Twit­ter has informed us that Mojo Old Bank (@mojooldbank) and the Mojo on the Ter­race are hav­ing a cof­fee art throw-down at 6.30pm tonight at the Mojo loc­ated in the PWC Build­ing on the Ter­race (map here).

There is talk of beer and pizza for those want­ing to watch the action.

I think we could be up for some cof­fee porn this even­ing.….

On Wed­nes­day night, our next door neigh­bours were burgled. On Fri­day night, my house was burgled. A couple of weeks ago someone tried to climb in my win­dow while I was sleep­ing. My flat­mate’s car has been restolen from out­side our house, but ha ha, sucks to be them because the pre­vi­ous thieves had used up all the pet­rol in it. It’s times like this that I need to be reas­sured of the good things in New­town. Things like:

• The otters at the zoo!
• The haloumi at Cafe Kial­is
• The mac­a­demia & chick­en salad at Bao­bob

What are your favour­ite things about New­town right now?

Some­times it takes the eyes of a vis­it­or to shed a new light on the ordin­ary.

Fernando Ram­ierez is a Chilean pho­to­graph­er who’s been spend­ing a bit of time trav­el­ling around Wel­ling­ton buses using the Daytrip­per tick­et.

He star­ted noti­cing the oth­er pas­sen­gers on the bus, and began talk­ing to them and pho­to­graph­ing them. This lead to his Daytrip­per photo essay series.

[I] soon real­ized that Wel­ling­ton is a beau­ti­ful city not just because of the great archi­tec­ture. It’s a beau­ti­ful city because of its people. Really kind, they let a com­plete stranger approach, take pho­tos, learn about their lives and hope for the best.

Scoop has some pho­tos online and also the photo essay avail­able as a PDF. And there’s also Fernan­do’s Flickr group with the pho­tos.

f you’re going to the Montana World of Wear­ableArt and you want to make sure that you eat first, Wel­ling­ton­NZ have put togeth­er a handy list of nearby-ish res­taur­ants that offer express menus to make sure you get to the show on time. We’re par­tic­u­larly fond of Trade Kit­chen. Nat­ur­ally, even if you’re not going to the show, you can still indulge your­self with these din­ners…

While the Hook of Maui has been scrapped due to cost over­runs and prob­lems with the frickin’ laser, the Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil is still keen on the idea of a gate­way sculp­ture, and indeed the com­pet­i­tion will be re-run later his year. The pro­pos­al had some mixed responses, but now there’s a chance for a rethink.

So, what do you think? What (if any­thing) would make a suit­able mark­er for the north­ern entrance to Wel­ling­ton?

You’d have to have been liv­ing under a rock (by which I mean “not been in Civic Square for the last couple of weeks”) not to have noticed the out­break of spots all over the City Gal­lery. It’s an install­a­tion by Yayoi Kusama to pub­li­cise her Mirrored Years exhib­i­tion, which is a showpiece for the newly revamped and exten­ded gal­lery.

After nearly a year of clos­ure, the gal­lery is cel­eb­rat­ing its relaunch with the Gal­lery-a-Go-Go event in Civic Square this Sunday. While many will be most excited by the return of Nikau café (which reopened a week or so ago) and its fam­ous kedgeree, there are a whole lot of new gal­lery spaces to explore after the expan­sion. There’s the brand new Rod­er­ick and Gil­lian Deane Gal­lery of M?ori and Pacific Art, which will host Ngaah­ina Hohai­a’s Pari­haka-themed work; a new Adam Aud­it­or­i­um; and a much lar­ger Michael Hirschfeld Gal­lery. The open­ing exhib­i­tion there will be the huge install­a­tion Make Way by Regan Gentry, a Wel­ling­ton artist best known for his large-scale pub­lic sculp­tures explor­ing pub­lic space and urb­an change.

[more after the jump]

Wel­ling­ton is blessed with many and splendi­fer­ous forms of avi­fauna. Between the Sanc­tu­ary; the coun­cil’s efforts in keep­ing pest num­bers low; and the nat­ur­al attrac­tions of our loc­a­tion, Wel­ling­ton is party cent­ral for birds.

And so it is only fit­ting that the Wel­ling­tonista takes at least a passing interest in Forest & Bird’s Bird of the Year Poll, giv­en that some of our favour­ite res­id­ents are top can­did­ates!

In truth though we’ve had some dif­fi­culty decid­ing if we should endorse one par­tic­u­lar bird over anoth­er. One per­son wanted the Robin; anoth­er the Tomtit; and anoth­er sug­ges­ted a non-res­id­ent left-field con­tender, the now extinct and totally not eponym­ous of any Wel­ling­tonista alive or dead Chath­am Island Whak­tard (which is only a half-decent Face­Book cam­paign away from being the poll win­ner that can­not be admit­ted to).

It turns out though, that the per­son that writes the blog post­ing gets to decide, and thus I would urge you all to vote for the Kārearea (New Zea­l­and Fal­con).

Why? After the jump.