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?