Putting out feelers: the Wellingtonista Cup
Not that we’re trying to get all Gawker on you or anything (or are we?) but the Wellingtonista would like to set up a league. A bowling league, if you will. Details will be confirmed later, but there would probably be a round-robin of sorts, and much booze would of course be involved ( because have you ever seen any of us out in public without a drink in our hands?), and as we’re not famous for our love of the ‘burbs, chances are the venue will be right in town at The Lanes.
This post is going out to see if anyone would be interested in taking us on. It would be great if teams had some sort of affiliation, no matter how loose it was (although ring-ins would be fine) and it would be best if teams had a place on the web in which they could let their fingers write cheques that their butts couldn’t cash in terms of trash-talking about their opponents. We’re envisioning competing against teams from other blogs (or blogs + notorious commentators), or web companies, or media outlets. Are you keen?
A drink for Autumn: the Negroni
At the wind whips at us with its chill flails, the blustery wet drizzle envelops our heads as we peraumbulate along the streets of downtown, as the night glows into the dawn with a dull damp violet cloud — we’re gonna need a drink to ward off the misery of the season. So I present to you the mulled-wine of the cocktail family: The Negroni.
It seems there are not a lot of people who will admit to a fondness for Campari. Indeed it was not two nights ago that a drinking companion of mine brayed something incoherent about “earwax” when the dreaded C-word was mentioned during a free-ranging session over at mine. However, for all its perceived sins, without Campari you would not have a Negroni.
It is the Campari that is the medicinal “bitter” and provides the characteristic flavor of the Negroni. A little background: according to my sources, Compari was concocted by Gaspare Campari in the 1850s. Gaspare, at only age 14, was the master drink maker at the Bass Bar in Turin, which was the commercial center for aperitifs at the time. Campari is made with natural ingredients that include herbs, spices, bark and fruit peels. The exact formula is of course a highly guarded secret. And as far as the Negroni is concerned, as with all great cocktails stories differ, but the most popular account of its origin is that Count Camillo Negroni, a Florentine aristocrat, decided one day to add some bite to his favorite drink, the Americano. He had the bartender add gin. From that time on he ordered the same drink every day. Eventually the bartender named the drink after him.
The Negroni. Complex. Spicy. Bitter, although not overly so. The tiniest bit of sweetness to offset that. It’s a drink to warm a cold breast. It’s a perfect aperitif, a drink to wake up your taste buds and shout “Ciao, ragazzo bello! Come stai?”. And the colour! The rich brown and deep red tones seem to glow with soft light and autumnal hues. Hold one near a light and your Negroni will erupt in orange novas. It’s the obvious drink-of-Autumn for a Wellingtonista.
“Bene, grazie!”
Cuba Street Carnival Feedback
Did you know that the Council supported the carnival?
Do you think they should support the carnival?
Got 2 minutes to answer those & a few other questions right here?
Supplementary question:
Are you offended by nudity at carnivals? If no, were you not outside Floriditas with half the Wellingtonista?
Then go here… and if that’s your wife/girlfriend/mother/daughter wrapped around that pole….
Well, way to go.
Plenty to wine about
There comes a time in everyone’s life when they feel the need to leave Wellington, even if it’s just for one day. No really, it happens! And a particularly good day to get out of town, if you don’t like the colour green, or potatoes, or Guiness or drunken fake-Irish louts, would be this Saturday. So where to go to get away? How about a wine festival – after we all know, that wine drinkers are a better class of people than beer drinkers – somewhere out of town but still nearby?
Well it just so happens that March 17 is your lucky day, with not one but two festivals taking place nearby. There’s the Wairarapa Wines Harvest Festival in Gladstone (as well as the International Balloon Fiesta and the day before Round the Vines, and also the Great Wellington Wine and Food Festival in Paekakariki. So how do you choose which one to go to when they both cost $25 for an entrance fee? Take our quiz to find out.
On the ball
Get your mask ready: it’s time to party quasi-anonymously with friends and strangers at a Venetian Masquerade Ball. Champagne! Chandeliers! Canapes! Cleavage! (if the poster is anything to go by)
Stately Dransfield House in upper Willis Street will play the gracious host for “Ballo di Sciocco” on the 31st of March. The venue and the imagery may me old-fashioned, but the ball itself must be Generation Next, since it has a myspace page. Looking at the organisers’ page and list of friends, I get the feeling this will be no ordinary ball.
Tickets $120 from Madmat on 027 290 3591.
Make a kitten smile
Start counting your coins people, because Craft2.0 hits the Hutt in four days. For those of you who can’t count, that’s this Saturday March 17th aka St Paddy’s Day.
