Author: Joanna

Road safety: ur doing it wrong

Just look at these young galahs hijinks­ing it along the road. In MY day we did School Patrol pure­ly for a milo in win­ter, and yet these kids get a parade? Shock­ing. And what kind of mes­sage are we send­ing them that it’s okay to walk on the road. It’s PC GONE MAD, THAT’S WHAT IT IS!

Room for Improvement: Round Two

Last night while the Welling­ton­ista and FAGs and SAGs (that’s Friends and Girl­friends, and also Sis­ters and Girl­friends, there were no Part­ners present) were at South­ern Cross quiz, we realised that hey, they don’t give us chipped glass­es any­more! That means things have got bet­ter since we com­plained about them. It has also been not­ed that since we bitched about the decor at the Port Cafe, they have in fact rein­stat­ed a cheap­er menu for take­away, which is a good thing. So, to con­tin­ue on from those great devel­op­ments, here’s some more sug­ges­tions as we strive for per­fec­tion.

1. That the Cross gets a $35 wine. We’re bored of drink­ing the $30 Five Flax, and we feel like the jump up to $40 as the next cheap­est wine on their list is too big a jump. We appre­ci­ate that their Matari­ki Cab/Merlot and Ata Ran­gi Rose are love­ly, but we’d set­tle for some­thing less awe­some for less pricey.

2. That Word of Mouth labels its sal­ads. It sucks to queue for ages for what you think is going to be yum­my coleslaw with kumara, only to dis­cov­er that (eww!) there is tuna in the mix. They have a pen­cil-writ­ten list on their wall, with meat, dairy and aller­gens high­light­ed, but it does need a lot of peer­ing at to read. And yes, we know they change their sal­ads every day, but real­ly, would it take that long to print out labels and stick them in a lit­tle per­spex thingie on top of the counter?

3. That Viva Mex­i­co start offer­ing sides. I’d pay extra for gua­camole and sal­sa if I had the option. Also, we’d love them to get a BYO license and extend their hours.

4. In fact, let’s get all of Left­bank a BYO license, and make the cen­tre tables more com­mu­nal, so groups of peo­ple can pick­’n mix their din­ners. 5. I know this is a very long shot, but can we please have these train-bus­es too?

This should be more popular: Chef’s Cafe

At the top of Cuba Street, oppo­site Fidel’s and next to a sex shop is what appears to be a crap­py lit­tle tea room named Chef’s Cafe. You might think that they’re going to try and sell you a pie and a cus­tard square, but you could­n’t be more wrong. See that lit­tle sand­wich board out­side that says “Take­away Cur­ry $10”? That’s right, this is an Indi­an restau­rant. And it’s good. And it’s insane­ly cheap*. If you dine in, you’re look­ing at a cost of around $12.90 for a meat cur­ry, rice and naan. The decor is admit­ted­ly noth­ing at all to look at, but the menu is real­ly exten­sive and the cur­ries do actu­al­ly all taste dis­tinc­tive and tasty, rather than just com­ing in dif­fer­ent colours of the same slop (cough cough Tul­si). Plus, it’s BYO, and not just wine — the cork­age on a small bot­tle of beer is $1, and $2 for big bot­tles. We real­ly think you should try it out. We would like it to have more patron­age. Just not on Tues­day nights, because that’s when we go before the Quiz around the cor­ner at the Cross.

* If you work on the basis that most Indi­an places charge at least $15 for a cur­ry, and that does­n’t include naan and in some cas­es does­n’t even include rice.

Blood and violence on the streets

So let’s say you’re a lit­tle bit unhinged, and you’re tired of pick­ing up hook­ers on Mar­i­on Street and then run­ning them over. What you real­ly want is to stay home and play Grand Theft Auto, but you hate the fake New York­ness of it all, and wish it could be a lit­tle bit more like home. Well we’ve got just the link for you — skin your game so that the police cars, taxis and ambu­lances are all famil­iar Welling­ton sights!

And of course, what’s a GTA sto­ry with­out some moral out­rage sur­pris­ing­ly sup­port­ive com­men­tary from Break­fast News?

Salivate over Cellar Vate’s winemakers’ dinners

Remem­ber that time that I went to Capi­tol for a Serisen wine din­ner that cost $85 and was frick­ing amaz­ing? Well it turns out that there’s some­thing sim­i­lar hap­pen­ing every month at Cel­lar-Vate, but for only $35! Holy crap! So, in order to inves­ti­gate this phe­nom­e­non for you, my dear read­er, my fear­less din­ing com­pan­ion Karen and I sub­ject­ed our­selves to six cours­es of food matched with Clearview wines last night. Oh the human­i­ty.

