Author: Robyn

Botanic infamy

OMG. The Welling­ton Botan­ic Gar­dens, cur­rent­ly teem­ing with life and colour and gen­er­al spring­time joy, gets a men­tion on an upcom­ing episode of The Simp­sons, the first of the new series.

The episode guest stars local boys made good Bret and Jemaine Con­chords, and the pair use the Botan­ic Gar­dens good name for great lolz:

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJkdPbpoc5s]

And remem­ber the annu­al Spring Fes­ti­val is cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing at the Botan­ic Gar­dens, so why not take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to frol­lick in the spring blooms and say you were down with the gar­dens before they were famous.

WOW winners

I’ve just got back from the WOW Awards Show, so here’s a quick­ie post with the win­ner and run­ner up.

The win­ner of the 2010 Mon­tana Supreme World of Wear­ableArt Award was Loops by Yogesh Chaud­hary and Man­as Barve, both design young stu­dents from India. Loops is a seam­less piece made from felt­ed Aus­tralian meri­no:

The run­ner up to the Supreme WOW Award was Hor­ridus Lynn Chris­tiansen of the USA. Inspired by the thorny dev­il lizard (Moloch hor­ridus), it’s made of cop­per and had a dis­tinct clat­ter as the mod­el moved in it:

A full report on the WOW expe­ri­ence will come soon, includ­ing the bit where Jo forced me to touch Te Radar’s love­ly soft curly hair.

A whole lot of WOW

WOW sea­son kicks off today, as the city turns into the World of Wear­ableArt.

The Mon­tana World of Wear­ableArt shows kick off at TSB Are­na tonight, with the awards show on Fri­day night. The Welling­ton­ista Will be there to report on the 2010 win­ners and gen­er­al goings-on.

Most of the shows are sold out, but there are still a few $50 “restrict­ed view” tick­ets left to most shows — a good option if you’ve always want­ed to expe­ri­ence the extrav­a­gant WOW show.

But as always, there are oth­er ways of expe­ri­enc­ing the mag­ic of WOW.

WoW design­er Susan Holmes has a num­ber of her pre­vi­ous entries on dis­play at var­i­ous loca­tions around the city, inclid­ing the Muse­um Hotel, TSB Are­na and the air­port.

Var­i­ous Welling­ton retail­ers are get­ting crafty with their own ver­sion of Wear­ableArt on dis­play, com­plete with good­ie bags and oth­er prizes for lucky shop­pers.

And com­ing up on Sun­day 3 Octo­ber at Te Papa is Get Set Cre­ate, a one-hour chal­lenge for WOW design­ers to come up with a cre­ation.

So strap on your bizarre bra and get down with the WOW.

Frock on

The new­ly launched New Zealand Fash­ion Muse­um aims to pre­serve and cel­e­brate New Zealand’ fash­ion his­to­ry.

It does­n’t have a phys­i­cal loca­tion, instead dis­play­ing exhi­bi­tions in pop-up loca­tions.

Its first exhi­bi­tion is Look­ing Ter­rif­ic – the Sto­ry of El Jay, look­ing at the career of fash­ion design­er Gus Fish­er and his label El Jay.

El Jay held the exclu­sive New Zealand licence for Chris­t­ian Dior design­ers, bring­ing ele­gant frocks to New Zealand women want­i­ng some Parisian chic.

The exhi­bi­tion is on dis­play at Kirkaldie and Stains, which apt­ly enough was one of El Jay’s stock­ists back in the day.

The Look­ing Ter­rif­ic col­lec­tion spans 40 years of El Jay, from the ’40s to the ’80s, with all gar­ments bor­rowed from pri­vate col­lec­tions — often the orig­i­nal own­er.

The exhi­bi­tion runs until 3 Octo­ber, and can be viewed inside (and out­side) Kirks on Lambton Quay.

A wall of one’s own

Cre­at­ing con­tent on the inter­webs is all very well, but some­times one has the need to express one­self in IRL.

For­tu­nate­ly the coun­cil have forseen this need and erect­ed giant tri­an­gles of expres­sion around town. There’s one under the umbrel­la sculp­ture at James Smiths Cor­ner, and oth­er by the tri­pod sculp­ture down the oth­er end of Courte­nay.

