A few weeks ago we wrote about the pro­posed city-wide ban on “drink­ing and car­ry­ing liquor in pub­lic places, 24 hours a day, sev­en days a week.” We don’t like to harp on this issue, but the nex­us of booze, urb­an life and social justice is cat­nip to the hard-drink­ing city-liv­ing caring folk here at the Wel­ling­tonista.

Mark your cal­en­dars for Tues­day the 30th of March – con­sulta­tion will start then.

PS: when did we all adopt the Amer­ic­an­ism “liquor?”

 This list was pub­lished in abbre­vi­ated form in the first issue of Fish­Head, which is hav­ing its launch party tonight. Here it is in all its smoking-pro­mot­ing, Ori­ent­al Bay-enra­ging glory…

1. Wander aim­lessly around the Cuba Quarter: win­dow-shop, have cof­fee, sit in the Mall & people-watch, draw or pho­to­graph the build­ings.

2. Go to the water­front on a sunny day: Put your polar­oid sunglasses on, then get some­thing nice in a cone from Kaf­fee Eis on the water­front, and go spot­ting eagle rays in the Frank Kitts park lagoon. Don’t for­get to point them out to swim­mers and people in small ves­sels.

3. Swim on the South Coast: Ori­ent­al Bay is for pussies. Any of the beaches near Seatoun are where it’s at, or if you’re hard enough, brave the surf and the cold at Lyall Bay.

4. Go bush, then go posh: Zeal­and­i­a’s all very well, but take the #14 bus to Otari/Wilton Bush for free nat­ive bush­ery, water­falls, tui and an 800-year-old rimu. At night, take the #14 in the oth­er dir­ec­tion to peek into all the expens­ive real estate along Ori­ent­al Parade and Roseneath where the res­id­ents obli­gingly leave all their lights on, and ima­gine what it would be like to be rich.

5. Hide out: Go to almost any bar that’s tucked away upstairs, in a base­ment or down an alley; Hooch, Hawthorn, Lib­rary, Good Luck, Watusi, Mighty Mighty are all gems.

6. Get cul­tured: Te Papa and the City Gal­lery are obvi­ous choices, but add vis­its to Manky Chops, the Adam Art Gal­lery and Museum of Wel­ling­ton City and Sea and you’ll feel much more well-roun­ded (and sore-footed).

7. To mar­ket, to mar­ket: Head to Wait­angi Park on Sundays for the City Market/Harbourside Mar­ket combo, plus fresh fish when the boat pull up to the dock.

You know there’s that cat you see on the way to the bus stop – the one that rolls around on the foot­path and lets you tickle his belly, and you’ve nick­named him Cap­tain Choice­pants? Well, that’s a neigh­bour­hood cat.

Inspired by the Neigh­bour Cats zines, Petra Jane has cre­ated a pub­lic Google map of neigh­bour­hood cats around Wel­ling­ton and bey­ond.

So if there’s a furry rogue in your ‘hood, add it to the map!

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UPDATE: The Neigh­bour­hood Cats map has been shut down. Could this be to foil poten­tial cat­nap­pers? Oh well – you’ll just have to cre­ate a map in your mind.

Any­one who has been down to the water­front this week would have seen a large rusty barge parked in the lagoon and a bunch of scaf­fold­ing and mar­quees going up.  You may well be won­der­ing,  “what the hell is all of this in aid of?”

Well gentle read­er, today for one day only, the area around the lagoon and Frank Kitts Park is being trans­formed into a slice of Asia (well about 10 or so slices of Asia) for the South­east Asi­an Night Mar­ket.  The mar­ket opens with a can­non blast at 4pm and fin­ishes up at 10pm.

This is only the second time the mar­ket has been held in Welly, and the big dif­fer­ence is this time they are cook­ing with gas, out­side, live and dir­ect.  Last time it was held in the TSB arena and lines snaked across Queens Wharf for hours so pre­pare your­self for Cuba Car­ni­val style crush.  Get in amonst the sights, sounds, smells and not for­get­ting for a second, the FLAVOURS of a real deal night mar­ket.  Yes, I did just use caps.  I know that is bad man­ners but I have seen the menus on offer and I have to say both “whaaa?” and “nom” in equal meas­ure, which is exactly as it should be.

Pro­gramme details and high­lights after the jump:

 Wel­ling­ton has a new magazine called Fish­Head and the first issue is out today. From their press release:

Fish­Head magazine will cov­er the full spec­trum of life in Wel­ling­ton includ­ing polit­ics, opin­ion, wine, food, fash­ion, loc­al issues, film, books, art, theatre, music and more.

