As you cross into the 300 block the retail mix switches up a notch. The shopfronts get a little more individual. This is the stretch where WestSide stops being a city strip and starts being a neighbourhood.
Hustle Surf & Moto is one of the best arguments for why this street works. A surf and motorcycle shop in inland Hastings... and it's thriving, because Hawke's Bay has always had a coast-facing identity with Waimārama and Ocean Beach bringing the swells. Hustle gets it. Music Works is next door in spirit... instruments, gear and a reason for actual musicians to make the trip to the WestSide.
"The Line Gallery gets the curious and the wayward on a WestSide Thursday. Art is where culture changes... and says something about what this street is becoming."
The Line Gallery sits in the 300 block and is connected to the global digital art movement of the same name... a WestSide business with an artist membership that stretches worldwide. On a Thursday afternoon, it's worth stopping in. The creative work changes. The energy doesn't.
SCM Fashion, Rick's Island Clothing, and Thomson's Suits give the fashion offer on this block real range... from the island aesthetic that's become part of Hastings' cultural identity, to tailored suiting for when the occasion requires it. Organic Farm Butchery is the 300 block's food anchor... slow, intentional, quality-first.
Dollar Warehouse, Cash Connectors, and a cluster of phone repair and mobile shops — FoneMate, Mobile Paradise, Mobile Point, Phone Zone — let everyone search for their fixes and deals. It's a full-service block with better shop density than any other block. Need a surfboard, a suit, a coffee, a gallery experience, and your screen fixed? This is the block.
VietThai Cuisine are doing what the best Asian restaurants in regional New Zealand do... cooking the family recipes they know, for an audience that has learned to come back. That's exactly why WestSide writes about them.
Flex Fitness is where the city gets fit and looks on fleek. Instagram-worthy poses aren't possible without putting in the hours at Flex. And if you break your phone while flexing, Rapid Tech Solutions survives on servicing every cracked screen and more. Two indispensable places that raise the energy in their own ways.
The Street Walk series walks Heretaunga Street West block by block — the 100, the 200, the 300, the 400. Four articles. Every business. One more block to go.