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.