Observed on Featherston Street

Spotted on Featherston Street in the window of Espresso Republic. Could this be the work of a disgruntled landlord?

Christmas in Cuba? Something smells fishy

Obviously, the most important calendar item of the year is coming up on December 3, when we hold The Annual Wellingtonista Awards for the fifth year in a row at Mighty Mighty, but we think you might need to warm up for the event.

Christmas in Cuba? Something smells fishy

Obviously, the most important calendar item of the year is coming up on December 3, when we hold The Annual Wellingtonista Awards for the fifth year in a row at Mighty Mighty, but we think you might need to warm up for the event. What better way than to have a drink on FishHead? Come […]

Review: The December Brother

The December Brother is the newest production from the SEEyD Theatre Company. It comprises of three mini plays, all linked with the common form of family and the search for truth.

By the beach of Babylon, where we sat down. And waited. And waited.

Sunday would have been a lovely day to have brunch at Sweet Mother’s Kitchen, except pretty much every other person in Wellington had the same idea, and we were told it was going to be a 45 minute wait. We decided we’d venture further afield, and made the mistake of heading out to Oriental Parade, and Beach Babylon.

When we got there, it was really busy, but we thought surely it would be less than the 45 minutes wait at SMK, because there were free tables outside. It was a bit breezy, so we were keen to sit inside – since there were no free tables they offered us one outside and told us they’d give us the first free table inside. So we hopped up on stools crammed in the corner, and consulted the menu. Lots of things sounded tasty on the menu. K was happy that they had Foxton Fizz. I contemplated ordering a Pink Princess, which was fizzy raspberry and vanilla ice cream, but I decided to pretend to be a grown up and order a latte bowl instead. So we waited for a waitress, and waited, and waited. Eventually one came up and told us that she couldn’t take our food order right now, because the kitchen was slammed, but she’d be back to take our drinks order. Seriously? I appreciate the place was busy, but surely it is the job of the staff to manage the workflow. If the kitchen wasn’t ready for our orders (which seems strange), the wait staff should still take them, and hold onto them, and let us know approximately how long a wait we could expect. 

Bye-bye, Wellywood sign

Wellington Airport has actually listened to the massive public opposition to the Wellywood sign (and potential legal troubles from Hollywood) and have ditched the idea.

Thank God for that.

Stuff reports

Wellington Airport has backed down from a proposal to erect a "Wellywood" sign and is asking the public for alternative ideas.

… [O]pposition from the public – and a possible legal stoush after Hollywood lawyers said it would be a trademark violation – led to a change of plans.

Wellington Airport chief executive Steve Fitzgerald today invited alternative ideas for "a sign celebrating the global success of Wellington’s film industry" to be submitted via Facebook.

The question now is whereabouts on Facebook do we leave our ideas? There’s nothing for Wellington Airport, so we’re just left with the "Hey, let’s NOT have a "WELLYWOOD" sign in Wellington" group, and the slightly strange "Support Wellywood" page.

Let’s hope that whatever they come up with to grace the Miramar hills is something we’ll love.

UPDATE: The Facebook page for Wellington International Airport has appeared. Have at it!

Catching the fish

Last Tuesday, I was drawn like a fly to a pile of fishheads to the Overseas Terminal for the launch of FishHead magazine.I had to sort out the Mollusc for trying to step into my territory. How many anonymous troublemakers does this town need, after all?

The adventure started with a boat ride from Queen’s Wharf, where entertainment came in the form of giraffe-esque models in ridiculous heels trying to clamber into the trawler. They still managed the task better than one Wellingtonista whose flailing arm knocked the lens out of some unfortunate gentleman’s glasses. Perhaps she was unsteady on her feet because of being uncharacteristically sober? 

The seven minute voyage across the harbour seemed to have been planned entirely so the hipsters could get their "on a boat" badge on Foursquare. Oh hipsters and their adorable need to collect things. Anyone would think that their lives were hollow and empty or something. Things got more lively on land, where we were welcomed by Batucada, fishheads firmly in place. 

 

fish head battacuda

 

The band sounded great outside, marching back and forward and hitting their percussiony bits. When they came inside later on, it was a little too loud though, so this Fly wasn’t suprised to see guests slipping outside to get their Titanic on. 

 

I'm the king of the world

 

Warmups, Webstock, Wrestling.

