Summer in the City Suburbs

You’ve got to love the effect a sun­ny day has on peo­ple — I’ve seen more smiles on the streets of New­town today than I have done the entire 6 months that I’ve lived here.
And speak­ing of New­town, time to give props to a local icon,The Ade­laide
Once the infa­mous Tramways Hotel, and stick­ing res­olute­ly to the “small­town pub” vibe and decor, the Ade­laide has qui­et­ly rein­vent­ed itself as one of the best places in town to see bands play for around the $5 mark. Cheap beer, great mir­rors in the ladies’, flash­ing lights behind glass bricks at the counter and under the stage, pool tables, pub meals … one day I’ll devote an entire post to how much I love unpre­ten­tious hos­pi­tal­i­ty. But the point of this post is to announce the inau­gur­al Sat­ur­day Mati­nee at the Ade­laide — just in time for the return of the gold­en weath­er!
Details after the jump…

Newtown words

Newtown spoken word - flier
Tomor­row night, the New­town Com­mu­ni­ty and Cul­tur­al Cen­tre hosts New­town Spo­ken Word Win­ter 06, an open mike event organ­ised by the Word Col­lec­tive, the peo­ple who brought you Sk8board Poets, Karaoke Poet­ry and the Word Fes­ti­vals. It starts at 7:30pm at the cor­ner of Rin­toul & Colom­bo streets, and entry is by koha. For more infor­ma­tion, call Craig on 027 242 3453.

Extreme Poo — Wellington Zoo

Events Cal­en­dar: “Extreme Poo Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Com­pe­ti­tion Welling­ton Zoo will hold an Extreme Poo Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Com­pe­ti­tion on 6 & 7 August. As part of the Con­ser­va­tion Week theme ‘Every­thing is Con­nect­ed’, the Zoo invites you to cor­rect­ly iden­ti­fy dif­fer­ent types of ani­mal poo to win a prize. Lis­ten to the Keep­er talks through­out the day to […]

Newtown: home to more than medical treatments

Five Oth­er Things to do in New­town: A post had been planned about how you might like to take a tour around the fab­u­lous archi­tec­ture of Welling­ton Hos­pi­tal, and sug­gest­ing that the best way to take such a tour is while lying zonked out on great drugs on a hos­pi­tal bed, being pushed by a […]

Newtown: more than medical treatment

Five Oth­er Things to do in New­town:

A post had been planned about how you might like to take a tour around the fab­u­lous archi­tec­ture of Welling­ton Hos­pi­tal, and sug­gest­ing that the best way to take such a tour is while lying zonked out on great drugs on a hos­pi­tal bed, being pushed by a secu­ri­ty guard, but as being sick is so last month, here are bet­ter things you should do in New­town instead:

1. Go to the Zoo. You could even touch the red pan­das if you’re par­tic­u­lar­ly lucky.
2. Go eat a moun­tain of fries at Malo. $5.50 buys a very very large bowl of thick crisp chips and great gar­lic mayo. Make sure to share them or you won’t be able to walk after­wards. Welling­ton­ista has also had many hap­py Sin­ga­pore­an din­ners at Chumeez, and adores the duck pan­cakes at Bei­jing Restau­rant.
3. Buy Thai Red Bull from the Asian sec­tion of the small cramped New World. Mmmm syrupy. (Welling­ton­ista rec­om­mends it as a good base for Punch, par­tic­u­lar­ly when mixed with soda, cran­ber­ry juice, vod­ka and blue cura­cao).
4. Check out some hot young tal­ent before they end up on Short­land Street in a show at Toi Whakaari New Zealand Dra­ma School.
5. Go celebri­ty spot­ting. Accord­ing to the Welling­ton City Libraries, not­ed celebri­ties who live in New­town include Emma Paki — and also Miss Natal­ie Biz of course.

What’s there to do in your sub­urb?

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 […]