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The Social Retail | May 07, 2009 11:12
Slightly Awkward Encounters at the Supermarket, #352: you're scooting around getting dinner and cat food, and you think you'll grab a bottle of the Church Road chardonnay, because $13.99, whilst being more than $9.99, is still a pretty sharp price for that wine (you're also wondering how bad the Cockle Bay sauvignon blanc could actually be for $6.99). So you head down that aisle.
And you run right into the top bloke from your local specialist wine store, who you know is feeling the pinch from the predatory pricing of the local supermarket, which is where you both are. You feel obliged not to approach the chiller. You have a pleasant conversation. And then you nip back later and grab the chardonnay on the way to the checkout.
That was me, and that was Jayson Bryant from The Wine Vault in Grey Lynn (accompanied by his daughter, from whose mouth I was clearly snatching sustenance by buying my supermarket wine).
It would be fair to say that my concerns about the supermarket wine trade are slightly different to those of Lianne Daziel. Whilst I know that easier access to alcohol has its social costs, and that no measure of drinking can be said to be truly safe, I also know that the supermarkets are screwing down the producers, and undercutting good local retailers like The Wine Vault.
So I feel I owe him. And happily, I can report that The Wine Vault is looking like a case study in supporting niche retail with social media.
Jayson is @TheWineVault. And the author of the actually-worth-reading thewinevaultnz.blogspot.com. And the star of Wine Vault TV. And keeper of the Wine Vault website, which takes online orders. And one third of tweetbunchnz, which has brought the simultaneous Twitter tasting concept to New Zealand, along with Fiasco Wines. There's also a Facebook page and an old-fashioned mailing list. He couldn't be accused of not putting in the effort.
And guess what? It's working. They're engaging people. And Twitter is working better than Facebook, which cheers me greatly.
I should note here, lest Drinnan be on the case, that no money has passed between Jayson and myself, other than as part of conventional retail transactions.
I just like being able to stroll in to the Wine Vault on a Friday and buy something (often at a good price) from a winery I've never heard of, one that's not just a brand front for a multinational liquor company; something that falls outside the boundaries of supermarket wine; something unexpected.
I also like having a conversation about the wine or about some other bollocks. Indeed, I have been doing so since before it was even The Wine Vault, when Greg Grieve opened Weta Wines in the same location, and I'd yarn there to Mike Wagg, before he went off to be a literary editor. As a social experience, it certainly beats waiting at the checkout for a manager to come and confirm the bleeding obvious fact that I am over 18 years of age.
I'm sure there are many other small wine retailers in supermarket zones who are feeing the pinch like Jayson. I doubt there are many responding as well as he is.
(But you should feel free to big up your local guy in the comments.)
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Going Underground | May 05, 2009 10:59
With "Tunnel or Nothing" signs starting to sprout all along the proposed SH20 route, it's clear that the eventual nature of the road -- under the neighbourhood or through it -- will be an issue for the folk of Mt Albert in their by-election.
Many of them clearly aren't comfortable with the idea of a bloody great big motorway splitting their suburb. But Owen McShane begs a thought for the other people. The people who fear tunnels:
Many people are uncomfortable driving in tunnels. Some call it the Princess Diana syndrome, but many people suffer from genuine claustrophobia in such environments.
We wonder why the interests of the neighbouring residents of Mt Albert are regarded so highly, while the interests of the motoring public, who pay for the project, are totally ignored.
Furthermore, this motorway network will exist and be in use for hundreds of years. Surely the specifications of such a major piece of infrastructure should not be determined by the wishes of households whose average stay is measured in years.
Of course. Because it's entirely possible that the neighbourhood will one day be full of people who find it reassuring to have a busy motorway over the back fence, even as they hold close their thoughts of the Queen of Hearts.
It won't be for want of trying on Owen's part. Because Owen has spoken the name of his fear before, in 2007, under the tremendous headline 'Does Auckland Have a Death Wish?':
Many of us enjoy walking. Surely, however, most of the pleasure lies in our enjoyment of the passing landscape. Will anyone enjoy walking any distance through a long tunnel beneath the harbour? Tunnels are generally frightening places to even drive through – shades of Princess Diana spring too readily to mind. The prospect of walking through a tunnel would frighten most people out of their wits. Surely the same applies to cycling. And when cyclists or pedestrians are in a tunnel they have no easy escape route from crazed drivers who delight in driving into them, or even from potential kidnappers or molesters.
Or even terrorists! Who knows?
Oh, and hat-tip to @keith_ng.
