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.