Author: Joanna

Fire! Fire! Fire!

Yes­ter­day twit­ter was all atwit­ter try­ing to fig­ure out where all the smoke in Welling­ton was com­ing from, before some­one fig­ured out that it was a fire in Titahi Bay. What’s been inter­est­ing today has been the amaz­ing col­lec­tions of pho­tos of the fire on Flickr — not just in our side­bar or this great shot by Welling­ton­ista friend Lisa Fur, but also this curat­ed flickr gallery. Nice work, flick­ri­nos!

42Below Cocktail World Cup in Wellington this year

We’d been won­der­ing for a while where our oth­er favourite McKen­zie broth­er has been at because we haven’t seen him behind the bar at Hooch or Hawthorn for ages, but of course we kept for­get­ting to ask, because nat­u­ral­ly we were too busy ask­ing for anoth­er drink.

Well, it turns out that Justin has been work­ing as 42Below’s vod­ka pro­fes­sor (we hope this means he gets a cap and gown) and he’s been rather busy today with the region­al finals of the Cock­tail World Cup. The three bar­tenders who’ll be rep­re­sent­ing New Zealand will be Auckland’s James Gog­gin from Rack­et and our own Josh Craw­ford from Hooch and Calum Chad­wick from the Mat­ter­horn.

As usu­al, there’s all kinds of fun and games in Queen­stown around the event, but since we’re the Welling­tonista prob­a­bly the bit that you’re inter­est­ed in is that the grand finale is hap­pen­ing in Welling­ton on March 27, fea­tur­ing the world’s best bar­tenders and (I’m going to quote the press release here) “New Zealand’s best rock group ‘Mid­night Youth’ ”, and prob­a­bly quite a few splash­es of vod­ka as well. And we’ve got a dou­ble pass to give away to it!

Along with the invit­ed VIPS, 42BELOW is offer­ing a select num­ber of peo­ple the chance to attend the Grand Final Shake off as vod­ka groupies. Tick­ets are being sold for $42, which includes four cock­tails, food and enter­tain­ment so get in quick for a chance to par­ty with New Zealand’s best music and with the world’s best bar­tenders.

Love to roll?

 Love bikes? Love frocks? Love Welling­ton? How about you mix all those things togeth­er on Valen­tine’s Day by tak­ing part in Frocks on Bikes’ Love to Roll event. 

All you need is your styl­ish self, a bike and a sense of joie de vivre! If you don’t have a bike … nev­er fear! Read on… 

♥ Lovers to Roll will gath­er at on Valentine’s Day at 1.30pm on Ori­en­tal Parade by Frey­berg Pool.
♥ After ensur­ing everyone’s reg­is­tered to be in to win our prizes, we will depart on our cruise!
♥ We will cycle at a leisure­ly pace, on the roads, around the beau­ti­ful Welling­ton bays through Kil­birnie and out to Lyall Bay, with a brief stop out­side the Maranui Life­sav­ing Club around 3pm where any addi­tion­al Lovers to Roll can join the flock.
♥ We’ll arrive at the Island Bay Fes­ti­val in Shorland Park, where we will take to the Fes­ti­val stage in the Pavil­ion to announce the win­ners of our fan­tas­tic prizes!
♥ After it’s all over, you can either return to the city with us or independently.If you’re cur­rent­ly short of a steed, don’t wor­ry — the awe­some Green Bike Trust is bring­ing a fleet of brand-new bikes for Lovers to Roll to hire (only $10!), but book­ings are essen­tial!

Lovers to Roll who reg­is­ter are in to be lucky win­ners! There will be intense com­pe­ti­tion for the cov­et­ed title of Best-Matched Bike & Rid­er Team, the Most Loved-Up Bike award, the Best-Dressed Cou­ple award, and the grand prize – the title of R&R Supreme Frock­er! Up for grabs are superb prizes from our gen­er­ous donors:

Davis Food Market: an investigation

We noticed Davis Food Mart pop up on the cor­ner of Tarana­ki Street and Karo Dri­ve a lit­tle before Xmas, so we decid­ed it was time to check it out to see if Mt Cook now has a prop­er super­mar­ket to call its own.

It does­n’t.

But, we did find some very inter­est­ing things any­way, and you can read more about them after the break. 

A new dialogue with Julia

So, Julia Deans, singer in the TAWA-nom­i­nat­ed Fur Patrol and all-around pret­ty lady has a solo album com­ing out this year. The first sin­gle off it is called “A new dia­logue” and it has a rather love­ly video. Enjoy!

Bloggers predict: 2010

We’ve writ­ten about UP’s Blog­gers Pre­dict event before, but this time, I’m one of the peo­ple doing the pre­dict­ing on Jan­u­ary 28 from 5.30pm to 8pm. I’m sup­posed to be mak­ing pre­dic­tions in the fol­low­ing areas:  

• Gad­gets & Games
• The Inter­net, Web 3.0…
• Busi­ness & Tech­nol­o­gy
• Wellington/NZ/the Uni­verse (open slather)

I’m allowed (and encour­aged) to solic­it sug­ges­tions, so have at it in the com­ments and I’d encour­age you to focus on Welling­ton-ish sug­ges­tions in par­tic­u­lar, since I’m rep­re­sent­ing the Welling­ton­ista, after all. Oh, and make sure you reg­is­ter to come along to the event, there’s FREE BOOZE and food, and you’ll be done by 8 so you can go along to any oth­er events that might be hap­pen­ing that night after­wards.