So what incin­di­ary mes­sages will we see? Peo­ple stick­ing it to the man and/or lady? Telling the politi­cians where to go?

Or per­haps some­thing charm­ing and delight­ful.

In case of emergency

So, the Can­ter­bury earth­quake. Our thoughts are with our friends and whau­nau in the area, and we’re so glad that there haven’t been any fatal­i­ties *hugz*

But, of course, liv­ing in the shaky city of Welling­ton, it makes us aware of the impor­tance of being pre­pared should such a big one hit our fair city. Remem­ber — parts of the two roads out of the city run along the fault line.

Resources for pre­pared­ness in an earth­quake:

• Welling­ton City Coun­cil’s basic pre­pared­ness guide­lines
• The Gov­ern­men­t’s Get Ready Get Thru guide
• The Greater Welling­ton Region­al Coun­cil’s earth­quake infor­ma­tion

In the mean­time, let’s count our bless­ings — we have elec­tric­i­ty, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions, run­ning water, sew­er­age and a roof over our heads.

Toilet cleaner

One News reporter Vic­ki Wilkin­son-Bak­ers tells it like it is — the toi­lets at Welling­ton Sta­tion are bloody dis­gust­ing.

[O]ver the last cou­ple of years con­di­tions have var­ied — from utter­ly dis­gust­ing, tru­ly dis­gust­ing, filthy, so smelly you don’t want to breathe, to gen­er­al­ly grub­by and unpleas­ant.

In my expe­ri­ence of the ladies’ loos, they seem almost per­pet­u­al­ly grub­by, the toi­let walls are cov­ered with school­girl graf­fi­ti, the rub­bish bins reg­u­lar­ly over­flow and the dis­card­ed debris of urban life — ripped pan­ti­hose pack­ets, bananas, wine bot­tles and lip­stick pack­ag­ing. And then there’s the issue of the nar­row doors you have to dodge through to enter the toi­let room.

The trou­ble, it seems, is these are real­ly heavy duty, high-use pub­lic toi­lets that are set up for and main­tained like much low­er-use loos.

Wilkin­son-Bak­er notes:

A while back, staff explained that the rail­way sta­tion is very busy. That’s true, it is, but so is Welling­ton Air­port and their pub­lic toi­lets are fine. Shop­ping malls are busy, so are pic­ture the­atres. They man­age to keep things clean and tidy. I’m assured the rail­way sta­tion toi­lets are cleaned every two or three hours. But it’s not enough. Maybe they need some­one there full­time.

It’s a real­ly sim­ple demand — clean toi­lets. Is this real­ly too dif­fi­cult for Kiwirail to man­age?

Pecha Kucha 8: The Latino Connection

It’s time for anoth­er Pecha Kucha Night, but this one is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from pre­vi­ous ones — this time it’s the Lati­no Con­nec­tion!

Peo­ple who have come from or gone to the spicy side of the South Pacif­ic will share their sto­ries. Like all PKNs, there’s some­thing for every­one.

El Line-up:

Bel­la Kalo­lo — Singer/Entertainer — Lost In Paraguay
War­wick Mur­ray — Musi­cian — From Birm­ing­ham Days to San­ti­a­go Nights
Amelia Lobo Mar­tinez — Jour­nal­ist — La Apa­sio­n­ante His­to­ria De Manuel Jose
Alda Rezende — Singer — Minas Gerais State, Brazil
Natalia Par­ra — Artist — Welling­ton Through the Eyes of a Colom­bian Artist
Cori Gon­za­lez-Macuer — Come­di­an — How to be Fun­ny in Anoth­er Coun­try
Katia Guiloff — Doc­u­men­tary Mak­er — Musi­cir­cus
Alice Hang — World Cit­i­zen — Per­cep­tions
Irene Morales — Guati­wi — The Curse of Dr Ropa­ta
Rich Dun­more — Media & Ani­ma­tion Spe­cial­ist — Tres Ami­gos
Car­los Navar­rete Aka “Car­los Navae” — Musi­cian — Aca­pul­co Soul Machín
María Mar­quez De Satyanand — Edu­ca­tor — A Work in Progress

This Pecha Kucha will be held at Down­stage The­atre, Mon­day 6 Sep­tem­ber.

Doors open at 6.30 with a 7.30 start. Tick­ets are $9 on the door, cash only.