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Meanwhile, this is from a release issued yesterday by a Mt Albert residents' group:
Steven Joyce, the Minister of Transport has asked for a review of the tunnel option citing costs as prohibitive to building a tunnel. Despite numerous requests from Mt Albert residents, the Minister has so far refused to visit the Mt Albert/Waterview area, to listen to residents concerns about how a surface motorway would impact on their lives. Residents are concerned the Minister is being influenced by other groups while not hearing what residents have to say.
Mt Albert Community Board vice –chair Phil Chase believes the Minister is being disingenuous about the costs he has publicly stated as $2.77 billion and the reason for the review. "The Minister has included the cost of the upgrade to SH16 (North Western motorway) in the tunnel option price. This upgrade has to be done regardless of what option is chosen (tunnel or surface). The Minister needs to take the SH16 upgrade out of the cost of the tunnel figure and then compare this to the surface motorway option."
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Kiwi FM breakfast host Wammo has noted on Twitter that the message explaining why we can't see the full episodes of The Daily Show on the Comedy Central website says that "your local content licensee" has asked that The Daily Show not be available to stream from Comedy Central. So would that be Sky -- implying that Sky's Comedy Central channel intends to grapple The Daily Show away from C4 -- or C4? Interesting.
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Because of the Comedy Festival, we'll be recording Media7 earlier on Wednesdays this month.
We have a panel -- Bernard Hickey, Finsec's Andrew Campbell and Star Times business editor Tim Hunter -- discussing the way banks' behaviour is covered in the media -- are they bastards, or feeling the squeeze like everyone else? The Herald today has two relevant stories: Aussie banks' rates higher in NZ and Lack of transparency 'fuelling distrust of banks'. There's even a Your Views. But, as we'll note in the show, there's much more stroppiness on customers' behalf in the Australian media.
And then there's a panel on the art market in a recession, featuring duelling Hamishes (Keith and Coney) and Warwick Brown. That should be fun. Among other things, I'll have some excerpts from the recent Intelligence Squared Foundation debate in New York, which argued the moot that "The art market is less ethical than the stock market". The acclaim went to the affirmative team. You can watch the whole debate on YouTube.
Did I mention we're doing this earlier? Students and others with flexible afternoons are most welcome to join us at The Classic Comedy Club in Queen Street by 2.30pm tomorrow, for a 3pm recording. Just click Reply and let me know you're coming.
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And the first two winners in the Powershop Pioneers competition have been drawn. Congratulations to Brenda Leeuwenberg and Steve Withers, who each win $1000 worth of free electricity. There's another draw this month. You can find out how to be in (by discussing your experience on Scoop's dedicated forum) here.
Personally, the major impact of going to Powershop has been being directly confronted with our house's actual energy usage. It has definitely made me more assiduous with the light switches ...
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The Sunday Capers | May 04, 2009 11:17
Having passed up on a comedy show, a memorial gig and yum cha with Keith Ng's gang in order to tend to a cold, I had plenty of time this weekend to play the game of finding the most absurd story in the Sunday papers.
The Herald's on Sunday's lead was particularly desperate. Brothel in Nat MP's house, it shouted from the front page. Underneath the headline (but not in the actual story) was the paragraph:
A house owned by a National MP was used by tenants as a brothel and has been shut down after complaints from horrified neighbours. The MP, Kanwal Bakshi, said yesterday he was unaware of what the tenants were up to, as residents in the leafy street spoke out about their neighbours from hell.
You have to read the story to find out that Bakshi appears to have moved to evict the tenants of the property he owns with two other men as soon as he was personally contacted by a resident, and they were out within three weeks (which was still too swift for the city council to investigate). He's a little hazy on what his property manager might have told him about the business being conducted, but it's not actually illegal to operate a brothel in a residential property -- it's just that this one seems to have quite clearly been in breach of the fairly tight regulations on sch a business. I suppose it's a story, given that John Key has agreed he should have been informed; but a shock-horror lead? Hardly.
In the Sunday Star Times, the week's most stupid story is on page A6 (although not, apparently, online): 'Herbal sex remedy round-up leans on lattes':
Imagine needing a prescription before placing your coffee order or biting into a bar of chocolate. It could come to pass -- in theory at least -- if some of our most popular foodstuffs get caught up in a change of legislation aimed at tackling herbal se remedies.
No it bloody couldn't -- as Medsafe's Stuart Jessamine explicitly states further down the story. The problem is that some "herbal" products targeting erectile dysfunction contain the same PDE-5 inhibitors -- sildenafil and its analogues -- as drugs such as Viagra, but are not prescription medicines. Selling these things off supermarket shelves is potentially very dangerous. So Medsafe wants them t be defined as prescription medicines.
The reporter, Lois Watson, has presumably copped her angle from a supplier of the "herbal" products, hence the bizarre angle. But this is what Jessamine says:
"Medsafe is aware that a number of substances, including coffee, chocolate and pomegranate juice, contain naturally occurring substances with very weak, clinically insignificant PDE-5 inhibitory effects. Caffeeine is one million times less potent than sildenafil.
