There is no Depression in Wellington

The Welling­ton­ista and Pub­lic Address, in asso­ci­a­tion with Free­view and Ponoko proud­ly present

THERE IS NO DEPRESSION IN WELLINGTON

It’s a quiz show! It’s awards for the best bits of our fair city! It’s BLAM BLAM BLAM!

Mighty Mighty, Thurs­day 6 Decem­ber. Doors open at 6pm. $15 and dona­tion to Down­town Com­mu­ni­ty Min­istry encour­aged.

First up the clever peo­ple of Pub­lic Address Radio and the Down Low Con­cept will bring you It Does­n’t Give My Oppo­nents Much Time Either, a quiz show in which var­i­ous celebri­ty con­tes­tants par­ty like Mul­doon is still Prime Min­is­ter and Rus­sell Brown asks the tricky retro ques­tions.

Then, for the sec­ond year in the row, the Welling­ton­ista will tell you who you’ve vot­ed for as the best of Welling­ton. Vot­ing is open at The Welling­ton­ista until Decem­ber 4. What’s the best drink in town, who’s the hottest hos­pi­tal­i­ty work­er who’ll serve you that drink, and where will you eat away the hang­over the next morn­ing? Who will win the sexyass tro­phies Dan Emery designed and Ponoko made?

You decide, and when you cast your vote and attend the awards, you’ll go into the draw to win some choice prizes from Wan­da Har­land, Super Very and more. In exchange, the Welling­ton­ista hope that you will make a dona­tion to the Down­town Com­mu­ni­ty Mis­sion, for the fol­low­ing rea­sons:

  • We love this city, right? And so there­fore, it is impor­tant that we actu­al­ly do good things for it, as well as talk­ing about it all the time.
  • We eat and drink to excess, and it’s awe­some that we cel­e­brate that, but it might be nice if we think about the peo­ple who have dif­fi­cul­ty eat­ing, or who have prob­lems with drink­ing.
  • Blan­ket Man was vot­ed Welling­ton­ian of the year last year at the Welling­ton­ista Awards. How about we give some atten­tion to the not-so-vis­i­ble home­less peo­ple?

But the good times don’t stop there, because we also hap­pen to have lined up one of the great­est New Zealand bands of all time to bring their spe­cial kind of mag­ic to the event. Don’t fight it, Mar­sha, because it’s big­ger than the both of us. That’s right — we’re pants-wet­ting­ly excit­ed to announce that Blam Blam Blam will be play­ing after the awards.

And if all that gets to be a bit too much for you, your atten­dance gives you the chance to win one of two Free­view decoders (with satel­lite install if required , so in the future you’ll be able to just stay at home with crys­tal-clear tele­vi­sion recep­tion. Hur­ray!

To make sure you can join us, please make sure that you email the.wellingtonista@gmail.com before the event with your name, and also get there before 7.30pm, oth­er­wise we can’t guar­an­tee you’ll fit! Reser­va­tions are now closed, so if you got on the list (if you emailed before today, you are), you need to be there by 7pm to ensure you make it in. And if you’re not on the list, it’s first-in-first-served from 7pm onwards. But we would tru­ly tru­ly love to see you there, so even if you don’t book, or you have to get there lat­er, come along.

And if you real­ly can’t join us, don’t go all emo: the par­ty will be record­ed for a spe­cial end-of-year edi­tion of Pub­lic Address Radio, which will air on Radio Live.

Thanks to our won­der­ful spon­sors:

Ponoko make the Grey Lady

Ponoko in the NYTLocal start-up and Friends-of-Welling­ton­ista Ponoko (among oth­er con­nec­tions to us they’re also part-spon­sor of our awards this year) have their pic­ture at the top of an inter­est­ing arti­cle in the tech sec­tion of today’s New York Times. The arti­cle talks about the rise of inter­net-aid­ed design and mak­ing and describes Ponoko thus:

Ponoko, a com­pa­ny based in New Zealand, allows cus­tomers to upload designs for flat shapes that can then be snapped togeth­er like Ikea fur­ni­ture. Mak­ing a pro­to­type can be as sim­ple as cut­ting shapes out of card­board. Users then cre­ate a dig­i­tal ver­sion and send it to Ponoko, which cuts the pat­tern out in met­al or wood with a laser.

