Return to the valley of the dolls

I was in Wel­ling­ton, my first time back since I left in April, and I was furi­ously catch­ing up on things. I got the bus out to the Hutt and vis­ited the Dowse Art Museum. It was choice, but as I left the gal­lery, I spied some­thing much more intriguing across the square. Over at […]

A farewell

So, OMG, this is my final post for the Wel­ling­tonista. I’m leav­ing this town for a more north­erly loc­a­tion. I’m sad to leave Wel­ling­ton and the W’ista, but it’s been a fun four years. I’ve met lots of cool people, had lots of amaz­ing exper­i­ences and shared them with y’all. As my farewell, I present […]

International hipster attraction

Air New Zea­l­and have recently launched a cam­paign to per­suade reluct­ant Aus­trali­ans to choose New Zea­l­and as a hol­i­day des­tin­a­tion. It turns out there are actu­ally some people who aren’t aroused by the thought of scenery, sheep and extreme sports. As part of this cam­paign, there’s a Rhys Darby-nar­rated series of videos, each smash­ing a […]

Urban Harvest

Urb­an Har­vest is a Wel­ling­ton-based com­pany that deliv­ers loc­ally grown pro­duce, meat and oth­er culin­ary delights. For the fest­ive sea­son, they’ve branched out into Christ­mas hampers, and have opened a pop-up shop in their Mt Vic­tor­ia headquar­ters (29 Hania St) for those who like to get up close with their yuletide nomz. The Wel­ling­tonista were […]

Wendy’s comes to town

There have been rumours for a while that a Wendy’s was com­ing to Wel­ling­ton, and finally I received a report from the Kapiti: a Wendy’s had just opened in Par­a­pa­raumu. Wendy’s Old Fash­ioned Ham­burgers – not to be con­fused with the Aus­trali­an ice cream par­lour chain Wendy’s Supa Sundaes – is an Amer­ic­an bur­ger chain […]

The other important vote

The gen­er­al elec­tion is only a few weeks away, but right now there’s anoth­er import­ant vote hap­pen­ing. Yes, the vote on what sign will sit atop the Miramar Cut­ting. There are three options: The con­tro­ver­sial and largely dis­liked “Wel­ly­wood” sign “Wel­ling­ton” writ­ten in a sim­il­ar Hol­ly­wood sign style, but with the final let­ters being blow […]

Candidates: Tane Woodley for the Greens in Rimutaka

We invited all can­did­ates in Wel­ling­ton elect­or­ates to con­tact us with their answers to fif­teen crowd­sourced ques­tions. Answers are restric­ted to 30 words each, and we pub­lish them exactly as we receive them. Who are you and what do you want? My name is Tane, and I was born and bred in the Hutt. I […]

Candidates: Alex Speirs for ACT in Hutt South

We invited all can­did­ates in Wel­ling­ton elect­or­ates to con­tact us with their answers to fif­teen crowd­sourced ques­tions. Answers are restric­ted to 30 words each, and we pub­lish them exactly as we receive them. NB: Alex went over the 30-word lim­it a few times. We’re pretty strict about the lim­it, so those answers have been trun­cated […]

Our Hearts Will Go On

I was aler­ted to a music video of a long-haired fel­low per­form­ing an emo­tion­al rendi­tion of “Titan­ic” theme song “My Heart Will Go On”. I star­ted watch­ing it, and it was all going well when sud­denly at the 19-second mark I real­ised some­thing very import­ant: the video was filmed in Wel­ling­ton. This makes it even […]

Old Groove, new Peel

When Real Groovy closed its doors in May, many music-lov­ing Wel­ling­to­ni­ans were rather sad. But a curi­ous thing has happened – we’ve got a Real Groovy back, sort of. Real Groovy Christ­ch­urch suffered dam­age to both its build­ing and stock in the Septem­ber 2010 earth­quake, but own­er Paul Hug­gins was determ­ined to con­tin­ue, reopen­ing a month […]