The Wellingtonista

Random stuff about Wellington since 2005

Joanna McLeod

Joanna McLeod 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.

A couple of new(ish) bars

by Joanna January 19, 2021

Hey, remember when we used to be on top of all the openings and closings in town and filled with reviews? Yeah me neither. The ‘ista is old and property-and-business owning now, and we have Twitter instead of our group mailing list. But we can still try! So to that end, here’s a couple of […]

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

by Joanna December 3, 2020

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 […]

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Tasty tastings

by Joanna September 6, 2019

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 […]

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

by Joanna August 26, 2019

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 […]

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

by Joanna July 27, 2019

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 […]

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Sex Workers of Aotearoa: A Day in the Life of

by Joanna July 2, 2019

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 […]

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James and Bullseye Bella

by Joanna March 1, 2019

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 […]

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Preview: WHY ARE WE STILL HERE?

by Joanna January 31, 2019

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 […]

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

by Joanna September 17, 2018

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 […]

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A sausagefest with Harrington’s at Logan Brown

by Joanna September 4, 2018

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 […]

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