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Civic Square, Wellington (Photo: Lucy Revill)
Civic Square, Wellington (Photo: Lucy Revill)

SocietyDecember 16, 2020

Nine reasons to get excited about Wellington this summer

Civic Square, Wellington (Photo: Lucy Revill)
Civic Square, Wellington (Photo: Lucy Revill)

Wellington has come in for a bashing recently, but complaints about house prices, weather and infrastructure only tell part of the story. Lucy Revill shares a few of the things she’s most excited about for summer in the capital.

At some point in my mid 20s, I decided to stop staring mournfully into my long black, complaining about how little there was for me in my hometown of Wellington. Instead, I decided to embrace living here wholeheartedly, starting with writing a regular blog about the people I knew.

Now at 31, I’ve seen people my age or older complain that Wellington’s lost its edge. I strongly disagree – it might just be that it’s time to hand the baton to the next generation. While researching my book The Residents: Made in Wellington, I found plenty of fresh talent. There are plenty of bright young things and exciting new haunts to discover – if you only get off your sofa and look.

Want proof? Here are nine reasons why Wellington isn’t over, and why the next generation of Wellingtonians are leading the way.

Nightlife

I’d advise those who feel like Wellington nightlife has passed its heyday to take a look in the mirror and ask what they’re doing to support those who are out there making things happen. The current generation of Gen-Zs don’t pine for Mighty Mighty, a legendary bar/club they never went to. Instead, they dance their ironic-90s tube socks off at Club 121, opened by Olly de Salis and Cameron Morris in 2018. The line to get in is always long on a Saturday night, but once you’re in, it’s worth it. Club 121 is pure rave, with strobe lights, furry cowboy hats and sweat drenching the dance floor until 4am. Its Halloween Party is legendary. “It’s not about who’s DJ’ing,” one regular told me. “It’s about the experience.”

Chef Monique Fiso explores New Zealand with her menu at Hiakai (photo: Amber-Jayne Bain)

Restaurants

Many Wellingtons wistfully remember Martin Bosley’s white tablecloth fine-dining at the Port Nicholson Yacht Club. Now, the most exciting place to eat is Hiakai, helmed by Bosley’s protégé, chef Monique Fiso. My husband and I recently ate there for his birthday and were blown away by dishes inspired by Māori myth and legend, incorporating seasonal foraged New Zealand ingredients, and accompanied by delicious non-alcoholic drinks.

Bars

After a few summer seltzers at home on the deck, Wellingtonians in the know are heading to Night Flower, a new bar that’s so discreet even some reviewers can’t find it. You’ll find it upstairs at 55 Ghuznee St, just around the corner from 1154 Pastaria. Night Flower boasts great cocktails, secluded spots to chat and, on occasion, a few famous faces.

Talia Soloa, one half of fashion brand Layplan (Photo: Lucy Revill)

Fashion

Instagram is more than a social network for Gen Z – it’s also their first port of call to find one-of-a-kind clothes. As a teen, I lusted for New Zealand designer brands I’d seen in Fashion Quarterly (RIP) like Karen Walker and Workshop. Today, the fashion scene is shifting to Instagram. Many young companies like Layplan are breaking the rules, selling direct to customers, and bypassing bricks and mortar stockists. Layplan’s Talia Soloa and Lavinia Ilolahia also make custom pieces, including a dress for superstar choreographer Parris Goebel to wear to an awards show in 2018.

Festivals

Forget Homegrown, now it’s all about a new generation of music festivals like Downtown Shakedown, which kicked off the summer festival season at Waitangi Park earlier this month. For a more Woodstock-inspired multi-day experience, February’s Nowhere Festival is set to take the baton from millennial cult favourite Camp A Low Hum. If you want in, you’ll have to add your name to the waitlist – it’s all sold out. An honourable mention goes to Peachy Keen, a new all-female festival at the Basin Reserve this Easter.

