2AWA: Most Needed

Here are the nom­i­nees for the Most Need­ed cat­e­go­ry for the 2nd Annu­al Welling­ton­ista Awards (2AWA)

Welling­ton most needs:

Welling­ton’s pret­ty close to per­fec­tion, but there are a few things that we need. More smart peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in local elec­tions so we don’t end up with Ker­ry again. A liv­ing wage for the Welling­ton­istas. More celebri­ties, appar­ent­ly. And also these things:

(nom­i­nees after the jump)

A. A tiki bar

For a coun­try that actu­al­ly has Tikis as part of the cul­ture we have no way to cel­e­brate that cul­ture by drink­ing our­selves sil­ly in some sort of tiki relat­ed man­ner. How hard is it to nail some bam­boo to the bar, serve drinks in pineap­ples, coconuts and Tiki mugs? Until we get a prop­er tiki bar you can find us sit­ting in the tik­i­fied cor­ner of Hadyn’s lounge drink­ing Zom­bies from his scor­pi­on bowl.

WINNER!!!
B. Light rail to the airport

In case you haven’t noticed, the Wellingo­nista are very pro-pub­lic trans­port. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the coun­cil aren’t. Light rail won the vote at the last Welling­ton­ista awards, but still has­n’t been imple­ment­ed. That’s just not good enough. After all, we are offi­cial­ly the self-pro­claimed offi­cial voice of the peo­ple, and we demand it!

C. Muji

We have to been to the Japan­ese design chain Muji many times. Thrice in Lon­don, twice in Paris and over and over again in Tokyo. Every vis­it had a bad effect on our wal­lets but a sooth­ing effect on the eye and mind. Whether it was bags, or pants, or design­er sta­tionery or linen or fur­ni­ture or cities in a bag, we could­n’t get enough of the Muji stuff. They opened their first store in New York recent­ly, it also hap­pened to be the first store in Amer­i­ca, so Welling­ton might be a ways off yet, but we can dream right?

D. A 24 hour diner

There’s only so far kebab shops can take you. Ken­ny’s and Mid­night Espres­so are not enough — we need to get all Amer­i­can­ised. We need a din­er with cosy booths and bot­tom­less cof­fee to fuel our intel­lec­tu­al dis­cus­sions. We need a place to go after our late-run­ning gigs so we can talk shit. We need a place to hook up over curly fries and burg­ers. We want to be able to order waf­fles at 3am.

E. Wagamama

For some of us it was over a decade ago, yet still we have fond mem­o­ries of noo­dle chain Waga­ma­ma’s orig­i­nal below-ground lev­el Soho and Blooms­bury branch­es and their min­i­mal­ist decor, long tables, and their cheap(-ish) but tasty and great take on Japan­ese noo­dles. So we were, it has to be said, mild­ly jeal­ous to find that a branch (or three) had opened in Auck­land. Per­haps the con­cept is get­ting a lit­tle old, and per­haps Welling­ton’s own Chow could be argued for instead, but nev­er­the­less we’d love to see a Waga­ma­ma here.

Vot­ing opens on Novem­ber 19.