One lap Dick Johnson

The Nis­san Mobil 500 may be a dis­tant mem­o­ry, but it still has made its mark on the city — check out the way that Jer­vois Quay feels more like a chute designed for cars to hur­tle along at high speed than a pleas­ant har­bour­side city street.

But those wish­ing the relive the glo­ry days can do so over at YouTube, where petrol­heads have uploaded a selec­tion of choice clips. My favourite is “One lap Dick John­son” from 1990. While this would be a per­fect­ly good name for a porno, it’s actu­al­ly a dash­board cam of dri­ver Dick doing a lap of the cir­cuit.

It ends up being a real­ly good snap­shot of Welling­ton’s water­front envi­ron­ment before the big regen­er­a­tion of the ’90s — no Te Papa, the Muse­um Hotel is still down by the water, Wai­t­an­gi Park is full of ware­hous­es, no Merid­i­an build­ing, no Kumu­to­to stream revival, no City to Sea bridge, and no love­ly pleas­ant har­bour­side walk.

Vrrm vrrrrrm:

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWx4sljvFVI]

Demon Woman — Flight Of The Conchords

The ‘nista have been too busy hit­ting the town this week to actu­al­ly make any posts. We’ll try hard­er next week. In the mean­time, since it’s Fri­day, here’s some Con­chords…

 

[video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnU62CUevn4]

Enamel — a literary magazine from Wellington

Enam­el is a small print mag­a­zine edit­ed by new Welling­ton­ian Emma Barnes. Its first issue con­tains work from writ­ers based in Welling­ton, oth­er places in New Zealand and all around the world. In this issue you’ll see writ­ing from: Johan­na Aitchi­son, recent Ran­dell Cot­tage writer in res­i­dence Jen­nifer Comp­ton, Miri­am Barr and Tim Jones as well as oth­er new and estab­lished writ­ers. It also includes art by artists from New Zealand, Aus­tralia and the U.S.A.

Large­ly an exper­i­ment in cre­at­ing a lit­er­ary mag­a­zine, Enam­el seeks to become an ongo­ing part of the lit­er­ary scene in New Zealand. Enam­el is print­ed each year in March. Sub­mis­sions are always open. Enam­el is espe­cial­ly open to exper­i­men­tal work but con­sid­ers any­thing. You can vis­it the blog at http://enamelmag.blogspot.com, email your sub­mis­sions through to enamel.editor@gmail.com or buy it from Trade Me.

Auckland, Wellington and televisual debate

This week’s episode Media 7 looked at the Auck­land vs Welling­ton cul­tur­al debate sparked by the Metro mag­a­zine arti­cle (as pre­vi­ous­ly cov­ered here).

Rus­sell Brown round­ed up Simon Wil­son — the arti­cle’s author; with Tom­my Hon­ey rep­re­sent­ing the arts in Welling­ton and Simon Prast rep­re­sent­ing Auck­land.

It was a live­ly debate, and did­n’t resort to much “us ver­sus them” bull­hunky, but they man­aged to slag off both Palmer­ston North and Hamil­ton. Heh.

They basi­cal­ly con­clud­ed that Welling­ton City Coun­cil sup­ports the arts bet­ter than Auck­land City Coun­cil does, and that there’s nowhere near Auck­land’s Maid­ment The­atre to get a drink.

You can watch the episode here. The Auckland/Wellington dis­cus­sion starts in part three (part one looks at the death of adver­tis­ing, part two at — ooh — holo­grams).

Earthly

We Welling­ton­istas have been strong sup­port­ers of Earth Hour in the past, and even though Kei­th Ng gave it a damned good fisk­ing over on Pub­lic Address, we’re still behind the con­cept. And so, it seems, are a lot of local bars and restau­rants, with Welling­ton­ista favourites Fidels, Sweet Mother’s Kitchen, the South­ern Cross, Caffe
Ital­iano and Trade Kitchen among the many places offer­ing can­delit din­ners on Sat­ur­day night. We just hope it does­n’t make those poor, frag­ile roller girls crash into one anoth­er*.

Kei­th’s right that the actu­al ener­gy saved in an hour will be min­i­mal, and the pow­ers (no pun intend­ed) that be are unlike­ly to be swayed by the sym­bol­ism, but that need­n’t make it an emp­ty ges­ture. If it helps a few peo­ple under­stand the impact of their deci­sions, and look for prac­ti­cal options to save ener­gy in the long term, then it will do some good. Kei­th points out that switch­ing to low-ener­gy light bulbs is, for most appli­ca­tions, a sim­ple and sen­si­ble thing to do right now. So it’s just as well that as part of the Earth Hour pro­mo­tion, Welling­ton City Library is giv­ing away free CFL bulbs until Sat­ur­day.

[*not real­ly]

Shhhh.…some secrets

No, this isn’t a fel­low Welling­ton­ista help­ing anoth­er out after a hard Fri­day night on Courte­nay Place, it’s a pic of the New Zealand Med­ical Corps in 1917.

This Sat­ur­day at the Film Archive (7pm, entry by koha) Dr Chris Puglsey is pre­sent­ing a peek at some of the old­est sur­viv­ing films in the Archive, from 1910–1920 of the New Zealand expe­ri­ence dur­ing WWI. 

Dr Pugs­ley is a total hoot (teach­es at Sand­hurst — yes that’s right, the school of choice for Wills and Har­ry) and he’ll be joined by live piano accom­pa­ni­ment. 

More after the jump

Works on Paper

The win­dow at Bowen Gal­leries in Ghuznee Street is often choc­ka with all sorts of inter­est­ing tid­bits of visu­al art, and right now is no excep­tion with the Works On Paper “group-show”.

Works On Paper fea­tures a selec­tion of fan­tas­tic prints and draw­ings on paper by a num­ber of artists: amongst them Kim Pieters, Greg O’Brien, Chris Salmon, Euan Mac­Cleod, and…

Metaphor­i­cal Prox­im­i­ty (Ota­go), 2006 by Reg Mom­bas­sa!

Some Thoughts on the Botanic Gardens

Ahem … climbs up onto soap­box. I have some­thing to say about the Botan­ic Gar­dens, the Coun­cil & Gar­den staff & some of the peo­ple who go there.

1. To the Wgtn City Coun­cil & Gar­den staff:

• Many thanks for the dog­gy-doo bag dis­pensers at the main gates, cable car & Rose Gar­den – I’m not sure if all dog own­ers have noticed them yet (more on that lat­er), but even those of us usu­al­ly pack­ing more plas­tic than the dash­board of an 80s Japan­ese import get caught out now & then. If I’m allowed a wish list, then anoth­er one at the Glen Rd entrance and (dare I say it) Mag­pie Lawn would be grand!
   
• The ‘Get off your bikes & walk’ signs are real­ly piss­ing some cyclists off, if the fre­quent­ly ripped up signs are any­thing to go by. I think that ‘Please bike con­sid­er­ate­ly – go slow’ signs would be a good com­pro­mise, par­tic­u­lar­ly on those roads that are already used by cars. Every­where else, they should walk. Most cyclists are con­sid­er­ate any­way (not all – and more on that lat­er too).
   
• The play­ground used to arguably have the great­est drink­ing foun­tain in the South­ern Hemi­sphere. What hap­pened to it? The one there now is ade­quate, the oth­er was attrac­tive & func­tion­al. Could we get one at the top of the Cable Car too? And (dare I say it again) Mag­pie Lawn?

More after the jump