There comes a time in everyone’s life when they feel the need to leave Wellington, even if it’s just for one day. No really, it happens! And a particularly good day to get out of town, if you don’t like the colour green, or potatoes, or Guiness or drunken fake-Irish louts, would be this Saturday. So where to go to get away? How about a wine festival – after we all know, that wine drinkers are a better class of people than beer drinkers – somewhere out of town but still nearby?
Well it just so happens that March 17 is your lucky day, with not one but two festivals taking place nearby. There’s the Wairarapa Wines Harvest Festival in Gladstone (as well as the International Balloon Fiesta and the day before Round the Vines, and also the Great Wellington Wine and Food Festival in Paekakariki. So how do you choose which one to go to when they both cost $25 for an entrance fee? Take our quiz to find out.
Get your mask ready: it’s time to party quasi-anonymously with friends and strangers at a Venetian Masquerade Ball. Champagne! Chandeliers! Canapes! Cleavage! (if the poster is anything to go by)
Stately Dransfield House in upper Willis Street will play the gracious host for “Ballo di Sciocco” on the 31st of March. The venue and the imagery may me old-fashioned, but the ball itself must be Generation Next, since it has a myspace page. Looking at the organisers’ page and list of friends, I get the feeling this will be no ordinary ball.
Tickets $120 from Madmat on 027 290 3591.
The St Michael’s & Kelburn Village Fair is on tomorrow at 10am.
This will be the first one I’ve managed to catch, so I can’t regale you with tales of past experiences, but I can promise you stalls, home baking, junk/treasure, and probably an awful lot of very out of date 2nd hand university text books.
There may also be fire eaters, dancing, dancing girls, dancing bears, acrobats & tightrope walkers. I dunno, but I’m hoping.
And of course, the very attractive residents of Kelburn.
And her owner.
Hi. I’m new here. Usually I burble sporadically and semi-coherently on Drinks-After-Work; I’m looking forward to the challenge of stepping up to the plate and making sense most of the time.
Posters for this went up last night (sorry for the stink image – I can’t find anything on the web so far):
Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma is the pioneer of the Kashmiri santoor (Indian hammered dulcimer) and was (heh) instrumental in it’s acceptance into the hallowed pantheon of Indian classical music (read about it). At 69 he is the acknowledged master of santoor; indeed he is virtually synonymous with it. Using a 100-string santoor in chromatic arrangement Sharma creates complex webs of beautiful, ethereal, shimmering sound, mounting improvisation within improvisation within the raga form, climaxing in furious blowouts with fiery tabla virtuosos and frenzied, ecstatic glissando.
He’s real good. His album Sampradaya is one of my favourite Indian classical recordings of all time. And with his debut in 1997 (also on santoor), Sharma’s son and disciple Rahul became the third part of an exceptional pan-generational santoor triumvirate. Both Sharma’s are playing at St Mary of the Angels on Wednesday the 14th of March – presumably on their way to WOMAD – with Yogesh Samsi on the tabla. They will play in an exciting Jugalbhansdi style. Bookings from Ticketek.
A DJ-event at The Mighty Mighty in Cuba Mall, featuring DJ Kapitan Krautrock and DJ Name playing progressive German music from the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s…
This event is part of the Berlin Bonanza at The Mighty Mighty in March.
Webstock Mini was last night, and for those that weren’t there: sorry. You missed out on a treat.
There was a room full of smart, cool, clever and passionate people; a couple of very interesting headline speakers: Rod Drury on User Centred Design as applied to both Aftermail and Xero.com; and Peter Gutmann on the ludicrous but for real Copyright Amendment Bill [PDF, 1.4Mb] (get submitting – there’s a couple days left); and later, ten others for two minutes each on “How the Internet changed my life”, interpreted rather loosely but very entertainingly.
We were there too: or more correctly 40% of the Wellingtonista collective (because you can’t be called a Wellingtonista and not belong to a collective, right? It goes with the faux left-wing chic of our name, you know). And we had lots to think about. Especially the one of us that was speaking.
Others have already written about last night in a much more structured way. Rather than reinvent the wheel, we’ll link to them instead.
Phewf, that was easy. And a good use of the internet, too.
And then we’ll resort to namechecking William Burroughs as a pathetic excuse for dumping the pooled thoughts of this 40% randomly as follows:
We all know that Wellington is a great place to take photos: its natural beauty, public art, lively street life and eclectic architecture all contribute to a visually stimulating city. The busy Flickr-ers of the Wellington Flickr group know this, and they’ve decided to take their best photos into the real world.
“Online to On the Wall” opens at the Paramount Theatre tomorrow night at 6pm, and runs until the 28th of March.
The genius minds behind Heavenly Burlesque are back again for the Fringe and this time it’s free. Gravity and other Myths is a spectacular outdoor new circus showcase inspired by the stars!
Vist Queen’s Wharf at night this week and you see some of the country’s best new circus, performing on a purpose-built outdoor circus rig, combined with pyrotechnics, spectacular lighting, sound and AV design.
I’ve been promised acts will use fire, trapeze, bungy, hula hoops, dance and object animation, all to the locally grown music of Rhian Sheehan, Module and more. This is proper circus people, not with evil clowns.
Plus here is your chance to run away with the circus in your lunchtime – Wellington Circus Trust are running introductory circus workshops at lunchtimes (12.30 – 1.30) on the days of the show performances.
Gravity and other Myths
Queen’s Wharf, (under the sails)
Wellington Waterfront @ 8.00pm
Thursday 1st – Sunday 4th & Wednesday 7th – Saturday 10th
March, 2007.
Entry by donation / Koha
and bring a cushion
If you’ve had enough of pretending to be Latin American, The Mighty Mighty now give you an opportunity to pretend to be from a very different part of the world with ten days of The Berlin Bonanza.
Much of this appears to involve a highly traditional Teutonic leisure activity: mass games of ping-pong with a country music accompaniment.
If that doesn’t appeal (and why on earth wouldn’t it?) there’s a bewildering array of other acts and activities on offer. Vodka ice slides! Beer and sausage! Polish/German chansonettes! Krautrock! More photos here and here, excited gossip here, and the urban semiotics of cowboy capitalism here.
So, remember how much fun we all had at The Great Blend? Or how much of a crush you have on Martha? How about you combind those two things into one event and come to Webstock Mini on Tuesday night? There are, after all, few venues nicer than the Paramount, and if it’s good enough for the Queen of the Bloggers to pay her own administration fee rather than trying to do the paperwork for the Wellingtonista to cover the $75 cost (it’s amazing how quickly the thoughts of an open bar will get her to pony up), it should be good enough for you too.