There’s a fair head of glob­al buzz build­ing up around Ponoko, whose poten­tial extends far beyond the Times’ fair­ly neu­tral descrip­tion of what can be achieved with them today.

And as for us: well, we were very excit­ed to note what looks like a pro­to­type of the high­ly sought after 2nd Annu­al Welling­ton­ista Award tro­phy vis­i­ble on the table between Dave and Derek. So maybe this means we’ve made the Times as well?

2AWA: Best cultural venue

The word ‘Cul­ture’ means many dif­fer­ent things to dif­fer­ent peo­ple. To us it means doing things that enrich the mind to make your­self into a more inter­est­ing per­son. And luck­i­ly for us, there are many fan­tas­tic places in Welling­ton in which to get enriched.

My cul­ture fix­es are prin­ci­pal­ly deliv­ered by:
Nom­i­nees after the jump…

2AWA: Best apparel store

Whether you’re a nu-rave kid or a glo­ri­fied dandy, being well-dressed is part­ly a mat­ter of taste. Nev­er­the­less, if you’re keen to spend some time on your per­son­al appear­ance, you’d do well to start out with these Welling­ton stores for clothes and/or acces­sories.

Does my bum look big in this? Who cares if it’s big – it looks awe­some!

Get dressed after the jump

2AWA: Best UnCheap Eats

If you’re going to splash out a large amount of mon­ey for a din­ner for a spe­cial occa­sion or because you’re worth it, the whole expe­ri­ence had bet­ter be pret­ty damn spec­tac­u­lar. The food must be deli­cious, the ser­vice must be amaz­ing, and the atmos­phere should be grand. The fol­low­ing restau­rants can all deliv­er sub­lime times, but which one is very best of all?

I spent all my rent mon­ey on din­ner here, but at least when the bailiffs beat me to death I will die bliss­ful­ly:

Splurges after the jump…

2AWA: Best Breakfast

Remem­ber how when you were grow­ing up you were always told that break­fast was the most impor­tant meal of the day? Well it seems like these cafes agree. Whether you’re up and about and plan­ning a big day, or you’ve man­aged to drag your­self out of bed some time in the after­noon, a plate full of good­ness from one of these places is prob­a­bly exact­ly what you need.

The Welly solu­tion to a hang­over is:

Time to get out of bed and get to these places, after the jump…

2AWA: Best public space

Every­body knows that you can’t beat Welling­ton on a good day. And good days can hap­pen at the most ran­dom of times. There­fore it’s super impor­tant that we have our lit­tle patch­es of sun­shine to escape to, when the whole “work­ing for the man” starts to wear you down…

Eat­ing lunch out­side nev­er felt so good:

Let’s go out­side, after the jump…

2AWA: Best Cheap Eats

Eat­ing is impor­tant. So is man­ag­ing your bud­get. These places offer good ways to com­bine the two. When we get cheap food, we want it to sat­is­fy us. We want a good-sized serv­ing, and we want it to be tasty, inter­est­ing and prefer­ably from a nice place to dine. Like these places…

I just found $20, so it’ll be din­ner at:

Cheap eats after the jump…

2AWA: Wellingtonian of the year?

What do you love the most about our city, and who has helped cre­ate that? Is it the hos­pi­tal­i­ty scene? Sports? Music and com­e­dy? The Sil­i­con Welly scene? These peo­ple all have been instru­men­tal in mak­ing our city as fun as it is. Now give them some love in return!

Damn I’m proud you’re from Welling­ton:

Super­heroes after the jump…

2AWA:Best Non-Drinking Venue?

It does­n’t hap­pen all that often, but occa­sion­al­ly the Welling­ton­istas will plan excur­sions with friends from out of town that don’t entire­ly revolve around a bar. And on those times, we want to do things that are a lit­tle bit touristy, but not over­ly so, so this is how we do it.

How I enter­tain those from out of town who might not want to drink all day:

After the jump, tourist activ­i­ties ho!