Author: Robyn

Botanic infamy

OMG. The Wel­ling­ton Botan­ic Gar­dens, cur­rently teem­ing with life and col­our and gen­er­al spring­time joy, gets a men­tion on an upcom­ing epis­ode of The Simpsons, the first of the new series.

The epis­ode guest stars loc­al boys made good Bret and Jemaine Conchords, and the pair use the Botan­ic Gar­dens good name for great lolz:

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJkdPbpoc5s]

And remem­ber the annu­al Spring Fest­iv­al is cur­rently hap­pen­ing at the Botan­ic Gar­dens, so why not take the oppor­tun­ity to frol­lick in the spring blooms and say you were down with the gar­dens before they were fam­ous.

WOW winners

I’ve just got back from the WOW Awards Show, so here’s a quick­ie post with the win­ner and run­ner up.

The win­ner of the 2010 Montana Supreme World of Wear­ableArt Award was Loops by Yogesh Chaud­hary and Man­as Barve, both design young stu­dents from India. Loops is a seam­less piece made from fel­ted Aus­trali­an merino:

The run­ner up to the Supreme WOW Award was Hor­ridus Lynn Chris­ti­ansen of the USA. Inspired by the thorny dev­il liz­ard (Moloch hor­ridus), it’s made of cop­per and had a dis­tinct clat­ter as the mod­el moved in it:

A full report on the WOW exper­i­ence will come soon, includ­ing the bit where Jo forced me to touch Te Radar’s lovely soft curly hair.

A whole lot of WOW

WOW sea­son kicks off today, as the city turns into the World of Wear­ableArt.

The Montana World of Wear­ableArt shows kick off at TSB Arena tonight, with the awards show on Fri­day night. The Wel­ling­tonista Will be there to report on the 2010 win­ners and gen­er­al goings-on.

Most of the shows are sold out, but there are still a few $50 “restric­ted view” tick­ets left to most shows – a good option if you’ve always wanted to exper­i­ence the extra­vag­ant WOW show.

But as always, there are oth­er ways of exper­i­en­cing the magic of WOW.

WoW design­er Susan Holmes has a num­ber of her pre­vi­ous entries on dis­play at vari­ous loc­a­tions around the city, inclid­ing the Museum Hotel, TSB Arena and the air­port.

Vari­ous Wel­ling­ton retail­ers are get­ting crafty with their own ver­sion of Wear­ableArt on dis­play, com­plete with good­ie bags and oth­er prizes for lucky shop­pers.

And com­ing up on Sunday 3 Octo­ber at Te Papa is Get Set Cre­ate, a one-hour chal­lenge for WOW design­ers to come up with a cre­ation.

So strap on your bizarre bra and get down with the WOW.

Frock on

The newly launched New Zea­l­and Fash­ion Museum aims to pre­serve and cel­eb­rate New Zea­l­and’ fash­ion his­tory.

It does­n’t have a phys­ic­al loc­a­tion, instead dis­play­ing exhib­i­tions in pop-up loc­a­tions.

Its first exhib­i­tion is Look­ing Ter­rif­ic – the Story of El Jay, look­ing at the career of fash­ion design­er Gus Fish­er and his label El Jay.

El Jay held the exclus­ive New Zea­l­and licence for Chris­ti­an Dior design­ers, bring­ing eleg­ant frocks to New Zea­l­and women want­ing some Parisi­an chic.

The exhib­i­tion is on dis­play at Kirkal­die and Stains, which aptly enough was one of El Jay’s stock­ists back in the day.

The Look­ing Ter­rif­ic col­lec­tion spans 40 years of El Jay, from the ’40s to the ’80s, with all gar­ments bor­rowed from private col­lec­tions – often the ori­gin­al own­er.

The exhib­i­tion runs until 3 Octo­ber, and can be viewed inside (and out­side) Kirks on Lamb­ton Quay.

A wall of one’s own

Cre­at­ing con­tent on the inter­webs is all very well, but some­times one has the need to express one­self in IRL.

For­tu­nately the coun­cil have forseen this need and erec­ted giant tri­angles of expres­sion around town. There’s one under the umbrella sculp­ture at James Smiths Corner, and oth­er by the tri­pod sculp­ture down the oth­er end of Cour­tenay.

