Archive for August, 2010

One of the best things about being in Vancouver is how close we are to the border. It makes cross border shopping more doable than if you lived in, say, some other place that was not as close to the border. There, I said it.

Besides a Target run and stocking up at Trader Joe’s (where a jar of organic peanut butter was $1.79?!) I like to hit up Tacos Tecalitlan for some authentic Mexican fare.

Authentic Mexican fast food tastes better when served from a truck at the side of the road.

I spoke to Olivia and implored her to make the trek across a second border to take advantage of Vancity’s new food cart laws. She seemed concerned but I assured her that crossing the border to the north was far less involved than the one to the south. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

As the person who has been selecting which Daily Flickr Pickr image to post on our blog over the past 244 days I have taken great pleasure in looking through all of the amazing photos that people add to the pool every single day. There are so many photos (7,224 at the time of this post) that it’s often hard to choose a favourite. Sometimes I’ll select one based on the technical merit of the photo, the composition and the colors while other times I’ll throw caution to the wind and publish one that doesn’t have as much technical merit but simply has something really awesome as the subject matter.

As my responsibilities to the Vancouver Is Awesome Inc non-profit grow I’m having to pass the torch and let go of the reins a bit, so today we’re looking for a new editor to take over the Daily Flickr Pickr selection/editing for the blog! Are you up for it?

The ideal candidate will:

1. Be an active member of our Flickr Group.
2. Have a strong knowledge of Vancouver.
3. Have a decent knowledge of photography, but need not be a working professional.
4. Be available to select, resize, caption and post one photo from the pool daily for at least 6 months, pro bono.

Nominate yourself by emailing your desire and your qualifications to me at contact@vancouverisawesome.com.

The tip of the iceberg of the 7,224 photos in our pool

Win Two Tickets to Wednesday’s Show and Dinner from Budgie’s Burritos!

Paul and an equine friend from a recent feature in the Vancouver Sun.

Paul Anthony’s Talent Time is back tomorrow night at the Biltmore Cabaret. Where else in Vancouver can you get amazingly memorable live entertainment for $8?! (The kind that will give you laughs, not something requiring the use of antibiotics.) Doors at 8:00, show at 9:00.

Official sponsor Vancouver is Awesome wants you to experience the full meal deal, which in this case involves getting you and a friend on “the list”, an exclusive backstage experience and insanely good vegetarian fare from Budgie’s Burritos! Check out what Bob had to say about his burrito here.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

The cats rule East Vancouver. They’re everywhere…sidewalks, roads, hiding in doorways, supervising stores, sprawled out anywhere to have a bath. The cats I meet while wandering through East Van are probably all house-pets but it’s not clear who ‘owns’ them. Cats are all about territory, but all space is public to them.

Stay tuned…When the project is finished I hope to have photographed every one of the East Van Cats!

[Click HERE to see all the East Van Cats to date]

The Vancouver International Improv Festival just got their new site up and running! The lineup, schedule, info on workshops and ticketing ($40 festival pass whaaaaat?) and more. Go have a look for yourself HERE and be sure to consider joining the VIIF 200.

It might not be as big of news as 30 million salmon making their way up the Fraser, or even as big as one single whale making it’s way up False Creek, but I wanted to note that as of this post we’ve made it up to a total of 5,000 blog posts to this web site since that we launched it two and a half years ago. That’s 5,000 pieces of good news all about the arts and culture and random awesomeness that makes up this city of ours.

I’d like to send a huge thanks out to all of our contributors, past and present, as well as our dedicated team of editors (listed in the right hand sidebar) who have helped bring this thing so far along that we had to build a non-profit corporation around it to make sure it keeps going. Not only are you reporting on awesome things in Vancouver but you’re also helping to make it a better place for the who people who live in it, and I can never thank you enough for all that you have done and continue to do.

On a side note, HERE is one of the very first posts ever made to the site, which is also one of my favourites of all time.

Recently Zipcar reached out and offered me a credit so that I could try out their service and write about it here on the blog. As somebody who owns a car and hasn’t ever considered joining a carshare, I admit I was initially lukewarm to the idea. But then it hit me: fishing! Sure if you don’t own a vehicle being a Zipcar member offers a simple and quick way to essentially rent a car short-term (and to tread lightly while you’re at it) but if you do own a vehicle that’s a little on the… well… gutless side and you have some heavy lifting/moving to do or a destination that’s at the end of a steep dirt road then they have small trucks and SUVs in their fleet. So I took them up on the offer.

And of course I don’t go fishing by myself, so I brought along my friends Suede Peterson and musician Rob Butterfield. This week I’m sharing five parts of the Zipcar fishing adventure that we went on.

In this second part I wanted you to see two photos from the road on the way to the lake. This one of the bait fridge at the Yellow Barn Fruit Stand where we picked up lunch and worms (the lunch didn’t come from this fridge)…

And I also wanted to share this shot of some “litter” that we found in the middle of the dirt road near the lake. This is what is known as the Point Of No Return, folks. It’s the point in the trip where the faint of heart might decide to turn back because they found a rather hefty pile of spent bullets on the road. It’s the point in the trip where even the most seasoned of bushwhacking veterans might notice that those aluminum coloured ones are, in fact, shells from a handgun and that while shooting a shotgun or any other sort of hunting rifle in the middle of nowhere is one thing (and is actually perfectly legal) shooting a handgun anywhere in this country aside from a shooting range is another. Not only is it illegal but it’s also a total lunatic move, but we kept going because we love fishing. And as we only report good news on this web site you don’t need to worry about part 3 of these fishing posts to contain a story about us fighting a handgun wielding lunatic… so stay tuned for more from our awesome adventure tomorrow!

If you’re thinking about signing up for Zipcar we’ve got a special V.I.A. deal only available to our readers: get $75 in free driving credit by signing up at Zipcar.com and entering the code: VIA2010. You’re welcome!

Almost to 10. We’re gettin up there. We got the usual crew in this bad boy.

[Editor's note: uh, there's some swearing in the second song of this clip. The first song is Mack the Knife!]