It was a beautiful Sunday in Wellington today. The air was crisp and cool but the sun was bright and the first signs of spring were visible. For example, as I wheeled along the waterfront promenade this afternoon, a few brave young men and women were in sleeveless tops or short shorts, anticipating temperatures that […]
You know what sucks? Getting yelled at on the street (unless it’s someone yelling “Hey Wellingtonista, you’re awesome, come and have some free drinks in my bar if you like” in a non-threatening way. Please do that). So Hollaback! wants to do something about it. We’ve got your back! Hollaback! is an international movement to end […]
We’re sorry it’s taken the Wellingtonista so long to weigh in on The Overpass. If truth be told we’ve all been kind of dumbfounded by the horror of it all. We’ll have more on the whole thing soon, but if you’re as appalled as we are (and if you aren’t, you might want to read […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] The offramp leads me down into what, for want of a better term, I will call the heart of Johnsonville. The local RSA greets me with a Bofors gun and an ad for its eponymous restaurant (“Family Friendly Environment”). Along with the Salvation Army, Super Liquor, a service station and […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] The stretch of Hutt Rd from Kaiwarawhara to Ngauranga is a long, dry slog through an artificial valley. The western side is almost natural, covered by tenacious regeneration, but often cut, buttressed and battered to keep the slope from failing, occasionally sliced by gullies and roads that scrabble up to […]
Remember when Wellington Airport, after the howls of protest and outright mockery, backed off on its cringe-inducing Wellywood sign idea and promised to go away and think of something better to celebrate our film industry? Well, they’ve had a good, long think about it, and this morning’s paper announces that they’ve come up with a […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] Kaiwharawhara is a node, a knot, a tangle of paths and histories. It’s where the eponymous stream meets the harbour, though quakes and reclamations have long since nudged the mouth seawards from its original position at the fault line, engulfing foreshore, shipwrecks and shellfish beds in the process. It’s where […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] The stretch of motorway that leaps out from the bluff was known in the Sixties as the “Kaiwarra-Thorndon Skyway”, incongruously combining the Jetsonian optimism of the term “skyway” with a mangled contraction of “Kaiwharawhara” that today would only be used by Pakeha blokes of a certain age. Both the skyway […]
[See all Notional Significance posts] The path bends with the motorway, peeling away from the hills, presenting a widescreen panorama of residential Thorndon. I can see what remains of the gullies into which the highway has wedged itself: from the all-but-vanished Honeyman’s Gully (once a duelling ground for lawyers, then filled in for the less […]
The Wellingtonista is not just about bringing the snark to the deserving. Sometimes we drop the cynical worn-out hipster thing to bring food to the deserving. We need to tell you that the Downtown Community Ministry food bank is just about out of food. Unfortunately, more people need their help than ever before. Yesterday their […]