Make the society pages with us

Shiny like an Oscar. But drinkableBy now you’ve either cast your votes for the First Annual Wellingtonista Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence, or you’re still trying to decide whether you <3 Good Luck or San Frindigo more. You might want to get a wriggle on with that, as voting closes at 5pm on Thursday.

Thanks very much for voting, it’s very choice that you got involved. If you’d like to get even more involved with us (ooer!), please come along to our awards ceremony at Mighty Mighty (above Mr Bun in Cuba Mall) on Friday night.

Drinks will start out at 6.30pm and the awards themselves will probably kick off around 7pm.

If you haven’t met us yet, you’ll be able to spot us easily as we’ll be the ridiculously attractive people patting ourselves on the back.

We’ll be drawing names for prizes then too, but as we are good people your attendance is not mandatory in order to win. However, what possible reason could you have for not wanting to attend?

If you would like to buy us drinks, naturally a dry martini would be the standard, but we imagine that we would drink pretty much anything you gave us.

It should all be a frightfully good time, and we look forward to seeing you there.

First Annual Wellingtonista Awards Voting

It is with great pride and pleasure that we announce the nominees for the First Annual Wellingtonista Awards for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.

The Wellingtonista have sweated and slaved over the categories, and now it is your turn for action. Step up and send us your votes before November 30. The awards will be announced in an elaborate* ceremony on Friday December 1 which we would love for you to attend.

Why should you vote? Because your opinion counts. And so that you’ll receive an invitation to the awards. And because you’ll go in to the draw to win awesome prizes, including but not necessarily limited to goodies from Babylicious, signed copies of 101 Stories That I Want To Tell You, tasty salads from Kapai (disclaimer: we wrote nice things about them before they offered up prizes), stunning tshirts, signed photos of The Dropkicks and lifelong Country Club membership.

The categories are after the jump, and nominees are suggestions only – you’re free to write-in your winners.

Silicon Welly – the sequel

Remember that article in Idealog that Noizy wrote about last month? It looks like the name was too good to pass up, because some of the high-tech companies featured in the article have got together and formed a Silicon Welly website to help keep you up-to-date with techy developments.

One of the more prominent of those companies, ProjectX, is about to launch a new version of their ZoomIn interactive mapping and community site. Rumour has it that there’s a now lot of exciting functionality and local data on the way, but if I told you I’d have to kill you.

Kai in our puku

bread bowlsRecently we asked you where the best places to eat on Lambton Quay are, and naturally, the internet word-of-mouth answered: Kapai Salads in Lambton Square.

There’s plenty of reasons to love Kapai, including:

  • Whānau: Everyone knows someone who knows the owners, hence the mass emails and bulletin board postings about the shop.
  • Mata: Your salad will be freshly made right in front of you, and you will get to choose the ingrediants yourself. No droopy lettuce and skankyass grated cheese here, no no.
  • Taiao: The soup is served in bowls made out of bread, while salads are served in potatopaks (which you probably wouldn’t want to eat, although technically they’re safe enough to), minimising environmental damage. Plus, the coffee’s fair trade.

We’d like them to offer lists of available ingrediants and make it a little clearer which are the gourmet ones that’ll set you back an extra $1.50, but when you can get a rocquette, falafel and feta salad with aioli in less than five minutes and feel good about doing it, you’ll definitely be going back.

Crazy Intersections of our time: #31

the madnessThis week, the stretch of Adelaide Road where it intersects with Britomart Street/Herald Street, and then, a little further up the road, with Luxford Street.

As you can see on our hastily assembled little map on the right there, North-flowing traffic splits into two lanes once it gets past the Britomart/Herald intersection, so right-turning traffic gets its own turning lane into Luxford.

Now, this would work fine if there weren’t a couple of 5 minute parking spots (outside a dairy) in the straight-ahead lane (photo 2). Cars parked in that 5 minute spot (indicated by blue in the graphic) act as a roadblock, so once the turning lane hits a red light, traffic quickly backs up to the point where no-one can actually get into the straight-ahead lane (photo 3).

Muka

The Settlers Museum is hosting the MUKA YOUTH PRINT EXHIBITION 2006.

The exhibition features a collection of forty original lithographs by twenty prominent artists from New Zealand, Australia and Europe.

The exhibition is unique in that it is only open to young people aged 5 to 18. The idea is that young people are given the opportunity to see, select and buy an art work that they like, uninfluenced by adults or the name of the artist. All the works reflect the normal style of the artists and there is no “talking down” to the children.

The uniform low price means that this is an excellent way for young people to get real works of art into their hands.

Settlers Museum
The Esplanade
Petone

25 and 26 November
12 noon – 5pm

The horror!

Videoblood brings you ‘FIRST BLOOD’. This dvd project brings together 11 video artists and visionaries to create an original masterpiece with the only rule being that it had to finish within 90 seconds.

Filled with motion graphics, stop motion, claymation, porno, comedy, 3d, surgery, flying, dude, geisha, planets,cosmic arts, snails and all in one serving of 15 minutes.

The Paramount is a massive theatre, tell everyone to come along because it’s FREE! FREE! FREE!

Featuring work from:

Alistair Cheyne
Vincent Lowe & Jon Strang
Lakshman Anandanayagam
Mike Heynes
Sally Tran
Guy Capper
Matt Pitt
Paul Herschell
Sam Webber & Gareth O’brien
Ed Davis
Jeremy Mansford

Check out the teaser at:
www.videoblood.com

FIRST BLOOD DVD LAUNCH SCREENING FRIDAY NOVEMBER 3RD, 9:30pm PARAMOUNT THEATRE

Wellington Lions set to Roar

despite gluing his hand to his head, Nonu still took his place in the starting lineup…and if I had a cent five cents ten cents for every time that pun has been used

Anyway, the Wellington Lions are indeed headed North this weekend to take on Waikato (who, like Hadyn in his Dropkick’s guise, doesn’t have an ‘official’ nickname) in the final of the NPC Cup. There they’ll be confronted by a very in-form team, a stadium full of fantical cowbell ringing Waikato supporters, and their own capability to implode in spectacular fashion.

Wellington haven’t won the NPC tournament since 2000, and Waikato fourteen years back in 1992 (the only time they’ve won it, in fact). Ominously though, it had been fouteen years since Wellington won their last trophy, and in this year’s round-robin play, Waikato were convincing winners over the Lions.

So, whadda we think? Are Wellington up for it? Will the fast and flashy Lions turn up? Or the bumbling and clueless Wellington team that occasionally takes their place?

Mother Baby & Child Show

In your spare moments not spent at Craftwerk this weekend, you may like to come out to sunny Hutt City for the Mother Baby and Child Show. This free event features an array of exhibits from enterprising mothers (catchily titled Mumz Biz).

Not wishing to pimp my own ride too much, watch me pimp my ride. Babylicious will be there, as will uber-local-clever-evil-bears, the Scrappers.Srappers pillows

Horticultural Hall, Laings Road, Lower Hutt.

Sunday, October 22nd – 10.30am to 5.00pm

Monday, October 23rd – 10.00am to 5.00pm

Spend it

Wellington may be New Zealand’s most exciting city, but that’s not enough to earn us one of Wallpaper*s City Guides. Almost as galling as the news that Auckland will get one next year is the fact that this disqualifies us from entering Gridskipper’s $100 a day contest and winning the complete set of guides.

Still, that shouldn’t stop us. What’s the best way to blow US$100 (about $150 Kiwi) in Wellington in a day?