So after an intense­ly frus­trat­ing day for local pol­i­tics anoraks, as every oth­er city got to find out who its may­or was going to be, the pre­lim­i­nary Welling­ton results have been announced, and we have…

…no win­ner?

With all the oth­er can­di­dates knocked out and their pref­er­ences redis­trib­uted (this might be a good time to brush up on how STV works if you’ve for­got­ten) Ker­ry Pren­der­gast is ahead of Celia Wade-Brown, 24,468 votes to 24,428.

Yes, that’s a 40-vote gap. And what’s more—all the votes haven’t actu­al­ly been count­ed yet. Say what?

Update: The pre­lim­i­nary results are now up on elections2010.co.nz and the City Coun­cil web­site. And we’ve added a roundup of the coun­cil results down the bot­tom.

The search for a gay man’s best friend in Welling­ton is on again with Aaron and Andy’s fourth annu­al Miss Fag Hag tak­ing place at Club Ivy, 13 Dixon Street, this Sat­ur­day, 9 Octo­ber.

The “pageant” isn’t too seri­ous, and cel­e­brates one of the most impor­tant rela­tion­ships a gay man will ever have, with prizes from Salute Hair & Day Spa, The Gua­va Tree, Club Ivy, and Kylie Minogue’s new album Aphrodite up for grabs, it promis­es a fun-filled night!

Host­ed by the noto­ri­ous Shaaron and Shandy, entry is free, and reg­is­tra­tions open from 11pm, with the com­pe­ti­tion start­ing at 1am.

The very choice Mattgeeknz has writ­ten a guest review for us, because we knew we’d be unable to write a review about being blind­fold­ed and stick­ing every­thing put in front of us in our mouths with­out being smut­ty about it. 

Capi­tol and CBM have teamed up to host three blind-din­ing evenings in Welling­ton. The first was on Mon­day, and there are two more sit­tings on Mon­day and Tues­day next week. It’s a fun twist on the din­ing expe­ri­ence: you’re blind­fold­ed for the entire­ty of your meal, and at the end of each course you’re told what you’ve just eat­en. 

 Y’know, it’s not often that I’d ever con­sid­er run­ning a Welling­ton City Coun­cil press release in full, but I’m going to do it right now, cos BLOODY HELL, Welling­ton, get your act togeth­er! PS: this is how to work your STV vote, explained quite sim­ply. Now hop to it. 

You may have seen a lifestyle col­umn in this week­end’s Dom­Post where Hadyn Jones bemoaned the “fact” that you can’t get milk­shakes at cafés in Welling­ton, and blamed this on the idea that Welling­to­ni­ans are too cool and stuck-up for such things. There are just a few things wrong with this:

• Just off the top of our lit­tle insect brains, we came up with Fidel’s, Mid­night Espres­so, Sweet Moth­er’s Kitchen, Espres­so­holic, Maranui and Off­beat Orig­i­nals as not­ed enablers for the shake-addict­ed.
• Those are hard­ly obscure, hard-to-find under­ground estab­lish­ments. If the Dom­Post’s esteemed cor­re­spon­dent is not aware of their menus, then one has to ask: just where has he been hang­ing out?
• If any­thing, those are the sort of places pre­ferred by the cool kids, so it’s hard­ly a hip­per-than-thou atti­tude that is keep­ing the oppressed milk­shake down.
• And final­ly, if he did hap­pen to ask for a milk­shake in one of the more upmar­ket restau­rant-style cafés, then I believe the staff would be quite jus­ti­fied to respond “No, we don’t serve milk­shakes. Nei­ther do we serve lol­lipops, Rashuns or hot dogs on sticks. We’re a café, not a dairy, burg­er bar or provin­cial tea­rooms cir­ca 1983.”

But there’s clear­ly a nos­tal­gic han­ker­ing for gelati­nous con­coc­tions of arti­fi­cial flavour and indus­tri­al-strength sat­u­rat­ed fats, giv­en the num­ber of local estab­lish­ments that do serve them. So, please help out the Dom­Post’s con­fused and bemused jour­nal­ist by let­ting us know where your favourite milk­shakes are: which place has the best shake, the best val­ue and the best range?

We don’t want to alarm you, but there are crea­tures liv­ing under your bed! You can see them lurk­ing around in dark cor­ners every­where. They live in mutat­ed cup­boards and ancient sto­ries. Don’t take a breath. They are here to stay…

From the artists that brought you ROBOTS in 2009, Run Amuck Col­lec­tive is proud to present MONSTERS! For 3 weeks only, Welling­ton will have the unique oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore the won­der­ful world of mon­sters as nev­er seen before. Artists from all over New Zealand will be trans­form­ing the base­ment rooms of Mygalaxi Gallery on Dixon St into an explo­sion of deli­cious beast­ies: from sculpt­ed fan­tasies to scrap met­al crea­tures Instal­la­tions, paint­ings and sculp­tures will line the walls as each artist express­es their own cre­ative vision. Rang­ing from the com­i­cal to the fright­en­ing, each fan­ta­sy is inspired by the artist’s own love affairs and fas­ci­na­tions with mon­sters, result­ing in an eclec­tic mix­ture of mad­ness. Hand hold­ing may be required.

Run Amuck Col­lec­tive is a group of New Zealand based artists that have come togeth­er for the love of art, the­atrics and cheeky pop cul­ture. Rough­ly 20 artists strong and grow­ing, each comes to the col­lec­tive with a unique back­ground and eclec­tic style.

Last night, our fear­less edi­toress Joan­na appeared on Media7. The episode was ded­i­cat­ed to region­al media cov­er­age of may­oral cam­paigns, from North­land to South­land. Joan­na talked about the Welling­ton­ista’s may­oral can­di­date ques­tion­naire, includ­ing that one can­di­date who could­n’t fol­low direc­tions.

Jo did us proud, and skil­ful­ly man­aged to glam­orous­ly coor­di­nate with the Media 7 set. You can watch the episode in full here.

After see­ing the clips of region­al tel­ly in oth­er parts of New Zealand, it makes me wish for Welling­ton to have its own low-bud­get, slight­ly crap­py region­al tele­vi­sion chan­nel.

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And speak­ing of Welling­ton local body pol­i­tics and TVNZ 7, on Wednes­day night, Back Bench­es held a debate with the Welling­ton may­oral can­di­dates, focus­ing on trans­port and tourism. Watch the episode here.