The Performance Arcade 2015

The Per­for­mance Arcade is one of those delight­ful year­ly Welling­ton events that hap­pen come rain or shine, wind or gale. The Arcade’s popped up on the water­front every sum­mer since 2011 and the 2015 series kicks off tonight 18th of Feb­ru­ary at 5pm. It’s run­ning for 13 hours every day — because even artists have […]

Some food-related things that are good right now

We went to Char­lotte, the new steak­house at 201 Cuba Street that is in the house with the check­ered past. The ser­vice was very friend­ly, and the steaks were cooked beau­ti­ful­ly. They are busy because they had a stu­pid­ly cheap Groupon deal, but it is worth mak­ing a reser­va­tion for, if you are of a […]

Going slowly for maximum pleasure

It was a beau­ti­ful Sun­day in Welling­ton today. The air was crisp and cool but the sun was bright and the first signs of spring were vis­i­ble. For exam­ple, as I wheeled along the water­front prom­e­nade this after­noon, a few brave young men and women were in sleeve­less tops or short shorts, antic­i­pat­ing tem­per­a­tures that […]

Getting social while someone else does the cooking

On Mon­day night, some of the Welling­ton­ista went along to the launch of Social Cook­ing, a new cook­ing school based in Herd Street, so this fly tagged along too, buzzing over­head. The launch was held inside the City Mar­ket space, not actu­al­ly in the class­room itself, where stands were set up by var­i­ous pur­vey­ors to […]

The Indian job

Those of us around the Civic Square or water­front areas may have noticed a bit of a ker­fuf­fle involv­ing a fleet of Min­is hooning where cars aren’t nor­mal­ly allowed. This is, it turns out, part of a Welling­­ton-based shoot for the film “Play­ers”, a cheeky Bol­ly­wood remake of the Michael Caine clas­sic “The Ital­ian Job”. […]

Waterfront Fiesta

There are many nice casu­al lunch places in town. What we don’t seem to have though is an abun­dance of nice casu­al lunch places on the Water­front. We need more places like Kaf­fee Eis, and Fies­ta. Fies­ta has a small and rea­son­ably priced range of burg­ers, hot dogs, and nachos; not your greasy spoon vari­ants […]

Future waterfront

Shed 5 and DocksideI’ve been asked to give a brief talk to the board and man­age­ment of Welling­ton Water­front Ltd (WWL) about my “three top pri­or­i­ty ideas for the water­front”. It will be no suprise to most of you that I won’t strug­gle for things to say, but while I’ve been asked to speak as an indi­vid­ual rather than as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive for any group, I’d like to get your input into this.

read on…