I just wrote about this for this week’s issue of Band­wag­on, but it’ll be out a day late because of the Queen’s day off yes­ter­day – so I thought I’d let you Wel­ling­tonis­tas know about it too.

Thursday June 5th is World Envir­on­ment Day, and one of the cutest of a bunch of inter­est­ing events going on is hap­pen­ing down at the MP’s end of town. The folks at Green Land, pur­vey­ors of fine cof­fee and counter foods with an eco-eth­os, are giv­ing away free North­ern Rata (Met­ros­ider­os robusta) sap­lings with each cof­fee sold on Thursday until stocks run out.

Hunt them down in Kate Shep­pard Place in Envir­on­ment House – walk/bus/run/skate there for extra car­bon kudos!

Enjoy Gal­lery is host­ing the pen­ul­tim­ate event in their per­form­ance work­shop­ping series tonight. Of course, dear read­er, it would be out­rageous to sug­gest that you have no oth­er social engage­ments lined up for the Sat­urday of a long week­end, but if you can for­give me once again for the short notice, may I sug­gest that you nip up to the Enjoy gal­lery on Cuba St (upstairs near Scopa). Come along in the spir­it of being a par­ti­cip­at­or not an observ­er and I guar­an­tee you will not be sorry.

The action will kick off at 6.00pm and buck­ing the estab­lished gal­lery tra­di­tion this event will be BYO.

Chris Brady will be attempt­ing to bring his “Rôti Sans Pareil – Roast without Equal” pro­ject to a deli­cious con­clu­sion. I hear rumors that up to eight birds, lay­er upon lay­er, will be involved. The sur­prise twist being that the eat­able end res­ult of all this per­form­ance art will be up for grabs tomor­row at an as yet undis­closed loc­a­tion. So you gotta show the com­mit­ment by turn­ing up tonight if you want to get your­self a tasty tit bit tomor­row.

It’s a grand thing to be in Wel­ling­ton for the long week­end cos SPAM INC is bring­ing the best of the coun­try’s dirti­est rock and roll to Cap­it­al City tomor­row night.

The Hor­ies (AK), Boss Christ (Palmy) and The Grand Saloon (Banks Pen­in­sula) all at the Mighty for a mea­gre five bucks.

[insert howl­ing wolf noises here]

Last night while the Wel­ling­tonista and FAGs and SAGs (that’s Friends and Girl­friends, and also Sis­ters and Girl­friends, there were no Part­ners present) were at South­ern Cross quiz, we real­ised that hey, they don’t give us chipped glasses any­more! That means things have got bet­ter since we com­plained about them. It has also been noted that since we bitched about the decor at the Port Cafe, they have in fact rein­stated a cheap­er menu for takeaway, which is a good thing. So, to con­tin­ue on from those great devel­op­ments, here’s some more sug­ges­tions as we strive for per­fec­tion.

1. That the Cross gets a $35 wine. We’re bored of drink­ing the $30 Five Flax, and we feel like the jump up to $40 as the next cheapest wine on their list is too big a jump. We appre­ci­ate that their Matariki Cab/Merlot and Ata Ran­gi Rose are lovely, but we’d settle for some­thing less awe­some for less pricey.

2. That Word of Mouth labels its salads. It sucks to queue for ages for what you think is going to be yummy coleslaw with kumara, only to dis­cov­er that (eww!) there is tuna in the mix. They have a pen­cil-writ­ten list on their wall, with meat, dairy and aller­gens high­lighted, but it does need a lot of peer­ing at to read. And yes, we know they change their salads every day, but really, would it take that long to print out labels and stick them in a little per­spex thingie on top of the counter?

3. That Viva Mex­ico start offer­ing sides. I’d pay extra for guacamole and salsa if I had the option. Also, we’d love them to get a BYO license and extend their hours.

4. In fact, let’s get all of Left­bank a BYO license, and make the centre tables more com­mun­al, so groups of people can pick­’n mix their din­ners. 5. I know this is a very long shot, but can we please have these train-buses too?