The fair kicks off at 11am with the first 200 people scoring a Craft2.0 bag of awesomeness full things like:
- The Craft2.0 Poster
- Badges from SuperVery
- Babylicious candy and discount vouchers
- The latest Idealog – whose contributors include Craft2.0’s most favorite blogger
- Discount Vouchers for Beckon
- A surprise from Reka Cafe
- Big Bang balloons
- K-bars!!!!
- Your very own personal leprechaun.
And just for Wellingtonista music fans, here’s the band schedule:
- Jason McIver at 11.30am
- SpartacusR at 12.45pm
- Ryan Prebble at 2pm
- Monobasic at 3.15pm.
And did I mention there were crafts, loads and loads and loads of crafts all for sale? Just loads, people!
Just quietly my knowledge of Craft2.0 is so vast you’d almost think I was one of the two crafty divas making it happen.
Oh wait 😉
Note: all Craft2.0 Leprechauns are invisible to human eyes
Not-so Breaking News
- Tupelo has moved its beer menu to all boutique styles, with only Heineken remaining on its menu as a mainstream drop. They also have the very tasty Nelson Bays Gold and Nelson Bays Pilsner on tap, with (classy glass) jugs for just $10.
- Meanwhile the Wellingtonista’s semi-tiki bar of choice, Imbibe is now offering brunch on Friday-Sunday. While there was no obviously displayed menu on the windows, the people sitting contentedly in the sun appeared to be tucking in to large plates of eggs. Hopefully they’ll have more on offer for those of us less eggily inclined, because it’s a gorgeous space and looks very nice and chilled out for a hangover breakfast.
- And finally, the Dominion Post can as usual be relied on to run front-page stories about the weather in exact reverse of what’s going on that day, so today’s rain brings a ‘Drought!’ cover story. Hurrah!
We ask: why are you here?
The Wellingtonista would like to know why so many goddamn black-legged jellyfish decided to hang out at Lyall Bay over the weekend. Sure, it was hot, and swimming was a great idea, but for me, not for you creepy wobbly things! And it didn’t make a difference how calm it was on Saturday and how wavey it was on Sunday – you were still there! Bastards. It ‘s not like you were put on Earth first or anything, and yet you act like you own the place…
Borders: opening Thursday
As Tom noted back in October, the northern portion of Capital on the Quay is to become a Borders’. Imagine a bookstore with a giant footprint, a café inside, and possibly the largest range of stock in town. That might well be what we’re getting.
Several months later it seems the the work is just about complete, and earlier this week a sign appeared in the window: opening is to be 8:00am this Thursday 15th.
At the Wellingtonista we’ve been keenly awaiting the opening: probably more because we are hoping for some great opening bargains than anything else (not that we actually know anything – please comment if you do).
Around the watercooler though, there’s been a bit of discussion about Borders’ entry into the Wellington book retail market: will it be good, or bad for the book-loving public?
Experience of the Auckland store varied: one of us felt that although the initial stock on opening was broad enough to have people hyperventilating (three different editions of “Finnegan’s Wake” – a benchmark by which any book-store, -chain, or even society can be measured he said, misty-eyed with remembrance), over time it seemed to become less diverse.
But a couple of the others have found the Auckland store to be pretty good actually, beating out even Unity in some areas (post-modern American poetry, anyone?), and that the range available is huge.
At this point, the concept of The Long Tail made its way into the increasingly thick soup of the conversation. The idea applied in this case being that Borders’ can generate volume and make money by selling one or two copies of many many different titles rather than flogging large numbers of just a few very popular titles. Which may bode ill for for our favourite small-but-more-specialised bookshops elsewhere in town: Unity, Vic Books, Parsons, and even Dymocks all have their adherents up here in Wellingtonista towers. It’s hard to say how it’s going to pan out: maybe Borders’ won’t, or can’t compete against the independents, crimping the Quay’s other book megastore pretender Whitcoulls instead… or maybe not.
St Michael’s & Kelburn Village Fair – March 10 from 10am
The St Michael’s & Kelburn Village Fair is on tomorrow at 10am.
This will be the first one I’ve managed to catch, so I can’t regale you with tales of past experiences, but I can promise you stalls, home baking, junk/treasure, and probably an awful lot of very out of date 2nd hand university text books.
There may also be fire eaters, dancing, dancing girls, dancing bears, acrobats & tightrope walkers. I dunno, but I’m hoping.
And of course, the very attractive residents of Kelburn.
And her owner.