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!