Author: Joanna

What’s the real reason the Miss Universe pageant has moved to Wellington?

 Last year the Miss Uni­verse New Zealand pageant was held in Levin. Which makes sense, because Levin is actu­al­ly pret­ty much the cen­tre of the uni­verse, based on the laws of grav­i­ty and dense­ness and all that kind of sci­encey stuff. And this kind of shock­ing behav­iour hap­pened at the event: 

The beau­ty queens sashayed their way through Levin and Para­pa­rau­mu shop­ping malls last year, leav­ing elder­ly shop­pers agog.

But this year, the pageant is mov­ing to Welling­ton: 

Event organ­is­er Val Lott has instead opt­ed to hold the final in Welling­ton after a “gor­geous” day out at the Welling­ton Cup. “The [Levin] event cen­tre was not set up well enough. The cater­ing was not up to stan­dard. It cost a dread­ful amount of mon­ey,” Mrs Lott said.

But one com­men­ta­tor on the arti­cle sug­gests that there is a much deep­er con­spir­a­cy going on:

I think this is all com­plete rub­bish, and the organ­is­er just wants to glam the thing up and get rid of the ruggeds that might oth­er­wise have attend­ed.

So what exact­ly is going on here? Are we through the look­ing glass? Do we even need to men­tion Ter­ry Serepisos here, giv­en that it’s Don­ald Trump who owns the Miss Uni­verse fran­chise? 

Answer the poll — The Miss Uni­verse Pageant is mov­ing to Welling­ton because: 

Good bastards like you to drink vodka

 42Below’s founder Geoff Ross has writ­ten a book with his wife Jus­tine about the sto­ry behind the vod­ka called Every Bas­tard Says No. They’re hav­ing a book launch this Fri­day at the’Ho that’s sup­pos­ed­ly invite-only but we bet you could sneak in if you were smart enough. In order to pro­mote the book, I got to inter­view Geoff and Jus­tine via email (my choice, things are crazy hec­tic this week at the Welling­ton­ista tow­ers), but of course since it’s not released until April 30, I was­n’t sure what to ask. Var­i­ous Welling­ton­istas help­ful­ly sug­gest­ed I should enquire about the War Memo­r­i­al Scan­dal — but that’s not relat­ed to the book — or the alleged­ly homo­pho­bic ad cam­paign in the USA, but I know noth­ing about that. And I don’t want to risk hav­ing my oppor­tu­ni­ties for free booze tak­en away from me. I’m a blog­ger, not a jour­nal­ist, after all. So, after the jump, I lob some soft balls at them, and Jus­tine in par­tic­u­lar impress­es me with her love for Welling­ton. 

Ques­tions and answers with Geoff

1. Why did you start with vod­ka? What is it about the spir­it that drew you to it?  

I drunk it. And actu­al­ly more spe­cial­ly I saw more and more Vod­ka Cock­tails emerg­ing. Vod­ka is the Switzer­land of Spir­its – it goes with any­thing. And with the re birth of cock­tails I could see it being the uni­ver­sal ingre­di­ent. Also New Zealand seemed it might have some cred with Vod­ka. We couldn’t do Tequi­la or Scotch because of Provence – but Vod­ka kind of fit­ted. (some­one  once told me New Zealand was the Swe­den of the South pacif­ic) 

Week Ends & Odds April 12

Some link lov­ing for you to start your week right.

• There’s a new hair salon on Cuba Street called Wildilocks. The pret­ty girls like it. 
• Metlink Welling­ton have start­ed a twit­ter account to keep bus rid­ers informed of delays. They could prob­a­bly use some feed­back about it. 
• The Auck­lan­dista point out that Welling­ton’s social page pic­tures in the Sun­day Star Times are of Ladies’ Night at the Estab­lish­ment. How embar­rass­ment. 
• You like food reviews? Here’s one of the Cel­lar-Vate din­ner for Coney Wines. 
• Richter City Roller Der­by is throw­ing a Quiz Night Fundrais­er on April 28 at the Watusi. You should go along, but be warned — the Welling­ton­ista team will prob­a­bly beat you.

What else should we know about? 

200 People I Used To Know

Toby Mor­ris is pret­ty famous in Welling­ton for his awe­some gig posters, and for his time in Batrid­er. 

Now he’s start­ed a new project, called 200 Peo­ple I Used To Know

This blog is my mem­o­ries of 200 dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters I’ve known over the years, drawn and writ­ten about as I remem­ber them. So I hope I remem­ber right.

Because this is Welling­ton, we bet you will know at least half of the peo­ple too (Hi Jim­my!), so you should check it out, and thank The Morgue for giv­ing us the hot tip. 

What up, Easter?

 So today we asked on Twit­ter for peo­ple to tell us what’s going to be open and what’s going to be closed over East­er. This is our list so far, please feel free to add more in the com­ments. 

• Leu­ven is “open every day over East­er”. They get away with it because they are a restau­rant.
• The Malt­house is open Sat­ur­day and Mon­day and sur­charge free all the way. They’ll be clos­ing at mid­night on Thurs­day and the Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er. 
• Read­ings Cin­e­ma will be open. We kind of fig­ured that, but since they took the time to reply, we thought you should know. 
• The South­ern Cross will be open “for din­ing only” all week­end. Which means they will put cut­lery on the tables and you can drink as usu­al. 