It’s such a hard­ship to sit down to dine with new peo­ple just wait­ing to become your friends, Rachel from Cel­lar­vate who took the time to explain her menu selec­tions, and two peo­ple from the win­ery to chat to. Food was served on com­mu­nal plates, and while it was­n’t huge amounts of any­thing, even Karen and I, who do like our food a lot, left sat­is­fied. You need to go to Cel­lar Vate on Molesworth and ask them to put you on their mail­ing list so you can come along to the next din­er. The menu after the jump.

It’s Friday, so tell us a story

Noone real­ly does any work on Fri­days, do they? So instead, tell us a sto­ry about one of your most mem­o­rable nights out in Welling­ton in the com­ments sec­tion. We’re look­ing for loca­tion, loca­tion, loca­tion, and what you choose to dis­close is entire­ly up to you. Just enter­tain us. Thank you. My sto­ry will fol­low very short­ly.

Wishing for a better world

Wish­bone have put up the prices of most of its food by $1, so now you will pay $7.50 for their cran­ber­ry, chick­en and brie sand­wich (luck­i­ly, next door to my local Wish­bone is the Con­corde Cafe where I can get a crusty baguette filled with sala­mi and cheese, and a mys­ti­cal half olive for a bar­gain $3.50). They say that it is the ris­ing cost of petrol that has forced them into it. We say that maybe if they inves­ti­gat­ed ways to reduce the ridicu­lous amount of plas­tic that their food comes in, the cost of petrol would­n’t affect them quite as much.

PS: Their black plas­tic box­es are #5, which can’t be col­lect­ed, but you can take them in to Com­mon­sense Organ­ics who will recy­cle them for you. If you’re that ded­i­cat­ed. We think that Wish­bone should take them back too.

Monster May Book Sale at Vic Books

We know that we’ve men­tioned their sales in the past, but we know that you like books, and dis­counts, and also free wine, and that is why we must let you know that once again, Vic Books is start­ing its sale of awe­some­ness.

It starts with drinks, nib­bles & great books with ridicu­lous­ly low prices from about 4pm, Thurs­day 1st May, in the Kel­burn shop. The sale runs in both shops until Thurs­day 22nd May, and they have two spe­cial “dis­count days”: 25% off all non-fic­tion not already dis­count­ed on Thurs­day 8th May; 25% off all fic­tion not already dis­count­ed on Thurs­day 15th May.

And remem­ber — if you’re too lazy to walk up the hill, you can take the Cable Car, or the num­bers 17, 20 and 23 bus­es to get there, or check out Vic Books down at the Rail­way Sta­tion if you’re not so keen on fic­tion.

Do you like to drink and/or network?

Recent­ly the Welling­ton­ista were sent an email from “Dave, Design­er fel­la in Welling­ton” enquir­ing whether we thought that Welling­ton­ian Cre­ative Web Design Folk might fan­cy the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet up month­ly; to drink, dis­cuss relat­ed stuff and net­work.

Our response was:
“Web peo­ple get­ting togeth­er to drink (and talk geek), you have to ask?”

But we thought we’d ask you any­way. We do appre­ci­ate that there are many sorts of sub com­mit­tees that hap­pen organ­i­cal­ly, but they’re all sub styles. So how about it, Web Cre­ative folk? Leave your com­ments and thoughts here for Dave to col­lect. And please feel free to con­tribute ideas for venues and spon­sor­ship while you’re at it.

RASSLIN!

Sure, it’s a bit late notice, but hey, what are you doing tonight? Don’t do that. Instead, you should come to THE RASSLIN! Doors at Welling­ton High open at 6.45pm for a 7.30pm start, but if you’re a first time goer and you need a sup­port group, meet us at the South­ern Cross from 5.30 for some stiff­en­ing drinks first. We’ll be the loud group wear­ing lots of pur­ple in sup­port for Pur­ple Haze, “New Zealand’s Sex­ist Masked Man” ™. Seri­ous­ly, I’m sure you don’t believe me, but wrestling is quite pos­si­bly the most awe­some thing ever. Read my account of the last time I went if you need fur­ther con­vinc­ing!