Click here for more pictures from the Sevens.
KEY POINTS:
On big sporting occasions in Wellington, the intersection of Featherston and Johnston Sts is a Mecca: there is a pub on three of the four corners, a couple more nearby, and the next stop is Westpac Stadium.
Come rugby sevens weekend, it's the most colourful place in town. Outside the Leuven Belgian beer bar sit cheerleaders dressed in fluorescent pink, some very swarthy gypsies and a group of cowboys.
Diagonally opposite, at the Black Harp bar, sit a group of US Presidents, an ensemble direct from the court of Henry VIII, and someone who is presumably on his stag do, given he is dressed up in a deer costume and has a very impressive set of antlers on his head.
Then there is "Sas" and his mates, a sextet hailing from Auckland and Palmerston North. You can't miss them - they're the ones in the inflatable ballet dancer costumes and tiaras.
Sas won't give away where the costumes came from, as the group of regular sevens attendees might want to wear them again. However, he proudly points out the motor that keeps the costumes pumped up with air and expanded to an impressive girth.
"Dressing up is more about being normal than being different," Sas says, explaining the mania that seems to have possessed the sell-out, 35,000-strong crowd, the vast majority of whom have put on costumes and come to party.
With Wellington teeming with Supermen, Wonder Women, nurses, cross-dressers and Roman legionnaires, it's almost possible to forget that an international rugby sevens tournament has sparked this frenzy of getting dressed up and getting out of it.
Certainly the spectators - who snapped up all the tickets to both days of the tournament within 15 minutes of them going on sale - seem to have forgotten it, with a mere handful actually being in their seats for the tournament's first game, Argentina vs USA.
That game resulted in a surprise win for the US team, 19-7.
Several thousand made it to the stadium a couple of hours later for an upset of massive proportion, the Cook Islands' 21-17 victory over England.
Sevens weekend is a multimillion- dollar bonanza for Wellington's bars, restaurants and hotels.
It's also a boom weekend for local law enforcement, with the police bringing in reinforcements from throughout the lower North Island to help keep the party civilised. More on sevens, D1.
SIGNS IT IS SEVENS WEEKEND
* You are joined on the bus to work by two people in leopard-skin loincloths.
* Several "police officers" in full uniform are drinking in a local bar at 11am.
* Napoleon is ahead of you in the queue for a takeaway coffee.
* While waiting to cross the street, you are joined by a bearded nun and the cast of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert.
* None of the above seems remotely unusual . Lunacy rules at the sevens
