Vot­ing in the Fourth Annu­al Wel­ling­tonista Awards is open from Decem­ber 1–15. Then come find out the res­ults at our Awards Night at Mighty Mighty on Decem­ber 17!

To vote, vis­it this page.

Wel­ling­ton is awe­some, no doubt about it, but we still have ideas about what would make it even more awe­somer. We use this cat­egory to gauge pub­lic opin­ion about what’s most import­ant. 

A liquor store that deliv­ers at night: The party is rockin’ and reel­in’ in Wel­ling­ton, New Zea­l­and (RIP Lux Interi­or) and you real­ise the sup­ply of hooch is dan­ger­ously low. Instead of find­ing out where the sober driver has gone to (mak­ing-out upstairs) you speed-dial the Deliv­ery Liquor Out­let and the party is saved! Sadly this is all a fic­tion because in real­ity there is no liquor store that deliv­ers (and you don’t actu­ally have any friends).

Bet­ter pub­lic trans­port: There’s one theme that emerged in many guises in our read­er­’s sug­ges­tions, and that’s pub­lic trans­port. Trains and buses need to be integ­rated, reli­able, fast, con­veni­ent and – not to put too fine a point on it – not fall­ing to bits.

Bike lanes: The oth­er trans­port theme that came out of the nom­in­a­tions was cyc­ling, and in par­tic­u­lar the need for more ded­ic­ated bike lanes. Wel­ling­to­ni­ans are great walk­ers, and put up with the short­com­ings of pub­lic trans­port, but apart from a few ded­ic­ated souls, few of us bike. Per­haps a good net­work of safe, con­veni­ent bike paths will be what it takes to get to crit­ic­al mass.

More people: We are going to go out on a limb here and nom­in­ate “more people in the inner city” for the most needed cat­egory. Our read­ers have nom­in­ated people-watch­ing vari­ous kinds of drunk­en idiocy under the “best reg­u­lar enter­tain­ment” cat­egory, wit­ness:

  • Drunk­en bridge and tun­nel bogans on Cour­tenay Place
  • Watch­ing new­comers’ reac­tions to Blanket Man
  • Watch­ing the emo kids rolling around the ground on Man­ners Mall (soon to be no more)
  • Green teens get­ting boozed on Cour­tenay.

Hillllari­ous! While drink­ing is argu­ably an ines­cap­able part of inner city cul­ture, what we are envi­sion­ing is a well-planned, flour­ish­ing people-friendly city, com­fort­ably crammed with people. What we have now but more so. While we will nev­er be Tokyo or New York (in spite of what those New­town T‑shirts say), we could aspire to be a small but per­fectly formed city that attracts more poten­tial “Wel­ling­to­ni­ans of the Year”. More people would also be a boon for those of us who feel, from time to time, that Wel­ling­ton is too much of a vil­lage.

A wet house: Con­grat­u­la­tions, NIMBYs of Island Bay. You suc­ceeded in block­ing a safe place for incur­able home­less alco­hol­ics to live in. Here’s hop­ing an altern­at­ive loc­a­tion can be found.