The streets of Welling­ton on a day like today are a joy, the sun is shin­ing, the breeze is more balmy than blus­ter and you prob­a­bly have a home to go to if you need some cave time.  In Welling­ton the streets are shared with all, and if you head into the CBD you will see suits, stu­dents, hip­sters, chil­dren and gold-card hold­ers util­is­ing pub­lic space along­side street peo­ple and alco­holics.  Auck­land is respond­ing to the chal­lenges of in-your-face social prob­lems by con­sid­er­ing a bylaw to force home­less peo­ple off the streets by mak­ing the police respon­si­ble for mov­ing the prob­lem around. Good luck with that one. 

Welling­to­ni­ans can’t afford to be smug about the issue but at least the focus is on a range of solu­tions includ­ing a wet hos­tel and liquor bans.  There was plen­ty of thought­ful dis­cus­sion over at Poneke about this issue last year.

The Welling­ton City Coun­cil would like to hear from you tonight. Like, seri­ous­ly. Accord­ing to their ads in the paper, they even want you to stop watch­ing Coro­na­tion Street long enough to call them up and tell them what you think about them. Or to be specif­i­cal­ly quot­ing their old news sto­ry (one of the things I would com­plain about first would be how hard it is to find cur­rent news on their site): 

Do you have views on the city’s future? Then call our hot­line, talk to the May­or or Coun­cil­lors and tell them what you think. Welling­ton City Coun­cil is run­ning the hot­line … 7.00pm to 9.00pm — phone (04) 801 4205) to can­vas views from res­i­dents about what they val­ue about the city, what lev­el ser­vices should be fund­ed and what ser­vices could be reduced.

As always, we have some sug­ges­tions:

1. Get the trol­ley bus­es run­ning more often because we val­ue them,
2. The ‘ser­vice’ of build­ing roads and bypass­es and fly­overs that we don’t actu­al­ly need can get scrapped. Or moved to Hamil­ton cos that city total­ly needs a bypass. 
3. How about along with the rub­bish col­lec­tion we think about hav­ing a green/compost col­lec­tion? It works in San Fran­cis­co… 

What would you say if you called? And also, you’re going to call, right? 

We admit it: we’ve been slack. Nor­mal blog­ging ser­vice will grad­u­al­ly resume as we re-emerge from the rum-induced ine­bri­a­tion heat-induced tor­por of sum­mer, but things are tak­ing a while to crank up again.

Some of us have been out of town on sum­mer hol­i­days, enjoy­ing all the clichés of the Great Kiwi Sum­mer^TM: beach­es, jan­dals, boats, sun­burn and ill-advised sex­u­al liaisons. But some of us have stayed put, and frankly, why not? Even if (like many Welling­to­ni­ans) you don’t have a car, with a Snap­per card and Shanks’ pony it’s not too hard to get to a whole range of beach­es. Here’s a lit­tle Flickr pho­to­set of the Welling­ton coast this sum­mer, show­ing peo­ple doing all those sorts of things that we’re sup­posed to have to leave town for. Erm, except the sex (and we would­n’t be sur­prised if that was just around the cor­ner, too).

There’s less than a month to go now until the great­est con­fer­ence ever, and since the Welling­ton­ista is always keen to show off the best parts of our city, we made a Begin­ner’s Guide to Welling­ton for those who are com­ing in for it from out of town. Even if you live here, there might be some­thing of inter­est on the list for you, so do have a read, and when you see us at all those places, do feel free to say hi and buy us drinks.

1. Have you reg­is­tered for Web­stock yet? Only 33 more sleeps left to go and we are very very excit­ed!

2. Have you checked out the pro­gramme for Sum­mer City yet? 

Welling­ton City Coun­cil’s three-month fes­ti­val of out­door activ­i­ties. Events include music fes­ti­vals, extreme sports, cul­tur­al cel­e­bra­tions and chil­dren’s enter­tain­ment. This year, Sum­mer City’s music per­for­mances focus on Welling­ton bands.

There’s a giant dis­play of info about it at the cor­ner of Man­ners & Cuba Malls, or you can read their event info PDF (because Sum­mer City is not acces­si­ble for every­one?)

3. Bren­da has empha­sised again why she was nom­i­nat­ed for Best Con­tri­bu­tion to the inter­net, with this reveal­ing pho­to of the por­trait of for­mer may­or Mark Blum­sky, stand­ing out­side Mer­maids Strip Club. Nice one!

Imag­ine our delight to find that this week­end there is a joust­ing car­ni­val in Upper Hutt.

Har­court Park, Sat­ur­day and Sun­day 10th and 11th Jan­u­ary, Upper Hutt.

As they said in days of yore, be there or be-eth square.