Category: Internet/Web

Flying in and switching off

The Oaks com­plex some­times seems like a hos­pi­tal­i­ty Bermu­da Tri­an­gle: fast-food joints and dodgy con­ve­nience stores jos­tle with bars of almost unre­lent­ing crap­ness. But some­thing’s about to land that looks much more promis­ing: Mem­phis Belle Cof­fee House.

With a barista who just came sec­ond in the region­al champs, a seri­ous-look­ing range of Flight beans from their Napi­er home base and glimpses of an inte­ri­or that looks vast­ly more sophis­ti­cat­ed than its pre­de­ces­sor (not that that’s say­ing much), Mem­phis Belle might just put the Oaks curse behind it. It should be open­ing this week, and def­i­nite­ly seems worth check­ing out.

On the oth­er hand, it looks like it might be lights out for a bar that was nev­er exact­ly this fly­’s favourite place: Elec­tric Avenue. There was a skip out­side this week­end, grad­u­al­ly fill­ing with neon-paint­ed MDF as the gaudy inte­ri­ors were ripped out. It’s quite pos­si­ble that it’s just a par­tic­u­lar­ly vio­lent ren­o­va­tion, but it all seems rather sud­den, and their Face­book group has been silent for a month. Is there any­one out there who will admit to being a reg­u­lar and can con­firm or refute its demise? And what are the chances of get­ting a decent bar to replace it? Giv­en the loca­tion in Munter Cen­tral, I guess the most we could hope for is a bar that can at least spell its street address on its web­site.

Play Four Square in Wellington!

Foursquare has arrived in Welling­ton — and we’re one of the first Aus­tralasian cities to be includ­ed!

But, you say, “I thought Four Square was a chain of over-sized dairies with a charm­ing­ly retro Dick Frizzell logo!” To which we’d say, “Ho ho, you cheeky post-iron­ic urban­ites, we mean Foursquare, the loca­tion-based social net­work­ing game that’s tak­ing the world by storm!”

You may remem­ber back in Sep­tem­ber we wrote about Twit­ter­places, which rather sad­ly shut up shop almost imme­di­ate­ly there­after. Well, Foursquare was the inspi­ra­tion for Twit­ter­places: when you go to a new place; a bar, restau­rant, park, any­thing, you “check-in”; and then you can see who of your friends are there.

And that’s just the begin­ning. There’s an overview of it all here, but here’s the basics.

You can leave tips for things to do at each place, or add oth­er peo­ple’s tips to your list; you earn points for check-ins out­side work hours, and you can earn badges for var­i­ous “achieve­ments”, like the Ben­der badge (when you are out for four nights in a row), or the Gym Rat badge (when you are a reg­u­lar at places tagged as a “Gym”).

And: you can become May­or of a spot by being the per­son check­ing-in most often in the last 60 days (though per­haps one should exer­cise dis­cre­tion as to where one checks-in if one does­n’t want to become May­or of a super­mar­ket or shop­ping cen­tre, like <coff> some of our readers—whom we are too polite to name).

One of the nice things that’s hap­pened in oth­er cities is that May­ors are often reward­ed by the pro­pri­etors of their places — and that’s what’s hap­pened here already at Mojo Old Bank, where Matt will stand a free cof­fee to the new­ly crowned May­or. We can think of a few oth­er places that we’d like to see extend­ing this sort of cour­tesy! (Espe­cial­ly the ones we go to often.)

Foursquare depends on hav­ing some sort of inter­net capa­ble mobile device: there’s a mobile web ver­sion, as well as the inevitable iPhone and Android apps — and by design these are the only ways you can do check-ins.

So sign up, get out there, and see if you can unseat Pablo G. from the top of the Welling­ton Leader­board!

Eating our way through the recession

Remem­ber a few months ago, when doom and gloom dom­i­nat­ed the hospo news? Well, there cer­tain­ly have been a lot of clo­sures in cen­tral Welling­ton, but many of those places have re-opened, and we’ve even got a few brand-new bars and restau­rants to cel­e­brate.

Here’s a list of rein­car­na­tions:

• Vin­tage → Hashigo Zake
• Calyp­so → Elixir
• Epic → Rhythm
• Chow Cabaret → The Library
• Par­adiso → Bet­ty’s (I insist on the apos­tro­phe)
• State Opera House Espres­so Bar → Pol­lux

Some brand-new places:

• Portofi­no (at Kumu­to­to)
• Red Gin­ger (under­neath Hawthorn Lounge)
• Lychee (in the wilder­ness of Arthur St)

A cou­ple of rumoured upcom­ing open­ings:

• “Cuba” (replac­ing Zeal in Gar­rett St)
• Yet anoth­er Irish pub, replac­ing New Orleans in Allen St

That leaves a hand­ful of recent fail­ures yet to be revived:

• Herd St Brasserie
• Sub­way at Chaf­fers Dock
• Empo­rio in Chews Lane

If any­thing, the indus­try looks to be health­i­er than a few months ago, and a few of the new places (Pol­lux, Hashigo Zake and The Library in par­tic­u­lar) are among our new favourites. If this means that con­sumers have stopped spend­ing on Plas­ma TVs while still din­ing out, then I applaud their good taste. Of course, it could mean that we’re all com­mit­ting kuidaore (a Japan­ese term rough­ly mean­ing “to ruin one­self through extrav­a­gance in food”). But what a love­ly way to go.

Enigmatic

Die-hard Espres­so­holic fans seem to be hap­py that it will con­tin­ue in a new loca­tion, tak­ing over from Dorothy’s Patis­serie in Cuba St. There are still grum­blings about its pre­vi­ous loca­tion being tak­en over by “anoth­er godaw­ful Courte­nay Place bar”, but there are signs that its replace­ment, “Enig­ma”, might not be anoth­er Shoot­ers or Elec­tric Avenue. For a start, the sign in the win­dow describes it as a “café/bar”, and the paint­ing going on inside seems to have a sim­i­lar graf­fi­ti theme to the old place. Some have even said that there are links to the old Espres­so­holic man­age­ment, so per­haps some of what­ev­er it was that peo­ple saw in the place will remain, for bet­ter or worse. But are we to expect a sound­track of Gre­go­ri­an chants and shakuhachi sam­ples?

There are plen­ty of oth­er changes going on in the bar and café world, and it’s not all doom & gloom. I’ll keep you in on the gos­sip after the jump.