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 […]