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.