I’ve just got back from the WOW Awards Show, so here’s a quick­ie post with the win­ner and run­ner up.

The win­ner of the 2010 Montana Supreme World of Wear­ableArt Award was Loops by Yogesh Chaud­hary and Man­as Barve, both design young stu­dents from India. Loops is a seam­less piece made from fel­ted Aus­trali­an merino:

The run­ner up to the Supreme WOW Award was Hor­ridus Lynn Chris­ti­ansen of the USA. Inspired by the thorny dev­il liz­ard (Moloch hor­ridus), it’s made of cop­per and had a dis­tinct clat­ter as the mod­el moved in it:

A full report on the WOW exper­i­ence will come soon, includ­ing the bit where Jo forced me to touch Te Radar’s lovely soft curly hair.

I was out with my Dad and my daugh­ter today and needed to find lunch for three gen­er­a­tions of Judds in the Cuba St area. I thought we’d wander down the Left Bank to get some empanadas from Buenos Aires. Des­pite the win­dow say­ing that they are open 12–2 on Fri­days, Buenos Aires was decidedly shut. So we went next door to Viva Mex­ico instead.

It was a sur­prise when we walked in to see that the place was com­pletely redec­or­ated. It’s now a revolu­cion-themed taquer­ia. I talked to the new own­er and he’s a sol­id Zapatista – that stuff’s not just hip brand­ing.

We were quickly seated and giv­en menus. The choices are pretty basic: enchil­a­das, tacos, or eggs with a vari­ety of fillings and sauces. I watched oth­er tables’ food go out and it looked good. Like oth­er cuisines that prize homo­gen­ous tex­tures and com­plex mix­tures, Mex­ic­an food can be danger of look­ing like cafet­er­ia slop, so it was good to have nice plat­ing.

I had not even begun to won­der where our order was when the pro­pri­et­or apo­lo­gised for the wait and gave us a little dish of fried cheese-stuffed jalapeños to keep us going. They were good enough that I would have been happy to be kept wait­ing longer as long as the apo­logy food kept com­ing. Our orders came out shortly after­wards and they were damned tasty. Of note was my hue­vos machaca, eggs scrambled with shred­ded beef and a good dose of hot pep­pers.

The food, the polit­ics and the price are all more than good enough for a humble taquer­ia and we left well sat­is­fied. I know many people liked the old regime at Viva Mex­ico – I am happy to report that the new regime is more than up to the job ¡Viva Viva Mex­ico!

Fol­low-up ques­tion: where do read­ers rate for Mex­ic­an food in this town?

WOW sea­son kicks off today, as the city turns into the World of Wear­ableArt.

The Montana World of Wear­ableArt shows kick off at TSB Arena tonight, with the awards show on Fri­day night. The Wel­ling­tonista Will be there to report on the 2010 win­ners and gen­er­al goings-on.

Most of the shows are sold out, but there are still a few $50 “restric­ted view” tick­ets left to most shows – a good option if you’ve always wanted to exper­i­ence the extra­vag­ant WOW show.

But as always, there are oth­er ways of exper­i­en­cing the magic of WOW.

WoW design­er Susan Holmes has a num­ber of her pre­vi­ous entries on dis­play at vari­ous loc­a­tions around the city, inclid­ing the Museum Hotel, TSB Arena and the air­port.

Vari­ous Wel­ling­ton retail­ers are get­ting crafty with their own ver­sion of Wear­ableArt on dis­play, com­plete with good­ie bags and oth­er prizes for lucky shop­pers.

And com­ing up on Sunday 3 Octo­ber at Te Papa is Get Set Cre­ate, a one-hour chal­lenge for WOW design­ers to come up with a cre­ation.

So strap on your bizarre bra and get down with the WOW.

Update: MyGalaxi will also be open on Sunday 26 Septem­ber.

You know how we had a blue moon this New Year’s Eve, right?  And how that is kind of a freak occur­rence when you think about it, right?

Well, this Sat­urday is the blue moon of mar­kets. There are two only once-a-mon­thers and one super-spe­cial, souped-up weekly mar­ket being held in our fair city.  It won’t mat­ter if the skies ain’t blue because they are all held indoors (very sens­ible).

First up, the Frank Kitts Under­ground Mar­kets are hold­ing a spe­cial Indie Fash­ion and Jew­ellery themed mar­ket in the Wilsons car­park­ing build­ing under Frank Kitts Park on the water­front.  This mar­ket has been put­ting in the hard yards over winter, hock­ing their wares weekly and build­ing up a ded­ic­ated fol­low­ing.  Their reg­u­lar stall­hold­ers will be there plus a range of spe­cial guests.  Check out their latest news­let­ter for details.

