The Graffography and Wgtn Wall Street graffiti blogs noticed that the Wellington City Council’s anti-graffiti posters (you know, these ones) had illustrated the evil graffiti by using a photo collage of actual non-illegal graffiti.
Wgtn Wall Street says:
My man over at Graffography first alerted me to the work by Drypnz and Random being used in the campaign, artwork that broke no law and was now put under a negative spotlight by the Council.
So then Wgtn Wall Street emailed the council with his concerns.
They were apologetic and apparently the ‘photographer’ didn’t know that the work used in the campaign was deemed legal. They agreed to remove the work from future campaigns but god knows how many posters, stickers etc that have already printed and not to mention the amount of money wasted on a poorly researched scheme.
It doesn’t reflect so well on the council. Their anti-illegal-graffiti campaign seems to demonstrate that they don’t actually know what they’re fighting.
Some of us at the Wellingtonista are rather fond of the old Snapper card. We worked through its teething troubles and are now happily tagging on and off as we bus about the city.
So when Miki Szikszai, CEO of Snapper, asked us if we’d like to visit Snapper HQ and learn a bit about what’s new in the world of the magical talking fish box, we (well, Alan and I) jumped at the chance.
After the jump – what we found at Snapper.
Spotted at the Railway Station is this hilarious anti-graffiti ad:
Find out what this nice young suburban couple are up to after the jump.
Wellington’s Tranz Metro trains have lately been known for certain carriages with broken heating. It’s horrible enough being (relatively) young and only faced with a 30-minute chilly commute. I wouldn’t want to be a Paraparam gran making the hour-long trip to Wellington in an unheated carriage.
But it seems that while the carriages are slowly being fixed, Trans Metro are also paying attention to, you know, being nice to customers. This morning when I was waiting for my usual train, a fellow came up to me representing Tranz Metro and asked me a few survey questions about the cold carriages.
One question was the toss-up between removing carriages with broken heaters from service and therefore having more crowding in the usual train servcies.
But most interestingly, it seems that Tranz Metro will be offering passengers a 5% discount on monthly train tickets for July, or else a couple of free Fridays in July if you use a daily ticket.
The survey asked if this was adequate compo. Well, for me it might be, but probably not for an arthritic senior.
Let’s hope that Tranz Metro gets their heating problems sorted out before the end of winter.
One of the highlights of this year’s Cuba Street Carnival was the painting of a GO Wellington bus by some of New Zealand’s top graffti/street artists and German artists Via Grafik.
The finished product looked great, the bus took pride of place in the Night Parade, and can still be seen in normal use on Go Wellington’s routes.
So when the independent Academy Cinema in Auckland planned to get some local graffiti artists to paint a Dargaville High School bus outside the cinema to help promote new graffiti documentary Alter Ego, you’d think the Auckland City Council would be as supportive as Wellington was for the bus painting.
But no! Find out the Auckland City Council’s bizarre reaction after the jump.
This competition is now closed.
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Ok, we still have a super sweet Nokia 5800 smart phone, worth $899 to give away, courtesy of Vodafone, so it’s time to mash up this competition to make it easier to enter and therefore easier to win. Yay.
To enter, all you need to do is visit www.Vodafone.co.nz/easy and watch the video called "Internet Access Easy ANYWHERE" and answer this rather easy question: What is the occupation of the mobile internet user in the video?
Email your answer to info@wellingtonista.com with the subject ‘Vodafone Competition".
I especially recommend entering this comp if you like doing cool stuff online but you’re labouring with a crappy old cellphone. Cos mobile internet is one of the best things about 3G.
The competition closes at midday on Friday 15 May and the winner will be determined by a random draw. You must be a New Zealand resident. Righto.
UPDATE
We have a winnar! Congratulations to Brent Dickens who will very soon be getting a lovely new Nokia 5800.
Thanks to everyone who entered!
EDIT: We’ve changed the entry criteria to make it easier to enter. Details over here.
Thanks to our pals at Vodafone, we at the Wellingtonista are giving you the chance to win a super sweet Nokia 5800 smart phone worth $899.
First, some background:
Vodafone plans to complete its rollout of 3G coverage to 97% of the places New Zealanders live work and play by 31 May. With 3G coverage it means Vodafone customers can do heaps more with their mobiles – including mobile internet, video calling, music downloads, mobile broadband and more.
To get people excited and involved in 3G, Vodafone has set up a mini site called 3G made easy www.Vodafone.co.nz/easy
Vodafone has also created some tutorials on how to get to know your 3G mobile. But they think that their customers could probably do better, so for every video that gets posted on the Vodafone website, Vodafone give that person $10 airtime credit and the top 5 most viewed videos will also get a Nokia N85 and $500 credit. The most viewed tutorial will also get a Dell Inspiron Mini 9 and 1 year free mobile broadband (1gb/month plan).
So that’s a lot of ace prizes already up for grabs over at www.Vodafone.co.nz/easy, but a Nokia 5800 smartphone could also be yours if you give it a Wellingtonista twist.
What do you need to do to win? Find out after the jump!
Jinetero MC is a locally based Cuban reggaeton artist (yeah, one of those) and part of Olmecha Supreme.
But as a solo artist, he has a new song called "Wellington", his danceable ode to the city.
Sample lyrics:
I say thank you, thank you very much.
Wellington, you have give me lotta lotta luck.
But more importantly, the video is AWESOME. It manages to transform this windy city into a subtropical paradise, including a sticky carnival parade, hot city streets, and the highlight – Jinetero dancing with booty girls out in the harbour on a mothertruckin’ boat, y’all.
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKwwEq0xtlM]The Nissan Mobil 500 may be a distant memory, but it still has made its mark on the city – check out the way that Jervois Quay feels more like a chute designed for cars to hurtle along at high speed than a pleasant harbourside city street.
But those wishing the relive the glory days can do so over at YouTube, where petrolheads have uploaded a selection of choice clips. My favourite is "One lap Dick Johnson" from 1990. While this would be a perfectly good name for a porno, it’s actually a dashboard cam of driver Dick doing a lap of the circuit.
It ends up being a really good snapshot of Wellington’s waterfront environment before the big regeneration of the ’90s – no Te Papa, the Museum Hotel is still down by the water, Waitangi Park is full of warehouses, no Meridian building, no Kumutoto stream revival, no City to Sea bridge, and no lovely pleasant harbourside walk.
Vrrm vrrrrrm:
[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWx4sljvFVI]This week’s episode Media 7 looked at the Auckland vs Wellington cultural debate sparked by the Metro magazine article (as previously covered here).
Russell Brown rounded up Simon Wilson – the article’s author; with Tommy Honey representing the arts in Wellington and Simon Prast representing Auckland.
It was a lively debate, and didn’t resort to much "us versus them" bullhunky, but they managed to slag off both Palmerston North and Hamilton. Heh.
They basically concluded that Wellington City Council supports the arts better than Auckland City Council does, and that there’s nowhere near Auckland’s Maidment Theatre to get a drink.
You can watch the episode here. The Auckland/Wellington discussion starts in part three (part one looks at the death of advertising, part two at – ooh – holograms).