National Pastime #16: Tricking Australians

Wellington is so cool.  We’re talking cucumbers on dry ice.  There is some Kelvin scale coolness here.

There is nowhere in America that has a higher per capita of hipsters.  Of this, I am positive.  Not Portland, not Brooklyn, not nowhere.

This is a town full of tight-pantsed, ukulele-playing, all-natural-locally-made-boutique-soda-drinking, vintage-clothing-and-vinyl-record-owning hipsters.  I’m not nearly cool enough to fit in, but since an overabundance of hipsters mean that there’s good food everywhere, I’m real keen on the whole thing.  It’s so impossible to have a bad meal here.

Anyway, this brings me to Air New Zealand, everyone’s favourite airline.  They’ve done this wee marketing campaign of 6 minute videos in which they trick Australians (who largely think New Zealand is a cold cultural backwater.  We’re basically their Canada) into coming to New Zealand and then forcing them to have a good time.  They need a little coaxing sometimes, Australians.  They’re an outwardly distrusting bunch, you see.  I reckon it’s account of all the snakes and dingoes running amok in their streets.

But this one’s all about Wellington and how snazzy everyone dresses and where you can go to get cocktails served in teacups.  It’s how I imagine every Wellingtonian but me is living.