Author: kowhai

Not in a month of Saturdays

Update: MyGalaxi will also be open on Sunday 26 Septem­ber.

You know how we had a blue moon this New Year’s Eve, right?  And how that is kind of a freak occur­rence when you think about it, right?

Well, this Sat­urday is the blue moon of mar­kets. There are two only once-a-mon­thers and one super-spe­cial, souped-up weekly mar­ket being held in our fair city.  It won’t mat­ter if the skies ain’t blue because they are all held indoors (very sens­ible).

First up, the Frank Kitts Under­ground Mar­kets are hold­ing a spe­cial Indie Fash­ion and Jew­ellery themed mar­ket in the Wilsons car­park­ing build­ing under Frank Kitts Park on the water­front.  This mar­ket has been put­ting in the hard yards over winter, hock­ing their wares weekly and build­ing up a ded­ic­ated fol­low­ing.  Their reg­u­lar stall­hold­ers will be there plus a range of spe­cial guests.  Check out their latest news­let­ter for details.

Next up is the fourth out­ing of Mygalaxi Art Mar­kets based in the base­ment of 39 Dix­on Street.  These mar­kets are keep­ing it art­house under the firm lead­er­ship of Arlo Edwards (best Art Exper­i­ence don’t you know) and the bene­vol­ent pat­ron­age of James Gil­bert at Pho­to­space who is the wind beneath a few cre­at­ive wings.  Long live the pat­ron, we say!

Cellos, Trumpets, Fancy Ladies and Divas

This week in Wel­ling­ton you could be geek­ing out, smelling the flowers or listen­ing to some sweet, sweet music to cel­eb­rate the start of Spring.  We have two girlie gigs to tempt you with this week fea­tur­ing three sets of ladies that are def­in­itely in bloom.

Claire Terry of Madame Fancy Pants fame is per­form­ing with City Oh Sigh at Mighty Mighty from 8.30pm this Wed­nes­day.  This lady has been stead­ily adding strings to her bow and treas­ures to her jew­ellery box, not to men­tion grow­ing a young’ in with her spare time.
She will be there with her pipes, her gui­tar and her charms. 
Always a pleas­ure.

City Oh Sigh fea­tures the lovely Kate (cello, vocals) Sarah (keys) and Cath­er­ine (trum­pet, gui­tar, vocals) bring­ing the music­al­ity and the sweet, sweet har­mon­ies.  These ladies are tight and truly com­mit­ted to the music­al arts.  You can see them hot on Claire’s heels from 9.30pm. 

Details on the invite here. ($5 on the door).

Lisa Tom­lins is doing it for her­self on Sunday, front and centre as part of the Sound­stage sea­son at Down­stage with back­ing from Twin­set.  These Sound­stage events are one-offs that allow you to go to the gig and focus on the music in a theatre envir­on­ment, a real treat for the per­former and the audi­ence.  Lisa is a gen­er­ous artist who is com­ing into her diva­li­cious own after lend­ing her tal­ents to oth­ers and put­ting in the hard yards learn­ing her craft.  Worth. Every. Damn. Cent.

Nerd Alert – Week of Geek

It is reas­sur­ing to know that the salon did not die in 18th cen­tury France, gath­er­ing togeth­er in RL to con­verse, spar, eat, con­nect and dis­play our intel­lec­tu­al charms has not gone out of style.  Recently we have had Pecha Kucha, Ignite and more Bar­Camps than you could throw a pack of PostIt notes at.  Today the open source inclined have been play­ing with their toys at Soft­ware Free­dom Day and this week is full of occa­sions to be witty and pretty and geek (slash nerd).

This week brings Nerdnite#2, anoth­er Tues­day night din­ner and Web­stock will be bring us mini-mar­vels and the big unveil of the speak­ers for 2011.

All of these events are non-geek friendly (plenty of room for fraghags), all you need is an eclect­ic men­tal diet and a love of cre­ativ­ity and innov­a­tion, so don’t be shy.  Nerd­nite looks to be tak­ing eclect­ic to a whole new level with geoen­gin­eer­ing, stor­ies, witch­craft, and food on the menu at Bettys Bar this Monday.  It seems the case that people self-identi­fy as geek but get twitchy when ref­ered to as “nerds”, well per­haps this word is going to be reclaimed as well if this Nerd­nite thing catches on.

Besides, geek appears to be con­tested term, this week we have had @BR3NDA toot­ing about priv­ilege and com­puters:

The Good Word on The Good Words

Tonight at the Bur­gundy Room at Bodega you can wit­ness the third live out­ing of a new band fresh from record­ing their demo.  Be there so you can brag to your friends that you were into them before they hit the big time.  Simon Sweet­man does­n’t hate them, so that is some kind of endorse­ment 😉

The Good Words is made up of:

•  Nik Jar­vie-Waldrom – Vocals
• Tak­umi Motokawa – Key­board (com­pos­i­tion prize win­ner)
• Mike Duffy – Bass
• Nick Hens­man – Drums

These guys are all kinds of awe­some, they kick off at 9.00pm with sup­port from Old Time Enemies $10 on the door.  All the dets are on the invite here.

Their bio says it as well as I can:

Take one soul-jazz tem­plate, elong­ate it, daub in bits of funk, traces of pop and the energy of a rock band to cre­ate 21st-cen­tury Diva blues. Proudly Kiwi, defi­antly ori­gin­al and with enough quirk to keep them far from the labels of any par­tic­u­lar ‘scene’, The Good Words live in the moments with­in songs, sidestep­ping the obvi­ous com­par­is­ons by offer­ing just enough spon­taneity in the per­form­ance, enhan­cing the craf­ted tunes. Hook­ing the audi­ence from start to fin­ish.

