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.