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Te Papa’s new Our Space exhibit

Recent­ly opened at Te Papa is the Our Space exhib­it. It cost $6 mil­lion and is appar­ent­ly aimed at the 15- to 25-year-olds — you know, the sort of peo­ple who’d rather be tex­ting or updat­ing their Bebo page or say­ing “wote­va” than vis­it­ing a muse­um, etc.

At its most basic, Our Space is a pho­to album. More specif­i­cal­ly, it’s an elec­tron­ic data­base of pho­tos and short video clips of New Zealand places and events. It’s a bit like Flickr, but rather than just rely­ing on media sub­mit­ted by the pub­lic, it also taps into Te Papa’s archives and the TVNZ archives.

The exhi­bi­tion is made up of three parts: The Map, The Wall and The Rides, and in the inter­ests of prop­er grown-up blog­ging, I made vis­its to Te Papa to do a thor­ough review of Our Space.

Mag­ic wands, surly teens and motion sick­ness after the jump…

Mystery tiki

The Crafts­man did­n’t take long to iden­ti­fy: not sur­pris­ing giv­en its promi­nent posi­tion. Here’s anoth­er quick one, which should also be pret­ty obvi­ous.

The Watusi pret­ty much counts as Welling­ton’s first Tiki Bar, but this place has a few touch­es of tik­i­tude as well. There’s this lit­tle guy, of course, and the ani­mal print cush­ion helps. It has a smat­ter­ing of tiki masks and ukule­les, an out­door area with lush foliage and torch­es, and most impor­tant­ly, a drinks list titled “Tiki Cock­tails”. Heav­en! Or is it?

Completely unpretentious and apolitical mystery bar

As a fly, I obvi­ous­ly have some dis­taste­ful habits, and I am some­times accused of buzzing too close to pre­ten­sion or polit­i­cal bias. Well, I’m hard­ly going to change the habits of a life­time, but just this once here’s a mys­tery bar with­out a hint of pre­ten­sion.

No bur­lesque dancers or pan-Mediter­ranean tapas here, mate! It’s beery, blokey and beefy, and if there’s any pre­tence about it, it’s that it’s pre­tend­ing to be some­where else: the South Island back­blocks, from the looks of things.

So, what and where is it?

One more sleep till Craft2.0

Craft2.0 springs into the shop­ping sea­son by return­ing to The­New­Dowse on Octo­ber 11th with a Craftas­tic Craftac­u­lar

(don’t ask us what that means, but pret­ty much beyond fab­u­lous is a good def­i­n­i­tion)

There are over 60 crafters this time round and as always there is a mix of return­ing favourite crafters and brand shiny new ones.

We guar­an­tee you’ll find presents for all the fam­i­ly, and more impor­tant­ly some spe­cial treats for your­self. Plus you can feel good about spend­ing mon­ey on 100% orig­i­nal NZ made hand craft­ed cre­ations instead of import­ed mass pro­duced stuff.

Every­thing sold at Craft2.0 is 100% New Zealand made.
Every­thing sold at Craft2.0 is made by the per­son sell­ing it.
Most items are unique one-off or lim­it­ed edi­tion cre­ations.

This time round there are free mak­ing activ­i­tites. In asso­ci­a­tion with Hutt Val­ley Com­mu­ni­ty Arts, kids lit­tle and small young and old can cre­ate flo­ral bou­quets from but­tons, card­board and pipe clean­ers.

every­thing is sup­plied all you need is your cre­ativ­i­ty. this is a great activ­i­ty for all the fam­i­ly, but we warn you it is addic­tive.

Spe­cial Treats
the most awe­some gift bag ever in the his­to­ry of craft2.0 , cour­tesy of those amaz­ing folks at Cafe reka are being hand­ed out at 10am.
inside you’ll find, badges, crafty things, fudge and some oth­er treats that we are keep­ing secret for now, but will prob­a­bly gush about on the web­site www.craft2.org/blog the night before the fair.

Because we know that every­one loves Crafts so much we also have a prize draw, where you can win over $200 of Crafty cre­ations and oth­er spe­cial things.