Next up is the fourth out­ing of Mygalaxi Art Mar­kets based in the base­ment of 39 Dix­on Street.  These mar­kets are keep­ing it art­house under the firm lead­er­ship of Arlo Edwards (best Art Exper­i­ence don’t you know) and the bene­vol­ent pat­ron­age of James Gil­bert at Pho­to­space who is the wind beneath a few cre­at­ive wings.  Long live the pat­ron, we say!

The newly launched New Zea­l­and Fash­ion Museum aims to pre­serve and cel­eb­rate New Zea­l­and’ fash­ion his­tory.

It does­n’t have a phys­ic­al loc­a­tion, instead dis­play­ing exhib­i­tions in pop-up loc­a­tions.

Its first exhib­i­tion is Look­ing Ter­rif­ic – the Story of El Jay, look­ing at the career of fash­ion design­er Gus Fish­er and his label El Jay.

El Jay held the exclus­ive New Zea­l­and licence for Chris­ti­an Dior design­ers, bring­ing eleg­ant frocks to New Zea­l­and women want­ing some Parisi­an chic.

The exhib­i­tion is on dis­play at Kirkal­die and Stains, which aptly enough was one of El Jay’s stock­ists back in the day.

The Look­ing Ter­rif­ic col­lec­tion spans 40 years of El Jay, from the ’40s to the ’80s, with all gar­ments bor­rowed from private col­lec­tions – often the ori­gin­al own­er.

The exhib­i­tion runs until 3 Octo­ber, and can be viewed inside (and out­side) Kirks on Lamb­ton Quay.

OO lucky hand­made shop­pers, the much loved and short lived Tinakori Road pop-up shop has popped up again, but this time in a dif­fer­ent loc­a­tion.

With a  mix of design­ers in for a day and anoth­er mix in for a week and some design­ers in for the whole time, it’s one of those places that’s worth a weekly vis­it.

You can find the Pop-Up Design Store at 24 Col­lege street from now till Octo­ber 17th.

The Masked Bar­fly has been busy in the last little while soak­ing up the scene and hanging around the hors d’oeuvres in our buzzy little town.  As could be expec­ted the Masked Bar­fly favours fecund environs where one can imbibe a good com­post of booze, blood and guts, gos­sip and cul­ture.
 
 Some bul­lets of buzz after the jump:

This week in Wel­ling­ton you could be geek­ing out, smelling the flowers or listen­ing to some sweet, sweet music to cel­eb­rate the start of Spring.  We have two girlie gigs to tempt you with this week fea­tur­ing three sets of ladies that are def­in­itely in bloom.

Claire Terry of Madame Fancy Pants fame is per­form­ing with City Oh Sigh at Mighty Mighty from 8.30pm this Wed­nes­day.  This lady has been stead­ily adding strings to her bow and treas­ures to her jew­ellery box, not to men­tion grow­ing a young’ in with her spare time.
She will be there with her pipes, her gui­tar and her charms. 
Always a pleas­ure.

City Oh Sigh fea­tures the lovely Kate (cello, vocals) Sarah (keys) and Cath­er­ine (trum­pet, gui­tar, vocals) bring­ing the music­al­ity and the sweet, sweet har­mon­ies.  These ladies are tight and truly com­mit­ted to the music­al arts.  You can see them hot on Claire’s heels from 9.30pm. 

Details on the invite here. ($5 on the door).

Lisa Tom­lins is doing it for her­self on Sunday, front and centre as part of the Sound­stage sea­son at Down­stage with back­ing from Twin­set.  These Sound­stage events are one-offs that allow you to go to the gig and focus on the music in a theatre envir­on­ment, a real treat for the per­former and the audi­ence.  Lisa is a gen­er­ous artist who is com­ing into her diva­li­cious own after lend­ing her tal­ents to oth­ers and put­ting in the hard yards learn­ing her craft.  Worth. Every. Damn. Cent.

WCC Watch is a loc­al web­site that does what it says on the tin.

They drew our atten­tion with some kind words a few days ago.

If you haven’t voted yet, they seem like an ideal source for addi­tion­al read­ing to inform your decision. Their recent archives have a lot of good mater­i­al on the can­did­ates.

If you have voted, we expect they’ll be doing a good job post-elec­tion in mon­it­or­ing what those naughty coun­cil­lors get up to.