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.