Author: Stephen J

City-wide liquor ban consultation starts next week

A few weeks ago we wrote about the pro­posed city-wide ban on “drink­ing and car­ry­ing liquor in pub­lic places, 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week.” We don’t like to harp on this issue, but the nex­us of booze, urb­an life and social justice is cat­nip to the hard-drink­ing city-liv­ing caring folk here at the Wel­ling­tonista.

Mark your cal­en­dars for Tues­day the 30th of March – con­sulta­tion will start then.

PS: when did we all adopt the Amer­ic­an­ism “liquor?”

One step closer to a city-wide alcohol ban

The coun­cil is going to draft a by-law to ban drink­ing in pub­lic places.

But don’t worry, respect­able cit­izens! It’s not aimed at you! It’s aimed at pesky booz­ers.

Extend­ing the liquor ban would mean we could deal with prob­lems in the sub­urbs. It would­n’t be about stop­ping people hav­ing a quiet beer or a glass of wine on the beach or in the park – and the Police are already on the record as say­ing they would use dis­cre­tion.

Anoth­er “x-ing while brown” offence in the mak­ing.

They break bottles, yell and swear, vomit and cre­ate chaos – but there’s noth­ing the Police can really do at the moment about the drink­ing of alco­hol – which is gen­er­ally the cause of the prob­lems.

This is a puzz­ler. If people are behav­ing badly, that’s dis­orderly beha­viour. If they’re not, who cares wheth­er they’re drink­ing?

If only there were some­where for hard­core street drink­ers to go. Mean­while, wast­ing police time on herd­ing them around the city is appar­ently the only way out.

There’s a Face­book group in oppos­i­tion. Here’s hop­ing that’s just a start.

First class citizens at last

If you’re a ped­es­tri­an, some­times it seems as though you’re the last to be con­sidered. Oth­er modes of trans­port get all the big bucks while we get to stumble along on our own, catch­ing our heels on the cobble­stones and dodging the seem­ingly inter­min­able earth­works.

So it’s nice to see that there’s a ded­ic­ated Cyc­ling and Walk­ing jour­ney plan­ner from the Great­er Wel­ling­ton Region­al Coun­cil. I par­tic­u­larly like how it tells you the elev­a­tion of your route so you can see wheth­er an appar­ent short­cut is going to be like scal­ing Everest or not. There is also a cal­or­ie counter, which I guess helps jus­ti­fy your morn­ing tea when you’ve got to work.

I exper­i­mented with the route from my house to work, and the default sug­ges­tion was def­in­itely the most prac­tic­al for the unathlet­ic, though not the shortest – it knows about the tracks over Mt Vic, but you have to drag the route over the moun­tain your­self.

Def­in­itely worth explor­ing, even if you’re a ded­ic­ated walk­er, if only so you can boast about the dis­tance to your lazy mates.

Maranui meeting report from Eye of the Fish

Over at Eye of the Fish, Max­imus has a good report of last night’s pub­lic meet­ing about what should be done about the Maranui surf club.

Money quote:

… all 4 scen­ari­os went down like a cup of cold sick in a burnt out shed on a cold wind-swept beach­front. A mem­ber of the crowd put the feel­ing into words and star­ted the ball that we should vote for a Fifth Scen­ario. An imme­di­ate show of hands con­firmed over­whelm­ing sup­port for this pro­pos­al, which was, as anoth­er crowd mem­ber suc­cinctly put it into words: “The 5th Scen­ario is that we just want Maranui rebuilt, so why are we debat­ing all this oth­er shit?”

The whole thing.

Live Brazil Festival this weekend

A lot of people don’t know that Wel­ling­ton has quite a siz­able Brazili­an expat­ri­ate com­munity. A bunch of them and their Kiwi friends have been work­ing hard to put togeth­er the Live Brazil 2009 Fest­iv­al this week­end.

The fest­iv­al will com­prise music, dance, capoeira, and cook­ing and drink work­shops. It starts on Fri­day night with a per­fo­mance fea­tur­ing Tam­bolelê (from Minas Gerais) at the Memori­al Theatre on the Vic cam­pus, with most oth­er events tak­ing place at the South­ern Cross.

Full details at this chaot­ic but inform­a­tion-rich site or in sum­mary form here.

This par­tic­u­lar Wel­ling­tonista will be lurk­ing in Car­men Mir­anda’s band on Sat­urday night – come and demon­strate your fruit-laden cos­tume and we can have a caipirinha.