(Issue two is out now, but I have been slow. All judg­ments below are based on the first issue. I’m not buy­ing anoth­er one to see if it’s improved.)

When I saw the first issue of Uno on the shelves at the super­mar­ket, I was hop­ing it would be the Wel­ling­ton equi­val­ent of Metro – on a good day, not all “Why your kids’ school will give you can­cer and nev­er let them buy a house” Listen­eresque. But it’s not. It’s really, really not. Instead it turns out that Uno is every bit as advert­ising-copy driv­en as the Wel­ling­ton Guide – without the advant­age of at least being Welly exclus­ive. I sup­pose I should have known bet­ter give that Wel­ling­ton’s offi­cial vil­lain of 2006 is on the cov­er. After the jump, more reas­ons not to waste $9.95.

  • The first line of the magazine is “Uno is unashamedly loc­al”, and yet it only has ‘What’s On’ pages for Hamilton and Taur­anga – the two cit­ies that the magazine star­ted out in. In fact, some con­tact num­bers for allegedly Wel­ling­ton busi­nesses start with an (07) as well.
  • While not every­one is as anti-Kerry as the Wel­ling­tonista gen­er­ally are, the cov­er puff piece entitled “wel­ling­ton’s first cit­izen” [sic] does­n’t even give a hint of a sug­ges­tion that there might be any­thing con­tro­ver­sial about her.
  • There are no cap­it­al let­ters in the art­icle’s titles. Who’s in charge around here – a journ­al­ist or a graph­ic design­er?
  • There’s an art­icle on Brazili­an wax­ing, cour­tesy of a salon called Waxn­laser. I’m not entirely sure how that fits in with the ‘Life­style’ theme, but I guess a case could be made for it. But it’s most def­in­itely straight advertori­al again, with half a page of text and half a page of ad.
  • One of the few pro­files in it that actu­ally relate to Wel­ling­ton is about phil&teds [sic] most excel­lent buggy com­pany. Not to nit­pick or any­thing, but the when the Wel­ling­tonista starts pro­du­cing a magazine, there’s no way that we’re going to pro­file any com­pany that delib­er­ately leaves out an apo­strophe like that. That’d be as bad as big-upping a com­pany that uses com­ic sans. Oh, and more annoy­ingly, the art­icle talks about how hil­ari­ous the com­pany’s answer­ing sys­tem is, with its fake Indi­an accent. Ahhh racism, that’s sooo Wel­ling­ton life­style!
  • Actu­ally, the proof-read­ing through­out the magazine needs to be tightened up and a con­sist­ent style guide should be applied (and oh yes, I can hear the kettle call­ing me black right now).
  • The art­icle called ‘Juice!’ is about the pro­gram­mer of Sky’s music chan­nels. How does this relate to Wel­ling­ton? Oh yes, Wel­ling­ton is his homet­own. Oh, and appar­ently, accord­ing to the open­ing para­graph, J2 “has become a part of the social fab­ric of Wel­ling­ton”. Really? Really? Silly me for think­ing that it was Fat Freddy’s we heard ubi­quit­ously.
  • While “UNO. does not pre­tend to be a nation­al magazine, nor a news magazine.”, their web­site also declares “It is not an advert­ising cata­logue!” – but writ­ing rarely gets much puf­fi­er than the piece on the new Voda­fone shop on Wil­lis St.

Okay, but in fair­ness, there are a couple of upnotes about the magazine:

  • Nice work pick­ing Hank Cubitt to write about men’s fash­ion – he’s a Wel­ling­ton icon and he knows what he’s talk­ing about.
  • Like­wise, it was a good idea to get the food recipes from a Wel­ling­ton recipe – Soi in this instance.
  • The write-up on Pinot Noir 2007 was good, and enough to make me wish I’d been there!
  • Chris Laid­law’s ‘Civic Jihad’ Wel­ling­ton per­spect­ive piece – I’m not sure if this is a column or just a fea­ture – at least touches on a con­tro­versy by call­ing the pro­posed Hilton Hotel a ‘spectre’ that would “do justice to a Marx broth­ers movie”. Tom no doubt would have some­thing to say about that, but at least it’s a piece that could get someone talk­ing.