Archive for July, 2010

The announcement was made at 9:56 this evening on Shore 104FM that myself and the other 6 members of the 2010 judging panel of the Celebration Of Light tallied up our scores and named Spain’s performance at this year’s fireworks as the most awesome. Congratulations, Spain!

Below is an image of the sheet of paper used to tally up said scores late Wednesday night at the Boathouse, as you can see it was a relatively tight race.

In case you missed my series of posts about the Celebration of Light: I took you onto the BARGE, I introduced you to the JUDGES of the fireworks this year, I showed you HOW WE JUDGED the fireworks, I told you about the competition part of the fireworks actually ENDING with Mexico and finally I introduced you to our RCMP ESCORT.

I tweeted insights and photos from each night’s event thanks to Telus and the smartphone they’ve provided V.I.A. with and I’ll be bringing you a final wrapup blog post this coming week. I’m still buzzing from this incredible experience and have to extend a huge thanks to the folks at brand.LIVE for inviting me to be a judge. As somebody who has been attending the fireworks for years it was such an amazing honour to be a part of it.

Today and tomorrow, the Powell Street Festival returns to its home, the newly renovated Oppenheimer Park (400 block of Powell Street) in Vancouver’s old Japan Town. Come down and get your sumo on with Vancouver’s Japanese Canadian community and far beyond.

Vancouver’s No Luck Club who have recently relocated to Toronto to further their music career return for their 3rd collaboration with Total Constructive Interference Taiko (Eileen Kage & Leslie Komori) for Rhythm Clash III @ 4:30pm on Sunday. See their 2008 performance HERE.

Full Festival Schedule
Pics from last year

Nighttime Gig!
TOCHKA (JAPAN) & DYNAMO COLEOPTERA (MONTREAL)
Saturday, July 31st, 8:00pm, Chapel Arts
The Powell Street Festival invites festival-goers to an evening double-bill that spans the globe: new media artists Tochka from Japan, and music and dance performers Dynamo Coléoptera from Montreal.

Full Festival, Tochka/Dynamo gig details below the cut

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Timebomb Trading hosted the RVCA skate demo at Railside in PoCo on July 20th. Vancouver’s Keegan Sauder was there, and ripping ensued.

•Locally-based pro Paul Machnau recently joined the skate team attached to  IS Eyewear, which is also locally-based. For Paul’s “Welcome to the Team” vid, click here.

•Machnau, ‘Couver’s Cory Wilson and Toronto’s Lee Yankou each chipped in 7 songs that get them hyped (or mellow them out), along with some commentary and skate photos. It’s a pretty epic tracklist that you’ll find right here.

•Red Bull Canada just posted a video of Darkstar pro Ryan Decenzo skating and getting interviewed at his home park in North Delta. Hit play here.

•Local cameraman/video producer extraordinaire (and also a ripper on the wood-wheel) Mike McKinlay has expanded to iPhone apps. Through the Mini Ramp 101 iApp, Mike will show you the “deep secrets” behind “35 essential tricks that every mini ramp skateboarder should know” for a mere $4.99 (looks like the old Antisocial mini is involved…).

PLACE: Elfin Lakes (Click for Map) LOCATION: Garibaldi Provincial Park, Squamish, B.C. It’s confession time at V.I.A. Ready? Ok, here we go… I have never done a real hike. Now I am sure you are saying, “What, but Mike, you write UNPLUGGED for Vancouver is Awesome, you must be a flippin’ mountain man.” Well, you are sorta right. I do pen this weekly outdoor column and yes, I do take regular hikes but I realize now that until this past weekend I have never done a “real” hike. By “real” I mean a hike where at any turn you expect to be greeted by a young Julie Andrews spinning and singing “THE HILLS ARE ALIVE…” to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Sound of Music. That all changed last weekend in Garibaldi Provincial Park.

The View of Howe Sound from Elfin Lakes Trail

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Have you ever been to the Vancouver Police Museum at 240 E. Cordova Street? Kim Werker did a BLOG POST about them and one of their forensic workshops not long ago and since V.I.A. moved into the neighbourhood a few blocks away from them I’ve been meaning to go and pay them a visit.

I was chatting with Chris Mathieson, the director of the Police Museum, and he told me to hold off, that he wanted to come and see us first. He asked me for our exact address and promised to dig up some of the police history of the Blim building at 115 East Pender. And dig up he did! I shared THIS piece with you yesterday and THIS one the day before. They’re newspaper clippings that he brought over to us from the archives, this third one involves the same raid as the last one, only with a bribe thrown in. I apologize in advance for the entirely unpolitically correct grammar used in this newspaper piece from March of 1923 but unfortunately there is no changing the language of the past…

More than a year ago we showed you these “bee condos” that are part of a City of Vancouver program to help maintain the bee population. HERE is a detailed story from the Vancouver Sun about it.

I’m heading out this afternoon to have a look at another urban beekeeping project so I thought it was as good a time as any to share this photo again. Is there one of these by your house? Are the bees using it? This one pictured has seen quite a bit of buzzing…