A few of us at the Welling­ton­ista are fans of the TAWA-nom­i­nat­ed Weird in Welling­ton pho­to blog, a col­lec­tion of odd­i­ties, curi­ousi­ties and just real weird stuff out there in the city.

So, using a trail of car­pet off­cuts, I lured the mys­te­ri­ous fel­low behind the blog in to Welling­ton­ista Tow­ers, strapped him to the Interrotoot2000 and asked him a few ques­tions.



Tell me a bit about your­self. How long have you lived in Welling­ton?

I moved here with my fam­i­ly from Nel­son when I was two. I lived in Auck­land for a cou­ple of years and Levin for six months (don’t ask), but have lived in var­i­ous Welling­ton sub­urbs for the remain­der of my life to date. So a long time. I love the place. I trav­el over­seas a bit, but have no plans to go and live any­where else per­ma­nent­ly, ever. This is it.

What inspired you to start the Weird in Welling­ton Tum­blr blog?

There is kind of a sto­ry with it, actu­al­ly. Some­time in Sep­tem­ber 2010 I was, well, for want of a less cringe-induc­ing­ly lame expres­sion, try­ing to woo a girl. This woo­ing involved writ­ing her a way-too-long email every day and attach­ing a pho­to I’d tak­en of some­thing odd, which I’d make some kind of cute or sar­cas­tic or absurd­ly obtuse com­ment about.

Yeah, you can stop laughing/crying any time you like.

Now the thing of it was (and this part may be hard to believe) my woo­ing attempts trans­lat­ed in her mind more-or-less to “wow, this guy is a bab­bling needy los­er to whom I can’t believe I ever gave the time of day”. Even­tu­al­ly her almost total lack of response to the emails had its desired effect and I gave up my dai­ly spam­ming of her inbox.

Any­way. As well as a bro­ken heart I also found myself the own­er of a met­ric crap­ton of pho­tographs of the weird stuff I’d seen around Welling­ton over the peri­od, with com­men­tary. The oth­er thing I found was that tak­ing the pic­tures was some­thing I enjoyed doing, and I want­ed to have a rea­son to keep doing it. As one of the best cures I’ve found for a bro­ken heart is fever­ish indus­try I set up the blog/twitter/facebook page, chucked up the pho­tos and com­men­tary I’d amassed to that point, and have been snap­ping and upload­ing pic­tures every day since, cir­cum­stances per­mit­ting.

The fun­ni­est aspect of the sto­ry to me is that the blog is, ulti­mate­ly, trag­i­cal­ly, pathet­i­cal­ly, the prod­uct of a bro­ken heart. And it’s on tum­blr. Which I’ve since learned is the online hip­ster home of the bro­ken-heart­ed and angst-rid­den. You could­n’t pay me to move it now, it’s too per­fect. And hon­est­ly, the hip­ster lovin’ would be way, way too hard to give up.

How do you decide what is weird?

If some­thing catch­es my eye and I think it’s odd or inter­est­ing or curi­ous, or I can quick­ly think of some­thing pithy to write about it to frame it in order that it can be per­ceived to be, I take a pic­ture. I assume there must be enough of an inter­sec­tion between what I find weird/unusual and what oth­er peo­ple do that it’ll be of inter­est to at least some of the peo­ple fol­low­ing the blog. That said, I often find the stuff I think is hys­ter­i­cal or tru­ly bizarre sloughs off the front page with­out com­ment while most of the pic­tures that’ve got­ten a lot of atten­tion I was pret­ty 50/50 about post­ing in the first place. So it goes.

Do you think there’s a par­tic­u­lar Welling­ton style? How does Welling­ton com­pare to your Auck­land vis­its?

Yeah, I guess in terms of street-lev­el “weird­ness,” there is. I see a lot more delib­er­ate clev­er­ness and wit on Welling­ton’s streets than Auck­land’s. Auck­land also seems to be a lot bet­ter at clean­ing up its graf (unless it’s with­in piss­ing dis­tance of a train track). Plus a lot more of what you see up there is tag­ging/­gang-relat­ed stuff, which does­n’t inter­est me so much.

But y’know, man. The world’s full of weird­ness. It’s just a mat­ter of per­spec­tive and being moti­vat­ed enough to look for it. There’s no rea­son you could­n’t run some­thing sim­i­lar about any place so long as you have a cam­era, way too much free time on your hands, and an obses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der.

What kind of cam­era do you use for your pho­tog­ra­phy?

You’re being obscene­ly kind to the point of sus­pect­ed fatu­ous­ness to call it “pho­tog­ra­phy,” thanks. For most of the pho­tos I used an old iPhone 2G. How­ev­er, a drunk­en night at a rock gig put paid to that phone and I’m now using a Sam­sung GT-I5800, which has a bet­ter cam­era. I par­tic­u­lar­ly like that it has a decent macro mode (for tak­ing pic­tures of stick­ers and such­like).

Has any­one ever tak­en excep­tion to being fea­tured in your blog, or even to you tak­ing a pho­to?

