Down at the City Gal­lery on Fri­day night they are run­ning anoth­er one of their Late Night Ses­sions, where you get to cruise around the big exhib­i­tion (this time it’s the bien­ni­al Pro­spect show) in rel­at­ive peace and listen to lovely live music while you do so. And all for free.

City Gal­lery’s pop­u­lar late night Fri­day returns. Wander through Tele­com Pro­spect 2007: New Art New Zea­l­and to a back­drop of inde­pend­ent and elec­tron­ic sounds by loc­al per­formers. Fea­tur­ing Penelop­ing, Tc Wedde with Luke Buda, and Aspen.

The lovely Luke Buda is of course in The Phoenix Found­a­tion, as is (the equally lovely) Tc Wedde. Aspen is also lovely and also known as Sign­er, and is one half of Over the Atlantic and one half of Skal­lander. And the “medi­um-core girl-boy plink­pop!” Penelop­ing also have a very good repu­ta­tion as a live act. Hav­ing exper­i­enced Late Night Ses­sions many times before – from the point of view both of a per­former and a pat­ron – I can heart­ily recom­mend this event.

Then on Sat­urday March the 24th, from 10:00am ’til 2:00pm, Aro Street’s newly revamped park is the site of the Aro Val­ley Fair.

Exper­i­ence bohemi­an inner city life at the annu­al Aro Val­ley fair. The fair will have stalls selling everything from jew­ellery to food. There will also be live bands and enter­tain­ment fea­tur­ing Olmecha Supreme and Home­fire Burn­ing. Make sure you drop by and check out the rhythm and soul of Aro Val­ley.

It’s been a long damn time before there has­n’t been some kind of con­struc­tion or road­ing work in Aro Street or the park; I’m look­ing to the fair as some sort of unof­fi­cial “re-open­ing” cel­eb­ra­tion as much as any­thing else. ‘Rain day’ for the fair is Sunday, 25 March.