This morn­ing it was announced that the World of Wear­able Arts has signed a con­tract with Wel­ling­ton for the next nine years. That’s great news.

WOW might not be your cup of tea, but it’s a big boost to our hos­pit­al­ity and retail sec­tors (worth more than $15.1 mil­lion, appar­ently). Sure, friends who work in ven­ues near the TSB Arena com­plain about the num­ber of caesar salads ordered, but those busy weeks help pay the bills for the rest of the year. And while one let­ter writer com­plained about WOW cou­gars, every­one I know still feels safe and secure walk­ing the streets free of har­ass­ment, unlike dur­ing the Sev­ens.

WOW’s also great for people who work in the Arts, who can be assured of at least one steady pay cheque per year. I just hope that the cre­at­ive dir­ect­ors real­ise that gol­li­wogs are nev­er ever okay. The use of one this year in the chil­dren’s sequence was utterly despic­able and totally unne­ces­sary, giv­en that a shirt­less male dan­cer with plastic Ken hair would have appealed even more to the tar­get demo­graph­ic any­way…