George Fowler as Gardener Hugo in The Glitter Garden (Photo: Roc+ Photography/supplied)

Drag

Ivy and Fringe Bar are the two glittery, underground venues that have given birth to a new generation of Wellington drag. George Fowler – transgender man, drag king (his alter-ego Hugo Grrrl was the winner of TVNZ’s House of Drag contest) and star of the recent sell-out kids show The Glitter Garden – believes being based in Wellington was critical to his success. “It could have turned out differently in a different place. Wellington, as a city, on the whole, is liberal and accepting. There is a culture here that you can be who you are.”

Fintech

Two Wellington women took home the Westpac Women of Influence Award in 2020 – joint founders of Sharesies, Sonya Williams and Brooke Roberts. Their aim with Sharesies was to help make this generation the most financially empowered one yet – and judging by their platform’s popularity, which lets people invest for as little as one cent, it’s working. Sharesies has $950 million in investments and is hiring rapidly in the Wellington region.

Culture

Rumour has it that creative powerhouse Tāwhiri is working on funding for a new immersive theatre event for next year. If you’re wondering why this is so exciting, know that Tāwhiri were behind Second Unit, which last year created What Will You Do in the Shadows?, an interactive version of Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi’s movie that became a raging success. Meanwhile, Van Gogh Alive – a multi-sensory experience that allows audiences to become immersed in the artist’s work through giant projections – is coming back to Wellington soon, after a sold out season earlier this year. An honourable mention goes to the Fringe Festival, returning to Wellington later this summer.

Artist Chevron Haslett (Photo: Lucy Revill)

Art

In JustUs, Naenae-born visual artist Chevron Hassett’s large-scale pixelated images of uniformed figures explore the media representation and lived reality of life as a Māori man in Aotearoa. “It’s mainly, firstly, giving a voice to the voiceless people and also creating bridges or access for other people who might not be as informed to have an awareness of what really happens in our country,” Hassett told Te Ao Māori News. “Hopefully these large works can allow people to feel the feeling that these men feel daily and bring some mana to them as well.” At Enjoy Gallery until February 13.

Lucy Revill is the author of The Residents: Made in Wellington, a coffee table book which celebrates 38 stories of local independent talent made in Wellington. It is available from Unity Books, Good Books and other book retailers, as well as The Residents website, where a version of this article first appeared.

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hoppers

SocietyDecember 16, 2020

Ex-staff of MAGA-linked Hoppers bar speak out on ‘intense and upsetting’ culture

hoppers

An Auckland bar attracted heat last month for hosting a US election party attended by MAGA hat-wearing Trump supporters. Three former employees have come forward to say that incident is the least of its issues.

Former staff of popular Auckland bar Hoppers have come forward with allegations about the working environment they encountered there, including an incident that led to the resignation of a staffer after complaints over serious sexual harassment by customers.

Once the site of popular live music venue Golden Dawn, just off Auckland’s Ponsonby Road strip, Hoppers Garden Bar was bought and refurbished by sisters Bronwyn and Jessica Payne in 2018. The New Zealand Companies Office lists the sisters as equal shareholders in Thank You Ltd trading as Hoppers. The pair also run Elmo’s pizza bar on Ponsonby Road.

After the US election, three former employees of the bar reached out to The Spinoff to share their stories. All three say the election night party, which prompted social media users to call for a boycott of the bar, was the least of the business’s issues.

Alex*, who was employed by Hoppers for a year, said the bar has a high staff turnover, due to a “customer is always right” attitude that can impact negatively on the staff. “Hoppers was getting a reputation as a bar where you could get away with anything.”

Alex described the culture there as “upsetting and intense”.

A second former employee, Reese, said they felt the owners saw their staff as “replaceable”. “I don’t think they asked me my name, to be honest. I honestly don’t think they knew my name.”

Another former employee, Lee, said staff felt they were considered less important than customers. “[The owners] are very much customer oriented, they care about making money and I think sometimes that’s at the detriment of their staff, who should feel safe. They get a lot of complaints about staff being in bad moods and stuff like that, and I think that’s a general reflection of how they’re treated.”

All three said it was a particular incident, however, that compelled them to speak out. Reese, Lee and Alex said a staff member was sexually harassed by multiple customers on one night – “a whole table of men” – including being grabbed by the face and touched below the waist. Reese said the staff member reported it to management and security on the night in question, and either the operations manager or the owners overruled a decision to kick the offending customers out, allowing them to stay at the bar.

