We ask: Boy and dog?

The Wel­ling­tonista want to know what is cur­rently shoot­ing in Wel­ling­ton that would require a large truck tow­ing a boy on a bicycle with a dog perched hap­pily behind him to film down Lamb­ton Quay.

Someone out there must have the answer. And also: how did they get the dog to hold on?

Wellingtonista boos: ads on our sacred space

Adjust­ing to the new offices on Lamb­ton Quay has­n’t been easy, and a huge part of the prob­lem has been try­ing to get into a new cof­fee routine. That is why it’s so dis­tress­ing that Fresco*, which sells Mojo cof­fee, is now using takeaway cups prin­ted with Tele­com advert­ising. How many minutes will I spend think­ing about cof­fee over the next two years? A lot more than I’ll think about switch­ing to Tele­com, you punks. Even if I had­n’t had my voda­fone num­ber since it was Bell South, there’s no way I’d switch now. Leave me alone and stop hound­ing me when all I am try­ing to do is wake up!

* Yes, their takeaway lattes are $4.50, but their muffins are $2.50, so break­fast is only 20 cents more expens­ive than get­ting a cheese scone and cof­fee from Kyrani.

Let’s all shut up about the weather now.

Dear Wel­ling­to­ni­ans,

I’ve become so sick of you whinging all the time that tonight I made this for you:

Sunset at Lyall Bay
Sun­set at Lyall Bay

The light at the end of the tunnel

Although we would hate you to think that we had an unnat­ur­al love for tun­nels, we think it’s only fair to warn you that new lights have been installed at either end of the Hataitai/Mt Vic tun­nel that are so bright that you’ll think you are out­side in the sun­shine already, even at night. It does­n’t make people honk any less though.

Make the society pages with us

Shiny like an Oscar. But drinkableBy now you’ve either cast your votes for the First Annu­al Wel­ling­tonista Awards for Out­stand­ing Achieve­ment in the Field of Excel­lence, or you’re still try­ing to decide wheth­er you <3 Good Luck or San Frindigo more. You might want to get a wriggle on with that, as vot­ing closes at 5pm on Thursday.

Thanks very much for vot­ing, it’s very choice that you got involved. If you’d like to get even more involved with us (ooer!), please come along to our awards cere­mony at Mighty Mighty (above Mr Bun in Cuba Mall) on Fri­day night.

Drinks will start out at 6.30pm and the awards them­selves will prob­ably kick off around 7pm.

If you haven’t met us yet, you’ll be able to spot us eas­ily as we’ll be the ridicu­lously attract­ive people pat­ting ourselves on the back.

We’ll be draw­ing names for prizes then too, but as we are good people your attend­ance is not man­dat­ory in order to win. How­ever, what pos­sible reas­on could you have for not want­ing to attend?

If you would like to buy us drinks, nat­ur­ally a dry mar­tini would be the stand­ard, but we ima­gine that we would drink pretty much any­thing you gave us.

It should all be a fright­fully good time, and we look for­ward to see­ing you there.

First Annual Wellingtonista Awards Voting

It is with great pride and pleas­ure that we announce the nom­in­ees for the First Annu­al Wel­ling­tonista Awards for Out­stand­ing Achieve­ment in the Field of Excel­lence.

The Wel­ling­tonista have sweated and slaved over the cat­egor­ies, and now it is your turn for action. Step up and send us your votes before Novem­ber 30. The awards will be announced in an elab­or­ate* cere­mony on Fri­day Decem­ber 1 which we would love for you to attend.

Why should you vote? Because your opin­ion counts. And so that you’ll receive an invit­a­tion to the awards. And because you’ll go in to the draw to win awe­some prizes, includ­ing but not neces­sar­ily lim­ited to good­ies from Baby­li­cious, signed cop­ies of 101 Stor­ies That I Want To Tell You, tasty salads from Kapai (dis­claim­er: we wrote nice things about them before they offered up prizes), stun­ning tshirts, signed pho­tos of The Drop­kicks and lifelong Coun­try Club mem­ber­ship.

The cat­egor­ies are after the jump, and nom­in­ees are sug­ges­tions only – you’re free to write-in your win­ners.

Kai in our puku

bread bowlsRecently we asked you where the best places to eat on Lamb­ton Quay are, and nat­ur­ally, the inter­net word-of-mouth answered: Kapai Salads in Lamb­ton Square.

There’s plenty of reas­ons to love Kapai, includ­ing:

  • Whānau: Every­one knows someone who knows the own­ers, hence the mass emails and bul­let­in board post­ings about the shop.
  • Mata: Your salad will be freshly made right in front of you, and you will get to choose the ingre­di­ants your­self. No droopy lettuce and skanky­ass grated cheese here, no no.
  • Tai­ao: The soup is served in bowls made out of bread, while salads are served in potato­paks (which you prob­ably would­n’t want to eat, although tech­nic­ally they’re safe enough to), min­im­ising envir­on­ment­al dam­age. Plus, the cof­fee’s fair trade.

We’d like them to offer lists of avail­able ingre­di­ants and make it a little clear­er which are the gour­met ones that’ll set you back an extra $1.50, but when you can get a roc­quette, falafel and feta salad with aioli in less than five minutes and feel good about doing it, you’ll def­in­itely be going back.

Eating outside my comfort box (heh)

Every­one knows that large cor­por­a­tions eat pup­pies, but what do the people who work for large cor­por­a­tions eat for lunch?

The Wel­ling­tonista is clos­ing down its Cour­tenay Place branch on Fri­day and is open­ing up in mid Lamb­ton Quay instead. After a year and a half down this way, we’d just finally got the good people at Saha­ra Kebabs to know that we like just a few onions and gar­lic yoghurt, tahini and hot chilli on our (mixed veget­ari­an, mujaver and falafel only) kebabs. Where are we going to eat now?

Big shoes to fill

Most of the time it’s nice being the tallest female Wel­ling­tonista (Martha and Nat­alie may get the column inches but I gots the height inches), but the trouble with being tall is that I need great big plates of meat as feet to sup­port me. And you know what they say about girls with big feet – they need big shoes.

That’s why I’m so excited that Wil­low Shoes – a web­site I’ve been shop­ping from for years since they spe­cial­ise in shoes size 10 and up – has just opened up a branch in Wel­ling­ton, in my neigh­bour­hood even, at 27 C Waitoa Road in Hataitai. This is going to be espe­cially handy (or err footy, badoom chish) now that Minx Shoes have moved their fact­ory out­let from Waik­an­ae to Otaki.

Snakes! On a plane! In Wellington!

ph33r my photoshop skillsNot that long ago, the Lon­don Time Out ran a fea­ture on pir­ates in Lon­don to cel­eb­rate the release of Pir­ates of the Carib­bean 2. Way to be hip, Time Out. Every­one who’s any­one knows that the actu­al most import­ant movie this year is Snakes on Plane – or as some like to call it “Mother­fuck­ing snakes on a mother­fuck­ing plane”. So, in trib­ute to this movie that opens on Thursday, the Wel­ling­tonista is proud to present this very spe­cial activ­ity guide to recre­at­ing snakes on a plane in Wel­ling­ton: