Archive for May, 2010

Hilary Henegar’s Canadian spelling is so flawless you’d never know she’s a Hoosier, not a hoser like the rest of us. She’s a film-geek-turned-writer and the intrepid digital editor of Granville and GardenWise magazines, but she’s probably best known for her array of amazing vegan sauces, and for the fact that, even after a number of years in Vancouver, she still delightedly refers to our temperate rainforest as “exotic.”
—Krista Eide

The Proof
1. I spend a lot of time with a camera in my hand spying on my boyfriend and my cats. I probably have thousands of pics of them. I love spying generally—spying and documenting—snapping random people and objects I find along the way, but Brad and Yuki (and Arlo) are my favourite subjects.
Yuki was our first cat. Her full name is Ms. Yuki Shanghai, and in a former life, she danced the hostess bars of Shinjuku in a burlesque revival cabaret. That was before she became a stray in Abbotsford.

2. I do a lot of vegan cooking and baking. These are some yummy vegan scones I made last year with berries from Richmond.
My goal is to eat as close to home and with as little interaction with the industrial food system as possible. Cooking vegan and from scratch makes it easy. And delicious. And living off Commercial Drive is a big part of it. I never have to step foot in a supermarket; instead, I have a huge variety of local, seasonal and specialty foods available to me in the indie shops along the Drive. I love my neighbourhood!

3. I started riding my bike to work last year during Bike to Work Week. I loved it immediately and was hooked. Taking the Central Valley Greenway every day, I get to watch as the city transforms the bikeway with wildflowers, flowering bushes and interesting grasses. One day, I came across this dead bird on the pavement. Someone had gathered some of the wildflowers that were in bloom and laid them out in respect. I found this really touching and felt an overwhelming urge to hug someone. But no one was around, so I took this picture instead.

4. This is my desk. We’re knee-deep in a site redesign for Granville mag, which will make it tons easier to access the huge breadth of content on the site and also emphasize our sharp hyperlocal focus, which had been overshadowed by our “green” content in the past. I’m using this chart to help me plot all the different topics we cover on the site into neat little categories for our new menu bar.
My hope with Granville mag is to really highlight how easy, fulfilling and addictive it is to live consciously, creatively and sustainably. There’s both an art and existential imperative to it that make for a curious, almost revelatory journey. It’s heady stuff, but it’s also just fun. And there’s never any lack for inspiring stories.

5. That’s my grandmother Jo Anna Nix Henegar. She grew up in the Texas hill country and has a touch of the Southern belle in her. My grandmother is one of the most influential people in my life. She has an engineer’s brain and is able to solve basically any problem you can think of. She’s also an artist, and I spent much of my childhood painting and drawing with her. Her smile is dazzling.

6. I think Nardwuar is pretty much the greatest music interviewer of our time. And one of Vancouver’s best performers. What a showman. What always strikes me though is how different he is on stage or on camera versus one-on-one. When he’s performing, he’s larger than life; in conversation, he’s humble, soft spoken and introverted. On stage or off, he’s always incredibly gracious and probably says “thank you” more than he needs to.

7. Because my job is basically to tell Vancouver’s story—from neat urban agriculture projects to that great little-hole-in-the wall Jamaican spot that serves the best vegan pizza in town—I find it hard to relax sometimes; my brain is always working, always planning new content for the sites. So getting away from the city every once in a while is important. BC is such an amazing part of the world, especially down here where you can drive in almost any direction for 3 or 4 hours and suddenly find yourself in a completely different terrain. Here, I’m in the Interior, a place I’d one day like to live some day.

8. The East Side Culture Crawl is one of Vancouver’s best annual events. A couple years ago, I saw this piece in Richard Tetrault’s studio and was transfixed. I can’t say why exactly, but in my gut I knew it was something I had to keep looking at.

The Questions
What neighborhood do you live in?
Commercial Drive. Boom.

What do you do and where?
I have the best job ever! I’m the digital editor of two awesome magazines:
Granville mag, a hyperlocal city living online magazine devoted to promoting the many wonderful, delicious, inspiring, community-minded, sustainable aspects of Vancouver and empowering Vancouverites to support the local indie scene; and GardenWise mag, an organic gardening magazine for Western Canada with a focus on both edible and ornamental gardens.
Being a digital editor entails: writing, editing, social media, SEO, multimedia and planning as well as meeting for lots of chai with people from different industries, disciplines, neighbourhoods and perspectives. It’s a lot of fun.
My office is on the Vancouver-Burnaby border, only a 20-minute bike ride from where I live.

What are you working on?
Lots of fun stuff. Most immediately, the Granville mag site redesign. And a bunch of video and photo essays.
This week, we’re shooting a video at Body Politic, a lovely boutique just off Main and 12th that sells really nice, high quality, Vancouver and Canadian designers who employ ethical materials and manufacturing practices. The inventory is well edited and impressively drawn, and without even a whiff of patchouli.
I’m also working hard to be a gardener. GardenWise mag is a real inspiration and wealth of knowledge. I especially appreciate blogger Sharon Hanna’s matter of fact, “I don’t have time for preciousness” approach to gardening.  
Oh and I’m also in the process of getting a new bike! New to me, anyway. A buddy’s friend builds bikes so I’m going to get him to walk me through the process so I know how to fix everything myself.

Where can we find your work?
Granville mag is at http://www.granvilleonline.ca/, GardenWise mag is at http://www.gardenwiseonline.ca/, and I tweet at @granvillemag and @gardenwise, as well as on my personal account @myloverarlo.

We don’t have a Guest Playlist to start your week off with (click HERE for the 19 that we’ve archived) but fear not, for the next hour and a half of your life is gonna be potentially filled with laughs. That is if you listen to this podcast. And you have a sense of humour.

It’s some sort of miracle that we’ve never featured Dave Shumka and Graham Clark’s weekly comedy podcast, Stop Podcasting Yourself, which after 115 weeks has grown legs far beyond Vancouver and is now a part of the Maximum Fun network serving a global audience.

The episode that dropped for this week is almost an hour and a half long and it features Charles Demers, who you can get more of this Friday at the first episode of our live talk show, A Night at MOV. Listen HERE, then click back through their archives…

Livestock has teamed up with Puma and Ferrari to release this fantastic series of hightops that just dropped today. I actually helped with the design on this project and normally I wouldn’t call something that I did “fantastic” (I’d like to think that I’m at least a little bit modest), but I only had a small part in bringing this to life as it hinged almost entirely on Garry Bone and his vision which I simply helped move along. Watch this video below to learn about it.

You can pick up a pair of these online through Livestock’s web site or pop by either of their stores in Gastown or West 4th (or in Toronto or Calgary if you’re reading this from either of those cities).

And if you’re feeling lucky, we’re giving away a pair here on the blog! Simply tell us what your favourite colorway is in the comments below and you’ll be entered to win that pair. Easy, right? Large photos after the jump… …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

In the 7 days leading up to our inaugural A Night at MOV talk show at the Museum Of Vancouver (learn about it HERE), I’m giving you 7 reasons why you should attend.

REASON #3:
Grant Lawrence from CBC is one of our special guests! If I may quote his bio, Grant “…has long been a leading voice for Canadian arts and entertainment. For years, the gregarious and encyclopedic Lawrence has hosted the CBC Radio 3 Podcast with Grant Lawrence, a weekly showcase of Canadian independent music. Grant also hosts Grant Lawrence Live, a live and interactive daily program on CBC Radio 3’s popular web radio station, also airing on Sirius 86. Grant can be heard throughout the week on various CBC Radio One programs such as DNTO, Spark, All Points West, and various afternoon programs across the country, and has been a frequent past contributor to Q and Sounds Like Canada. Grant also hosts many major music events, such as the Polaris Music Prize Gala, and various festivals around North America, and conducts music industry seminars and keynote addresses on music and media related topics.”

You may also remember Grant as the frontman for the now-defunct Vancouver band, The Smugglers.
Grant will be sitting on the couch (opposite our co-host, Craig Anderson) talking with Conor about music, radio, his love for Vancouver, being a recently married man and more…

Facebook event page HERE. Get your tickets HERE!

If you want to be entered to win stuff and keep up to speed with what we’ve done, what we’re doing and what we’ve got planned then sign up to receive these from now on. The mailing schedule is once per month and we’ll be sending out occasional special mailers for giveaways and contests that we won’t promote on the blog. Don’t miss out, sign up!

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool with you, shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!). Today’s photo was shot by Wurtis Kilson.

An early season fishing trip is pictured in this photo entitled “Cold Hotdog”. What did you do this weekend?

This last Saturday, May 22, the VanDusen Botanical Garden hosted the All British Field Meet of cars, trucks and motorcycles. The rains stayed away just in time for the event on the grass. The design, graphics, logos and colors of the vehicles were great to see in the park environment.

All the cars could be looked at closely and some people were even able to sit inside of them if they were friendly with the owners.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

This Tuesday, May 25th, we’re co-sponsoring legendary hip hop act EPMD at Fortune Sound Club with guests Defenders Of The Faith & DJ Marvel. We’re also giving away two pairs of tickets. Send the answer to the question below to gman88@shaw.ca and be entered in a draw to win!:

“What does EPMD stand for?”