“They handled it incredibly poorly and that person resigned because she didn’t feel safe,” said Lee.

On being contacted by The Spinoff,  Jessica and Bronwyn Payne said they were “aware of an incident where a staff member was sexually harassed by a customer”. However, they didn’t confirm if the customer or customers in question were allowed to stay in the bar on the night after the staff member reported the harassment.

“The safety and comfort of our employees is the most important thing to us. As women in a male-dominated industry, once we heard of the incident we immediately sympathised with the employee and took action,” they said in a statement via email.

They outlined the actions taken after the incident, saying their operations manager discussed the matter with the employee. The Paynes then met with the operations manager to discuss the next steps, and after seeking input from management, they “worked to update protocols and implement further measures for the safety and wellbeing of both our employees and patrons”.

Later an all-staff meeting was called and attended by “about 15 people”, according to Reese, in which a colour coding system to address any future incidents of harassment was introduced. But Reese said the initial incident, and their handling of it at the time, was never addressed. Lee and Reese told The Spinoff that when the staff member in question raised it, she was called “childish” for revisiting the issue.

“And then they implied that sometimes the female staff might exaggerate things to gossip and have little work dramas,” Lee said.

Screengrabs from Bronwyn Payne’s Facebook and Instagram: sharing a conspiracy theory posted by Billy Te Kahika, a photo of both Payne sisters wearing MAGA hats, and an Advance NZ petition.

The Paynes reject the suggestion they called the staff member childish “in relation to the complaint of harassment”.

“We took this issue very seriously and prioritised putting in place new protocol and training to help combat future issues of inappropriate customer behaviour. Further, in respect of the employee, we confirm that a position of continued employment at our alternative venue was offered to help address the concerns raised and make the employee feel more comfortable. The employee wrote to us to say they appreciated the time and effort we put into trying to resolve the issue, but overall elected to pursue other employment offers.”

Reese says another incident involved a patron being asked to leave by a manager due to having called a bouncer the n-word on a previous occasion. Reese says that when the patron and his party became confrontational, one of the bar’s owners “diffused” the situation by allowing the group to stay – and even brought them a bottle of champagne that she then shared with the table.

“I was like, ‘Oh, you guys don’t really care’,” Reese said. “Someone can come in and call a bouncer the n-word and get a bottle of champagne. A female gets grabbed by a man, don’t worry, it’s a rich white dude, he gets to stay.”

The Paynes also reject this account, saying: “The customer who made the racist remark did return at a later date. They were immediately asked to leave and did so willingly.”

In the lead-up to the US election night, the word among staff was that the partners of both Jessica and Bronwyn Payne were strong Trump supporters, said Lee, and that the election night party would encourage people to show their support for the US president, who has made unfounded claims about election fraud and has bragged about sexually assaulting women. “The reason I knew they would be taking their MAGA hats with them is because I got invited to join and I got offered a hat. And they offered one to a friend of mine too,” said Lee. Despite some claims on social media, Lee didn’t believe the party was exclusively for Trump supporters, however.

On the night of the party, a group of friends caught wind that it would be attended by people in MAGA hats and decided to enter the bar to see for themselves. A young Black Auckland woman captured altercations on video between herself and her friends, and staff and patrons, some of whom were wearing the hats, and published them on Instagram. The videos show the group being kicked out of the bar by staff.

She told The Spinoff: “It made me sad for all of my friends and family in America. To me that hat means racism, it means horror, it means violence.”

Hoppers released a statement the following day stating that the entourage the party was held for included Democrat supporters and only a “small minority of Americans that attended were Republican supporters”. They added: “Hoppers has no political agenda.”

Alex said that night in early November had her on the verge of quitting, a decision confirmed by finding Bronwyn Payne was promoting dubious Covid-19 content on her personal social media – including posts from conspiracy theorist and aspiring politician Billy Te Kahika of Advance NZ. The sisters also appeared in a post on Instagram wearing MAGA hats. This was the last straw, said Alex. “It didn’t feel very welcoming.”

*Names have been changed 

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