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