North Shore living is more than the beach, cafés and sunshine. It’s about community, about belonging. It’s the nod of recognition in the supermarket, the knowledge that the local dairy is open until midnight, the roads we grew up on where our parents rode their bicycles and where their parents rode theirs, too. One of the often-unsung attributes of the North Shore, which perhaps isn't appreciated fully by us younger folk, is not something we boast about loudly; it's the generations of people who share this community with us.
Take any walk down any local street on any given day, and you’ll see evidence of the generations of people who call the North Shore home. Grandparents walking along Cheltenham Beach in the morning, families meeting up by the playground in Takapuna, older people enjoying the atmosphere in Milford's cafés, soaking up the vibrant energy of the day. The North Shore is not just for young families with toddlers or teenagers enjoying increased freedoms. It is home to generations of people with their own stories of yesterday and today.
This legacy is important for us, the younger generations of the North Shore. Our grandparents have lived through the transformation of the North Shore into what it is today; changes we can’t even imagine, before the bustle of shops and malls and the multitude of cars, before the high-rise apartments and housing developments on what were green, open spaces, and before the likes of TikTok and Instagram became the norm.
Sitting with them in the community they love, just chatting about their memories and opinions, adds depth to the place we call home. When grandad talks about the “good old days,” or grandma says, “that house has been there forever,” suddenly the North Shore is no longer the place in which we just hang out with our mates, but somewhere we can relate to as part of the bigger story of us now.
For many older locals, the North Shore has been home for a long time; the place where they brought up their families, made friends, built their careers, and lived their lives. For many, as their world contracts with age, our younger North Shore residents' lives are the full, crazy scope of school, work, sports, friendships, and dreams of futures waiting to happen. By choosing to spend some time with the older people of the North Shore, we bridge the gap between the generations.
It is not always necessary to make grand gestures of support or spend huge swathes of time dedicated to the older folk around us. It can be as simple as sharing a table in a café, strolling through a weekend market together, or helping with their shopping. It can be as simple as asking what the Shore used to be like, or listening to their stories.... Yes, even the ones we’ve heard many times before! And then there is the gift of the proximity of the North Shore. Many of us are lucky enough not to be hours away from loved ones; we’re ten minutes down the road, or a short drive or a quick bus ride away. It’s something we often forget to appreciate.
In a world designed to keep us moving fast from one goal to the next milestone, and onto the next stage of life, our grandparents pull us back, slow us down a little, and remind us to look at where we are, of where we’ve come from, and that the community we walk through every day did not appear overnight.
The Shore is more than a wonderful location of beaches, school, home, friends' houses, and the sight of the harbour bridge in the distance. It’s memory, roots, and stories that have been passed down through the generations. Living here is not just about occupying space, but honouring the people who have shaped the spaces we now occupy, and choosing to spend time with them while we can, because their stories will one day become ours to tell.

Channel Mag's youth contributors, Billy Brown and Fantasia Nair, bring a fresh monthly feature to our pages to inspire and advise our younger North Shore readers. If there are any topics you'd like to read about, contact Liz at liz@channelmag.co.nz, and our fledgling writers will research and write engaging articles specifically for our younger (at heart) readers.