emergency level 3 clipboard!

Welcome to clipboard, a weekly (and sometimes more) newsletter about clothes, hospo and Tāmaki Makaurau, a city which will be soon be a little bit more free than it has been for the last month. If you enjoy clipboard, send it to your friends to sign up, and click the button below to chip in financially as I attempt to singlehandedly kickstart the local economy over the next two weeks. A massive welcome to first-time clipboard readers, look forward to meeting you!

level 4 with takeaways

Folks, we did it! Well, sort of. At midnight tonight, Auckland will head back to the all-too-familiar vibes of Level 3, my personal second favourite Alert Level, because it means I don’t have to go into town for work, and I can still buy coffee from my favourite cafes.

We are not yet out of the woods, though. You only have to look across the ditch at your Australian mates, or cousins, who’ve been in a Level 3 style lockdown for months now, with no signs of a solution, all because they couldn’t get their collective shit together. I do not want to be stuck, like Melbourne or Sydney, and I sure as hell don’t want to ever do Level 4 again. I feel like most of you will agree with me on all of those fronts.

With that in mind, I wanted to send out this emergency dispatch to provide a few tips for doing Level 3 in a way that benefits you, your community, and all of us.

wear a mask

Please, god, just put on a mask, even if you’re just walking the block, even if you’re on a run. It’s the considerate thing to do, and shows that you care about other people more than avoiding the smell of your own breath. If some numpty goes and buys a burger at Cantine without a mask, and every influencer in Ponsonby catches Covid, it’s back to Level 4 before you can say “natural wine bar.” None of us want that, so deal with some minor inconvenience for the next little while so we can all go see our family sometime this year.

get vaccinated

If you aren’t yet vaccinated, go and do it in the next two weeks! Where else do you have to be? You can even pick a vaccination centre near a cafe or bakery, and pick yourself up something yum on the way home. Win win! It’s free, easy, painless, and means that we’ll all be able to holiday overseas a little bit quicker.

You can find your nearest vaccination centre at vaxx.nz, and if you have a booking but it isn’t for a few more weeks, you can cancel it, get an earlier booking or just roll up to a walk-or-drive-in clinic.

support local

The best thing about Level 3 is that spending your money on yum food and cool clothes suddenly becomes a civic service. You, dear reader, are a hero, just because you choose to buy your book from Time Out’s paddle instead of Book Depository, or fried chicken from Sneaky Snacky instead of KFC (KFC will be fine, I promise).

Here are the businesses I’ll be supporting during this lockdown, whether I’m rewarding myself on my silly little walk, treating myself to a nice new thing, or just avoiding doing the dishes:

• Daily Daily for fancy filter coffee

• Annabel’s Wine Bar for a long black and a sammie

• Ockhee for the best Korean in town, and because I want it to still be open when we can dine in again

• Satya for curry and paratha

• Time Out Bookstore for the new Sally Rooney, which we’ve had on order for months

• Kensal Flowers for a bouquet to brighten my work from home set up on the dining table

• Crumb for friendly service, tasty brews, and because it’s shit that they were a location of interest

• Mag Nation for magazines, duh

That’s all for this special emergency issue of clipboard! We’ll resume normal service this Sunday, I’ll see you then! Until then, flick me an email or get in touch on Instagram, and share clipboard with your coolest friends.