drink up!Far and away our most pop­u­lar post in the last wee while was Jo’s ‘Drink­ing Wel­ling­ton on the Cheap’ from last week. Dis­cus­sion of water­ing holes around Wel­ling­ton seems to be a pop­u­lar top­ic, as Steph­en of Dork­ing Labs’ ‘Drinks After Work’ has joined in with his own bar review, the first of what he prom­ises will be an occa­sion­al fea­ture. What’s really good about the first review though, is his quick assess­ment of Bar Bodega, which Steph­en rates as…

…a stink­hole, and so nev­er let me grace its boards with my pres­ence; at least not for some time. That’ll show them for can­cel­ling The Puddle at the last moment, after the band had arrived in Wel­ling­ton. Oh, and its pro­pri­et­or Fraser MacInnes has shown (once again) (as if it was really neces­sary) that he is hands-down the biggest cock in the NZ band/bar scene.

The poor old Puddle. We saw the band put­ting their own posters up with sel­lo­tape down Cuba St the day before the gig: one mem­ber to hold the pho­to­copied A4 ‘poster’ in place, anoth­er to stick it down with sel­lo­tape, and anoth­er to pull the lengths of tape required from the spool itself. Now that’s a band who work togeth­er well. We also hear via the grapev­ine that Fraser can­celled The Bleed­ers on Sat­urday night, also at the last minute, and after the band had pre-sold dozens of tick­ets, because the oppor­tun­ity to host some luc­rat­ive cor­por­ate shin-dig had aris­en. FFS, as the kids might txt.

Any­way, Bar Man­ag­ment 101 aside, do check out Steph­en’s review of Blend, or, if the quick pre­cis is what you’re after, here’s the sum­mary…

Don’t even both­er. It’s attached to a back­pack­er hostel, fer fuck­’s sake. In addi­tion, the state of the “ladies” in the room – after sev­er­al hours of free “bubbles” – led me to won­der if the bar-staff crumble E’s into the flutes before serving. I was going to post a pic­ture, but instead I think I’ll just link to CollegeWildParties.com (warn­ing: NOT work-safe). I’d rather go drink­ing at The Lazy Shag, and that’s now a car-park.

Also worth tak­ing a look at is Wel­lUrb­an’s ongo­ing Mys­tery Bar series.