Four­teen and half thou­sand of us watched the Phoenix get their A‑League cam­paign under way with a thrill­ing 2–2 draw at West­pac sta­di­um this after­noon. An estim­ated (by myself and a couple of oth­er self-appoin­ted experts) couple of thou­sand more were stuck in queues for the first quarter and gave up and went home.

Yes, it was anoth­er tri­umph of event tick­et­ing with the com­bin­a­tion of a huge walk-up due to the good weath­er plus a huge pick-up queue for those that booked by phone yes­ter­day caus­ing chaos on Fran Wilde Walk.

If it had­n’t been for Sky and oth­er Asia-Pacific broad­cast com­mit­ments I’m sure the kick-off would have been held back but, as it was, those of us in our seats were treated to an enter­tain­ing spec­tacle with the Phoenix sav­ing their best for a sen­sa­tion­al last 15 minutes.

[Match report after the jump]

*govt3 is a scheme whereby gov­ern­ment employ­ees have their rub­bish bins taken away and replaced with a cube the size of a cof­fee mug, so they’re forced to sort their rub­bish into com­post, recyc­lables and land­fill waste. It’s a great idea but it’s very very annoy­ing how hard it seems to be for slightly older gen­er­a­tions to adapt to it. If it gets put in place in your work­place, stay out of the kit­chen for a couple of months or get earplugs because OH MY GOD how hard can it pos­sibly be and is it really worth the hours and hours of com­plain­ing and not under­stand­ing what to put where? No!

I’m sure you know by now that tomor­row the fantabulous Craft 2.0 fair is hap­pen­ing again at the New­Dowse tomor­row from 11am-3pm. And even though this does mean you’ll need to ven­ture out to the Hutt, you’re will­ing to make that sac­ri­fice. Plus, since you can also go see the exhib­i­tions that are on at the same time, you can take advant­age of this:

When you travel by bus to see Becom­ing King Kong – get a free ride home! Simply bring in your bus tick­et to The­New­Dowse and you’ll receive a vouch­er for a free ride home. Must show a val­id tick­et from a Cityl­ine Hutt Val­ley, Stage­coach Wel­ling­ton or Go Wel­ling­ton bus ser­vice.

And if you need even more of an incent­ive to get along oth­er than just the great range for stuff for sale, Wel­ling­tonista mem­bers Martha, Sue and Joanna will all be there in the flesh sign­ing auto­graphs selling their wares, which you can sample for free if you get there at 11am for the gift­bags. Hur­rah!

Just remem­ber to take cash along for all your shiny pur­chases as there is no ATM.

PS. Wel­ling­tonista Che will be selling someone else’s wares.

P.P.S. 101 gift bags get handed to the first people through the door at 11am.
You can check out Craft2.0 before 11am, but the the gift bags get handed out with the offi­cial fair start of 11am.

There are a couple of things that we’re uni­ver­sally fond of here at the Wel­ling­tonista. Bars. Being enter­tained. Exper­i­en­cing dif­fer­ent things. Sexu­al per­versity. If only there was a way we could com­bine all those things togeth­er… Hang on, there is! Dav­id Mamet’s one-act play Sexu­al Per­versity in Chica­go starts tonight at 6pm (doors at 5.30) at the San Fran­cisco Bath House, and we’re guar­an­tee­ing* it’s going to be a good time. If you need more con­vin­cing, here’s five good reas­ons you should see it.

1. Dav­id Mamet’s plays and screen­plays for things are gen­er­ally witty and hil­ari­ous.
2. It’s one act only! This means it starts at 6pm sharp and you’ll be out by 7.15pm, which is per­fect if you’re not much of a theatre-goer and you just want to dip your toes in.
3. You can drink while you watch!
4. It’s only $15 a tick­et (or $10 for stu­dents), and is a great way to see some ser­i­ously tal­en­ted up-and-com­ing tal­ent, like the lovely Laurel Devenie (pic­tured).
5. SFBH is one of our most favour­it­ist ven­ues (not just because of how late they’re open) and the play has been spe­cially staged to fit the space, which will be very inter­est­ing to see.

It runs from Thursday 16th – Sat­urday 25th August 2007, so we’ll see you there, right?

* Well, not tech­nic­ally. But we are giv­ing you our word as a gen­tle­man.

EDIT: And now I’ve actu­ally seen it, I recom­mend it like, ten times as much as before. Cab­aret-style shows where you can sit at a table and drink and eat while watch­ing hil­ari­ous dia­log and pretty con­vin­cing mid-west accents and also hott boys in their panties are alright by me!

Since the rest of the Wel­ling­tonista are doing it, here are a few things about Dami­an Christie’s art­icle about Wel­ling­ton that I dis­agree with.

• He advoc­ates avoid­ing Cour­tenay Place. Don’t do that. Yes, it’s hor­rible on Fri­days and Sat­urday nights, but without Cour­tenay Place there would be no beloved Wel­ling­tonista insti­tu­tions Sweet Mother­’s Kit­chen, the Para­mount, Arashi, or access to Boulot on Blair St.


• He says “A real city should have at least one bar that stays open 24 hours a day.” Well, The San Fran­cisco Bath House is often open until 6am, and Sand­wiches until 7am, and after that, you can jump in a cab and go get a pie from the Hataitai Bakery, and eat it in the laun­dro­mat, both of which are open 24 hours. Per­haps you’ll find some anonym­ous sex there while you’re at it.


• He men­tions that Wel­ling­ton lacks celebrit­ies. Hello, don’t you know who I am? The Wel­ling­tonista are social­ites. Llew in par­tic­u­lar bears a strik­ing resemb­lance to Glinda Kirk­patrick.


• Dami­an’s men­tioned before how all the girls in Wel­ling­ton wear skirts over their trousers. I know I do every day, but I don’t know any­one else who does. And I know every­one.


• Ser­i­ously, talk­ing about Fat Freddy’s and Fly My Pret­ties? Yawn. It seems like he just googled ‘Wel­ling­ton Music’ and took those names from a Wall­pa­per art­icle. For someone seen around town as much as he is, you’d think he might have real­ised that there’s a lot more going on in our music scene.

The final ques­tion that ends all dis­cus­sions or post mortems of Wel­ling­tonista events:

also, did someone pick up our bar tab?

I like it for its simple, if plaint­ive, optim­ism.

Bret and Jemaine chan­nel the Pet Shop Boys circa “West End Boys”…

Real Art Road­show is a mobile exhib­i­tion of ori­gin­al work by more than 60 lead­ing New Zea­l­and artists. It’s cur­rently parked right out­side the Bee­hive.

More details, incl. list of artists, after the jump.