Island Bay Festival 2012

The 28th annu­al Island Bay Fes­ti­val kicks off tomor­row (Sat 11 Feb), with a heap of events and activ­i­ties planned for the com­ing week. All the favourite events are back: Bless­ing of the Boats, the parade down the Parade, Bands in the Park (fea­tur­ing Fam­i­ly Cac­tus, Ryan Preb­ble, Joe Blos­som, and New­town Sound and MC Israel […]

Get Mr Gay Wellington to Mr Gay World!

This week­end in Auck­land is the Big Gay Out. Now that wouldn’t be of much inter­est to us here at the Welling­ton­ista because Out In The Square, the capital’s own queer fes­ti­val is big­ger and bet­ter, but at the Big Gay Out they’re also run­ning the Mr Gay New Zealand com­pe­ti­tion and Wellington’s Mar­cus Fen­son […]

Less than a week til Webstock ’12!

Can you feel the excite­ment in the air? Hear the squeak of glass­es being polished,Threadless pack­ages being opened, plaid shirts being ironed and beards being fluffed? Next week, Welling­ton plays host to the great­est most awe­some con­fer­ence in the world. Fact! We’ve already made some rec­om­men­da­tions of things for Web­stock atten­dees to do in Welling­ton, […]

Incoming: Badd Energy

Sike-elec­tro weirdos and recent “that’s inter­est­ing” Fly­ing Nun Mark II signees Badd Ener­gy are back with a new single/video and tour.

Review: The Motor Camp

Two fam­i­lies take their car­a­vans to The Wind­mill Motor Camp for the sum­mer hol­i­days. Uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­ers, Frank (Tim Spite) and Jude (Danielle Mason) Red­mond, along with their daugh­ter Hol­ly (Flo­rence Mul­heron) set up next to build­ing con­trac­tor Mike His­lop (Phil Vaugh­an), his wife (?) Dawn Tairoa (Olivia Vio­let Robin­son) and her son Jared (Antony Young). […]

Summer fairs are here

After the rush of pre-Christ­­mas shop­ping when it’s all about every­one else and the right present for the right per­son and being love­ly and self­less, it’s rather nice when sum­mer fair sea­son rolls around. Sum­mer fairs are not just about shop­ping for thing for oth­er peo­ple, although that is an excel­lent and impor­tant com­po­nent to […]

The Restaurant Website Drinking Game

In our review of Capi­tol, we men­tioned how we go there despite the dread­ful­ness of their web­site (but you prob­a­bly missed that bit and cut straight to talk­ing about negro­nis). What espe­cial­ly is so bad about their site? There’s Flash, con­tact details hid­den, menus embed­ded that don’t even work prop­er­ly (can any­one tell me what […]

Batucada Sound Machine in town to shake it

Cuba Street Car­ni­val favourites Batu­ca­da Sound Machine have returned to New Zealand with a new album of tried and true road-test­ed tunes enti­tled Don’t Keep Silent, due for release Jan­u­ary 23rd, 2012. In addi­tion, BSM have planned their first ever com­pre­hen­sive tour of New Zealand to cel­e­brate the album release includ­ing a spot at WOMAD […]

Capitol opposite of punishment

With a cou­ple of fam­i­ly birth­days tak­ing place over the hol­i­days, Jan­u­ary was a good time to assem­ble for din­ner togeth­er. Hav­ing dined at Capi­tol before (in fact, it’s been nom­i­nat­ed for TAWAs mul­ti­ple times), I was­n’t put off by its Flash web­site or that they don’t take book­ings for groups small­er than eight. As […]

Keep that picnic rug in the car

Just a note to any­one plan­ning on head­ing to the Dell for the 2012 Films By Starlight screen­ing tonight, Bill Cun­ning­ham New York has been post­poned due to the wind until tomor­row night, Fri­day 20 Jan­u­ary.     The screen­ings start at dusk (approx 8:30 — 8:45pm). This pic­ture is the crowd assem­bled by 7:45 last night […]