Wellington from space

Can just about make out the Wel­ling­ton­ist Towers… Google Maps

A preview of coming attractions.… soon!

That’s a clev­er quote from Hitch­cock­’s Rear Win­dow… But that’s irrel­ev­ant right now… Com­ing soon (only just scored the bro­chure, so bear with us)… I’ll give you my legendary (unaf­fili­ated with any spon­sors – so far…) Film Fest­iv­al run­down. What’s hot, what’s good (they’re all good), what’s heart-warm­ing, what’s art-house, what’s sleaze, what’s art-house sleaze, […]

Wellington boy done good

Well, Titahi Bay boy, but close enough for us. Michael Camp­bell has pulled off one of New Zeal­and’s greatest sport­ing achieve­ments ever, by win­ning this year’s US Golf Open (held at Pine­hurst, North Car­o­lina). It’s only the second time a kiwi has won one of the four big majors, and it’s been a long wait […]

Rata Planting begins on Tinakori Hill

About 1200 aging pine trees were removed dur­ing the recent Tinakori Hill clean up, but over the next five years, Pro­ject Crim­son and the Wel­ling­ton City Coun­cil will be plant­ing around 7500 north­ern rata (met­ros­ider­os robusta). North­ern rata are indi­gen­ous to the Wel­ling­ton area and live for hun­dreds of years. The first 1500 baby trees […]

Fireworks in Petone

Here we are recom­mend­ing you to head North up the motor­way for the second time in as many weeks, but we sus­pect the mid-winter fire­works dis­play to be held off the Petone beach tomor­row night (Sat 18 June), will be well worth it. Accord­ing to the offi­cial press release over at the Hutt City Coun­cil […]

Young and Hungry

The latest Young and Hungry sea­son gets under­way this week at Bats, with three new plays being staged by crews of (mostly) young and aspir­ing thespi­ans. This play – The Many Faces of Kelly J Loko – par­tic­u­larly caught the eye. From the blurb… Laptops, i‑pods, chat rooms and text mes­saging – wel­come to the […]

Cabaret

Last night, unwind­ing from a hard week, we stopped by the new Cab­aret out­fit adjoin­ing Chow on Tory Street to check out the enter­tain­ment. It’s a lovely space – the decor is won­der­fully eleg­ant: dark wooden tables, wood louvres, beau­ti­ful car­pet and remark­able light­shades. There’s a warm red back­drop to the stage where I saw […]

The New Cool

The New Cool – an exhib­i­tion that cel­eb­rates the achieve­ments of some of New Zeal­and’s small but suc­cess­ful cre­at­ive com­pan­ies – star­ted this week at the Dowse Art Gal­lery out in the Hutt, and, hav­ing seen a wee sneak pre­view last week­end, as the final pre­par­a­tions were being put togeth­er, we can highly recom­mend get­ting […]

Rugby fans in town

It’s come to our notice that some bars (Vespa and Jet Bar to date) have barred punters wear­ing rugby jer­seys. We’d like to take this oppor­tun­ity to both warn fans, par­tic­u­larly out-of-town­ers, AND to express how much we think this sucks. When the Barmy Army and the rest of the fol­low­ers hit Wel­ling­ton we are […]

Matariki

Matariki, the peri­od of the year when the Plei­ades cluster of stars lifts itself up from below the hori­zon, and which (for some tribes, at least) her­alds in the Maori New Year, is in full swing. The appear­ance of Matariki in the sky is con­sidered vital. If the stars in the cluster are clear and […]