[Dis­claim­er: The author lives with super tal­en­ted Tak­umi Motokawa but it ain’t just her that thinks they are shit hot, the demo is get­ting plenty of play in the office.)

Hoko Kai on the Waterfront

Te wiki o te Reo Maori is draw­ing to a close, with the finale being held at the mar­kets on the water­front this Sunday. This year’s theme is ‘te mahi kai’ (the lan­guage of food) and what bet­ter place to cel­eb­rate than the food mar­kets on Wellington’s water­front. 

So go grab your fruit, vege and gour­met good­ies from Har­bourside and City Mar­kets and live the lan­guage of food in te reo.  There will be biligual sig­nage, haka, wai­ata and the release of the a biligual CD of songs Tipi Haere Te Reo.  

Form­al­it­ies kick of 8.00am at Har­bourside Mar­ket and there will be enter­tain­ment until mid­day. 

Over at the City Mar­ket (inside the Chaf­fers apart­ment build­ing) they will be doing what they do best: mak­ing us drool with treats from their kit­chen.

Te Kihini Makete i tenei wiki: Kau tunuumu Greytown, hupa paukena Pine­haven penu ma te mina-aua­hi, he paku hirikaka me te kokonati,Wairarapa pai ika, pai kaimoana, Kawakawa parauni.
Mar­ket kit­chen this week: Braised Greytown beef, manuka smoked mash Pine­haven pump­kin (paukena) soup, hint of chilli & coconut Wair­ar­apa fish pie, dill mash. Kawakawa brownie.
 

Kaua e whakama ki te korero maori.

(Again apo­lo­gies: mac­rons give our site indi­ges­tion)

Less Mahi, more Kai

You know how there is often cool free stuff hap­pen­ing at lunch­time if you have your ear to the ground (actu­ally Twit­ter may well be the mod­ern digit­al jungle drum or smoke sig­nal if you know how to fos­sick and fil­ter, you could just just fol­low us on Twit­ter).  We have had com­plaints in the past about post­ing juicy tid­bits a little too close to the time for ya’ll to cram into your busy diar­ies. 

Well, suck it up people, you may have missed the free titi (mut­ton­bird) tasters at Mid­land Park on Monday or the noodles today at Wagamama but at least you have time to make a packed lunch for a free lunch­time con­cert tomor­row for Te Wiki o te reo Maori in the Illot theatre, Town Hall.  This con­cert will fea­ture the spine-tingles of Ria Hall who bought the house down at the Sev­en Sis­ters con­cert at Te Papa last month.  There will be a range of per­form­ances, includ­ing the Ngati Poneke maori club juni­ors and fresh back from the world expo in Shang­hai Elena viol­in­ist, with her world-class kapa haka clas­sic­al fusion and impress­ive mohawk. 

So BYO kai and enjoy this cel­eb­ra­tion of the Maori lan­guage and cul­ture.  This is what liv­ing and work­ing in cent­ral Wel­ling­ton is about people: free access to cul­tur­al treas­ures, excite­ment and hap­pen­ings every­where, even on your lunch hour. 

Where: Illot Theatre, Town Hall

When: 12.30 – 1.30 Wed­nes­day 28 July

Cost: Free

Noodle noodle noodle

Not that it needs any pimp­ing by us, but thought you should know that Wagamama in the Meridi­an build­ing on the Water­front is giv­ing away free noodles today from 12 – 2.00pm.  We are talk­ing don buri, udon and beef noodle salad here people, well worth wait­ing in line for if you have the time.

Behold the line at 11.30am last year.…

King of the Kapital

King Kapisi was spot­ted around Welly town today with a laptop of new tracks.  He is actu­ally a Wel­ling­to­ni­an, who knew?  Take that Auck­land and Sam­oa, we will fight you for him if we have to.

Any­way here is a clip of Kapisi show­ing some loc­al favour.

Stars in our eyes

Art Free for All

The Free Store has been open at 38 Ghuznee Street for 11 days now and word has cer­tainly got out that there is such a thing as a free lunch.  The Free Store is due to shut up shop on Sat­urday this week so if you want to take or give to the pro­ject you have 5 more days.

There are a lot of ideas packed into this shop.  Part art­work, part social exper­i­ment the Free Store is part two of the Let­ting Space series that began with Pop­u­lar Arche­ology: A Sound Archive.  One of the stated inten­tions of the pro­ject is to:

high­light the under­ground ‘free eco­nomy’ that redis­trib­utes pro­duce and food around Wel­ling­ton, [Kim Paton] is cur­rently mak­ing a call to sellers of fresh pro­duce, as well as to to cafes and super­mar­kets for their excess stock.

The logos of some of the par­ti­cip­at­ing busi­nesses grace the chalk­board.

Stock comes in at vari­able times, feast or fam­ine if you will.  But the obser­v­ant and dare we say the needy, are dis­cov­er­ing what time dis­carded cafe food is due to arrive and loiter­ing ready to des­cend.  This makes for a chal­len­ging pro­ject for those volun­teers who are staff­ing the shop.  I can ima­gine they are exper­i­en­cing the busi­ness end of what must be a nor­mal day for Down­town City Mis­sion staff, although pos­sibly with more hip­sters.