Stock Market Goes Haywire!
Is it just me, or is the NZX animated display much more aesthetically pleasing when it goes berserk?
Catch of the day
Piscivores rejoice! A couple of local fishing boats have started to dock at Chaffers Marina on Sundays and are selling their wares direct to the public, and it will make a nice complement to the meat & veg at Waitangi Park market. The species on offer no doubt depend upon what’s caught on the day, but today’s offerings ran from groper steaks and blue warehou to octopus (for those with a tentacle fetish) and kina (for those who like it spiny and slimy).
More fishy goodness after the jump.
Lordy Lordi
According to our spies, noises are emanating from the TSB Arena that indicate the presence of metal at varying degrees of heaviness. The autograph-hunters waiting outside confirm that this might indeed be a warm-up for this weekend’s rocktastic mayhem. Penniless bogans of Wellington! Get yourself to Queens Wharf for a free sampler of Rock2Wgtn and a chance to meet your (wizened) heroes!
Pizza overload
All you gourmets and gourmands will no doubt know about Scopa’s attempt on the world pizza-eating record on Saturday the 22nd, and the fact that if you join in you will essentially be eating FREE pizza. If that sounds like your sort of thing (and why wouldn’t it?), then you’ll need to register first, and according to Texture, you’ll have to do so by Monday.
To get in the mood, you could do worse than waddle down to the Overseas Passenger Terminal this Sunday for the Italian Festa, which is also sponsored by Scopa among others. Combine that with the fact that the recently papered-over windows of the former Imbibe are covered in plenty of Italian Festa posters, and one might start to guess who’s planning to reinvigorate that Swan lane favourite. Could it be the Bresolin boys?
Homage to Duchamp
Here’s another one of the wee guys in this series of temporary sculptures:
Quite an appropriate location, atop the long-abandoned toilets and amid the construction of the new Courtenay Place park.
If you can use some exotic booze…
…there’s a bar in Cuba Mall. Okay, so that doesn’t swing quite as well as the original, but those with a longing for outrageous costumes and hard drinking, but who can’t stomach the Sevens, ought to know that it’s Tiki Bar weekend at Matterhorn.
That’s right: you have one more night to savour concoctions based on classics by Trader Vic and Beachbum Berry; bar staff dressed as Hawaiian deities; bubbling cauldrons of lethally refreshing punch; and some of the cheesiest slices of lounge exotica ever committed to vinyl.
Bars and Bites
This is in the vein of The Wellingtonista Bar Fly-les, but I thought I’d give it another name since it’s about food & coffee as well as drink.
- Have I been unobservant, or has Offbeat Originals only just started offering lamb as an option in their famous burgers? And tapenade as an accompaniment?! [insert drooling noises here]
- The Buena Vista Social Club seems to have been successful as a certain mayoral campaign. It has closed (rather inconveniently for certain fringe shows), though it is apparently due to reopen as a gay bar called S&M. No comment.
- If you’ve been putting off enjoying Simply Paris’ excellent cassoulet, patisserie, Merguez frites baguettes or pain perdu by their bizarre choice of “Nespresso” in place of coffee, then rejoice! for they now have a proper espresso machine and Orb coffee. You’ll still have to put up with the twee décor and occasionally slow service, though the more than occasional hotness of their staff should make up for the latter.
- Forgive me for shouting, but … TIKI TIKI TIKI! It’s not quite the proper Tiki Bar that the Wellingtonista have long been gagging for, but Matterhorn are having a Tiki Bar weekend this weekend, complete with vintage tiki mugs, dry ice, special cocktails and silly hats.
Tui hooligans
The recent flap (no pun intended) over noisy tui may seem like a typical silly season non-story, but believe me, it’s a real problem. I live above a major central city intersection, and people sometimes ask whether I’m disturbed by road noise. “No,” I say, “but those bloody birds wake me up at 5 in the morning!” A small patch of harakeke eight floors down is enough to attract hordes of juvenile tui flitting around and chattering and generally carrying on like kids in Manners Mall. Tsk tsk, youth today!
It’s probably just the morning-averse urbocentric biophobic grump in me, but does anyone else notice it? And what is the best collective noun for tui? A disturbance? A larrikin? A raucous?
The Wellingtonista guide to drinking for free
Now, don’t get me wrong: we Wellingtonistas are not usually parsimonious when it comes to paying for drinks. On the other hand, we’re a canny and logical bunch, and it only takes about 10 free glasses of house wine to save up enough for a Mega Mai Tai, so in the long run it pays to seek out gratis grog.
Let’s start with the obvious: gallery openings and launches. You can get lucky by simply cruising the streets on a midweek night seeking the tell-tale sounds of clinking glasses and poststructuralist discourse, but dedicated cheapskates know that the best way to guarantee results is to get on the mailing lists.
Intense, man!
I’ve been blathering about it all over the place, but the Wellingtonista has thus far remained staunchly unblathered about IntensCITY week, which started yesterday.
Downtown Wellington is full of exhibitions, posters, shipping containers, lunchtime talks and video installations, all celebrating and/or critiquing our urban spaces. The official site is on the WCC website, and brochures are available in cafes, libraries and council places, or as a big juicy PDF.