Holy crap, next week is going to be insane. It’s WEBSTOCK WEEK, baby! Expect a proliferation of smart sexy people with smart sexy satchels to be taking over your favourite bars (especially the ones we recommended to them) and discussing mindblowingly awesome concepts. You’re going, right? 

And because we don’t want you to get injured from having your mind (and liver) blown without stretching first, we here at the Wellingtonista are super pleased to be hosting an Official Wellingtonista Unofficial Webstock Warm-up on Wednesday 17th at Hashigo Zake from 5pm. Expect lovely people, great prices on some beers thanks to Dominic and perhaps some other special treats. Feel free to come along even if you’re not going to Webstock, although we may point and laugh at you. 

If you can’t afford to go to the whole conference, there are still a couple of tickets left to the ONYAs party, which we are assured will be amazing even if we’re not up for any awards. 

Or, if none of this floats your boat, you should go to the RASSLIN

The Wellingtonista & Twitter’s Lists

TwitterWe’ve talked about Twitter before – we’re on it, of course, as over a thousand of you already know. Over time Twitter has evolved from a WTF? (back then at the same stage in its life as Google Wave is now) to an indispensible part of our social networking landscape.

If you’ve logged on to Twitter recently you’ll have seen their newest feature, Twitter Lists. These are a way to group up other Twitter users, both among the people you follow and the people you don’t. You might want to group up some of your friends; or make a list of your favourite bands; then you can conveniently view just those tweets from those people.

Where this becomes interesting is that it’s possible to follow other people’s lists. A nice example of this is @webstock‘s Speakers List – a List of speakers at past and future Webstock events. Following this list allows you to immerse yourself in the whole Webstock vibe, months in advance of the event itself! Very handy.

Of course The Wellingtonista is not to be left out of this action. It can be quite hard to find the best people to follow on Twitter – so let us do it for you! We have compiled some must-follow Wellington-themed lists for you to follow, with more on the way.

  • @wellingtonista/team – Us! Or at least, the large subset of us who are on Twitter. We are, of course, all well worth following individually, but following the list is probably easier.
  • @wellingtonista/wgtn-music – Locally based musicians, venues and record shops. Why aren’t there more out there?
  • @wellingtonista/wgtn-theatres – A mix of cinemas and playhouses. Good for finding out what’s on, and whether there’s any competitions, specials or other promotions running.
  • @wellingtonista/wgtn-food-and-drink – all the cafés, bars, venues, restaurants and bottlestores we could find. The interplay between the various cafés in particular is quite nice and collegial and almost warrants its own List, really.
  • @wellingtonista/wgtn-events – Events. You know what they are: Festivals; Markets; Carnivals. And the occasional, uh, sporting event.

Clearly these lists could do with a little fine tuning, as well as additions. So let us know!

Smarten your Snapper – Voting starts

Finally here they are.

The top 14 finalists in the Smarten your snapper Competition
as chosen by our panel of delightful judges, and you can now vote for the ultimate winner!  (click on the image to see large-wise, yo).

the top 15

So what comes next?

Well it’s now down to you, the fine readers of the wellingtonista to tell us which Snapper cover you like best. All you have to do is head over to a very simple entry form, and vote for the snapper cover you like the most.

Click here to vote.

Of course it might help to be able to check them out first
Voting runs from today September 14th till Monday September 28th

Our finalists in alphabetical order are:

  1. Bite Me – created by Amie McCarron
  2. Cassetiquette Case – created by Matt Whitwel
  3. Jeans for your snapper  – Created by Heike aka minu.
  4. Kokako tie up cover – created by Deb from Boocraft Designs
  5. Library Card Cover – created by Matt Whitwel
  6. Patchwork Snapper card – created by Marjorie from WHSKR
  7. Pirate Patch – created by Amy from Bad Animals
  8. Sequined Snapper – by Emma from emma makes
  9. Tahi Blue – created by Miss Millie
  10. The Big Snapper – created by Miss Millie
  11. The Hoff – created by Paula from Madame Cake
  12. Urban Vintage card holder – created by Shelley Gardner from "Sweet William"
  13. wave– by Yana from chromatophobic
  14. Yum Yum Donuts – created by Paula from Madame Cake

Over the next week all the finalists are being profiled over at Craft2.0 and we’ll also be sharing some of the judges thoughts on the finalists.

There there is one vote per email address.

And you can vote right now!