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.