So today we asked on Twit­ter for peo­ple to tell us what’s going to be open and what’s going to be closed over East­er. This is our list so far, please feel free to add more in the com­ments. 

• Leu­ven is “open every day over East­er”. They get away with it because they are a restau­rant.
• The Malt­house is open Sat­ur­day and Mon­day and sur­charge free all the way. They’ll be clos­ing at mid­night on Thurs­day and the Sat­ur­day, how­ev­er. 
• Read­ings Cin­e­ma will be open. We kind of fig­ured that, but since they took the time to reply, we thought you should know. 
• The South­ern Cross will be open “for din­ing only” all week­end. Which means they will put cut­lery on the tables and you can drink as usu­al. 

Despite my friv­o­lous title, it seems that most peo­ple loved the Kusama instal­la­tion “Dots for Love and Peace”, and are sad to see it removed, dot by colour­ful dot, from the front of the City Gallery today.

The Gallery have been help­ful­ly answer­ing ques­tions on Twit­ter, and unfor­tu­nate­ly for sou­venir hunters that includes the news that the dots will be “very care­ful­ly dis­posed of”. On the plus side, the Hotere/Culbert instal­la­tion Fault will be soon be mak­ing a glow­ing return.

…well the stage itself will be lit up like a Christ­mas tree but the bar and exte­ri­ors will be lit by can­dles for Earth Hour.

 Sat­ur­day is the clos­ing night for Pick of the Fringe at Down­stage, if the whirl of Fringe and the New Zealand Inter­na­tion­al Arts Fes­ti­val has passed you by this year you can still catch two out­stand­ing shows at Down­stage. 

The­atre is an expe­ri­ence to be shared and both shows on offer are real­ly acces­si­ble as well as being ‘Fringe’, so you could take you sis­ter or your boyfriend or your work col­league.  You can see both shows for $40 which is very rea­son­able.

back/words is a piece of doc­u­men­tary the­atre with per­for­mances that focus on being com­plete­ly faith­ful to the source of the sto­ry.  The source being in this case, filmed inter­views with peo­ple that have been loose­ly framed around impor­tant ‘firsts’.  Out of hours and hours of footage they have shaped a the­atre length show full of humor and emo­tion.

 Those clever folks at Clemenger have a nifty project on the go called Watch This Wall. They’ve cre­at­ed a huge paint-by-num­bers, and are invit­ing friends and clients (includ­ing Vince Mar­tin, Vince!) to colour it in. All pro­ceeds are being donat­ed to the Welling­ton Sculp­ture Trust, when it is even­tu­al­ly fin­ished and auc­tioned on Trade Me.

This Sun­day 28 March there is an inter­na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tion of the beau­ti­ful game going on at Mar­tin Luck­ie Park, Berham­pore 9am — 5pm.

Cul­ture Kicks is a mul­ti eth­nic foot­ball fes­ti­val with five-a-side teams from Welling­ton rep­re­sent­ing coun­tries from around the world bat­tling it out on the pitch for a chance to take home the 2010 tro­phy.

There will be Columbian dancers, African drum­ming, music from Matiu Te Huki and Lion dancers from the Chi­nese Sports and Cul­tur­al Cen­tre.

The day kicks off with Bel­la Kalo­lo singing the New Zealand Nation­al anthem (the woman has some pipes!) and prize giv­ing will be at 3.45pm.

With around 40 teams rep­re­sent­ing over 20 coun­tries you don’t have to pick just one team to sup­port.  A few team names to give you the flavour of the day: Havana Hus­tlers, Tar­tan Army, Uni­ty Arabs, Soma­li Eagles, Los Deca­dentes, Kore­an White Angels, West African Kiwis. 

There will be healthy food­stuffs on offer from the Hari Krish­nas, so all you need are your chants and some sun­block (well let’s face it, you should prob­a­bly bring a rain­coat too, this is Welling­ton after all). 

So, right now there’s a whole lot of real­ly good stuff being exhib­it­ed in Welling­ton’s gal­leries.

City Gallery

After the huge­ly suc­cess­ful Yay­oi Kusama exhi­bi­tion turned the gallery into a mag­i­cal won­der­land, the main gallery space has now been giv­en over to three also won­der­ful artists.

More after the jump. 

I’m more like­ly to write about nightlife than wildlife, but I do like urban obser­va­tions in gen­er­al, so Project Noah caught my eye. It’s a web­site and shiny new free iPhone app that lets peo­ple track, record and find out about the species in their envi­ron­ment.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, I’ve most­ly record­ed very urban species (that’s not quite what Baude­laire meant by “the botanist of the pave­ment”), but it could be very use­ful for map­ping rare plants, spi­ders, inva­sive species or even neigh­bour­hood cats, if you were so inclined. It’s all pret­ty new in this neck of the woods, so there’s only my light­ly-informed spot­tings of scrap­py road­side cab­bage trees and fright­ened lit­tle pen­guins to look at, but if more Welling­to­ni­ans get involved it could become a real­ly use­ful guide to local flo­ra and fau­na.