WBL 2008 Round Two Results

Last week was Bowl­ing­ton­ista’s by-week, hence why I was lazy with report­ing. But my spies tell me the scores were:

• Xero 338 to Mighty Boost­’s 378
• Fur­ry Fer­als on 438 to the Pur­ple Cobra’s 378

With Jamesh from the Pur­ple Cobras get­ting an extra league point for fastest bowl, the scores cur­rent­ly look like this:

Bowl­ing­ton­ista: 2
Fur­ry Fer­als: 15
Mighty Boost: 8
Pur­ple Cobras: 9
Xero: 2

See you tonight for more excite­ment!

The politics of dining

Has any­one noticed that the elec­tion cam­paign has spread to restau­rants? Pic­co­lo is sport­ing a big blue Stephen Franks poster in their win­dow, and I’m not sure what it says about poten­tial Nation­al vot­ers if Vivian St is seen as fer­tile adver­tis­ing ter­ri­to­ry. La Kas­bah has tak­en it fur­ther: not only was the pro­pri­etor wear­ing a Labour badge, with a dona­tions jar on the counter, but Trevor Mal­lard was fill­ing up on tagine and cous­cous tonight! Yes, it seems that Dami­an Christie was right: in Welling­ton, that does count as a celebri­ty sight­ing.

Do any of the oth­er par­ties have fan­boy restau­rants? Kai in the City seems an obvi­ous Maori Par­ty stal­wart, and per­haps Aun­ty Mena’s and Green Land would go for the Greens. But what sort of place would sup­port NZ First or ACT? And does any­one from Unit­ed Future eat out?

Wellingtonista Film Season continues

Tonight in the spe­cial Welling­ton­ista sea­son of NZ fea­ture films, either rough­ly relat­ed to, shot or set in our love­ly cap­i­tal city (and what a typ­i­cal­ly bril­liant answer to yes­ter­day’s weath­er bomb than this beau­ti­ful day?) we have the hilar­i­ous fea­ture Mark II, as select­ed by our­selves.

This film is worth view­ing for the high-waist­ed jeans alone.…

(click on the image for a larg­er ver­sion)

And it’s a road movie which fol­lows three unem­ployed Maori teenagers adven­tur­ing in a two tone Mark II Zephyr!

Tick­ets $8 or $6 con­ces­sion — which includes a com­pli­men­ta­ry glass of wine (with ID) unless you can tell us which year it was shot and we’ll give you a dou­ble pass. Film com­mences 7pm.

More details on The Film Archive’s web­site…

Things aren’t THAT bad

So, Welling­ton is cur­rent­ly the recip­i­ent of a whole lot of bad-ass weath­er and you may have received an email with an alarm­ing list of all the dam­age the storm has done, like this:

Pub­lic access to the Basin Reserve has been closed. Approx­i­mate­ly 15 win­dows in the RA Vance Stand have blown out.
Ful­ton Hogan work­ing on Air­port roof which is lift­ing Coun­cil Parks staff have closed off the walk­ing tracks on Tinako­ri Hill due to the dan­ger caused by many falling trees. Pow­er poles are in dan­ger of top­pling on the seafront at Lyall Bay.

Slips! Bus­es and trains closed! Pow­er out­ages! Pret­ty bad, huh?

Except it’s not. Find out the truth after the jump!

A‑splishin’ and a‑splashin’!

While today’s gale-force winds and rain isn’t much fun, there was much water-relat­ed fun last night on Abel Smith Street.

Late last night a water main on The Ter­race burst, send­ing a tor­rent of water gush­ing down Abel Smith.

Rather than snug­gling up under their duvets, local res­i­dents instead leapt out of bed and turned the infra­struc­ture mal­func­tion into an inpromp­tu water­slide, using recy­cling bins, deckchairs — any­thing they could get their hands on — to slide down the street. Awe­some!

Even bet­ter — a video was made!

Thanks to _june’s Twit­ter Tweets for the reportage.
Video by MrJud­kins.

WOW — Fab or Fug?

WOW sea­son is over for anoth­er year (for the 20th year in fact) with the last sold-out show last night. So now it comes time, dear read­ers, for the cold hard assess­ment. Our streets have been fes­tooned with ban­ners, the spon­sors have been fling­ing free bub­bles about eager for a pho­to op, mer­chan­dise has mush­roomed and var­i­ous shop fronts have been req­ui­si­tioned for the cause.

So whad­da ya think? “World-class”? Fab? Fug? Meh? Find out after the break.