city
to be proud of us because obviously, there's not much of us left.
It used to be a thriving community back in the '60s, '70s, '80s.
When there's less of you, you got to go twice as hard.
Last of a dying breed, that's how I see it.
We're all riding for a common cause
and we all have the same idea
of how we want to portray ourselves to the world.
City Boys is all the younger boys.
They're like the next wave coming through.
They're doing big things.
They're the next era.
Che Fu and Nesian Mystik, right? They were the first wave.
And then me and Dirty, were kinda like the second.
And these boys are just coming through,
and they're just putting on in their own way.
The boys are really just a group of Island and Māori boys
who grew up around the area.
We all know each other very well and we consider each other family now.
I think we're just trying to defy the odds and do something positive in the community
that we all once called home.
A lot of the boys and their families have had to move out of the inner city suburbs,
but this is really all they know.
Just being young brown boys,
trying to do something positive in the community is cool.
If we can inspire some young, brown children around here,
it's a win for us.
How many City Boys does it take to put down an umbrella?
Two of those smoothies, please.
Two berry and banana?
- Make it three please miss.
- Make it three. Four?
We've all known each other since we were young,
and as all of us got older we all became closer.
I see these guys every day
always joking around and we train together.
We all support each other as well. That's the main thing.
Just as well as being boys from the area, from Ponsonby, Grey Lynn,
we've kind of kept our connection now to
where we are now as grown men.
What we've been trying to do is kind of keep that culture here
and rebirth it too.
What I'm trying to create for myself
and what my brothers are trying to create for themselves
is generational wealth and a new culture
for future generations to see and work off of that.
Everything around us is changing.
So it's either we adapt or we don't evolve.
We have the chance to seize those opportunities.
There's me with the gym.
There's one of the boys who have a concrete company.
Then one of the boys that do landscaping.
A couple of the boys have t-shirt companies
and then Sasha, Inner City.
Being able to push each other as well, physically and mentally,
not just only for our businesses but as people and who we are.
In a way it's my safe haven, you know?
We chose to represent the inner city through clothing
because I think like most people our age,
and even generations above and below us,
everything's kind of derivative of hip-hop culture.
37600 is just the area code that the boys run by.
- Amplified by a thousand.
Yeah.
The best part about it is seeing people around us embrace the brand
and seeing people like Diggy wearing our t-shirts on stage
it makes it that much more surreal.
- He's a big inspiration for all the PI creatives around here.
I hope he goes far with what he wants to do.
We know he's got it in him.
The cityscape is changing and it's evident
the price of life is on the rise.
It's word to the new apartments in Morningside.
Same time in Arch Hill they're building four more.
Grey Lynn's turning into a North Shore.
Lord.
That lyric is just exactly what happened when I dropped it.
They took away all those businesses.
Even our bros there, they were panel beaters down there.
They got evicted because they're building
this mega complex of apartments
like luxury living type thing
where they're trying to get people to bank in on their lifestyles.
Well, they took away our Grey Lynn Countdown.
Now all the old people from Grey Lynn have to go to Ponsonby.
Fuck, there's two aisles for milk.
There's normal milk and then there's bougie milk.
Just put the milk in the same place.
I feel like the area's going to get so washed that a lot of the history is going to be forgotten.
There's already so much of New Zealand history that's been forgotten.
Central holds so much history.
People are only just finding out about it,
and because we're just finding out about it as it's getting washed away, you know?
All that info is just going to get lost.
Our neighbours hate us.
Our neighbours absolutely hate us.
Islanders love music.
The more we get into it, the louder the music gets,
the louder the music gets, the more everyone gets pissed off.
But it's just us having fun.
We're not here trying to cause no trouble, nothing.
Just trying to do what we want to do in our own space.
Living in central, you learn to be resilient.
You learn to overcome obstacles that not other people face.
We get treated like the outsiders, but we've been here the longest.
- Walking my dog in Ponsonby, people probably buzz out.
You got to stick your chest out a bit,
put your head up a bit higher.
Some people still pick up their little French Bulldog and cross the road.
I'm just like, fuck whatever man.
I grew up through gentrification.
I watched everyone leave.
Like all changes, it was just part of the time.
When tangata whenua were here, none of this was here.
When Europeans arrived, they created all of this.
When the Islanders arrived, we enjoyed all of this.
And now the millionaires are moving in and now they have to deal with us.
Hopefully one day we can come back here, when things are cheaper.
And the best thing is all the palagi have fixed up the houses for us,
so if we do come back here, don't worry, there's now rooms
and everything's insulated and there's Sky TV.
For your children that grow up
knowing that not only were their grandparents here,
not only were their parents here,
but their following generations to come will also be here.
So if you get the chance, come back. We're waiting.
Man, just to make like Nipsey Hussle and just start buying everything back.
That's ultimately the goal.
If I could buy back whatever I could, I absolutely would.
We're here at the Oakroom for our boys
at One and Only Promotions.
We have a market with a few local brands
from around the area, selling their merchandise
and just trying to get their name out there.
It's pretty cool to finally be here releasing our football jerseys.
We were supposed to release them in the summer,
but because of Covid and everything,
we didn't feel like it was the right time to do it.
Them putting their Inner City brand together,
I've seen it from the jump, eh.
To see it turn from an idea into something tangible
and actually putting your best foot forward.
That takes a lot.
You know our people, we say it but we don't really do it.
So, these guys are actually out here doing it.
Back in the days,
the city was known as 'Little Polynesia.'
Having events like these or even gatherings,
it just gives us a little throwback to what life used to be like back then for them.
And just having our small little Polynesian community in the inner city,
it's cool to still see that we're all still here and thriving.
Just when we thought we lost it to vegan burger bars.