I have yet to get my hands on a copy of it because I am wait­ing for the launch party next week, but I can tell you that at least two of the art­icles are awe­some, because I wrote them – a para­graph on why I love Wel­ling­ton, and the Wel­ling­tonista’s Top Ten Things To Do in Wel­ling­ton – albeit in edited form so as not to enrage the cit­izens of Ori­ent­al Bay.

I don’t think that Wel­ling­ton has ever had its own prop­er magazine (remem­ber UNO? hahaha!), so I, for one, wel­come the new pub­lic­a­tion.

Autumn is upon us, and sea­sons chan­ging means only one thing in the Wel­ling­ton Craft World. It’s Knack time.

Knack time being this sat­urday from 9.30am till 2.30pm at Ber­ham­pore School.

Knack is a glor­i­ous sea­son­al mar­ket which also doubles as a school fun­draiser. So you get to buy hand­made from the artist which is grand and then know that you are also help­ing out a school. It’s like double doing good, with shop­ping .

Knack­’s full of lovely hand­made things, and is often where some of Wel­ling­ton’s newests crafters make their selling debut, so it’s a great mar­ket for those of you want­ing to be ahead of the trends.

There’s loads of park­ing at the school or catch the bus and amble up the hill.

When the New Zea­l­and crick­et team (note not BLACKCAPS™) first toured South Africa in 1953 they had nev­er won a Test Match and were giv­en no show against a ruth­less South Africa, on pitches tailored to sup­port their fast, mean quick bowl­ers.

The crick­et was tough, and vic­tory was ulti­mately bey­ond New Zeal­and’s grasp, but it was­n’t the crick­et that ensured that the series became a NZ sport­ing legend. The 1953 Second (Christ­mas Day) Test is fam­ous for the pro­foundly mov­ing story of one play­er, Kiwi fast bowl­er Bob Blair, and his story has been brought to the stage by tal­en­ted act­or Jonny Brugh (Sug­ar & Spice) and it’s play­ing now at BATS.

Dur­ing the rest day of the Test, Blair got the news that his fiancée Nerissa Love had been killed along with 150 oth­ers in the Tangi­wai Rail Dis­aster. When play resumed on Box­ing Day nobody expec­ted Blair to play any fur­ther part in the game. Without giv­ing too much away, the rest (as they say) is his­tory.

Brugh’s play is a mov­ing and beau­ti­fully acted treat­ment of the story. He plays dozens of parts (Blair & Love; crick­eters Rabone, Reid, Sutcliffe, etc; Prime Min­is­ter Sid Hol­land) and imbues them all with fine detail and a sweet com­ic sens­ib­il­ity. He brings, not just the game to life, but the era – a dif­fer­ent age.

Noth­ing about signs here, I prom­ise, except that a tweet I saw after the storm wished that the sign had been up so that we’d have alpha­bet soup in the har­bour right now. But in some bul­let points that you might be able to use: 

• Con­grat­u­la­tions to Ange whose Four Sea­sons Cock­tail has won her a double pass to the 42Below Cock­tail World Cup. Can you please email us your address so I can send that out to you, Ange? And the rest of you can buy tick­ets for your­self online or at the Hawthorn Lounge. The Old Museum Build­ing is a lovely ven­ue and cock­tails are always a good time. 
• Speak­ing of alco­hol-related events, Cel­lar-Vate are start­ing up their wine­maker din­ners for the year with Coney Wines on March 31. Tick­ets are $45 and are avail­able in store, or you can book on the phone. Coney make deli­cious wines, and their tast­ing notes are kind of hil­ari­ous, so it should be a good night. 
• Our cous­ins in the north, The Auck­land­ista are mak­ing a go of it again, so if you had deleted it from your book­marks due to inactiv­ity, you might want to resub­scribe. 
• We set up a form­s­pring account so y’all could ask us anonym­ous ques­tions, and while it was easy to reply if we get paid by any of the bars we men­tion (we’re not. Full dis­clos­ure though: occa­sion­ally we get treated extra nice, but only as reg­u­lars are, rather than because we wield the almighty power of teh blo­go­sphere) it’s much harder to advise on how could someone find a book­club to join. Do you guys have any answers? 

The Wel­ly­wood sign madness/awesomeness con­tin­ues!

Auck­lander Edward from has cre­ated the Wel­ly­wood Sign Gen­er­at­or.

This is a crop of my attempt, where I have added a help­ful “lol” to explain that the sign is a “send-up” and a “tongue-in-cheek play” on the Hol­ly­wood sign.