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 […]