Over the com­ing week­end, the town hall will echo with the sound of New Zeal­anders com­pet­ing furi­ously against Aus­trali­ans and Amer­ic­ans to build a web­site for char­ity in 24 hours. There’s more inform­a­tion about how you can sup­port your chosen team here, but if you’re not into com­pet­i­tion, per­haps you’re into THE SUPERNATURAL?

At the same time as FullCode Press is hap­pen­ing, there’s also going to be a Full Code Ghost invest­ig­a­tion going on at the Town Hall. It’s a grand old build­ing (and also the sub­ject of my first ever Wel­ling­tonista post back in 2005!), so they’re bound to find some­thing. Per­haps there might even be ghosts in the lib­rary next door…

King Kapisi was spot­ted around Welly town today with a laptop of new tracks.  He is actu­ally a Wel­ling­to­ni­an, who knew?  Take that Auck­land and Sam­oa, we will fight you for him if we have to.

Any­way here is a clip of Kapisi show­ing some loc­al favour.

 Those of you with an interest in tex­tiles, his­tory and dress­ing up might be veeeeeeeeeerry inter­ested in an upcom­ing lec­ture to be held at St. Andrew’s on the Ter­race at 2.30pm on Sat­urday June 19. 

Join the Dream­stress and the Wel­ling­ton His­tor­ic­al Cos­tume Soci­ety for a fun­drais­ing fash­ion his­tory extra­vag­anza: From the Streets of Pom­peii to the Salons of Par­is – The Clas­sic­al influ­ence on West­ern Fash­ion.

Tex­tile and fash­ion his­tor­i­an Leimomi Oakes will present a enter­tain­ing and inform­at­ive talk on the way Greek and Roman art and fash­ion have influ­enced West­ern fash­ion from the 18th cen­tury to the 20th. The talk will be illus­trated by 10 mod­els in his­tor­ic­ally accur­ate recre­ations of peri­od attire – from a 1770s’ robe a la fran­caise to a 1920s’ flap­per dress.

The talk will be fas­cin­at­ing, and the frocks will be fab­ulous – it should be an event to remem­ber! Pro­ceeds to bene­fit the Wel­ling­ton Free Ambu­lance. Tick­ets are $15 waged, $10 unwaged. Tick­ets will be avail­able at the door, or can be pur­chased in advance by email­ing thedreamstress@yahoo.com.

Eric Fish­er has been geo­map­ping Flickr pho­tos of cit­ies around the world. He tracks the loc­a­tions of pho­tos taken by loc­als (blue) and tour­ist­s/out-of-town­ers (red). This is what Wel­ling­ton looks like:

There are notice­able tour­ist areas around Te Papa, Mt Vic­tor­ia lookout and Par­lia­ment. Tour­ists and loc­als are both dom­in­ant along Cour­tenay Place, Cuba Street, Lamb­ton Quay and the water­front. Aro Val­ley gets a loc­als-only burst of blue, as do Te Aro streets off the golden mile.

The New York ver­sion of this has been touted as a way for loc­als to avoid tour­ists, but the way Wel­ling­ton’s com­pact geo­graphy works, there’s really nowhere to run. And besides, our tour­ists are quite nice.

Click though for a look at the big­ger Wel­ling­ton photo, and if you have any obser­va­tions (or cor­rec­tions of my notes!), share them here.

  Hey you, Vic stu­dent! Should­n’t you be busy study­ing instead of read­ing blogs? Well fine, if you’re look­ing for ways to occupy your brain, Vic Books has a sug­ges­tion for you

Vicbooks is run­ning a duo of writ­ing com­pet­i­tions, one for Poetry and the oth­er for Short Stor­ies. We want to see what Vic­tor­ia under­gradu­ate stu­dents are cap­able of when they delve into poetry instead of eco­nom­ics, dip into fic­tion rather than his­tory (wait… was that irony?) and draw fully on their tal­ents and ima­gin­a­tion.

The selec­ted win­ner in each cat­egory will receive over $200 in Book Tokens, plus a pile of selec­ted books from our excel­lent stock. The win­ners will also be pub­lished in the stu­dent paper Sali­ent, on the vicbooks web­site and on our blog. There are no entry fees and all the details are on our web­site.

Of course, if you’re not a Vic under­grad, you can always tell us a story instead. Have at it in our com­ments sec­tion. 

Tonight saw the open­ing of the Roy­al New Zea­l­and Bal­let’s Meridi­en sea­son of Car­men.

Set in the met­ro­pol­is of mod­ern-day Rio de Janeiro, Car­men works in a cigar­ette fact­ory by day and hangs out with a gang of low-life crim­in­als by night. When José makes the mis­take of fall­ing in love with Car­men, things spir­al out of con­trol. As José’s world falls apart, Carmen’s desire to live life on her terms sets a course that can only lead to dis­aster.

The bal­let is based on the opera by Biz­et (Wiki­pe­dia con­tains some ser­i­ous spoil­ers, of course), but this ain’t your grand­pappy’s bal­let. Gang­sters tote cell­phones, a bull­fight­er has become a rock­star, the seedy bar has soc­cer on its TV. The res­ult is a steamy piece of theatre that crackles with sexu­al­ity, while still being crammed full of play­ful humour and heated ten­sion.

I’m not a dance expert, but I’d say that this pro­duc­tion uses a lot of ele­ments of mod­ern dance as opp­posed to straight bal­let. There is a lot more swag­ger from the guys in their leath­er jack­ets. Car­men shakes her ass in a pair of tight jeans, while in her sparkly gown and heels she comes across like Cyd Charisse, all legs and sex.

And let’s talk about the set design! Harsh chain­link fences at the cigar­ette fact­ory are incor­por­ated into the cho­reo­graphy, neon signs light up the bar, and an iron bed is a stage for some incred­ible fore­play. The sets all seem very stripped back and simple, but it’s obvi­ous how much thought has gone into them. The Vec­tor Wel­ling­ton Orches­tra play along­side the action on the stage, and seem to have a lot of fun with the bugle-heavy score.

The Free Store has been open at 38 Ghuznee Street for 11 days now and word has cer­tainly got out that there is such a thing as a free lunch.  The Free Store is due to shut up shop on Sat­urday this week so if you want to take or give to the pro­ject you have 5 more days.

There are a lot of ideas packed into this shop.  Part art­work, part social exper­i­ment the Free Store is part two of the Let­ting Space series that began with Pop­u­lar Arche­ology: A Sound Archive.  One of the stated inten­tions of the pro­ject is to:

high­light the under­ground ‘free eco­nomy’ that redis­trib­utes pro­duce and food around Wel­ling­ton, [Kim Paton] is cur­rently mak­ing a call to sellers of fresh pro­duce, as well as to to cafes and super­mar­kets for their excess stock.

The logos of some of the par­ti­cip­at­ing busi­nesses grace the chalk­board.

Stock comes in at vari­able times, feast or fam­ine if you will.  But the obser­v­ant and dare we say the needy, are dis­cov­er­ing what time dis­carded cafe food is due to arrive and loiter­ing ready to des­cend.  This makes for a chal­len­ging pro­ject for those volun­teers who are staff­ing the shop.  I can ima­gine they are exper­i­en­cing the busi­ness end of what must be a nor­mal day for Down­town City Mis­sion staff, although pos­sibly with more hip­sters.