Joel, a Pākeha man, stands outside the beehive and smiles

Meet Joel MacManus, the journalist that Wellington actually deserves

It’s been a very weird week in Wel­ling­ton where we’re think­ing actu­ally Chris Bish­op has done good for once with the Dis­trict Plan? Very strange pos­i­tion to be in. Obvi­ously, city coun­cilors who want a city for the liv­ing and future have pushed for this for a very long time, but I don’t think it […]

Preview: The Blacklight Comedy Club at Moon

Hello, I’m Jonny, and I’m about to start a com­edy night at Moon in New­town. It’s called the Black­light Com­edy Club. If you’re able to come along, please try. I think you’ll enjoy it. Jo asked me to write a Black­light Com­edy Club ‘guest mani­festo’ for the Wel­ling­tonista. I’ve real­ised that I can­’t. To me, […]

Reviewing the review: David Burton loses his noodle

Once again Mr Bur­ton has ven­tured into the mean streets of New­town, this time to get his ramen on, but what he found has not been well-received. “I took my first sip of ramen broth with eager anti­cip­a­tion, but alas, to my undoubtedly eth­no­cen­tric pal­ate, it tasted oddly coarse – very porky and rather too […]

A lion (and others) in winter

Right now the magno­li­as are in bloom along Roy Street in New­town, and it’s gor­geous. But of course, it’s around this time last year that it snowed, so don’t be fooled – it’s still winter. The good news though, means that Wel­ling­ton Zoo has entry for only $5 on Wed­nes­days through­out all of August. Nat­ur­ally […]

fabric-a-brilliant

Ima­gine if you will,  40 tables  stacked full of vin­tage fab­ric from the 1950s and 1960s,  and lace from the 1920s.  Add in all sorts of delight­ful sew­ing accessor­ies like but­tons and vin­tage pat­terns and you start to get an idea for what the bian­nu­al Fab­ric-a-brac sale  is  all about It’s being held this Sat­urday 19 […]

forget fireworks this is an explosion of fabric

Kind of inspired about get­ting into mak­ing post-Craft2.0? Well if fab­ric is your thing, then Fab­ric-a-brac is the place you want to be this Sat­urday From WoW win­ners and fash­ion design­ers to Christ­ch­urch earth­quake evacu­ees and but­ton obsess­ives, the stall­hold­ers at this weekend’s fab­ric- a‑brac event will be part of the biggest fab­ric-a-brac event ever. […]

Top times at Kopi Tiam

Over the past couple of months I have been review­ing Malay­si­an res­taur­ants all around Wel­ling­ton for Malay­sia Kit­chen (full dis­clos­ure – I got refun­ded some of the costs). It’s time to share the reviews! Today’s Malay­si­an quest takes us out of the CBD to New­town, but luck­ily park­ing is easy at New­town Mall and we can do […]

Some Italian jobs

1. The Medi­ter­ranean Ware­house in New­town has under­gone some renov­a­tions tak­ing out the wall sep­ar­at­ing the pizzer­ia from the ware­house, so now there’s an exten­ded deli counter and you dine among the shelves. The price of an indi­vidu­al pizza may have gradu­ally increased $4 over the past couple’o years but now you can get a bowl of […]

A lake of laksa

As it’s get­ting colder, and we’re get­ting colds, the minds of the Wel­ling­tonista turn towards hot, spicy sat­is­fac­tion. For some of us (well, at least me), this means laksa. But where on earth in Wel­ling­ton can we find Malay­si­an food??? What’s that you say, on every second block? Okay, fine. But not all lak­sas are […]

Coffee in Newtown?

Can any­body help me loc­ate a decent cof­fee in New­town dur­ing these inter­min­able pub­lic hol­i­days? Peoples’ is shut until Monday, as is the café at the Med. The only option I have loc­ated thus far is Eva Dixon’s at the Zoo (which was a lovely walk in the sun) but res­ul­ted in a small lat­té in a large takeaway cup topped by prodi­gious amounts of froth, cost me $5.20 includ­ing the sur­charge, and tasted like filth.

So, tomor­row I need a bet­ter option. Any ideas?

UPDATE: Thanks to the help­ful com­ments I headed north today to find that The Ball­room, The Recov­ery Room and Pra­nah are all closed (which I sus­pec­ted after hav­ing the same prob­lems last East­er). And I did feel fairly strange prowl­ing the cor­ridors of the hos­pit­al look­ing for the Fuel kiosk which was also closed.

So, I’m off to the movies at Island Bay where, hope­fully, the Empire can serve me up a brew before Alv­in and The Chip­munks.