The Weekend that Was II: Gigs Galore

As well as all the sport­ing cham­pi­on­ships and fest­ivals tak­ing place around Wel­ling­ton over the week­end, there was also an insane num­ber of top gigs. Top loc­al tal­ents The Black Seeds, Pase­load, Ghost­plane were on show around town, as well as oth­er excel­lent kiwi bands Dav­id Kilgour and the Heavy Eights, and The Fan­at­ics. On […]

The Weekend that Was

The power­boat­ers, women cyc­lists and dragon­boat­ers must have been ruing the choice of Wel­ling­ton as the choice of cham­pi­on­ship ven­ues as a, er, ‘brisk’ north­erly blew in from the Hutt and across the har­bour over the week­end. The wind also caused hav­oc with the Sat­urday night Neil Dia­mond con­cert at the Sta­di­um, where the poor […]

Newtown Festival

The nev­er-end­ing sum­mer stream of Wel­ling­ton sub­urb­an car­ni­vals and fairs con­tin­ues on its merry way with the start of the ten day New­town Fest­iv­al tomor­row (Fri 4 Mar). The big day is Sunday’s Fair Day, when Rid­di­ford Street will be closed to traffic, allow­ing a pleth­ora of stalls, enter­tain­ers and gen­er­al may­hem to hit the […]

Tuatara Day

I must admit, I’ve nev­er actu­ally seen a tuatara in the flesh (in the scales?) before. So the Karori Wild­life Sanc­tu­ary are hav­ing a spe­cial Tuatara Day to allow me and the no doubt many oth­er urb­an­ites who haven’t seen our most fam­ous liz­ard the chance to check out their res­id­ent rep­tile – Oliv­er – […]

Never mind the statue, what’s in my baggy?

No joy for the Wel­ling­tonista present at today’s Academy Awards in Los Angeles. Taika Wai­titi’s bril­liant short film Two Cars, One Night lost out (as Taika him­self pre­dicted in a TV inter­view we saw a couple of days ago) to Brit­ish dir­ect­or Andrea Arnold ‘s film Wasp. And the Weta guys had no luck for […]

New Wellington Arts Centre

Just spot­ted on the excel­lent Feel­ing Great web­site – Wel­ling­ton is to get a new Arts Centre, on Abel Smith Street (in the old Edu­ca­tion Board Build­ing between Cuba and Vic­tor­ia Streets). We’re not sure if the old Arts Centre (the band rotunda down Ori­ent­al Parade, where we go for piano les­sons every week, incid­ent­ally), […]

Weekend gig action

Moody rock­er and increas­ingly funk-ori­ent­ated Dim­mer and Sam­oan hip-hop­per extraordin­aire Tha Feel­style (it’s not a typo, it is Tha) will be enter­tain­ing the stu­dents and any­one else who cares to turn up at the Vic­tor­ia Uni­ver­sity Uni­on Hall tonight (Fri 25 Feb). Should be an inter­est­ing combo of sounds. The latest Dim­mer album – You’ve […]

Matt Couper @ Janne Land Art Gallery

Wel­ling­ton artist Matt Couper­’s new exhib­i­tion opened earli­er this week at the Janne Land Art Gal­lery (which has recently moved to Unit 1, 13 Jessie Street). Accord­ing to Wiki­pe­dia, his most latest work illus­trates imagery from his recent trip to the USA, and is con­cerned with Mason­ic sym­bol­ism, mod­ern archi­tec­ture and cul­tur­al para­noia. You know, […]

Free Acheh Protest

The Indone­sian Ambas­sad­or is giv­ing a talk at the Wel­ling­ton Law School today, giv­ing every­one the chance to voice their dis­ap­prov­al of his gov­ern­ment’s ongo­ing use of viol­ence and tor­ture in Acheh. Blog­green points out that there’ll be a nice big ban­ner to rally behind, but any oth­er imple­ments of protest (noise-makers, plac­ards, that sort […]

Cuba Street Carnival

Hope­fully Wel­ling­ton’s glor­i­ous sum­mer weath­er will hold on for anoth­er few days, and treat the city’s cit­izens to what prom­ises to be a fant­ast­ic Cuba St Car­ni­val, this Sat­urday (Sat 26 Feb). It’s the last Car­ni­val before the south end of Cuba St will be irre­voc­ably altered by the impend­ing bypass, so there’s bound to […]