Posts by BenWilson
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Muse: Hooray for Wellywood (Really!), in reply to giovanni tiso,
Sure, but it if was pasted on a sign near my house I'd probably have to ask the writer.
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Muse: Hooray for Wellywood (Really!), in reply to Tim Hannah,
You might not be wrong, but you are almost certainly in a minority.
I guess I'm happy in that place. I'm not a supporter, either. To me it's mostly about property rights. If enough people are bitter on it, then that's a reason to override those rights, and it would be politic to do that anyway for most businesses. But I am rather interested that such a furore has been created over it which seems to override all sense and intentions. It doesn't seem to matter to anyone what it was intended to signify. Wellingtonians clearly feel that they get to decide what the meaning of the sign is.
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OK, located it on streetview..So it's on the corner of Miramar Avenue? As in, like a big sign as you enter Miramar? As in, a sign telling you something about Miramar?
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Muse: Hooray for Wellywood (Really!), in reply to giovanni tiso,
Wellywood refers to Wellington, not to Miramar. Not unlike Bollywood.
You might be right. Do you have anything to prove that is the intention of the sign? Isn't it actually quite close to Miramar?*
Otherwise it'd be called Mirawood, no? Or Hollymar or some such.
It's not my joke. But "Hollywood in Wellington" is the very first thing that jumped to my mind not "Wellington is Hollywood".
How will people see that? People I think will naturally assume that it's how Wellingtonians have decided to market their city.
By the same process as when you said:
People aren't dumb and generally they can tell an airport apart from the city it's in.
Edit: OK, so I checked. So far as I can tell, the sign will actually be in Miramar.*
Edit: I checked again, and now confess I don't actually know where it will be.
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Muse: Hooray for Wellywood (Really!), in reply to giovanni tiso,
But the Wellywood sign doesn't make a statement about the airport, it makes a statement about the city.
Does it? I thought it was talking about Peter Jackson's studio suburb, rather like the Hollywood sign doesn't represent the entire city of Los Angeles.
People aren't dumb and generally they can tell an airport apart from the city it's in
So what's the problem then? People will see it doesn't represent Wellington. Or are you using the word "brand" in a different sense, like the marks they put on cattle?
If the two of you are so adamant there's some sort of analogy here, start a campaign. I'll be interested to see how many people agree with you.
No, I'm happy to just make my point to anyone who can see the analogy, which is quite a straightforward one. You're bitter on a prominent brand shown prominently. Why is Starbucks different? Or if it's about the "Welly" bit, what's the difference with it an all the signage for "Kiwiburgers"? They "brand" the entire country, in the sense you seem to be using the term. So what? It's advertising and it's tacky, and no-one is fooled even if you put an egg in it.
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Muse: Hooray for Wellywood (Really!), in reply to giovanni tiso,
One of your usual acrobatic equivalences, I assume? You'll note that Starbucks only installed itself, it didn't place a huge sign on the hill behind Parliament that says STARBUCKSWOOD.
It does have a lot of big signs everywhere though. Considerably more square footage than Wellywood will ever have. They're all about town. Even worse, they commit the cardinal sin of actually having shops taking up valuable real-estate that could be used to serve genuine NZ coffee. Is this the kind of coffee we want to brand our city with?
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Muse: Hooray for Wellywood (Really!), in reply to giovanni tiso,
It's unavoidable that anything the airport puts up will "brand the city" because the airport is how the majority of visitors arrive. Of course they could put something else, or nothing up. But I don't buy that it's an outrage that they have this ability. It's in the nature of an airport.
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Muse: Hooray for Wellywood (Really!), in reply to Paul Campbell,
with scrubby stuff just hanging on the last thing it needs is the tattered remains of a giant sign
That actually sounds even better, if the sign became like a modern ruin. There was one like it, but much bigger and more visible, in Ponsonby not so long ago. The "HYDRA" sign could be seen from the North Shore. Practically the last sign that Ponsonby had once been a working class neighborhood, when I lived there, and my Pacific Islander neighbors would hack up meat beneath it before retiring to the Gluepot (also gone) for beers, music and fights. Now it's a bank, and the Gluepot is fashion shops. But they kept the Post Office, because it looks all euro and Oldie Worldie, and repaired it at considerable cost, so that it can serve Belgian beer. A stone's throw from there I was whelped in a run down piece of shit cottage with shocking rising damp. My Dad used his kiwi ingenuity to transform it by building an attic room in which his two boys escaped the asthma heaven below. It's the only one in the street, now such things are frowned upon by the millionaire neighbors, who like to preserve the charm of the ramshackle Victorian huts.
The new owners did do one thing right though, they took down the poplar tree in the back yard. Dad foolishly took a cutting from it and planted it symbolically out the back of their Herne Bay place. Now it's about 200 feet high, causes considerable damage to the property with its roots, casts an acre sized shadow, drops a metric fucktonne of leaves every year, and he can't do a damned thing about it because it has been marked as an important tree for the neighborhood by a bunch of people who don't happen to live under it.
Is anyone picking up that I'm not a big fan of communally driven fashion sense? To me, it's school uniforms all over again.
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Muse: Hooray for Wellywood (Really!), in reply to Paul Campbell,
"oh god, how sad, they're trying too hard"
But they are trying. I personally rate that over not trying.*
Edit: or worse, not being allowed to try.
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I think the biggest irritant for me - besides the idea that the airport gets to brand the whole city, and without consultation, which is appalling
Whilst at the same time unavoidable since the decline of sea travel.
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