Family-owned Naumi Hotels open Naumi Studio Hotel on Cuba Street

There’s been a hotel on Cuba Street for as long as I can remem­ber.  In sixth form my very dar­ing sex-hav­ing friend booked her­self and her boy­friend a room at Trek­kers Hotel for after our ball at Cuba Cuba (but she ended up get­ting too drunk to leave the room).  In the mid naugh­ties, we […]

four women in a tattoo style label

Tasty tastings

Rules around advert­ising alco­hol are pretty strict. That’s why High­ball, Wel­ling­ton’s first spir­its & cock­tail fest­iv­al, was not able to tell you that for your $50 entry fee, you would abso­lutely be able to get your money’s worth of drunk in free samples. So instead it looked like you’d pay a lot of money to […]

a line of fat babes in great clothing

Polishing the Crown Jewels – a clothing pop-up sale for fat people

I have been busy, and that is why there is almost no con­tent from me on this site any­more, although you will find me on the tweets, as per usu­al, though there are of course about a dozen of us who have access to the ‘ista twit­ter account. But that’s not what I’m here to […]

Don’t feed dogs chocolate – put it in beer instead

Guest post by Krystle, thanks Krystle! Cof­fee, chocol­ate, and beer…these are a few of Wel­ling­to­ni­ans’ favor­ite things – and thanks to a col­lab, you can now drink a fusion of all three. Loc­al legends Black Dog Brew­ery and Wel­ling­ton Chocol­ate Fact­ory have teamed up to pro­duce the Bean Me Up Mocha Stout. You may be […]

poster for the exhibition with a lot of text on it

Sex Workers of Aotearoa: A Day in the Life of

Sex work­ers and artists have gone hand in hand for hun­dreds if not thou­sands of years.  Think of basic­ally nearly every nude woman in a clas­sic paint­ing by a white dude, or Moulin Rouge, or ‘Vic­tor­ia’ or count­less oth­er examples and you get the idea. Oh sure, they’re muses. But what if we did­n’t centre […]

James and Bullseye Bella

While the Wel­ling­tonista is what we do on the side of our day jobs, it turns out that almost all Wel­ling­tonis­tas have a side hustle on the side of the side. Case in point: our fear­less lead­er only went and wrote a bloody book did­n’t he? So I had a chat to him.   Hey […]

Preview: WHY ARE WE STILL HERE?

You’ll remem­ber Emma from her reviews right here on the ‘ista. Turns out she’s put­ting her money where her mouth is, so I had a chat with her about it. Why are we still here? Feb­ru­ary 5–9pm Bats Theatre Emma! You’re doing a play! What’s it all about? Four women break into an aban­doned theatre […]

Budburst is here to celebrate natural wines – win a double pass

I like any event centered around wine, so I’m really excited about Bud­burst, com­ing up on Novem­ber 11 – the country’s only nat­ur­al wine fest­iv­al. Nat­ur­al wines, you say? What exactly does that mean? Well let’s cut’n paste from the press release His­tor­ic­ally, the term nat­ur­al wine is without a single defin­i­tion. For the Bud­burst […]

A sausagefest with Harrington’s at Logan Brown

As should be obvi­ous by now, we love a free din­ner here at the Wel­ling­tonista. So when we were invited by Harrington’s Small­goods to din­ner at Logan Brown, of course we said yes. It ended up being one of the more inter­est­ing din­ners I’ve been to in my life so this review is going to […]

Preview: The Loneliest Whale in the World

This isn’t a break up show. It’s about mar­ine sci­ence. So begins the blurb for this pro­duc­tion com­ing up at Bats Theatre from July 10–14. A play about whales seems to be very very timely for Wel­ling­ton right now, but this one has been in the mak­ing for a long time. “Four years ago, my friend […]