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.