What the hell’s going on down Magin­nity Street?!

Wrecked cars! A massive pile of rubble! Res­cue crews mov­ing in! OMG, the big one has finally hit!

And yet Peth­er­ick Tower is look­ing sur­pris­ingly undam­aged…

All is revealed after the jump.

In Steph­en’s recent post the top­ic of Ze Frank’s Earth Sand­wich has come up again. So exactly what lies on the oppos­ite side of the Earth from our city?

Well, accord­ing to Google Earth (and Ze Frank), it’s the fair town of Alae­jos, in Spain.

Alae­jos seems like a fairly unre­mark­able, although cer­tainly pic­tur­esque, town beside the motor­way between Val­lad­ol­id and Sala­manca. (Yes, Sala­manca. Many parts of Wel­ling­ton bear the place names fea­tured in the Iron Duke’s pen­in­su­lar cam­paigns. In the 1860s, the Napo­leon­ic wars were closer to the set­tlers of Wel­ling­ton than WWII is to us today, hence the nam­ing schemes: Talavera, Welles­ley, Water­loo, Sala­manca etc etc.)

So, does any­one have pho­tos, or any oth­er report­age of Alae­jos? There’s some on Flickr, but we really want to know: what’s Wel­ling­ton’s oth­er, and unof­fi­cial, sis­ter city really like?

Ok, so what’s this guy up to? (answer after the jump)…

Last night a select group of over 500 people at the Para­mount were treated to the launch of this year’s Wel­ling­ton Film Fest­iv­al pro­gramme. Fol­low­ing a brief-ish intro­duc­tion from return­ing dir­ect­or Bill Gos­den, those present were treated to a delight­ful anim­ated film called Persepol­is – an adapt­a­tion of Mar­jane Sat­rap­i’s graph­ic-nov­el-auto­bi­o­graphy which is avail­able in some loc­al stores. Sat­rapi grew up in pre and post-revolu­tion­ary Iran and the film is a vivid and witty por­tray­al of the way total­it­ari­an­ism of all extremes can squeeze human beings bey­ond recog­ni­tion.

The pro­gramme is in a dif­fer­ent format this year (A4) which makes it a bit easi­er on the eye as you scour it for gems. It also has to do double duty this year as the lack of a prin­cip­al spon­sor has meant the elim­in­a­tion of the glossy souven­ir guide book.

I woke up this morn­ing to find that last night I had ticked some­thing on every page which is obvi­ously not a sus­tain­able strategy, but I do have until Tues­day (when tick­ets go on sale via Tick­etek out­lets) to slim my list down. The pro­grammes are avail­able now at all the Fest­iv­al ven­ues: Embassy, Para­mount, Te Papa, Film Archive and Pent­house and across town over the next few days. The web site seems to be up and down under the load this morn­ing but has a cun­ning cal­en­dar fea­ture to allow you to build a per­son­al­ised screen­ing sched­ule over the two and a half weeks between July 18 and Aug 3.

Funer­als & Snakes will have a few Fest­iv­al pre­view posts over the next few weeks but I also com­mend you to The Lumière Read­er, whose online cov­er­age of the Fest­iv­al is likely to be unequalled.

As we move through the elec­tion year, we’re going to start get­ting plenty of invites to “Meet the can­did­ates” type events. We wanna know about the nefar­i­ous ins and outs of invit­a­tions you receive. Are they unso­li­cited? Do they provide you with instruc­tions on how to get there using pub­lic trans­port or are they purely for the car-drivers? Are they encour­aging healthy debate or unhealthy drink­ing? Or are they, as one invit­a­tion the fly spot­ted recently, sug­gest­ing that you park in nearby super­mar­ket car­parks, per­haps because they’re work­ing in an unholy alli­ance with a tow­ing com­pany?

Spill your guts. Keep us in the know.

In anoth­er of this shame­lessly unori­gin­al series, I’ve just been stuff­ing my abdo­men with ser­i­ously good snack­ing and some tasty cock­tails at this brazenly Euro­phile little place.

The wine list is designed to tempt you out of your vin­ous rut, since while each sec­tion is “inspired” by a style or vari­et­al, it branches out from there into less obvi­ous wines. For instance, the “Riesling” sec­tion also lists Grün­er Velt­liner and that unusu­al Moscatel/Gewürtztraminer con­coc­tion known as Viña Esmer­alda. The cock­tail list is extens­ive and invent­ive, includ­ing such delights as the “Span­ish Inquis­i­tion”: rasp­berry, cin­na­mon, amaro and Amon­til­lado (I nev­er expec­ted that).

But it’s the food that really stands out. You can have a full meal, but the concept is really a sort of pan-Medi­ter­ranean tapas, with more­ish and occa­sion­ally Moor­ish morsels that include skordalia with Catalan “chastity bread”, truffled Jer­u­s­alem artichokes, pista­chio couscous and Ouzo-flamed sagana­ki. Com­bine that with pleas­antly Old World décor, reas­on­able prices and some ser­i­ous eye-candy among the wait­ing staff, and you’ve got a recipe for more than one happy bar­fly.

1. Plum is now doing 2‑for‑1 for small plates on Tues­days
2. It’s 1994 all over again with the new plaid shirt uni­forms at the South­ern Cross
3. There is a Lone­star open­ing in Petone. Get your big plates of meat in the Hutt without a sur­charge on pub­lic hol­i­days!
4. Mojo Bond St have mulled wine, as does the Green Room.
5. Cafe Itali­ano is offer­ing 2‑for‑1 pas­tas for $15 on Mondays and Tues­days.

That’s all we’ve got for now.

I ask you now to take a moment to reflect on the loss of that great crime against cinema exhib­i­tion, Rialto Wel­ling­ton, and per­haps raise a glass to cel­eb­rate it’s final day of screen­ings. If I can be there to wit­ness it’s immin­ent crum­bling beneath a hun­dred wreck­ing balls I will (how­ever, I should con­fess that in need of a few dol­lars I was the pub­li­cist for it’s open­ing back in 1994).

The dis­astrous archi­tec­tur­al and build­ing choices that wrecked many a poten­tially inter­est­ing film should not reflect on many excel­lent and com­mit­ted staff who worked there over the years. The Para­moun­t’s Kate Lar­kindale man­aged the place for a while, as did cur­rent San Fran Bath­house man­ager Chris­ana Love. The first man­ager was Bar­bara Sum­ner, now known as cru­sad­ing colum­nist Bar­bara Sum­ner Burstyn, who, as legend has it, once faxed a pic­ture of her own naked rear end to a com­pet­it­or.

[More on Rialto Wel­ling­ton, after the jump]

Sat­urday 14th of June 2008 is World­wide Knit In Pub­lic Day. As we all know knit­ting is not a crime, but very much an activ­ity people mostly do on their own.

In Wel­ling­ton why not fully embrace the out­doors and head along to the Buck­et Foun­tain in Cuba Mall where the lovely Tash will be from 2pm with her needles (or at the South­ern Cross if it’s rain­ing).

Yay for knit­ting in pub­lic!

And speak­ing of knit­ting in pub­lic, how much are we all lov­ing, lov­ing, lov­ing the urb­an knit­ting that is appear­ing around town. Finally Wel­ling­ton is exper­i­en­cing a fash­ion renais­sance of the woolen vari­ety. Every day I keep hear­ing and see­ing reports of sub­vers­ive knitty­ness around the city, and hon­estly I don’t think Wel­ling­ton has ever looked more beau­ti­ful.

Sadly someone dis­agrees as noth­ing seems to stay up for too long.

Which makes me won­der, if you could see sub­vers­ive knit­ting any­where, where would it be?