Yes­ter­day twit­ter was all atwit­ter try­ing to fig­ure out where all the smoke in Welling­ton was com­ing from, before some­one fig­ured out that it was a fire in Titahi Bay. What’s been inter­est­ing today has been the amaz­ing col­lec­tions of pho­tos of the fire on Flickr — not just in our side­bar or this great shot by Welling­ton­ista friend Lisa Fur, but also this curat­ed flickr gallery. Nice work, flick­ri­nos!

We’d been won­der­ing for a while where our oth­er favourite McKen­zie broth­er has been at because we haven’t seen him behind the bar at Hooch or Hawthorn for ages, but of course we kept for­get­ting to ask, because nat­u­ral­ly we were too busy ask­ing for anoth­er drink.

Well, it turns out that Justin has been work­ing as 42Below’s vod­ka pro­fes­sor (we hope this means he gets a cap and gown) and he’s been rather busy today with the region­al finals of the Cock­tail World Cup. The three bar­tenders who’ll be rep­re­sent­ing New Zealand will be Auckland’s James Gog­gin from Rack­et and our own Josh Craw­ford from Hooch and Calum Chad­wick from the Mat­ter­horn.

As usu­al, there’s all kinds of fun and games in Queen­stown around the event, but since we’re the Welling­tonista prob­a­bly the bit that you’re inter­est­ed in is that the grand finale is hap­pen­ing in Welling­ton on March 27, fea­tur­ing the world’s best bar­tenders and (I’m going to quote the press release here) “New Zealand’s best rock group ‘Mid­night Youth’ ”, and prob­a­bly quite a few splash­es of vod­ka as well. And we’ve got a dou­ble pass to give away to it!

Along with the invit­ed VIPS, 42BELOW is offer­ing a select num­ber of peo­ple the chance to attend the Grand Final Shake off as vod­ka groupies. Tick­ets are being sold for $42, which includes four cock­tails, food and enter­tain­ment so get in quick for a chance to par­ty with New Zealand’s best music and with the world’s best bar­tenders.

The coun­cil is going to draft a by-law to ban drink­ing in pub­lic places.

But don’t wor­ry, respectable cit­i­zens! It’s not aimed at you! It’s aimed at pesky booz­ers.

Extend­ing the liquor ban would mean we could deal with prob­lems in the sub­urbs. It would­n’t be about stop­ping peo­ple hav­ing a qui­et beer or a glass of wine on the beach or in the park — and the Police are already on the record as say­ing they would use dis­cre­tion.

Anoth­er “x-ing while brown” offence in the mak­ing.

They break bot­tles, yell and swear, vom­it and cre­ate chaos — but there’s noth­ing the Police can real­ly do at the moment about the drink­ing of alco­hol — which is gen­er­al­ly the cause of the prob­lems.

This is a puz­zler. If peo­ple are behav­ing bad­ly, that’s dis­or­der­ly behav­iour. If they’re not, who cares whether they’re drink­ing?

If only there were some­where for hard­core street drinkers to go. Mean­while, wast­ing police time on herd­ing them around the city is appar­ent­ly the only way out.

There’s a Face­book group in oppo­si­tion. Here’s hop­ing that’s just a start.

Petone Fair is this Sat­ur­day (20th Feb­ru­ary) 10am-4pm.  Jack­son Street is closed for the fair from Cuba to Vic­to­ria Street.

Word on the (Jack­son) street is that there are gen­uine Low­er Hutt made gin­ger­nuts for sale with a cup­pa at the Rotary tent.

If the gin­ger­nut does­n’t fill the gap­ing void in your tum­my, the Welling­ton­ista rec­om­mend grab­bing a deli­cious Rush Munro ice­cream and New Zealand made arti­san cheese from Cul­tured, under the clock tow­er. 

There are many great eth­nic food stalls, and the samosas from out­side Cur­ry Heav­en are bril­liant. Go Bang is a Welling­ton­ista favourite for a sit down feed and a cof­fee, and if you’re stick­ing around until evening, Gus­to Bistro is a great choice.

Where are your favourite Petone food spots?

Te Papa’s fore­court may look as if it’s under attack by giant glit­tery space balls, but it’s actu­al­ly the start of a two-year kinet­ic sculp­ture instal­la­tion called “The Mimet­ic Broth­er­hood”, by Peter Trevelyan.

There’s not much kine­sis evi­dent at the moment, but once the instal­la­tion is com­plete, expect the plinth-eat­ing mon­sters to start pul­sat­ing in their full hydraulic glo­ry.

Hey guys.

Below is the line up of Ori­en­ta­tion events this year, with thanks to The Vic­to­ria Uni­ver­si­ty of Welling­ton Stu­dents Asso­ci­a­tion and the VBC88.3FM. Not just for stu­dents, tick­ets are also avail­able to the gen­er­al pub­lic. (For full dis­clo­sure: I had a hand in this years line up. I hope you like it!)

VUWSA 2010 ORIENTATION LINE UP

STEVE WRIGLEY, BEN HURLEY AND JAMIE BOWEN
Union Hall
Tues­day March 2
Stu­dents $10/ Pub­lic $15 + book­ing fee
6PM

THE CHILLS
With sup­port from SECRET KNIVES and JOE BLOSSOM
Stu­dents $20 Pub­lic $30 + book­ing fee
Tues­day March 2
San Fran­cis­co Bath House
8pm
*Tick­ets for this show also avail­able at undertheradar.co.nz

Antho­ny McCall Draw­ing with Light
Late night at the gallery w/ Kaza­am­BLAM!!
Adam Art Gallery
Wednes­day 3 March
FREE ENTRY
OPEN UNTIL 9PM

HAWNAY TROOF
With sup­port from SETS and 47 DIAMANTES
Wednes­day March 3 2010
Mighty Mighty
Stu­dents $10/ Pub­lic $15 + book­ing fee
9PM
*Tick­ets for this show also avail­able at undertheradar.co.nz

THE GREAT DEBATE
Thurs­day MARCH 4
UNION HALL
$5 DEBATING SOCIETY $10 STUDENTS + book­ing fee
6PM

ALL AGES SHOW with STREET CHANT + NEVERNUDES
Fri­day March 5 2010
THE MOUNT STREET BAR — CAMPUS
FREE ENTRY
5:30PM

Some­one (or some­ones) has got their out­door knit on at Kil­birnie Park. Hur­ray for loves! I won­der what the coun­cil’s take on this kind of graf­fi­ti is…

Pasi­fi­ka was can­celled this morn­ing due to high winds mak­ing it unsafe for per­fomers and stall hold­ers.  Safe­ty first eh.

So no Cindy of Samoa or Yan­dall Sis­ters and tasty food for us.

Well actu­al­ly, I think you will find that if you head to a cer­tain Pasif­ic Island Com­mu­ni­ty Church in New­town you will find the food and the odd act has relo­cat­ed (rumor has it that the Yan­dall Sis­ters are keen to belt out a few tunes).

A group of stall hold­ers from the Cook Islands have flown over espe­cial­ly so if any­one knows of some­where they can sell their wares tomor­row let us know in the com­ments.  They would real­ly appre­ci­ate it.