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.