Intersection of Impending Death

So, the John St/Riddiford St/Adelaide Rd inter­sec­tion has under­gone a bit of a lights phas­ing tweak. It took this par­tic­u­lar Welling­ton­ista by sur­prise when, last week, I con­fi­dent­ly start­ed to cross John St as the lights turned to red, only to dis­cov­er that instead of my lit­tle green man, I was now the tar­get for traf­fic com­ing down from Ade­laide Rd.

There’s been some good that’s come from the change — the most obvi­ous one being that pedes­tri­ans cross­ing John St (with the green man, that is), are no longer in dan­ger of being skit­tled by right-turn­ing traf­fic from Ade­laide Rd head­ing up John St (it was a com­mon trick for the first one or two cars in that queue to dive across the inter­sec­tion as soon as the lights turned green).

On the oth­er hand, pedes­tri­ans cross­ing at the same place now have to con­tend with traf­fic run the orange (or, even the red!) from Rid­di­ford St and head­ing up John St. Every sin­gle morn­ing I’ve had to cross at that point, cars have sailed through the inter­sec­tion a good few sec­onds after the green man has gone off. It’s par­tic­u­lar­ly bad if you’re cross­ing south-to-north, as the traf­fic is com­ing from behind you, out of your line of sight. It won’t be long before some­one gets knocked over: mark my words!

How’s it work­ing out for you? Dri­vers — any thoughts?

Free day at Te Papa — today!

Alert read­er Andy writes to inform us that it is free day Te Papa! (Today being Thu 7 March May).

…so if you want to go see the Mon­et exhi­bi­tion you can do so with­out pay­ing $15 entry. Te Papa is open until 9pm tonight.

Be warned though that there will prob­a­bly be crowds.

Thanks Andy!

Update: As Andy points out in the com­ments, the offer is only valid for Welling­ton res­i­dents, so bring along some proof that you live local­ly. Because we all know what hap­pens if you’re not local…

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOGAAlHzF4o]

It’s funny season in the City

It’s Com­e­dy fes­ti­val time in the Cap­i­tal.

Per­son­al­ly I think the tim­ing is always quite impec­ca­ble as win­ter has just hit and with it comes the win­ter blues. There are loads of amaz­ing local acts and also some bril­liant inter­na­tion­als.

Now nor­mal­ly the inter­na­tion­al acts like to include a lit­tle local con­tent to make the crowd love them more. Often it’s lim­it­ed to jokes about wind, jaf­fas and Aus­tralians. Sam­my J is clear­ly the excep­tion to the rule, and to prove it he’s even been mak­ing some extrem­ly cute videos.

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQG1pRpTF‑c]

You can catch him at Down­stage from tonight.

My hot local tip is the The Come­di­ettes.  Emma, Jim and Sarah were amaz­ing at the fringe fes­ti­val with their stand up show. Sarah’s been win­ning a few com­e­dy com­pe­ti­tions late­ly, so you now she’s going to bring the gig­gles.

A thing at Spacething

There’s an exhi­bi­tion open­ing on at New­town’s Spacething tonight (Thu 7 May), fea­tur­ing new art­work from Helen McVey and Tania Price.

There will also be live music from (the excel­lent­ly named) Pub­lic Toi­let ltd, Chris Palmer and Dan Beban, as well as casu­al rock cock­tail poet­ry by Eliot White.

Starts at 6pm. 171 Ade­laide Road. 

A book sale worth walking up a hill for

It’s sale time at Vic Books again, both at the Kel­burn Cam­pus and the Pip­itea store by the train sta­tion.

The sale runs from Mon­day May 11-Thurs­day May 28, and if you’re clever you’ll fig­ure out a way to get to the sneak pre­view with wine and nib­bles at the Kel­burn shop, from 3pm, Thurs­day May 7th.

‘Tis the sea­son of twist­ed umbrel­las, so it’s time to stock up on books which will keep you enthralled despite the weath­er. Our famous sale fea­tures fierce­ly dis­count­ed fic­tion, pol­i­tics, his­to­ry, art & archi­tec­ture, sci­ences and cur­rent affairs. Uni­ver­si­ty Press & oth­er aca­d­e­m­ic books, qual­i­ty hard­backs and paper­backs, chil­dren’s books and more.
Dur­ing the sale we will also be hold­ing spe­cial dis­count days:

• Thurs­day May 14th: for one day only, 25% off all chil­dren’s books not already dis­count­ed.
• Thurs­day May 21st: for one day only, 25% off all fic­tion not already dis­count­ed.
• Thurs­day May 28th: for one day only, 25% off all non-fic­tion not already dis­count­ed.

 

Paint that bus!

One of the high­lights of this year’s Cuba Street Car­ni­val was the paint­ing of a GO Welling­ton bus by some of New Zealand’s top graffti/street artists and Ger­man artists Via Grafik.

The fin­ished prod­uct looked great, the bus took pride of place in the Night Parade, and can still be seen in nor­mal use on Go Welling­ton’s routes.

