Hastings CBDWestSide
Park once. Skate, game, eat, glow up your phone, dare your mates, make something, escape something, and still get home for dinner. Everything on one strip.
Hastings is underrated for school holidays and WestSide is the reason. Within a few blocks you can go from skating a bowl that Australian visitors are posting about, to losing an afternoon to board games, to eating the saltiest lolly in the country, to picking up gear for whatever you've decided this is the summer you're actually going to learn. One strip. Park once. (If parking is the worry, the WestSide Parking Cheat Code has you sorted.)
The WestSide Skate Bowl sits right on the strip and it is genuinely good. Not "good for a small city" good. Actually good. Australian skate site Skate-Parks.net called it out specifically, noting the bowl is one of the better setups in the region... high praise from people who have seen a few.
Free to use, open all hours, right off Heretaunga Street. If you are learning, the transitions are forgiving enough to figure things out. If you already know what you're doing, the bowl has enough to keep it interesting. Bring your own board or pick something up at Hustle Surf while you are on the strip.
$15 gets you in for as long as you want. Hobby Lords has a room full of board games you can pull off the shelf and play, plus pinball machines with live leaderboards. The current high score sits at 864 million. That number is either a challenge or a warning depending on how you look at it.
It is the kind of place where you think you are going in for an hour and surface two and a half hours later slightly confused about what time it is. Good for groups, good for solo, good if the weather turns and you need somewhere to disappear into. The full story is in Hobby Lords — Roll for Initiative.
If you genuinely think your group can figure things out under pressure, Beyond the Box Escape Rooms on WestSide will test that theory. You have 60 minutes. The room will not help you. Your friends will probably not help you either but at least you will find out.
School holidays hours: Tue–Sat, walk-ins welcome from 10am–2pm. Walk-ins are fine in that window but if you want a guaranteed slot, book online. These fill up fast and a Thursday afternoon walk-in is not always going to work out. Good for groups of three to six.
The Lolly Shop stocks the saltiest Dutch liquorice lollies in the country. That is not a marketing claim, that is a statement of fact that will become immediately apparent if you put one in your mouth without reading the label first. Dare your mates. Watch their faces.
If you want to play it a bit safer, they also carry sour snakes, sour worms, and a selection that covers everything from "mildly adventurous" to "why would anyone make something this salty." Pick up a bag and take it across to 300 West Laneway to eat them. Better with an audience. (More of the strip's play-time spots are in Fun, Levelled Up.)
WestSide has four phone shops within a few blocks and each one has its own flavour. Mobile Paradise is warm and friendly, 5.0 stars from 82 reviews, most repairs done in 30 minutes. Mobile Point is right next door with a sharper technical edge. FoneMate and Phone Zone round out the strip with their own selections of cases, screen protectors and accessories.
New case, new screen protector, or if your screen is actually cracked... this is the place to sort it out without going to a mall. Check all four and see who has what you are looking for. They all stock different things.
Summer is actually coming. Hustle Surf has the latest season styles in and if this is the year you are genuinely going to learn to surf or skate for real, the gear is here. Not the big box version of surf and skate... the actual stuff, from people who use it.
Even if you are just looking, it is worth a walk through. The kind of shop that makes you want to go outside and do something with your hands and your body rather than your phone. Which, during school holidays, is not a bad thing to want.
Nick and the team at MusicWorks are genuinely relaxed about people trying the instruments on the floor. Walk in, ask to have a go on the drum kit, and nobody is going to make you feel weird about it. If you are curious about picking up something new, school holidays are the right time to find out if it sticks.
Guitars, drums, keyboards, ukuleles, everything you need to start. If you already play something and your gear needs attention, they do repairs and servicing too. The kind of music shop where you go in for one thing and end up talking for half an hour.
300 West Laneway is the spot to land between activities. Eat your lollies here. Debrief after the escape room. Figure out what to do next. It is a proper urban laneway right off Heretaunga Street West... sheltered, relaxed, the kind of outdoor space that does not feel like it is trying too hard.
Right opposite the laneway is The Line Gallery, which is currently showing a retro New Zealand photography collection from the early 1970s. Free to walk in. Real photographs from fifty years ago of a country that looks both familiar and completely different. Worth five minutes of your time even if art is not usually your thing... the photos are just genuinely interesting.