Vanishing appears

There are a few shops around town that cater to pop-cul­ture junkies and seekers of retro mem­or­ab­il­ia, but new­comer Van­ish­ing Point (40 Abel Smith St) adds a  per­son­al twist. As quiffed and string-tied rocka­bil­lies wandered about the tiny shop on open­ing day, the own­ers had to point out that what looked like a café or […]

Wishbone blows, harder

In case kinda nasty and over-priced food, and rumoured work­er exploit­a­tion wer­en’t reas­on enough to dis­like the (sur­­pris­ingly-suc­­cess­­ful) Wish­bone, how about this for some odi­ous sen­ti­ment:

The Owls Are Not What They Seem

You know that we’re big fans of Madame Fancy Pants. You know what we’re not fans of? Thieves! Dear MFP love­lies, Sorry to say that our big com­pet­i­tion will be can­celed as someone has stolen your prize. 🙁 If you hap­pen to know of someone acquir­ing a Deadly Ponies Mr Night Owl bag.…? If you […]

The Indian job

Those of us around the Civic Square or water­front areas may have noticed a bit of a ker­fuffle involving a fleet of Minis hoon­ing where cars aren’t nor­mally allowed. This is, it turns out, part of a Wel­ling­ton-based shoot for the film “Play­ers”, a cheeky Bol­ly­wood remake of the Michael Caine clas­sic “The Itali­an Job”. […]

PhotoChop III

On this week at Thistle Hall is the bien­ni­al Pho­toChop exhib­i­tion, centred around the art of col­lage. It’s all about tak­ing the ordin­ary paper mater­i­als, and with scis­sors and glue, turn­ing it into some­thing new, with a selec­tion of fine works includ­ing repur­posed post­cards, a scen­ic Uruwera set­ting for Wil­lie Api­ata and a couple of […]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

This week­end, film fans, you can watch the new anim­ated Yogi Bear movie in two dif­fer­ent formats, com­pare the two and then have an eru­dite dis­cus­sion of the related strengths and weak­nesses of the new “re-booted fran­chise” versus the beloved, barely 2D, ori­gin­al. Or, you can watch a drama about female cir­cum­cision. Tough call. Dan […]

So long, Marbecks Cuba Mall

It looks like the Marbe­cks on Cuba Mall is clos­ing down, leav­ing the blessed Slow­boat and Real Groovy the only music shops in the area. It does­n’t really come as much of a sur­prise – record shops today seem to exist mainly for music nerds and CD-buy­ing grans. ’90s-style music shops like Marbe­cks are a […]

Cinephilia: Opening This Week

A New Year brings with it sev­er­al res­ol­u­tions and one of those is that I will return to reg­u­lar con­tri­bu­tions here at The Wel­ling­tonista. So, until I col­lapse under the strain, every Thursday I’ll present a quick run­down of what’s open­ing at loc­al cinemas. This week Dis­ney offers us an anim­ated 3D “adven­ture”, Tangled (pre­vi­ously […]

Win Craft 2.0 craftcash for this Saturday!

The amaz­ing Craft 2.0 is hap­pen­ing again this Sat­urday, and its amaz­ing founder Sue Tyler (full dis­clos­ure: paid-up mem­ber of the Wel­ling­tonista) has decided that you should get a present. Or maybe you. We’ll leave it up to the ran­dom­izer to make the ulti­mate call. On Sat­urday, 18 Decem­ber, Wel­ling­to­ni­ans who want to gift in […]

New guy

The lovely people who are The Wel­ling­tonista have invited me to join them. And so here I am, strug­gling with my first post. As someone who works here but lives else­where – let’s hear it for Lower Hutt – this site is the misty win­dow I have peered through to learn what Wel­ling­ton city dwell­ers […]