You can’t trust the new real-time bus system; don’t

Ear­li­er this month Alan her­ald­ed the begin­ning of the roll-out of the Region­al Coun­cil’s new Real Time Pas­sen­ger Infor­ma­tion project. So far, though, I’m not hap­py. Just as numer­ous pieces of pub­lic­i­ty in local and com­mu­ni­ty news­pa­pers have failed to alle­vi­ate my sus­pi­cion that the sys­tem is not all it is cracked up to be, […]

Narrative Playgrounds group show at Pixel Ink Gallery

Nar­ra­tive Play­grounds is a group exhi­bi­tion at Pix­el Ink Gallery of visu­al works by emerg­ing and estab­lished New Zealand artists. The com­mon theme of the show is that the work is inspired by sto­ries and the imag­i­na­tion. Gallery direc­tor, Ros­alind Clark, said the exhi­bi­tion is all about trans­lat­ing the imag­i­na­tion onto a blank can­vas. The artist’s brief was to […]

Letting Space on the Terrace

From the pub­lic art pro­gramme which brought you Kim Paton’s Free Store and Tao Wells’ The Beneficiary’s Office (which both caused sig­nif­i­cant nation­al media inter­est and debate) I’d like to present to you: Col­in Hod­son’s The Mar­ket Tes­ta­ment. An entire office build­ing on Welling­ton City’s The Ter­race is to be turned into a work of […]

Parkour update

In Novem­ber 2007 I post­ed an arti­cle about the excit­ing pur­suit of park­our in Welling­ton, and it’s been one of our most endur­ing­ly pop­u­lar arti­cles, gen­er­at­ing a steady stream of traf­fic and com­ments. In the mean­time, the New Zealand Park­our Asso­ci­a­tion has been estab­lished. They have a strong pres­ence in Welling­ton and recent­ly got in touch to update […]

Wishbone blows, harder

In case kin­da nasty and over-priced food, and rumoured work­er exploita­tion weren’t rea­son enough to dis­like the (sur­pris­ing­­ly-suc­cess­­ful) Wish­bone, how about this for some odi­ous sen­ti­ment:

JUST GOOD STUFF is back for 2010

Craft mad­ness!  Cre­ative cre­ations!  6 days to solve all your Christ­mas shop­ping needs, while sup­port­ing local cre­atives — it’s prac­ti­cal­ly guilt-free! Fea­tur­ing JUST GOOD STUFF from: Genevieve Pack­er, Gab­by O’Con­nor, Lucy Adams, Philli­pa Cow­drey, Alanah Gib­son, Wendy Neale, Ngaere MacK­in­non, Flo­ra Way­cott, Isel Gre­ta Jane, Her­mon & son, Flo­ra Gray, Tess & Gab, Mary Adams, […]

Jewels of Whitireia

On Thurs­day night the Annu­al 2010 Whitireia Stu­dent Con­tem­po­rary Jew­ellery Auc­tion will be held at Mighty Mighty with Nation­al Radio pre­sen­ter Kim Hill con­trol­ling the ham­mer as auc­tion­eer. Donat­ed con­tem­po­rary jew­ellery is being sent from all over New Zealand for the event includ­ing pieces from con­tem­po­rary jew­ellery prac­ti­tion­ers Peter Deck­ers, Matthew McIn­tyre Wil­son and Owen […]

Doug Jerebine (AKA Jesse Harper) in town this weekend

Leg­endary (and non-myth­i­cal) NZ gui­tarist brings his East­ern influ­enced Blue Cheer-Hen­drix-Atom­ic Roost­er meets Son­ic Youth skwall to Wellign­ton at Hap­py on Sat­ur­day 8th May.

[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OOG-As652k]

We can’t pin­point when Doug was last in Welling­ton, but he was there in August 1965 when The Pret­ty Things swung through town, play­ing in Mike Per­janik’s group*.  Doug left for the UK in 1968 search­ing for more open minds. The next year he record­ed an albums worth of Hen­drix influ­enced mate­r­i­al under the name Jesse Harp­er. Acetates and tapes fil­tered back to NZ and the Human Instinct appro­pri­at­ed the best songs for their first two albums. Giv­ing away music in 1971, Doug moved to India where he stayed for 35+ years.

Cur­rent­ly based in NZ — Doug Jere­bine will be bring­ing his sear­ing musi­cal mes­sage to Dunedin, and tak­ing no pris­on­ers. This will be a unique per­for­mance. Accom­pa­ny­ing Doug will be Miles Gillett (drums), son of Bob Gillett — Doug’s musi­cal inspi­ra­tion and fel­low mem­ber of Dougs late 60s group The Brew, and Chris Orange on bass. Open­ing the show will be the EXCELLENT MANTARAYS!

For more info on Doug, check out Kei­th New­mans excel­lent Doug Jere­bine sto­ry.

Doors at 8pm – DOUG ON STAGE AT 10pm

ADMISSION $15

* Google him — fas­ci­nat­ing career — and you prob­a­bly know one of his most famous com­pos­tions if you watch Aus­tralian soaps!

Lightning Bolt are here! Tomorrow night!

Some­body just asked me what Light­en­ing Bolt are like.

I said: take the White Stripes and feed them, force them through the eye of a nee­dle which is made frmo some­thing which looks like Cream’s farewell live gig Albert Hall 1969, push them all the way through to the oth­er side in a place where every­thing’s in the red and the sound becomes an envelop­ing 4‑dimensional bear hug choke-hold stran­gle dead­ly embrace, where the stone inveades yr bone and

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[video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Hcw1C1AzQI]

Wednes­day 25th Novem­ber in the mid­dle of the floor at San Fran­cis­co Bath­house… tick­ets avail­able from Slow Boat Records and Under The Radar… updates and more info from Gales­burg.

Oh, Adelaide, Adelaide, I want you tonight

The first we heard of The Ade­laide when it popped up on Ade­laide Rd in 2006 was when Tom gave it the Mys­tery Bar treat­ment on WellUr­ban.

This week’s mys­tery bar used to be noto­ri­ous for many rea­sons, and there would have been times when only the staunchest and/or dodgi­est pun­ters would have ven­tured inside. These days it seems a bit tamer, though it’s still not the sort of place that you’d take some­one you were try­ing to impress. Unless they real­ly, real­ly liked cheap beer. Hav­ing said that, it was com­fort­able enough on a qui­et Sat­ur­day after­noon, and there were no scary patrons in sight. Actu­al­ly, there were almost no patrons at all, though the gen­er­al is that it would get very busy at times, and I imag­ine it gets hard to move when there’s a rug­by match on or a band play­ing.

… and he could­n’t have been more right!  Many a wast­ed night has been spent in its con­fines, and the sub­se­quent wast­ed day was always well worth it.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly The Ade­laide shuts it’s doors this Sat­ur­day after more than three years of gigs and good times. So you’ve got one last week to come down and enjoy a band, bin­go and beer. We’ll be cap­ping it all off with a mas­sive day of music for Hal­loween

Weds — The Final Spin for the orig­i­nal BINGO event in town

Thurs — Bad Sta­tis­tics, Detry­tus & guests

Fri — Sniper Alley ACDC trib­ute

Sat — Mati­nee show; Street­light Requiem, The Prox­ies

Sat Evening; Fos­set & Bad­ger, Cougar Cougar Cougar, The Cold Shiv­ers

Appar­ent­ly there is noth­ing planned for the site at this stage, but appar­ent­ly alsa “the vul­tures are cir­cling” and we’re sure it won’t take long for some­one to move in.