So what incin­di­ary mes­sages will we see? People stick­ing it to the man and/or lady? Telling the politi­cians where to go?

Or per­haps some­thing charm­ing and delight­ful.

In case of emergency

So, the Can­ter­bury earth­quake. Our thoughts are with our friends and whaunau in the area, and we’re so glad that there haven’t been any fatal­it­ies *hugz*

But, of course, liv­ing in the shaky city of Wel­ling­ton, it makes us aware of the import­ance of being pre­pared should such a big one hit our fair city. Remem­ber – parts of the two roads out of the city run along the fault line.

Resources for pre­pared­ness in an earth­quake:

• Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil’s basic pre­pared­ness guidelines
• The Gov­ern­ment’s Get Ready Get Thru guide
• The Great­er Wel­ling­ton Region­al Coun­cil’s earth­quake inform­a­tion

In the mean­time, let’s count our bless­ings – we have elec­tri­city, tele­com­mu­nic­a­tions, run­ning water, sew­er­age and a roof over our heads.

Toilet cleaner

One News report­er Vicki Wilkin­son-Bakers tells it like it is – the toi­lets at Wel­ling­ton Sta­tion are bloody dis­gust­ing.

[O]ver the last couple of years con­di­tions have var­ied – from utterly dis­gust­ing, truly dis­gust­ing, filthy, so smelly you don’t want to breathe, to gen­er­ally grubby and unpleas­ant.

In my exper­i­ence of the ladies’ loos, they seem almost per­petu­ally grubby, the toi­let walls are covered with school­girl graf­fiti, the rub­bish bins reg­u­larly over­flow and the dis­carded debris of urb­an life – ripped panti­hose pack­ets, bana­nas, wine bottles and lip­stick pack­aging. And then there’s the issue of the nar­row doors you have to dodge through to enter the toi­let room.

The trouble, it seems, is these are really heavy duty, high-use pub­lic toi­lets that are set up for and main­tained like much lower-use loos.

Wilkin­son-Baker notes:

A while back, staff explained that the rail­way sta­tion is very busy. That’s true, it is, but so is Wel­ling­ton Air­port and their pub­lic toi­lets are fine. Shop­ping malls are busy, so are pic­ture theatres. They man­age to keep things clean and tidy. I’m assured the rail­way sta­tion toi­lets are cleaned every two or three hours. But it’s not enough. Maybe they need someone there full­time.

It’s a really simple demand – clean toi­lets. Is this really too dif­fi­cult for Kiwirail to man­age?

Pecha Kucha 8: The Latino Connection

It’s time for anoth­er Pecha Kucha Night, but this one is a little dif­fer­ent from pre­vi­ous ones – this time it’s the Latino Con­nec­tion!

People who have come from or gone to the spicy side of the South Pacific will share their stor­ies. Like all PKNs, there’s some­thing for every­one.

El Line-up:

Bella Kalolo – Singer/Entertainer – Lost In Paraguay
War­wick Mur­ray – Musi­cian – From Birm­ing­ham Days to San­ti­ago Nights
Amelia Lobo Mar­tinez – Journ­al­ist – La Apa­sion­ante His­tor­ia De Manuel Jose
Alda Rezende – Sing­er – Minas Gerais State, Brazil
Nat­alia Parra – Artist – Wel­ling­ton Through the Eyes of a Colom­bi­an Artist
Cori Gonza­lez-Mac­uer – Comedi­an – How to be Funny in Anoth­er Coun­try
Katia Guiloff – Doc­u­ment­ary Maker – Musi­cir­cus
Alice Hang – World Cit­izen – Per­cep­tions
Irene Mor­ales – Guati­wi – The Curse of Dr Ropata
Rich Dun­more – Media & Anim­a­tion Spe­cial­ist – Tres Ami­gos
Car­los Nav­ar­rete Aka “Car­los Navae” – Musi­cian – Acap­ulco Soul Machín
María Mar­quez De Satyanand – Edu­cat­or – A Work in Pro­gress

This Pecha Kucha will be held at Down­stage Theatre, Monday 6 Septem­ber.

Doors open at 6.30 with a 7.30 start. Tick­ets are $9 on the door, cash only.