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.