Well, I did get bust­ed tak­ing this pho­to. The guy came out of his house while I was walk­ing down his path and kind of aggres­sive­ly asked me what I thought I was doing. I smiled and explained that I was just tak­ing a pho­to of the sign in his win­dow because I thought it was won­der­ful. That mol­li­fied him and I escaped unmo­lest­ed. I also got has­sled by a few of the friends of this guy, but I guess that just comes with the ter­ri­to­ry when you make mean-spir­it­ed and sar­cas­tic pub­lic com­ments about peo­ple’s fash­ion sen­si­bil­i­ties from behind the cowl of an +5 Inter­cloak of Pseudoanonymi­ty.

Uhm, oh and this pic­ture? The guy you can just see through the door crack saw me tak­ing the pho­to and was head­ing out to con­front me. But I’d turned and walked off before he got out, and he must have decid­ed it was­n’t worth it.

Gen­er­al­ly though, when I take pic­tures of peo­ple I either have their per­mis­sion or I’m real­ly sneaky and under­hand­ed about it (relat­ed note: lovin’ the zoom on the new cam­era). Does tak­ing sneaky pic­tures of peo­ple and putting them on the Inter­net with pithy com­men­tary make me a bad per­son? Prob­a­bly. I guess it’s some­thing I’m just going to have to find a way to live with. teh_lulz are a harsh mis­tress.

Do you go out specif­i­cal­ly look­ing for weird stuff, or is it just things you notice as you oth­er­wise go about your busi­ness?

I do both. I walk to work and it’s long way, so I get a lot of pho­tos from those par­tic­u­lar “jus’ trollin’ ’bout mah bid­nez” trips. Because I’m using my phone to take the pho­tos and I usu­al­ly have it on me a lot of the pho­tos are also tak­en as I’m just doing my thing, for what­ev­er val­ue “thing” may have at the time.

But I do also do planned trips. Some­times I rock into town at 4am to check out graf with a torch and cam­era. Or, to pre-empt your next ques­tion, rock out on twit­ter-direct­ed mis­sions to sub­urbs I’m less famil­iar with. Like, well. Woodridge. And if I get a tip-off about some­thing in par­tic­u­lar and can get to it before it’s gone, I will.

Welling­ton’s inner neigh­bour­hoods, like Te Aro, Mt Cook and New­town, seem to be a rich source of weird­ness, though recent­ly you’ve trav­elled a lit­tle fur­ther afield to deep­est, dark­est Woodridge. Are you going to explore all of Welling­ton’s sub­urbs? Weird in Chur­ton Park?

Yeah, that’s the plan. I’m going to col­lect them all. So far I’ve made spe­cial trips to Woodridge, Karori, and Brook­lyn. And I guess the sub­urbs I trav­elled through to get to them. I will def­i­nite­ly get to Chur­ton Park even­tu­al­ly. Maybe even soon, see­ing as you keep bring­ing it up.

Do you think any­one’s ever done some­thing delib­er­ate­ly to get into your blog?

I know peo­ple have. I’m cool with it. I don’t have any kind of grand plan or agen­da, but if the blog inspires a few peo­ple to do a few odd things to make city life more inter­est­ing and fun for every­one else I say go nuts. And let me know. I’ll totes go and take a pic­ture of your shit.

What’s your favourite weird thing so far?

Oh man. There’s well over a thou­sand pho­tos on there right now, I don’t think I could pos­si­bly choose one I liked best. If I tried I’d end up with a lot of first-equals.

I guess in terms of my own sense of humour and appre­ci­a­tion for weird­ness, I pre­fer things that are extreme. For which I blame way too many years of hang­ing out with com­plete no-fil­ter freaks on IRC/ED/4chan. It’s safe to assume that the more puerile, offen­sive, and harsh an image is the more like­ly it is to be count­ed amongst my favourites. I also real­ly like the “wit­ty” text stuff when it has an edge to it. For exam­ple, this:

What do you do when you not doing Weird in Welling­ton?

Work some job in town. Write. Read. Eat, sleep, exer­cise. See bands. Go to D&B/Jungle/Dubstep things. Col­lect ran­dom junk from the foot­path and stick it on my wall. Unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempt to woo girls via email.

Just kid­ding about the “read­ing” thing.

HAY DUDE THERE’S A REALLY COOL ONE OF DARTH VADER DOING A RUBIK’S CUBE BY THE BYPASS. YOU SHOULD TOTALLY DO THAT ONE!!!!!1

O SWET BRO IL HEAD RIGHT OUT THEIR NOW AND TAEK A PIC AEWSOMA LOL RUBIX CUB DARTH VAEDR SOUNDS 2TALY AEWSOMA IL MAEK IT LIK A FEATUR3D POST OR DA BAKGROUND OR SOMETHNG THX AGANE U ROK!1!!1!

Thank you kind­ly. I am sure the read­ers of Gen­tle­wom­an’s Quar­ter­ly will find your com­ments most insight­ful.

You are very wel­come. Thank you, and I’d like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to quote my man Albert Camus when he states that virtue can­not sep­a­rate itself from real­i­ty with­out becom­ing a prin­ci­ple of evil. Why? Because it does­n’t have any rel­e­vance or rela­tion­ship to any­thing I’ve just said.

And that’s weird.

Wait, what? Ok, you can go now.