Art on the streets
Let’s say this for the record: the Wellingtonista hates tagging. It’s just an inane and territorial fury of poodle-pissings scrawled around the town signifying nothing but a terrifying lack of imagination on the part of the tagger.
That said, there’s more to the world of graffiti than tags. And at some point graffiti changes from mindless and wanton property damage into ART, somewhere across boundaries as ragged and ill-defined and debatable as any cultural warzone. Around central Wellington, it’s all there to be discovered and mapped, tucked away in the alleys and byways of Te Aro mainly, but also scattered around the wider inner city.
[We show you some great street-art, after the jump]
Ponoko at TechCrunch40
Ponoko is perhaps Wellington’s hardest to categorise tech startup. The general idea seems to be to around empowering ordinary people to design items that Ponoko will help them manufacture and distribute.
This admittedly sounds a bit vague until you’ve been immersed in the service, as several of the Wellingtonista (and many of our readers) have been. In fact, it’s now possible to buy fellow Wellingtonista Sue’s designed-by-Sue, built-by-Ponoko jewellery via the Ponoko site, with more to come.
So we are all very excited about what Ponoko has to offer, and that view is shared by the people at TechCrunch, who invited them and a handful of others out of a field of 700 start-up hopefuls world wide to present to today’s TechCrunch40 conference in San Francisco.
This is a fantastic achievement (the immediate evidence being the occasional 503 bandwidth errors on the Ponoko site after co-founder Dave ten Have‘s presentation) and we hope this is the foundation for further and bigger success!
- Dave’s presentation is liveblogged here
- Noted by Engadget here.
- Zillions of mentions via Google Blogsearch
Say it ain’t so – the Chocolate Fish to close
Using the wonders of modern technology and the interweb we here at Wellingonsita Towers have discovered that The Chocolate Fish over at Scorching Bay is set to close.
Noooooooooooooooooooooo!
Don’t believe us – read this article from Stuff.co.nz:
Wellington’s landmark Chocolate Fish Cafe is to close at the end of the year, hit by rising rent and council compliance costs.
…
So what can we do – find out after the break…
Ask Wellington: spring gardening?
Sometimes we at the Wellingtonista must admit that even we, strange though it may seem, do not know everything about our fine city (and in this case, its climatic peculiarities). So periodically we must call upon the mighty and erudite collective wisdom of our readers to fill in the gaps.
Many of you may have noticed the arrival of springtime, if only to observe the marginally warmer temperatures, a sustained breeziness, and an increased rate of sneezing experienced between your front doors and that of your air-conditioned workplaces. But not all of you fall into this category, and it is of you in particular we are enquiring today.
You see, some in the Wellingtonista (and again, this may be a little shocking) live in the suburbs. And some of us actually have areas of flat ground reserved for the growing of things that can be eaten (it is true that some apartment-dwellers have a couple of terracotta pots on their balconies for the same purpose – the following may apply to them too), called “vegetable gardens”.
And so the question we have for you today is: What should we be planting in our “vegetable gardens” right now?
We suspect that potatoes are good at the moment. But we wonder: what else is good, assuming that it’s both legal and tasty? If we were to get planting this coming week, what’s best?
Answers, please, dear readers.
A Bit o’ Berlin
Poster tells it all, really…
The good folk who brought you the Berlin Bonanza invite you to savour the sights, sounds and flavours of Berlin once more. Relive the city’s ubercool vibe with the Saturday market, get the true Berlin with a mondo doco, dig in to hot’n’heapin’ plates of currywurst, thrill to the heady mashup of ping pong and country music, groove to alt-country cowpokes channelling the Heimat, and finish the night with a flourish of Deutschland disco dancing.
Full programme after the break…
Cinephilia: Opening This Week
After a disappointing week of un-suspenseful suspense films we welcome a couple of potentially comedic comedies this week. Firstly, from Judd Apatow, creator of The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, comes Super Bad. Co-written by Knocked Up star (and funny guy) Seth Rogen with childhood friend Evan Goldberg when they were about 14, it follows two High School kids (who at one point were going to be called Seth and Evan) on a search for booze and girls so they can lose their virginity before they go to college. Playing at Readings, Regent-on-Manners, Sky City Queensgate.
The 40 Year Old Virgin himself, Steve Carell, stars in an un-anticipated sequel to Jim Carrey’s Bruce Almighty: Evan Almighty. Carell returns as Evan Baxter: egotistical newscaster in the original; egotistical Congressman in this one and Morgan Freeman is also back as God. Readings, Regent-on-Manners, Sky City Queensgate.
[The rest of this week’s releases after the jump]
FOTC Wednesday: Frodo is great…. who is that?
This ia friendly public service announcement that the object of much lust is the subject of a documentary about his being such an object of lust that screens tomorrow night on Prime at 8.30pm. According to the IMDB entry, Frodo Is Great… Who Is That?!!,
The documentary looks at the rise to celebrity status of NZ actor and musician Bret McKenzie, who appeared for 3 seconds as an extra in "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring", during the Council of Elrond scene. His brief appearance sparked a huge internet fan-base dedicated to his "brooding pout" and "elvish good looks". McKenzie has been dubbed "FIGWIT", an acronym of "Frodo is Great; Who is That!!?"
So that’s probably quite a nice warmup to when Flight of the Conchords finally start screening here on the 17th.
Ahoy me hearties!
So it’s one week until that most beloved of all days – International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I bet you’re wondering how you can celebrate it instead of going to the Driving Government Performance – the development goals at work conference. Luckily, the Museum of Wellington City and Sea has the perfect solution: The Great Pirate Corporate Challenge!
The challenge takes place between 12.30-2pm on the day, and will see teams of five compete in a treasure hunt on Somes/Maitu Island, a peg-leg race and a tug’o war. See this handy PDF for more details!
And of course if you DO have to go to that conference, might we suggest a trip to Pirate’s Cove would be the order of the day for another time?
Government 2.0 – will it ever happen? YES!
The date for your calendar is Saturday 15th September for the BarCampWellingtonNZegov:
… making a difference to egovernment in New Zealand. We are a small country with a very well connected, vibrant web community. government 2.0 can happen here!
The day is being hosted by Fronde at their Queen’s Wharf office, is free and totally driven by you fine people in the community (‘BarCamp’ background and what to expect).
Seven things (after the break) that you can do now that will give us a government for the 21st century:
Where to watch the Rugby World Cup – Wellington
Well, in response to Mike’s question, the only place open at 6.30am this morning was J.J. Murphy’s.
And a top bunch of people they are too. The beer was flowing for those still out since the night before (including a gaggle of French guys. Bad luck there Blues).
Even better! They did a hungry man a $5 breakfast. Scrambled eggs, sausages, hash browns, tomatoes, toast.
So, to repeat that. No Occidental, no Bristol.
Get yourself down to Murphy’s next Saturday to watch England v. South Africa (and France v. Ireland the week after).