In an effort to encour­age people to leave their cars at home, Great­er Wel­ling­ton has announced that from July 1 this year, bikes can ride on trains for free.

At the moment, trav­el­ling by rail with your bike will cost you anoth­er adult fare.

Sounds like a good idea to us. There is a caveat how­ever, if the train is full, your bike can­not ride at all.

Stuff cov­er­age here.

Expat Wel­ling­to­ni­an keytar-tot­ing fash­ionista sex­pots Charlie Ash are back in town and play­ing at Bodega this Sat­urday.

There’s the usu­al huge line-up of sup­port acts, includ­ing MC Storm­troop­er, Tri­mas­ter­bate and Heat Like Me, who some of you may remem­ber from the recent L.E.D.s gig. They’re a little bit Eighties elec­tro and just a little bit late-Nineties techno (not that there’s any­thing wrong with that), and they should com­ple­ment Charlie Ash’s punky lycra-glam just so.

But for those who want their rock with a little less glit­ter and a whole lot more feed­back, Sat­urday night may be bet­ter spent at Happy, where Wel­ling­ton’s favour­ite post-prog-drone-noise out­fit The Stumps take on Mel­bourne’s Elise & Jem and Hut­tite ambi­ent-art-met­al super­stars Black Boned Angel. If you’re unde­cided and brim­ming with stam­ina you might try mak­ing it to both: but good luck try­ing to find an out­fit to suit both gigs.

Did you know? Craig­list, the hugely suc­cess­ful free online clas­si­fied, per­son­al ad and list­ing ser­vice has a Wel­ling­ton site. As an exper­i­ment, a few weeks ago I put up an ad for volun­teers for the ‘V’ 48 Hour Film Com­pet­i­tion and got a couple of responses (two more than I was expect­ing).

There are sec­tions on employ­ment, ser­vices, per­son­als, com­munity and hous­ing. All list­ings are free and you can mon­it­or any sec­tion via RSS.

Sadly, the sig­nal to noise ratio is not great as most of the entries are a bit spammy but that should change as Wel­ling­to­ni­ans start to use it.

Yes, I know it’s an old concept, but I could­n’t res­ist. Also, this isn’t so much a bar as a café, though it does sell wine. And it feels more like being in a friend’s liv­ing room, if you had a friend with lots of sexy mid-Twen­ti­eth-Cen­tury fur­niture and nice views.

Rather a nice place to sit in the sun­shine (pre­sum­ing you can do so without freez­ing your anten­nae off) at the week­end and watch the world go by. But where is it?

White Fungus is an exper­i­ment­al arts magazine based in Wel­ling­ton, Aotearoa, New Zea­l­and. Pro­duced by a col­lect­ive of artists, writers and design­ers, White Fungus is an ongo­ing exper­i­ment in com­munity media art.

The new issue of White Fungus comes out this week. This issue is the strongest yet for exper­i­ment­al music with an in-depth art­icle on the Dead C, an inter­view by Andrew Clif­ford with Justice Yeld­ham (who stunned and shocked audi­ences through­out NZ last year thanks to alt.music), an inter­view by Daniel Beban with Annea Lock­wood, plus art­icles on John Wiese, Greg Mal­colm and Manuel Göttsching. This issue also fea­tures a new 7‑page col­our com­ic, Noah, by Tim Bollinger, new art by Richard Killeen, Hye Rim Lee, Yao Jui Chung and Tao Wells plus much more.…

And the launch party… my god, the launch party… (more after the jump)

Noone really does any work on Fri­days, do they? So instead, tell us a story about one of your most mem­or­able nights out in Wel­ling­ton in the com­ments sec­tion. We’re look­ing for loc­a­tion, loc­a­tion, loc­a­tion, and what you choose to dis­close is entirely up to you. Just enter­tain us. Thank you. My story will fol­low very shortly.

Wish­bone have put up the prices of most of its food by $1, so now you will pay $7.50 for their cran­berry, chick­en and brie sand­wich (luck­ily, next door to my loc­al Wish­bone is the Con­corde Cafe where I can get a crusty baguette filled with salami and cheese, and a mys­tic­al half olive for a bar­gain $3.50). They say that it is the rising cost of pet­rol that has forced them into it. We say that maybe if they invest­ig­ated ways to reduce the ridicu­lous amount of plastic that their food comes in, the cost of pet­rol would­n’t affect them quite as much.

PS: Their black plastic boxes are #5, which can­’t be col­lec­ted, but you can take them in to Com­mon­sense Organ­ics who will recycle them for you. If you’re that ded­ic­ated. We think that Wish­bone should take them back too.

Regis­tra­tion for this year’s ‘V’ 48 Hours Furi­ous Film­mak­ing com­pet­i­tion closes in only 8 days and organ­isers are once again look­ing (some­what appre­hens­ively) at a record-break­ing num­ber of entries. 2007 saw more than 120 teams take part in the Wel­ling­ton region alone, and this year extra capa­city has been made avail­able so no one will get turned away.

There are over $100,000 of prizes up for grabs includ­ing a spe­cial Wel­ling­ton-only prize for Best Film Writ­ten or Dir­ec­ted by a Woman, donated by WIFT (thanks to the efforts of the won­der­ful Gaylene Pre­ston). While the attrac­tions of cam­era-gear, facil­it­ies vouch­ers, travel, movie tick­ets and guar­ana-infused fizzy drinks are obvi­ous, most teams enter for the sheer joy of film­mak­ing and return again and again.

Teams will shoot their films on the week­end of 16–18 May and the Heat screen­ings (this year free of charge) take place at the Para­mount from 20 May. The Wel­ling­ton Grand Final will be at The Embassy, once again, on Wed­nes­day 11 June.