The glorious struggles of the people’s working-class rugby art sculpture

A year and a half ago we were offered a tan­ta­lis­ing glimpse of the mod­el of the Weta Work­shop-designed Welling­ton rug­by sculp­ture, not­ing its resem­blance to a provin­cial junior rug­by tro­phy, a knick-knack gift for a rug­­by-lov­ing uncle, and a vagi­na. And then final­ly the full-size sculp­ture appeared, tucked away in Jack Ilott Green, that […]

WOW 2011

It’s WOW time again, and this year’s show is the most amaz­ing and extrav­a­gant yet. But was it too extrav­a­gant this year? I’ll get to that lat­er. Please note that this post will con­tain spoil­ers about the show, so if you’re going, don’t read it until after­wards okay?  The Welling­ton­ista has a lit­tle pre-WOW game. […]

A Travelogue

Mark Shea is an Aus­tralian film­mak­er and trav­el­er who com­bines his two loves to cre­ate short trav­el­ogues of the places he vis­its. Ear­li­er this year he was in Welling­ton, and was inspired to get a lit­tle more in depth than his usu­al style, tak­ing to the streets to ask the locals what it is they […]

WOW comes early

The Welling­ton­ista has been going along to the World of Wear­ableArt show for the past three years, and we’ve come to have a bit of affec­tion for the grand cel­e­bra­tion of the extrav­a­gant mash-up of fash­ion, design and cos­tumery that is wear­able art. The WOW show and awards are com­ing a month ear­ly this year […]

WOP: The taste of happy

So, a cou­ple more excur­sions to restau­rants with Welling­ton on a Plate menus. I’m con­sid­er­ing going to the Ware­house and buy­ing a pair of elas­tic-waist­ed track­pants for the rest of Welling­ton on a Plate. Most recent­ly I paid a vis­it to Cuba Street icon Florid­i­tas and Hip­popota­mus at the Muse­um Hotel.

WOP: Give me shelter

So, Welling­ton on a Plate — it’s quite good, yeah? While Joan­na is a (deli­cious­ly) sea­soned pro, this is my first year sam­pling the culi­nary delights of the fes­ti­val of nomz. So I fig­ured I should share my find­ings. Here are my first two expe­ri­ences — Mar­tin Bosley’s and Fox­glove.

Wellywood Sign Song

Come­di­an Rob­bie Ellis — who you may remem­ber for his show-stop­ping per­for­mance of Man­ners Mall Emo Song (Bus­lane Through My Heart) at the 2009 TAWAs — has a new video. In reac­tion to the huge­ly unpop­u­lar plan by Welling­ton Air­port to erect a “WELLYWOOD” sign, Rob­bie has put his feel­ings into song. Sing along!

The duchess’ nice frock

“Oh, look! It’s Kate Winslet’s wed­ding dress!” On the night of the roy­al wed­ding, while most of us were drink­ing gins and mak­ing snarky tweets about Princess Beat­rice’s hat (or point­ed­ly not), fash­ion design­er Jane Yeh was hard at work furi­ous­ly sketch­ing and sewing a repli­ca of Kate Mid­dle­ton’s wed­ding dress, ready to go on […]

La Boca Loca

With the open­ing of The Roxy cin­e­ma, Mira­mar has sud­den­ly become a rather pop­u­lar lit­tle neigh­bour­hood. And now things get even more inter­est­ing with the open­ing of Mex­i­can restau­rant La Boca Loca. It’s a taque­ria — a Mex­i­can fast food joint. But the fast food in ques­tion is cen­tred around a selec­tion of tor­til­la-based dish­es, […]

A Cuba St cafe that’s not a cafe in Cuba St

Last week I was in sun­ny Napi­er, idly strolling down Dal­ton Street, when I came across this curi­ous cafe. Yes, it’s a cafe themed after a ’00s-era Welling­­ton-style cafe. Named after our cen­tral cafe dis­trict, Cuba St cafe serves Welling­ton brands Havana cof­fee and t leaf T tea, and I was tick­led to hear bar­be­cue […]