The Wellingtonista’s top ten things to do in Wellington

 This list was pub­lished in abbre­vi­at­ed form in the first issue of Fish­Head, which is hav­ing its launch par­ty tonight. Here it is in all its smok­ing-pro­mot­ing, Ori­en­tal Bay-enrag­ing glo­ry…

1. Wan­der aim­less­ly around the Cuba Quar­ter: win­dow-shop, have cof­fee, sit in the Mall & peo­ple-watch, draw or pho­to­graph the build­ings.

2. Go to the water­front on a sun­ny day: Put your polaroid sun­glass­es on, then get some­thing nice in a cone from Kaf­fee Eis on the water­front, and go spot­ting eagle rays in the Frank Kitts park lagoon. Don’t for­get to point them out to swim­mers and peo­ple in small ves­sels.

3. Swim on the South Coast: Ori­en­tal Bay is for pussies. Any of the beach­es near Seatoun are where it’s at, or if you’re hard enough, brave the surf and the cold at Lyall Bay.

4. Go bush, then go posh: Zealan­di­a’s all very well, but take the #14 bus to Otari/Wilton Bush for free native bush­ery, water­falls, tui and an 800-year-old rimu. At night, take the #14 in the oth­er direc­tion to peek into all the expen­sive real estate along Ori­en­tal Parade and Rose­neath where the res­i­dents oblig­ing­ly leave all their lights on, and imag­ine what it would be like to be rich.

5. Hide out: Go to almost any bar that’s tucked away upstairs, in a base­ment or down an alley; Hooch, Hawthorn, Library, Good Luck, Watusi, Mighty Mighty are all gems.

6. Get cul­tured: Te Papa and the City Gallery are obvi­ous choic­es, but add vis­its to Manky Chops, the Adam Art Gallery and Muse­um of Welling­ton City and Sea and you’ll feel much more well-round­ed (and sore-foot­ed).

7. To mar­ket, to mar­ket: Head to Wai­t­an­gi Park on Sun­days for the City Market/Harbourside Mar­ket com­bo, plus fresh fish when the boat pull up to the dock.

Get your fresh Fishheads today

 Welling­ton has a new mag­a­zine called Fish­Head and the first issue is out today. From their press release:

Fish­Head mag­a­zine will cov­er the full spec­trum of life in Welling­ton includ­ing pol­i­tics, opin­ion, wine, food, fash­ion, local issues, film, books, art, the­atre, music and more.

I have yet to get my hands on a copy of it because I am wait­ing for the launch par­ty next week, but I can tell you that at least two of the arti­cles are awe­some, because I wrote them — a para­graph on why I love Welling­ton, and the Welling­ton­ista’s Top Ten Things To Do in Welling­ton — albeit in edit­ed form so as not to enrage the cit­i­zens of Ori­en­tal Bay.

I don’t think that Welling­ton has ever had its own prop­er mag­a­zine (remem­ber UNO? haha­ha!), so I, for one, wel­come the new pub­li­ca­tion.

Week Ends & Odds

Noth­ing about signs here, I promise, except that a tweet I saw after the storm wished that the sign had been up so that we’d have alpha­bet soup in the har­bour right now. But in some bul­let points that you might be able to use: 

• Con­grat­u­la­tions to Ange whose Four Sea­sons Cock­tail has won her a dou­ble pass to the 42Below Cock­tail World Cup. Can you please email us your address so I can send that out to you, Ange? And the rest of you can buy tick­ets for your­self online or at the Hawthorn Lounge. The Old Muse­um Build­ing is a love­ly venue and cock­tails are always a good time. 
• Speak­ing of alco­hol-relat­ed events, Cel­lar-Vate are start­ing up their wine­mak­er din­ners for the year with Coney Wines on March 31. Tick­ets are $45 and are avail­able in store, or you can book on the phone. Coney make deli­cious wines, and their tast­ing notes are kind of hilar­i­ous, so it should be a good night. 
• Our cousins in the north, The Auck­lan­dista are mak­ing a go of it again, so if you had delet­ed it from your book­marks due to inac­tiv­i­ty, you might want to resub­scribe. 
• We set up a form­spring account so y’all could ask us anony­mous ques­tions, and while it was easy to reply if we get paid by any of the bars we men­tion (we’re not. Full dis­clo­sure though: occa­sion­al­ly we get treat­ed extra nice, but only as reg­u­lars are, rather than because we wield the almighty pow­er of teh blo­gos­phere) it’s much hard­er to advise on how could some­one find a book­club to join. Do you guys have any answers? 

The new issue dividing our capital

First it was “Bret or Jer­maine?” then “Smash Mal­ice or Bru­tal Pae­gent?” but now it’s time for the real­ly big deci­sion — which Face­book group to join — “Hey, let’s NOT have a ‘Welly­wood’ sign in Welling­ton“or “A WELLYWOOD sign on the Mira­mar Cut­ting Hill is a STUPID idea”?