About the Wellingtonista

You can receive our semi-daily text updates about what’s going on by following us on Twitter or one of the Wellington interests lists that we curate. Our resident gossip-monger The Masked Barfly is also on Twitter, if you’re interested in that kind of thing.

If you’ve got something going on that you’d like us to know about, contact us. Or maybe you’d like to write a guest post for us?

What’s our deal?

The Wellingtonista is a blog about the things we love about the city we love. Since 2005, we’ve been promoting and writing about its many interesting aspects: places to get drunk, things to go and see, events to participate in, bands to listen to, places to get drunk, plays to watch, comments on local news, restaurants to eat in, and (sometimes) places to get drunk.

We have been accused of being out of touch with mainstream New Zealand, and of playing to:

…drinking, dancing, gallery visiting, pedestrian friendly urbanites who skirt so close to being called Yuppies but deftly avoid it by telling you to fuck off.

Both of these accusations are absolutely true and we wear them with pride.

Publisher

Natalie Biz is an award–winning blogger, ex-librarian and figment of an overactive imagination. She set up the Wellingtonista in 2005 after a severe bout of home-sickness (whilst touring the USA as substitute bass-player in a Swedish prog-rock band).

Editors

James Guthrie (posts) is rumoured to have become one of Wellington’s first entirely online beings, having not been spotted in any physical form since late 2004. As well as trying to keep this place in some sort of order, he also potters about with other online projects.

Joanna McLeod (posts) has started calling herself the Empress of the Internet because she can. As well as wrangling the other site contributors and Getting Shit Done, she likes to eat, drink and write in equal amounts. Yes, she would love to be invited along to your event in order to do those things. Joanna’s also the best person to talk to if you’re interested in advertising on the site.

Contributors

Alan Macdougall (posts) struggles under stress to provide witticisms of the sort required for short potted bios on group websites.

Martha Craig (posts) is the beige sheep of the family, living in the Petropolis of Petone. She has her finger loosely on the pulse of the city, and aims to make it into some (any) society pages before the year is out.

Tom Beard (posts) lives in a tasteful neo-Tuscan mansion in Churton Park. He is a teetotaller, and his hobbies include golf, gardening and watching V8 supercars. He owns three SUVs, but his favourite vehicle is the Hummer with the “I ♥ Peter Dunne” bumper sticker, which he enjoys driving to church.

Sue Tyler (posts) owns two unicorns and spends most of her time doing research into why so many cat videos are on the internet. When not creating craft fairs she spends her time napping and thinking of how she could have been a contender.

Stephen Clover (posts) swears too much, drinks too much, and is frequently being sent not-safe-for-work weblinks by his amusing friends. He lives for music and art. He also worships at the same church as Tom Beard.

A refugee from Thatcher’s Britain, 20 years ago Dan Slevin (posts) produced and hosted the Radio Active guide to cultural Wellington, Asleep At The Wheel. Since then he has bounced around various creative endeavours including co-owning and managing the Paramount between 2002 and 2005. He is now the Capital Times film reviewer as well as proprietor of his own strategic communications consultancy. His collected film reviews can be browsed free of charge at Funerals & Snakes.

Anna Dean (posts) aka ‘The Mouth from the South’, has been causing a ruckus, throwing great parties and getting the word out for various projects these past five years in Wellington. She rarely posts. Don’t hold your breath.

Stephen Judd (posts) already has one too many About pages.

Keith Bolland (posts) describes his ideal job as “getting paid to read a lot and occasionally insult people.” Until he can achieve this blessed state he bangs away at the web to keep himself in cocktail ingredients.

Tom Ackroyd (posts) lives in Mount Victoria and worries too much.

Greg Bodnar (posts) now looks at the world from around 50cm from the ground and wonders how kids manage to survive all of this.

Tim Herbert (posts) enjoys live music, eats at all the places, supports the Phoenix, pretends to be a photographer & lives it up large on Cuba Street. He is also a Z-grade guitarist.

There have been others.