"There is no intention that substances such as those you have mentioned with clinically insignificant activity will be captured by the proposed legislation."
The entire premise of the story is nonsense.
And is there a word for the sin of pride in one's own comprehensive ignorance? Michael Laws' column on swine flu would take it.
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Speaking of ignorance, Ian Wishart's new book Air Con: The Seriously Inconvenient Truth About Global Warming gets disembowelled by Gareth Renowden on Hot Topic.
And Tane at The Standard discovers the source of the book's cover art. Good grief.
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I was at Friday night's New Zealand Music Month showcase when I acknowledged to myself that I had a cold and should go home and be warm, even if it meant missing Sola Rosa's set. And then, just to rub it in, I walked a kilometre to my car in cold rain.
But up till then, it was sweet. The bar at the Montechristo Room was not, as many people seem to have anticipated, a free-for-all (but really -- eight bucks for a light beer?), but the music was excellent.
Before The Checks took the stage to play a set of the new songs on their forthcoming album (recorded in only three weeks), I could see an arm at the side of the stage, furiously back-combing some hair. I couldn't think who that might be. Turned out, it was the band's new keyboard player, who has a funky 'fro. Which is as good a touchstone as any for the new sound: think the groove of Black and Blues period stones, with a bit of stoner rock and, I dunno, some Muse thrown in? Anyway, I'll look forward to seeing them again.
Then, downstairs, it was Bang! Bang! Eche, who were absolutely full of beans with their dance-punk thing. I really enjoyed them, even if they did make my ears hurt some more.
And, finally, Midnight Youth, this year's industry hope. I had an idea that they'd be another Zed or, lord forbid, Goodnight Nurse. They certainly are not. It's not quite my thing -- I'm not much of a Coldplay fan -- but Midnight Youth's stadium pop is extremely convincing, and Jeremy Redmore has a hell of a voice.
It can seem with a band that suddenly breaks the surface that they've sprung into being fully-formed -- and it felt that way on Friday night -- but I gather the band have been honing their popcraft for some time, much of that with a different singer. Intriguingly, all three bands I saw got their start with the Smokefree Rock Quest. That contest really has become important.
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While the family was off at the Wolverine movie on Saturday, I lit a fire and watched documentaries. Anyone who feels that their political indignation needs stoking should watch the PBS Frontline documentary Black Money, which explores the way in which governments of the "free" world have been complicit in global corruption around the arms industry. The world would be a better and cleaner place without the odious Saudi regime.
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In Friday's linkfest, I missed two things. One was my own damn show -- the swine flu discussion is dating a little already, but anyone who's been around the internet a while should enjoy the 20-years-of-permanent-connection panel with Nat Torkington, David Farrar and Colin Jackson. There are some good stories.
And I'm very proud to say that the Waikato episode of the landmark 1974 documentary series Tangata Whenua has been cleared and posted on NZ On Screen. The script, by Barry Barclay and Michael King, won a Feltex award. Clearing these rights is no small feat.
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Goodie Bag! | May 01, 2009 11:49
It was perhaps predictable that the work at the Auckland Art Fair that really made my heart sing would be a McCahon. I'm like that. It was one I'd never seen before: 'Coastal Landscape', a simple work of ink on gold paper that roiled like the sea. Perhaps it's Muriwai: I can't find any information about it online. Can anyone help?
That isn't to say there was nothing newer that took my fancy at last night's gala opening. I loved John Edgar's Cube JE 90, a work of glass and stone that seemed to possess its own internal source of light, and the small, obsessive paintings of Sam Leach and Neil Pardington's witty photograph Art Store #3 (which doesn't work at all at web size).
Amongst work I might currently aspire to own, Darryn George's formal but sensuous oil paintings, which reference Gordon Walters on their way to somewhere else, stood out. Perhaps we can put one in the budget for the house extension …
The people-watching wasn't bad either. I rarely get to art events, so it was fun to witness the wealthy, the wise and the weird sluicing back the wine and shouting merrily at each other.
I also ran into costume designer Ngila Dickson, who is -- be ready to swoon, geeks -- working on the Green Lantern movie. It's set in the present day, rather than the 1950s, but she's had access to all the original comics illustrated by a series of artists ("bad, bad, BRILLIANT, bad …") for inspiration. The film itself is something of a New Zealanders' club: Martin Campbell is directing and Grant Major is there as DOP production designer. She says she's loving it.
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Who is Robert Songsmith? It may just have something to do with the people who built this very website. If there is a Cure song in your heart, you, too, can join in.
