Away

As our small group of regulars will probably have realised, we're currently on holiday. Natalie is in Austin living the high life at the SXSW Festival, and I'm a bit busy with other stuff, so will let this lie until I can get back into gear, and give it the amount of time it deserves (probably April).

We'd initially set-up the page as proof-of-concept demo, just to show to a couple of other people to see if they might be interested in helping out. There's probably still a fair bit of work required to get it to a state that's as functional as the 'ist' sites we've modelled it on (gothamist, londonist, etc.), including a shift to a proper hosted domain, and probably switching over to movable type so we can get all the 'categories' functionality that blogger/blogspot is currently lacking. We shall see though, all that costs money, and the finances are pretty much non-existent at the moment. In fact, if anyone who wants to buy shares in the Wellingtonist, feel free to get in touch!

Likewise, any suggestions for content, features, welly blogs we've overlooked in our blogroll, or anything are always welcome. Just leave a comment, or email.

See you soon...

The Oxford Union Debate on Nuclear Weapons

If you're still looking for things to do after being harangued by street performing Estonians later this evening, then head along to the Film Archive on Taranaki Street, where they're screening the famous 1985 Oxford Union Debate on Nuclear Weapons, in which our PM, David Lange debated and defeated the then American Moral Majority leader, Jerry Falwell, on the topic that "all nuclear weapons are morally indefensible".

The text of this debate recently turned up over at Russell Brown's Public Address blog, in the excellent NZ Argument Section, so, if you can't make it along to the screening, you can always relive the memories with the full-text transcription, but, as is pointed out by Russell...

His booming voice and idiosyncratic, commanding phrasing, cannot be captured here, except through best efforts with punctuation.

The screening starts at 6:30pm, and runs to 7:45pm. Entry by koha.

Avangard at the Railway Station

Just because the Fringe Festival is over (and congrats to all the winners at the Fringe Awards), doesn't mean you can't still see some avant garde performance art on the streets. Oh no.

We've already missed a couple of performances by Avangard - the pro-glam art band from Estonia - but I fully intend to be at the Train Station later today as they put on their final performance of 'The Bomb'.

The Bomb is, as one blurb puts it, "...an ironic comment on the decades-long hysteria about nuclear threat and growing up in the shadow of imminent nuclear disaster." Be wary, the same blurb also tells of Avangard being interested in organising 'social experiments', so I doubt it will be a 'sit-back-and-enjoy-the-show' sort of affair. Hopefully.

The Avangard crew also do art installations under the name of Pink Punk, so, even if you can't make their social experiments, you can pop along to the Enjoy Gallery to see what sort of stuff the modern-day avant-garde Estonian artist produces. The art exhibition ends 18 March.

The Weekend that Was II: Gigs Galore

As well as all the sporting championships and festivals taking place around Wellington over the weekend, there was also an insane number of top gigs.

Top local talents The Black Seeds, Paseload, Ghostplane were on show around town, as well as other excellent kiwi bands David Kilgour and the Heavy Eights, and The Fanatics.

On the international front we had the Violent Femmes swinging into town to regale yet another year of varisty freshers with their songs of love and angst, and alt-country legends Lambchop were playing down at Indigo. Oh, and there was Neil Diamond, of course.

I didn't go to a single one of these gigs. But Jess from The Backyard did - to several of them in fact, so go and read her write up.

The Weekend that Was

The powerboaters, women cyclists and dragonboaters must have been ruing the choice of Wellington as the choice of championship venues as a, er, 'brisk' northerly blew in from the Hutt and across the harbour over the weekend.

The wind also caused havoc with the Saturday night Neil Diamond concert at the Stadium, where the poor acoustics of the stadium combined with the swirly winds to blow most of the ancient pop-star's dulcet tones out of the Stadium before anyone had a chance to hear them. We can report there were many out-of-town souls commiserating with each other at the Cuba Street cafes on Sunday morning. $100 seats! To hear the Wellington northerly! Ah well.

However, there seemed to be lots of perfectly enjoyable inside and outside action to partake in, with the Fringe Festival wrapping up while the National Arts Festival for Children got under way. The Greek Food and the Newtown Festival were both on, and, to cap off the most perfect of windy Wellington weekends the Hurricanes won.

And, finally, what is the council up to with height restriction bylaws?

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 street. With four stages of live and DJ entertainment going on, you'll be hard pressed to not find some music you can have a wee dance to.

The other big event, the following weekend, is the 20th Gay and Lesbian Fair, which takes place at the Newtown School on Sat 12th March.

Before, between and during these two events are a heap of other activities: Art Exhibitions, the Carrara Park Picnic and Jazz Day (5 Mar), a library story-telling session from the Toi Whakaari drama students (9 Mar), and, always good fun - an open poetry night (10 Mar).

As well as all the rest - check the excellent wotzon programme for more things to do and see.

Tuatara Day

I must admit, I've never actually seen a tuatara in the flesh (in the scales?) before. So the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary are having a special Tuatara Day to allow me and the no doubt many other urbanites who haven't seen our most famous lizard the chance to check out their resident reptile - Oliver - up close, this Saturday (5 March).

There'll also be some talks over the course of the day which will reveal some of the more interesting aspects of the tuatara, such as (we didn't know this before stumbling across the Island Bay School class pages on their Tuatara studies, who obviously got along to the last Tuatara Day) that they have a third eye? Really.