And now you know

(photo and illustration by, soon-to-be re-Wellingtonian, Robyn Gallagher)

About half the Wellingtonista now call Newtown home, so we thought it was about time we did some exploring of the area. Therefore, on this coming Saturday, we're going to be doing a Newtownista Pub Crawl, and you should come with us!

We're going to start on Riddiford St down near the zoo around 7.30pm, and work our way back towards town, aiming to end up at Amigo's for tapas. Most of us haven't been to most of the bars, so we'll be intending to give them all a go-to, even the dodgy ones - but we may change our minds on the night when we look in their doors.

To come along, either show up in that area at that time, get in contact with a cellphone number so we can text you our progress, or follow my twitter account as hopefully I'll remember to update it as we go along. We're going to boldly go where some people have gone before, and it should be a jolly good time.

Gorgeous photo by Dead Possum, yanked from flickr

Finn is a local musician, film maker, student and friend of ours who has gone missing.

He is 26 years old, medium height, slim build, dark brown hair.

He was last seen on the evening of Monday 11th February in Hawker Street, Mt Victoria, Wellington.

He was wearing cargo pants and a black teeshirt, barefoot.

He may have also headed north (possibly to Auckland). If you see him, please contact the Wellingtonista and we will send on the information.

Finn, you are missed. Come home if you can, or ask someone to phone for you.

This posting brought to you by Sandy Mamoli (deeply honoured inaugural guest blogger).

I discovered the Wellingtonista on day two after my arrival. It took them almost year to discover me ...

In fact, it took them exactly a year. I celebrated my one year New Zealand anniversary last Friday with the contradictory emotions of someone who simultaneously feels like a true long-term Wellingtonian and a rookie who has just stepped off the boat.

I am still struggling with a wee bit of culture shock - complaining about Wellington's provinciality and second-world infrastructure while marveling at the vibe, friendliness and genuine feeling of community one can only find in Wellington (I think).

Apart from being with a Kiwi partner who has been too long out of the country to remember anything useful and having read halfway through a travel guide I didn't know much about New Zealand a year ago. And my former life in Vienna, Copenhagen and Amsterdam proved to be way too limited an experience of the world to shelter me from the surprises I was in for.

Spinning the platters that matter on VBC from 7 to 9 tonight on behalf of the Wellingtonista will be... Dan S.

Hardy souls happy to be enraged or enlightened by some blasts from the past (many tunes will be conjured from actual vinyl artifacts) can tune in on 88.3FM or by visiting http://www.vbc.org.nz/ where they will stream the content direct to your PC speakers. I’ll try and make a recording of the show for podcast conversion but, in the likely event I am consumed by panic, I make no guarantees.

Stephen’s intro to version 2.0 still applies:

The show will go from 7 - 9 pm, NZDT (GMT+13). The studio line is +64 4 463 9994 if you feel like ringing up and abusing/encouraging me.

Just in case Jo felt a little selfconscious about promoting her own empire-building, I thought I'd mention the brand new Aucklandista!

Currently it is mainly populated with stories about how Wellington is different from Auckland (spoiler: Wellington is arty and windy, Auckland has traffic and celebrities) but in the coming weeks it will include many other wonderful articles about the City of Sails.

What is with the indescribably awful smell that lingers along Tory St between Buckle St and (roughly) Lorne St?

It's there most mornings and makes the walk to work quite foul.

View Larger Map

Last week saw the quiet but confident debut of the Wellingtonista Radio Show on The VBC. You can listen to an edited version of the show here Wellingtonista_Show_EP01 (right-click, save as), and hopefully we'll get our podcasting steez together and start publishing the shows as umm.. podcasts.

I'll be presenting the second show, same time: 7pm - 9pm, tonight.

Tech info after the jump...

Just a wee heads up: I'll be presenting the very first Wellingtonista Radio Show on The VBC tonight. The VBC is the student owned and operated/community LPFM radio station broadcasting on 88.3FM, based at the Kelburn Campus of Victoria University of Wellington, in New Zealand.

Tech info after the jump...

Yeah, that's our boy Hadyn hangin' with Giovanni Ribisi at last week's AWAs held at the mighty Mighty Mighty. Flight of the Conchord's Bret was there as well, to accept the Wellingtonian of the Year award, and Blam Blam Blam played and were awesome.

Oh yes, the Trendy Urban Class* were out in force to celebrate all that is good (and a little bad) about our fair city at last week's Annual Wellingtonista Awards.

For more photos, head over here, where official photographer Mike has uploaded his pix from the evening.

* © Dominion Post.

