Notional Significance: Asylum

[See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] After my detour, I head back to the motorway’s edge. My route takes me along Mexted Terrace—a name that is engraved across Tawa’s skin, and with its twin asso­ci­ations of car deal­er­ships and rugby it encom­passes two dimen­sions of the sub­urb­an myth­os. On the corner of Tre­mewan Street, with the […]

Crafters brew corner

How to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear?  That was the ques­tion for the broth­ers who own the build­ing just off the corner of Vic­tor­ia and Vivi­an when their former ten­ants’ ven­ture to open a bakery/café dis­solved. So in true kiwi fash­ion, they decided they’d bet­ter jump in them­selves and do some­thing […]

It’s their birthday but we get the presents

Beloved Miramar insti­tu­tion is turn­ing three, and to cel­eb­rate, they’re pub­lish­ing a cook­book! You get to vote on which recipes you think should be included, and go into the draw to win a copy of the book, an invite to the launch, and a vouch­er to spend at the res­taur­ant. The person/s who nom­in­ated the […]

Is Utopia within arms reach?!

Accord­ing to the Inter­na­tion­al Com­edy Fest­iv­al 2014 Uto­pia can be found at Kitty O’Shea’s, on Cour­tenay Place, from 8:30pm for the next two nights. Accord­ing to Adam Wright, the comedi­an put­ting on the show, Uto­pia can be found by fol­low­ing his 10 simple answers to the world’s biggest prob­lems. In a show that cov­ers everything […]

Reviewing the review: David Burton’s goose is cooked

Wel­ling­ton has one daily news­pa­per, and that news­pa­per has one res­taur­ant crit­ic, who cer­tainly has his own… dis­tinct­ive style. The Fly has decided that Dav­id Bur­ton needs some account­ab­il­ity. We’re giv­ing him his own series. Nor­mally the Fly is pre­pared to see Dav­id Bur­ton’s reviews as some kind of strange per­form­ance art, but his “review” of […]

Review: Other Desert Cities

Lyman and Polly Wyeth are wealthy Repub­lic­ans enjoy­ing their lives in Palm Springs. Their chil­dren, Brooke and Trip, are at their par­ents’ place for Christ­mas for the first time in six years. Also stay­ing for Christ­mas is Polly’s sis­ter Silda. She’s been in rehab. Everything seems to be going well (at least, as well as […]

Easter markets

Here are the YES’s and NO’s for the usu­al Wel­ling­ton mar­kets over East­er if you fancy a wander and inhale or imbibe: YES’s: Frank Kitts under­ground craft mar­ket on Sat­urday Pori­rua and Hutt River­side mar­kets on Sat­urday Hill Street Farm­ers mar­ket on Sat­urday The Fringe Mar­kets in Allen Street on Sat­urday Har­bourside mar­ket on Sunday […]

Southern Cycling

Are you one of the increas­ing num­ber of cyc­ling dare­dev­ils who spend morn­ings and even­ings dodging the traffic on Rid­di­ford Street, out­run­ning buses in the Adelaide Road bus lane, and watch­ing in dis­may as cars try and over­take you on the down­hill stretch into the Bay when you’re already doing 50km/h? If so, you might […]

Notional Significance: Flat

[See all Notion­al Sig­ni­fic­ance posts] I set off along Taylor Ter­race, and into the slow, steady heart of the sub­urbs. So far my path has tra­versed urb­an, edge­lands and rur­al land­scapes, with occa­sion­al tan­gen­tial encoun­ters across suburbia’s ragged edges. But here I am engulfed, flanked on both sides, strid­ing out its loose domest­ic rhythms: hip, […]

Sweeties for your sweetie…

As if East­er com­ing isn’t enough (I hear the cin­na­mon bun­nies at Bohemein are hop­ping out the door again), we now have more sweet deli­cious­ness on offer around the city. Firstly the new ven­ture on Feath­er­ston Street in the old Capri space – Louis Ser­geant Sweet Cou­ture.  By (you’ll nev­er guess…) Louis Ser­geant, the until-recently […]