2AWA: Best Late-Night Venue nominations

Here are the nom­in­ees for the Best Late-Night Ven­ue cat­egory for the 2nd Annu­al Wel­ling­tonista Awards (2AWA).

When even Win­ston Peters has gone to bed, the best bar to go to is:

Sure, town is banging and hum­ming around mid­night. But what if the bar you’re in starts clos­ing and you’re not ready to go home yet? Where do you head to then?

(nom­in­ees after the jump)

A. Hawthorn Lounge

The Hawthorn Lounge reminds us of a very soph­ist­ic­ated lounge, so it’s the equi­val­ent of invit­ing someone home for a night­cap – which means you can cut straight to the sex­ing when you do actu­ally get home. The smooth, unob­trus­ive ser­vice and the cosy fire (with marsh­mal­lows in winter!) will def­in­itely encour­age snug­gling, and the cock­tails are strong enough to help you make your decision on where to sleep that much easi­er…

B. Sandwiches

Sand­wiches serves many pur­poses, from a quiet spot for an early even­ing drink, to a tasty res­taur­ant to a full-on ven­ue that places host to inter­na­tion­al DJs. It’s the lat­ter that makes Sand­wiches such a late night spot – don’t be sur­prised to see people stum­bling out at 7am, rub­bing their eyes bleer­ily in the sun­light.

C. San Francisco Bathhouse

Gigs at San Fran­cisco sel­dom start before 10pm, so with a couple of sup­port bands, it’s rare for a show to be fin­ished before 1am. Just as well that they’re licensed until some­time around 7am then, because the Wel­ling­tonista has seen a couple of sun­rises from a couch on their bal­cony. They don’t always choose to stay open that late, but when they do, good times and debauch­ery with an alt-indie audi­ence are there for the tak­ing. SFBH is also awe­some at obtain­ing spe­cial licenses so they can be open on Good Fri­day, Anzac and Christ­mas Day, and it’s very amus­ing to see the crowds of people from all over town show up des­per­ate for anoth­er drink.

WINNER!!!
D. Mighty Mighty

Mighty Mighty does­n’t really start going until mid­night, and then it’s hard to know when it stops. What’s fant­ast­ic about the Mighty is its diverse clientèle (from hip kids to the Bridge and Tun­nel crowd – although many would argue there’s not very much dif­fer­ence there), and the tunes that get spun cov­er all eclect­ic bases. Your feet will hate you in the morn­ing, but you just might have the time of your life dan­cing away the whole night under the mir­rorball.

E. Havana

Havana and its many dif­fer­ent small spaces is full of dark corners, and that’s really what you need in a late-night ven­ue, isn’t it? Its semi-secret loc­a­tion (well, it’s not on Cour­tenay Place) means that it’s mostly not pop­u­lated with wank­ers, and when the DJ’s spin­ning funk you can dance dance dance. Sev­er­al Wel­ling­tonis­tas nom­in­ate this as the bar most likely to fea­ture people who will try to pick you up in the wee hours of the morn­ing, so if that’s the way you get your self esteem boost, we’re not going to judge you. In fact, we might just be at the bar next to you, order­ing anoth­er caipirin­hia and giv­ing you a saucy wink.

For a handy map of where to find these ven­ues, use the “latenight” tag on Zoom­in. Go try ’em all out before vot­ing opens on Novem­ber 19.