 
So when the inde­pen­dent Acad­e­my Cin­e­ma in Auck­land planned to get some local graf­fi­ti artists to paint a Dar­gav­ille High School bus out­side the cin­e­ma to help pro­mote new graf­fi­ti doc­u­men­tary Alter Ego, you’d think the Auck­land City Coun­cil would be as sup­port­ive as Welling­ton was for the bus paint­ing.

But no! Find out the Auck­land City Coun­cil’s bizarre reac­tion after the jump.

Rumbles is ready to rumble with DB

There’s been quite a bit of news around DB Brew­eries try­ing to copy­right the already in use name ‘radler’ late­ly, and one Welling­ton liquor shop — Rum­bles on War­ing-Tay­lor street has had enough.

As seen on the Real Beer page: 

Join us in a boy­cott of DB Brew­ery’s prod­ucts and sup­port NZ Beer…

In response to what we per­ceive to be bul­ly-boy tac­tics and a direct attack on the emerg­ing bou­tique beer indus­try, Rum­bles Wine Mer­chant will not be stock­ing the fol­low­ing prod­ucts brands untl the threat of legal action has been lift­ed. We make no apolo­gies for any incon­ve­nience…

And you can read more about it on the Rum­bles blog. Go Rum­bles! Just read­ing about this makes me thirsty, I could real­ly go for a Ben­net­t’s right about now…

Win a Nokia 5800 worth $899 (still)

This com­pe­ti­tion is now closed.

Ok, we still have a super sweet Nokia 5800 smart phone, worth $899 to give away, cour­tesy of Voda­fone, so it’s time to mash up this com­pe­ti­tion to make it eas­i­er to enter and there­fore eas­i­er to win. Yay.

To enter, all you need to do is vis­it www.Vodafone.co.nz/easy and watch the video called “Inter­net Access Easy ANYWHERE” and answer this rather easy ques­tion: What is the occu­pa­tion of the mobile inter­net user in the video?

Email your answer to info@wellingtonista.com with the sub­ject ‘Voda­fone Com­pe­ti­tion”.

I espe­cial­ly rec­om­mend enter­ing this comp if you like doing cool stuff online but you’re labour­ing with a crap­py old cell­phone. Cos mobile inter­net is one of the best things about 3G.

The com­pe­ti­tion clos­es at mid­day on Fri­day 15 May and the win­ner will be deter­mined by a ran­dom draw. You must be a New Zealand res­i­dent. Righto.

UPDATE

We have a win­nar! Con­grat­u­la­tions to Brent Dick­ens who will very soon be get­ting a love­ly new Nokia 5800.

Thanks to every­one who entered!

 

Calling all Neil Young fans!

Don’t miss this 35mm screen­ing of the bril­liant Rust Nev­er Sleeps (USA, exempt, 103 mins) this Sat­ur­day night at the Film Archive.  Tick­ets are $8 ($6 con­ces­sion) and this fea­ture length doc­u­men­tary could sell out so get your tick­ets now.

The God­fa­ther of Grunge is in essen­tial (read: grungy) form on this acclaimed live video, wide­ly con­sid­ered to be the best record of Neil Young’s spec­tac­u­lar con­cert pres­ence. Filmed in 1978, Young and his back­ing band, Crazy Horse, rip through six­teen of his best songs, includ­ing Like A Hur­ri­cane, Cin­na­mon Girl, and the mod­ern clas­sic, After the Gol­drush.

Rust Nev­er Sleeps is one of those rare con­cert films that renews one’s faith in rock and roll. Tell your Dad.

Review: Little India, Cuba Mall

It’s a Tues­day night. Rather, it’s 5.55pm, approx­i­mate­ly. You walk into a restrau­rant that has its ‘OPEN’ sign up. The man behind the counter talk­ing on the phone that gives you a “I am on the phone” look. You nod polite­ly and look around the restau­rant. It is total­ly emp­ty. When he final­ly paus­es his phonecall, he ges­tures you towards the six-seater right in front of the door and dis­ap­pears again, appar­ent­ly to fin­ish off his ter­ri­bly impor­tant phone call. You retrieve a bot­tle of wine from your bag, even though a glass of water first would be nice. The wine is a screw cap, but it takes you a cou­ple of min­utes to crack. No sign of water or menus, so you pull out your copy on NW and start the sudoku, even though you’d real­ly rather order an entree before the rest of your friends arrive because you’re total­ly starv­ing. and the intense heat in the restau­rant and the HI NRG Ban­gra is real­ly real­ly off­putting.

How­ev­er, even though you’re not par­tic­u­lar­ly fast at Sudoku, you man­age to com­plete the entire thing before the wait­er returns with menus for the whole table. You order some samosas, and turn your atten­tion to the small­er cross­word, which you plow through before your lit­tle pas­try parcels show up. The crust of the samosas is not melty, the cab­bage scat­tered on the plate has def­i­nite­ly seen bet­ter days, and the tamarind sauce seems unusu­al­ly con­cen­trat­ed. For $5.50, it is accept­able, but not with that kind of ser­vice.