At the top of Cuba Street, oppos­ite Fidel’s and next to a sex shop is what appears to be a crappy little tea room named Chef’s Cafe. You might think that they’re going to try and sell you a pie and a cus­tard square, but you could­n’t be more wrong. See that little sand­wich board out­side that says “Takeaway Curry $10”? That’s right, this is an Indi­an res­taur­ant. And it’s good. And it’s insanely cheap*. If you dine in, you’re look­ing at a cost of around $12.90 for a meat curry, rice and naan. The decor is admit­tedly noth­ing at all to look at, but the menu is really extens­ive and the cur­ries do actu­ally all taste dis­tinct­ive and tasty, rather than just com­ing in dif­fer­ent col­ours of the same slop (cough cough Tulsi). Plus, it’s BYO, and not just wine – the cork­age on a small bottle of beer is $1, and $2 for big bottles. We really think you should try it out. We would like it to have more pat­ron­age. Just not on Tues­day nights, because that’s when we go before the Quiz around the corner at the Cross.

* If you work on the basis that most Indi­an places charge at least $15 for a curry, and that does­n’t include naan and in some cases does­n’t even include rice.

There is noth­ing this girl loves more than check­ing out jew­elry, because hello, it’s mostly sparkly and shiny.

Cel­eb­rat­ing that very fact is Shine, a jew­elry exhib­i­tion with a bit of a twist. Instead of your stand­ard hanging from the walls and encased in boxes exhib­it, Shine is a a per­form­ance exhib­i­tion where con­tem­por­ary and bur­lesque dan­cers, act­ors and cir­cus per­formers will all be adorned by the cre­ations of six women jew­el­ers from around New Zea­l­and.

In their own words:

“It will be quite unlike any jew­ellery exhib­i­tion you’ve seen; glow­ing, lumin­ous works will be presen­ted in con­text, close to the skin, mov­ing, in con­ver­sa­tion with its human envir­on­ment in a glor­i­ous even­ing of bur­lesque dance. Streams of pearls, gleam­ing sil­ver chain-links quiv­er­ing on skin; feath­ers tick­ling just under­neath a chin… this is a per­form­ance that glor­i­fies beauty, and wel­comes the human form in all its shapes.”

When: Thursday, Fri­day, Sat­urday, 29 – 31st May, 9pm

Book at the Para­mount 04 384 4080

Tick­ets:
* $30 Adult
* $20 Groups 10+
* $15 Con­ces­sion

web: http://www.myspace.com/shinejewellery

On May 28th – that’s this Wed­nes­day night – PechaK­ucha returns to Wel­ling­ton for it’s second Wel­ling­ton out­ing.

All you need to do for a great night out is head out to The­New­Dowse at 45 Laings Rd in Lower Hutt.

PechaK­ucha Night is an event in which presenters give brief present­a­tions about a top­ic of their choos­ing accom­pan­ied by 20 images, each of which is shown for 20 seconds – giv­ing a total present­a­tion time of 6 minutes 40 seconds.

Doors open at 7.30 pm and the whole thing kicks off at 8.20pm. The bar is run­ning all night, so you get to hang with great people, hear about some inspir­a­tion­al stuff and have some fun, all at the same time.

After the jump is the list of lovely speak­ers they’ve lined up for Wel­ling­ton.

Well, I know that in the “The Rules” it is com­manded that you should nev­er accept a Sat­urday date after Wed­nes­day, but if you find your­self at an early Sat­urday even­ing loose end and you are near the Cuba quarter, may I sug­gest head­ing up to Enjoy gal­lery from 6:00pm onwards. Enjoy is cur­rently hold­ing a work­shop­ping per­form­ance series and a little bird told me that there will be deli­cious tit bits for those will­ing to par­ti­cip­ate in some per­form­ance art.

The face­book event descrip­tion sets the scene thusly:

“Any­one who has ever exper­i­enced a live piece of per­form­ance art is likely to have exper­i­enced con­fused expect­a­tions, a sense of embar­rass­ment for the artist and or a desire for some­thing suc­cess­ful to hap­pen. Enjoy’s 2008 per­form­ance series addresses these issues for both audi­ence and artist.”

More after the jump…

It’s true. They were toy­ing with us.

In Christ­ch­urch news, a photo of May­or Bob Park­er with a dildo has been pulled from a web­site because it was appar­ently “not rep­res­ent­at­ive”.

In a totally unre­lated ques­tion, has any­one seen any pho­tos of Kerry with Rex lately?