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I have two double passes to give away to Philip Patston's new comedy show, Philip Patston Gives You A Bit Of What He's Got, 7pm tomorrow at the Herald Theatre.
Be quick: hit reply and email me with "Shit Sandwich" in the subject line. [Both passes are gone. So buy a ticket already.]
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It's New Zealand Music Month (it kicks off tonight with a showcase) and my goodness, we have some booty!
Exclusively from Public Address: a limited-time free download of the extremely tasty 'New J' from the Wild Bill Rickets album, John Dryden, which was described on Elsewhere by Graham Reid as being full of "wit, intelligence, evocative music …"
Wild Bill is, of course, Will Ricketts from famous Wellington seven-a-side rugby team the Phoenix Foundation. Here's his MySpace. Many thanks to Charlotte Ryan for the opportunity to offer up the track here.
Also, Peter McLennan has a brand new Dub Asylum track, 'Jump and Twist' available for listening on his MySpace, and for download as a 192k MP3 file.
Peter's also the guest on tomorrow's edition of the very engaging bFM Historical Society, 11am on 95bFM. He says he's talking about "Hallelujah Picassos and BFM, and some of our supports like African Head Charge, and Screaming Jay Hawkins - we asked him 'got any advice? he said 'Keep on rocking'. So we did." His chosen tracks include Eric B and Rakim and Mantronix.
Speaking of which … Damian and I talked to Tyree and Deach of Smashproof, on occasion of their single 'Brother' breaking the record run at No.1 set by that bloody awful yachting song (you can hear the interview on Public Address Radio, 5pm tomorrow on Radio Live). They seem like tremendously nice young men. But, yes, young. When I asked them about the old school hat-tip in the name of Move the Crowd (their record label, founded by the New York-based Kiwi hip-hop impresario Kirk Harding), I thought they'd namecheck the classic Eric B and Rakim tune. But no: they know it as a sample in a Little Wayne track. I am getting old, aren't I?
Anyway, here's the video for the new Smashproof single, 'It's Friday'. It's a party tune (and the radio version is all about the auto-tune) but in a New Zealand stye. Instead of swimming pools and booty camps, it's filling the bathtub with ice and moving the furniture:
It keeps coming: Dirty Records' PNC has a streaming version of his new single 'Tonight' available for listening on his blog. It's a really fun track: very loud synths and namechecks for Brooke Fraser and Millie Holmes, among others. Like Eminem, only better than any of Eminem's comeback stuff. What is reckoned to be an amazing video will go live on the blog later today. PNC's album, Bazooka Kid, is out on June 2.
Note that his blog also features an embedded Twitter feed. The local hip hop scene is going crazy for the social media these days.
I'm really impressed with the way Real Groove magazine is working since its management bought it from the main Real Groovy business. The new cover -- the Mint Chicks in 3D, with free 3D glasses -- is great. Also, the mag's third Awesome Feeling CD, a savvy sampler of the best new local bands beyond the mainstream, is out too: minus the actual CD. You just need to go along to the Real Groove website and register there to download the zip file of all the tracks. They've even sent out a CD slick with the magazine if you want to go old-skool and burn it to to CD. Artists include James Duncan, Bionic Pixie and a bunch of people you've never heard of -- which is pretty much the point.
And when you've finished downloading all that goodness, perhaps you could consider buying some New Zealand music …
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Elsewhere, RG editor Duncan Grieve's Free the Internet blog, which regularly compiles legitimate free MP3s from lots of name acts.
And thanks to Paul S for the tip about Pet Sounds in the Key of Dee, British producer Bullion's mash-up of the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds with the works of J Dilla. It doesn't suck! Full download here until the fun police come calling.
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And friends and fans of the Androidss may wish to converge on the Bacco Room (under Toto at 53 Nelson Street) tomorrow night for You Wanna Be In Auckland Tonight! A Celebration Of The Life Of Steve 'Android' Marsden. It's free, and Chris Matthews and band (including robbery, copyright thread fans!), Newmatics, Spelling Mistakes and the Androidss will be playing. Like the invite says, "come and raise a glass to a fallen brother."
PS: Leo says to check out trailers for The Hunt for Gollum, a LOTR fan film in which the level of detail is positively devotional. Also, he has a new game review up on his blog: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. He was looking up Chernobyl maps on Wikipedia this week, which just proves that video games are educational.
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Just over a year ago, The Wine Vault would have been categorised as your traditional, conservative, small New Zealand business. Its marketing tactics consisted of leaflet drops, direct mail campaigns, a monthly email to the customer database and a few fairly unsuccessful radio ads. But owner Jayson Bryant changed all that when he decided to dive head-first into the then-nascent world of social media retailing in New Zealand. 
