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?