We ask: Boy and dog?

The Welling­ton­ista want to know what is cur­rent­ly shoot­ing in Welling­ton that would require a large truck tow­ing a boy on a bicy­cle with a dog perched hap­pi­ly behind him to film down Lambton Quay.

Some­one out there must have the answer. And also: how did they get the dog to hold on?

Wellingtonista boos: ads on our sacred space

Adjust­ing to the new offices on Lambton Quay has­n’t been easy, and a huge part of the prob­lem has been try­ing to get into a new cof­fee rou­tine. That is why it’s so dis­tress­ing that Fres­co*, which sells Mojo cof­fee, is now using take­away cups print­ed with Tele­com adver­tis­ing. How many min­utes will I spend think­ing about cof­fee over the next two years? A lot more than I’ll think about switch­ing to Tele­com, you punks. Even if I had­n’t had my voda­fone num­ber since it was Bell South, there’s no way I’d switch now. Leave me alone and stop hound­ing me when all I am try­ing to do is wake up!

* Yes, their take­away lattes are $4.50, but their muffins are $2.50, so break­fast is only 20 cents more expen­sive than get­ting a cheese scone and cof­fee from Kyrani.

Let’s all shut up about the weather now.

Dear Welling­to­ni­ans,

I’ve become so sick of you whing­ing all the time that tonight I made this for you:

Sunset at Lyall Bay
Sun­set at Lyall Bay

The light at the end of the tunnel

Although we would hate you to think that we had an unnat­ur­al love for tun­nels, we think it’s only fair to warn you that new lights have been installed at either end of the Hataitai/Mt Vic tun­nel that are so bright that you’ll think you are out­side in the sun­shine already, even at night. It does­n’t make peo­ple honk any less though.

Make the society pages with us

Shiny like an Oscar. But drinkableBy now you’ve either cast your votes for the First Annu­al Welling­ton­ista Awards for Out­stand­ing Achieve­ment in the Field of Excel­lence, or you’re still try­ing to decide whether you <3 Good Luck or San Frindi­go more. You might want to get a wrig­gle on with that, as vot­ing clos­es at 5pm on Thurs­day.

Thanks very much for vot­ing, it’s very choice that you got involved. If you’d like to get even more involved with us (ooer!), please come along to our awards cer­e­mo­ny at Mighty Mighty (above Mr Bun in Cuba Mall) on Fri­day night.

Drinks will start out at 6.30pm and the awards them­selves will prob­a­bly kick off around 7pm.

If you haven’t met us yet, you’ll be able to spot us eas­i­ly as we’ll be the ridicu­lous­ly attrac­tive peo­ple pat­ting our­selves on the back.

We’ll be draw­ing names for prizes then too, but as we are good peo­ple your atten­dance is not manda­to­ry in order to win. How­ev­er, what pos­si­ble rea­son could you have for not want­i­ng to attend?

If you would like to buy us drinks, nat­u­ral­ly a dry mar­ti­ni would be the stan­dard, but we imag­ine that we would drink pret­ty much any­thing you gave us.

It should all be a fright­ful­ly good time, and we look for­ward to see­ing you there.

First Annual Wellingtonista Awards Voting

It is with great pride and plea­sure that we announce the nom­i­nees for the First Annu­al Welling­ton­ista Awards for Out­stand­ing Achieve­ment in the Field of Excel­lence.

The Welling­ton­ista have sweat­ed and slaved over the cat­e­gories, and now it is your turn for action. Step up and send us your votes before Novem­ber 30. The awards will be announced in an elab­o­rate* cer­e­mo­ny on Fri­day Decem­ber 1 which we would love for you to attend.

Why should you vote? Because your opin­ion counts. And so that you’ll receive an invi­ta­tion to the awards. And because you’ll go in to the draw to win awe­some prizes, includ­ing but not nec­es­sar­i­ly lim­it­ed to good­ies from Baby­li­cious, signed copies of 101 Sto­ries That I Want To Tell You, tasty sal­ads from Kapai (dis­claimer: we wrote nice things about them before they offered up prizes), stun­ning tshirts, signed pho­tos of The Drop­kicks and life­long Coun­try Club mem­ber­ship.

The cat­e­gories are after the jump, and nom­i­nees are sug­ges­tions only — you’re free to write-in your win­ners.

Kai in our puku

bread bowlsRecent­ly we asked you where the best places to eat on Lambton Quay are, and nat­u­ral­ly, the inter­net word-of-mouth answered: Kapai Sal­ads in Lambton Square.

There’s plen­ty of rea­sons to love Kapai, includ­ing:

  • Whā­nau: Every­one knows some­one who knows the own­ers, hence the mass emails and bul­letin board post­ings about the shop.
  • Mata: Your sal­ad will be fresh­ly made right in front of you, and you will get to choose the ingre­di­ants your­self. No droopy let­tuce and skankyass grat­ed cheese here, no no.
  • Taiao: The soup is served in bowls made out of bread, while sal­ads are served in potatopaks (which you prob­a­bly would­n’t want to eat, although tech­ni­cal­ly they’re safe enough to), min­imis­ing envi­ron­men­tal dam­age. Plus, the cof­fee’s fair trade.

We’d like them to offer lists of avail­able ingre­di­ants and make it a lit­tle clear­er which are the gourmet ones that’ll set you back an extra $1.50, but when you can get a roc­quette, falafel and feta sal­ad with aioli in less than five min­utes and feel good about doing it, you’ll def­i­nite­ly be going back.

Eating outside my comfort box (heh)

Every­one knows that large cor­po­ra­tions eat pup­pies, but what do the peo­ple who work for large cor­po­ra­tions eat for lunch?

The Welling­ton­ista is clos­ing down its Courte­nay Place branch on Fri­day and is open­ing up in mid Lambton Quay instead. After a year and a half down this way, we’d just final­ly got the good peo­ple at Sahara Kebabs to know that we like just a few onions and gar­lic yoghurt, tahi­ni and hot chilli on our (mixed veg­e­tar­i­an, mujaver and falafel only) kebabs. Where are we going to eat now?

Big shoes to fill

Most of the time it’s nice being the tallest female Welling­ton­ista (Martha and Natal­ie may get the col­umn inch­es but I gots the height inch­es), but the trou­ble with being tall is that I need great big plates of meat as feet to sup­port me. And you know what they say about girls with big feet — they need big shoes.

That’s why I’m so excit­ed that Wil­low Shoes — a web­site I’ve been shop­ping from for years since they spe­cialise in shoes size 10 and up — has just opened up a branch in Welling­ton, in my neigh­bour­hood even, at 27 C Wait­oa Road in Hataitai. This is going to be espe­cial­ly handy (or err footy, badoom chish) now that Minx Shoes have moved their fac­to­ry out­let from Waikanae to Ota­ki.

Snakes! On a plane! In Wellington!

ph33r my photoshop skillsNot that long ago, the Lon­don Time Out ran a fea­ture on pirates in Lon­don to cel­e­brate the release of Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Way to be hip, Time Out. Every­one who’s any­one knows that the actu­al most impor­tant movie this year is Snakes on Plane — or as some like to call it “Moth­er­fuck­ing snakes on a moth­er­fuck­ing plane”. So, in trib­ute to this movie that opens on Thurs­day, the Welling­ton­ista is proud to present this very spe­cial activ­i­ty guide to recre­at­ing snakes on a plane in Welling­ton: