(Issue two is out now, but I have been slow. All judg­ments below are based on the first issue. I’m not buy­ing anoth­er one to see if it’s improved.)

When I saw the first issue of Uno on the shelves at the super­mar­ket, I was hop­ing it would be the Welling­ton equiv­a­lent of Metro — on a good day, not all “Why your kids’ school will give you can­cer and nev­er let them buy a house” Lis­ten­eresque. But it’s not. It’s real­ly, real­ly not. Instead it turns out that Uno is every bit as adver­tis­ing-copy dri­ven as the Welling­ton Guide — with­out the advan­tage of at least being Welly exclu­sive. I sup­pose I should have known bet­ter give that Welling­ton’s offi­cial vil­lain of 2006 is on the cov­er. After the jump, more rea­sons not to waste $9.95.

  • The first line of the mag­a­zine is “Uno is unashamed­ly local”, and yet it only has ‘What’s On’ pages for Hamil­ton and Tau­ran­ga — the two cities that the mag­a­zine start­ed out in. In fact, some con­tact num­bers for alleged­ly Welling­ton busi­ness­es start with an (07) as well.
  • While not every­one is as anti-Ker­ry as the Welling­ton­ista gen­er­al­ly are, the cov­er puff piece enti­tled “welling­ton’s first cit­i­zen” [sic] does­n’t even give a hint of a sug­ges­tion that there might be any­thing con­tro­ver­sial about her.
  • There are no cap­i­tal let­ters in the arti­cle’s titles. Who’s in charge around here — a jour­nal­ist or a graph­ic design­er?
  • There’s an arti­cle on Brazil­ian wax­ing, cour­tesy of a salon called Waxn­laser. I’m not entire­ly sure how that fits in with the ‘Lifestyle’ theme, but I guess a case could be made for it. But it’s most def­i­nite­ly straight adver­to­r­i­al again, with half a page of text and half a page of ad.
  • One of the few pro­files in it that actu­al­ly relate to Welling­ton is about phil&teds [sic] most excel­lent bug­gy com­pa­ny. Not to nit­pick or any­thing, but the when the Welling­ton­ista starts pro­duc­ing a mag­a­zine, there’s no way that we’re going to pro­file any com­pa­ny that delib­er­ate­ly leaves out an apos­tro­phe like that. That’d be as bad as big-upping a com­pa­ny that uses com­ic sans. Oh, and more annoy­ing­ly, the arti­cle talks about how hilar­i­ous the com­pa­ny’s answer­ing sys­tem is, with its fake Indi­an accent. Ahhh racism, that’s sooo Welling­ton lifestyle!
  • Actu­al­ly, the proof-read­ing through­out the mag­a­zine needs to be tight­ened up and a con­sis­tent style guide should be applied (and oh yes, I can hear the ket­tle call­ing me black right now).
  • The arti­cle called ‘Juice!’ is about the pro­gram­mer of Sky’s music chan­nels. How does this relate to Welling­ton? Oh yes, Welling­ton is his home­town. Oh, and appar­ent­ly, accord­ing to the open­ing para­graph, J2 “has become a part of the social fab­ric of Welling­ton”. Real­ly? Real­ly? Sil­ly me for think­ing that it was Fat Fred­dy’s we heard ubiq­ui­tous­ly.
  • While “UNO. does not pre­tend to be a nation­al mag­a­zine, nor a news mag­a­zine.”, their web­site also declares “It is not an adver­tis­ing cat­a­logue!” — but writ­ing rarely gets much puffi­er than the piece on the new Voda­fone shop on Willis St.

Okay, but in fair­ness, there are a cou­ple of upnotes about the mag­a­zine:

  • Nice work pick­ing Hank Cubitt to write about men’s fash­ion — he’s a Welling­ton icon and he knows what he’s talk­ing about.
  • Like­wise, it was a good idea to get the food recipes from a Welling­ton recipe — Soi in this instance.
  • The write-up on Pinot Noir 2007 was good, and enough to make me wish I’d been there!
  • Chris Laid­law’s ‘Civic Jihad’ Welling­ton per­spec­tive piece — I’m not sure if this is a col­umn or just a fea­ture — at least touch­es on a con­tro­ver­sy by call­ing the pro­posed Hilton Hotel a ‘spec­tre’ that would “do jus­tice to a Marx broth­ers movie”. Tom no doubt would have some­thing to say about that, but at least it’s a piece that could get some­one talk­ing.