Local start-up and Friends-of-Wellingtonista Ponoko (among other connections to us they're also part-sponsor of our awards this year) have their picture at the top of an interesting article in the tech section of today's New York Times. The article talks about the rise of internet-aided design and making and describes Ponoko thus:

Ponoko, a company based in New Zealand, allows customers to upload designs for flat shapes that can then be snapped together like Ikea furniture. Making a prototype can be as simple as cutting shapes out of cardboard. Users then create a digital version and send it to Ponoko, which cuts the pattern out in metal or wood with a laser.

There's a fair head of global buzz building up around Ponoko, whose potential extends far beyond the Times' fairly neutral description of what can be achieved with them today.

And as for us: well, we were very excited to note what looks like a prototype of the highly sought after 2nd Annual Wellingtonista Award trophy visible on the table between Dave and Derek. So maybe this means we've made the Times as well?

According to some eyewitness reports and the Capital Times this morning, a "fight" broke out at last Thursday's Festival launch party.

The dust-up occurred between Steve Nicoll of Salient and Radio NZ producer Mark Cubey. Nicoll apparently drunkenly approached Cubey saying words to the effect of "you old bastards should get out of the way and let the new generation take over" although probably with more swearing.

Cubey, taking insult to the term "old", allegedly* threw his drink at Nicoll. Nicoll then, allegedly, threw a punch ‘like someone pecking at typewriter keys’ and was escorted off the premises. Cubey, after receiving the "peck" went down (knocked out we hear, but only from one person, though he may have fainted).

Some of the Wellingtonistas were in attendance though had sensibly left before the scuffle. One reported she had been the recipient of an awful pick up line: "What’s your Myers-Briggs personality type?" and was forced to leave.

But what this journalist wants to know is: why the hell didn't Cubey drink the wine!?!

*a word used so we can't be sued

fresh spray
Originally uploaded by Philip Fierlinger
of turntable.com

Sometimes we at the Wellingtonista must admit that even we, strange though it may seem, do not know everything about our fine city (and in this case, its climatic peculiarities). So periodically we must call upon the mighty and erudite collective wisdom of our readers to fill in the gaps.

Many of you may have noticed the arrival of springtime, if only to observe the marginally warmer temperatures, a sustained breeziness, and an increased rate of sneezing experienced between your front doors and that of your air-conditioned workplaces. But not all of you fall into this category, and it is of you in particular we are enquiring today.

You see, some in the Wellingtonista (and again, this may be a little shocking) live in the suburbs. And some of us actually have areas of flat ground reserved for the growing of things that can be eaten (it is true that some apartment-dwellers have a couple of terracotta pots on their balconies for the same purpose - the following may apply to them too), called "vegetable gardens".

And so the question we have for you today is: What should we be planting in our "vegetable gardens" right now?

We suspect that potatoes are good at the moment. But we wonder: what else is good, assuming that it's both legal and tasty? If we were to get planting this coming week, what's best?

Answers, please, dear readers.

Last night the WQL hit the Bristol, where the quiz had the advantage of ever-so high tech computer graphics on screen, and the opportunity to win an ice machine and waffle-maker in the jackpot draw, but the disadvantage of a quiz master who refused to pronounce 'Quizingtonista' properly. Because we couldn't book, the bar was stupidly full, but luckily ClickSuite are bolshy enough to ask people to leave to give them tables. The Alohas were wearing their leis again, but didn't get extra points for them this time. The M team almost lost points for trying to steal one of our players (we swear that most of them were purely ornamental!) but escaped because it was lovely to meet the Americans for the first time. But you know, if I wasn't so damn hubristic and full of myself, I'd be starting to worry that I smell bad or something because neither Silverstripe nor Xero showed up for quiz last night. So we'll award them 72 points each, and I will comfort myself with the bar tabs that we keep winning.

Points so far:

• Alohas: 140
• Click Suite: 144.5
• M: 132
• Silverstripe: 136
• Quizingtonista: 179
• Xero: 141

So it's looking like a pretty close game right now, and anyone could take out second and third places...

So, tonight was the inaugural round of the WQL, and I reckon it went quite well, really. Quiztron and the M-Team were no-shows (I understand why the M-Team weren't there, but I really missed Quiztron), so if they can make it next week they'll start out with the same points as the lowest-scoring team tonight. Which happened to be the Alohas, even though they got a bonus point for their costumes (dude, they all totally got lei'ed). Silverstripe almost lost a point because Matt tried to make me cry (I can't remember the context, except that they kept trying to sit at our table), but ultimately they earned a bonus point for their can-can.

Points so far:

• Alohas: 61
  
• Click Suite: 71.5
  
• Silverstripe: 64
  
• Quizingtonista: 85
  
• Xero: 69

Woo haa! Stayed tuned for the announcement of next week's venue. If you want to join us, let me know, you'll be starting out on 60.