Bar Bodega
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bar Bodega is a music venue in Wellington, New Zealand. Founded in 1991, it originally occupied a house earmarked for demolition by Transit New Zealand to make way for an inner city motorway extension. Due to the continuing short-term nature of the lease, the venue continued to exist with a relatively make-shift appearance until 2001 when the motorway extension was finally started and the venue shift into new premises on Ghuznee Street.
Bar Bodega was one of the few stages open almost exclusively to original New Zealand Bands and has played a vital role in nurturing the highly original and unusual music scene of New Zealand's capital city.
Virtually every New Zealand Band has played in this Venue in the 1990s, very often in front of a very crowded house. Many local Wellington bands had regular spots in Bar Bodega: The Gardening Angels, Letterbox Lambs, Breakfast of Champion, and Let's Planet, to name a few. Regular poetry nights, which included many members of the Wellington underground poets movement, were popular during the mid to late 1990s.
Regular appearances by Chris Knox, Martin Phillipps and The Chills, Jean-Paul Sartre Experience, David Kilgour, The Renderers and many other household names of New Zealand music enusred a wide and loyal followship of this iconic bar. The White Stripes played at Bodega on their first New Zealand tour in 2000.
