Hey, guess who’s been too busy with oth­er brain things to update this for a while? That’d be me. But let’s not waste time on it. Here’s the best things for a while. 

Best behaved weather of the week

Nice weath­er on a pub­lic hol­i­day allow­ing us to sit out­side around a fire and set inten­tions and let go of the things we no longer need? Cheers Tāwhirimātea!

Best new cafe in the Cuba Street area

There’s a new place for cof­fee and snacks near the top of Cuba St, on the corner of Tonks Grove, called Orange. It’s tiny but cute, with excel­lent banana bread and cheese scones (if you catch them quick enough), and a lot of cus­tom­ers seemed very excited by the res­id­ent fluffy dog. – Tom B

Orange Cafe counter, loaded with treats

(Any­one else remem­ber the Orange Din­ing Room, next to the Bake­house Gal­lery in what is now Noble Rot? Any­one? Bueller? Bueller? – Edit­or)

Best ridiculous campaign for you to get behind

We’re start­ing a cam­paign for the most des­per­ately needed revolu­tion in Wel­ling­ton: For Fred’s Sand­wiches  (hey ANOTHER orange place on Cuba St that has an Ins­tagram account but no web­site) to add sweet treats to their deliv­ery menu, so we can have a little dessert after our per­fect sand­wich with the last of our deli­cious cof­fee please.

The ideal would be cups of the dreamy tiram­isu from their sis­ter The Ram (yes yes, that Wel­ling­ton-wide tiram­isu review is still com­ing), but brownies or cook­ies would be just fine. I’ve done some extens­ive research (look­ing at their ins­tagram) and found that on 23 March, “Car­rot cake w/ maple wal­nuts & brown but­ter miso cook­ies also on the menu!” so it’s not like they don’t have bak­ing on offer to the people who vis­it them instore!  Please, Fred’s, help us home work­ers out!

Best article about A DANGEROUS MENACE TO SOCIETY

The Spinoff’s The shock­ing drag storytime event Bri­an Tamaki did­n’t want you to see. 

Threats of viol­ence against a chil­dren’s event (or any event) is unac­cept­able, and using foot­age from an R18 show to claim that’s what hap­pens at Drag Story Hour is fuck­ing pathet­ic. While we can­’t allow grift­ing thugs to con­tin­ue to shut down events like this, Alex did a great job in shred­ding Des­tiny’s claims about the event  being unsuit­able for chil­dren.

Tamaki and Des­tiny Church mem­bers have com­pared the drag storytime events to “the wolf dressed as granny wait­ing for [Little] Red Rid­ing Hood”, labelling it “foul pred­at­or beha­viour” and “tar­get­ing our inno­cent kids with their filth”. Oth­ers have pos­ited it might just be a per­son dressed in sparkly clothes read­ing a book.

In excel­lent news for any­one who would have been unable to make it to the live read­ing, you can catch Willy’s recor­ded Face­book live any time now! I will warn you though, the last story was so beau­ti­ful it made me cry.

And if you wanna show some sup­port to Willy, buy them a ko-fi.

Best other place for your rainbow dollars

Wel­ling­ton Pride Fest­iv­al (WPF) is being sued by rep­res­ent­at­ives of an anti-trans group called Les­bi­an Action for Vis­ib­il­ity Aotearoa (LAVA) after WPF made decision to not accept LAVA’s request for a stall at a gala event after the com­munity aler­ted WPF to their anti-trans views. . The case will be heard by the Human Rights Review Tribunal (HRRT) in 2025. Full dis­claim­er – I am a new mem­ber of the WPF Board. 

To quote co‑chair Tas­min Prichard in the New Zea­l­and Her­ald:

Prichard said the fest­iv­al and Lava had very dif­fer­ent views on trans people.

“At the core of it, our organ­isa­tion believes trans people exist, deserve the same rights as oth­ers, and have a place in Pride cel­eb­ra­tions. We work hard to put on a bright, col­our­ful fest­iv­al every March that wel­comes thou­sands of people, wheth­er they’re part of the rain­bow com­munity or are whānau and friends.”

Wel­ling­ton Pride Fest­iv­al have a Givealittle going right now – “Funds raised by this Givealittle will be spent on sup­port­ing expert wit­nesses to help us and oth­er leg­al costs. Any and all remain­ing fund­ing left over will be donated to trans*/nonbinary sup­port causes and char­it­ies.”