Archive for August, 2011

DiYVR is a weekly spotlight on all things handmade, done-by-oneself, crafted and hacked around Vancouver, featuring profiles of makers, event announcements, exhibits and general DIY fun. Know someone or something we should cover? Email me!And don’t forget to roll up your sleeves and join us in our first citywide home-improvement challenge!

East Van homeowners LL and Cool J bought their 80-year-old house a couple years ago, and their total inexperience with renovations didn’t seem to matter to them when they decided off the bat to reno the house. Like, the whole house.

Digicam in hand, they’ve been documenting their work, project by project. Season 3 of their web show Lez Renovate – “Watch as hilarity and humility ensue as two East Vancouver lesbians grapple with the real time renovation of an 80 year old house, with no handyman in sight” – launches on After Ellen this week. I caught up with LL by email about their DIY adventures. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Vancouver is an amazing city, chock full of creative talent. WE ARE VANCVR is a simple, elegant way to showcase all that talent in one place. Every Tuesday we profile one individual from the VANCVR community.VANCVR.com is a Domain7 Labs project, inspired by PRTLND.com.

Anyone who has visited VANCVR.com in the last month will recognize Nikita and Natasha from their epic avatars—and chances are if you work at any Vancouver agency, you’ve met with them at some point. Fact is they are just as fun and creative in real life as they appear. These two are serious about collaboration and reaching out to Vancouver’s creative community to do work in a diverse range of media. Which we think is just straight up cool.

What do you do?

For work, we do graphics and web design. For fun Nikita is a B Boy (break dancer) and Natasha is a professional dancer.

Why do you love being creative in Vancouver?

We love being creatives in Vancity because of the scenery. When it gets stressful in the office, lunch breaks consist of inspiring bike rides to get the creative juices flowing or a walk in the downtown East Side to see the contrasts of people and life.

How would you love to collaborate with local creatives?

We are always collaborating with local creatives. We both have friends and relationships with an array of talented artists in the city. We love to get our hands dirty with anything creative. Mixing graphics with dance along side with photography.

The possibilities are endless.

How can people reach you?

The best way to get at us is our website: niks1.com

Did you know that Vancouver jingle-writers Griffiths, Gibson and Ramsay were responsible for the “Rice-a-Roni, the San Francisco Treat” jingle? They never got paid for it, either.

True story.

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!)

I have mixed feelings about today’s photo. On the one hand, we have a fantastic portrait of a proud and sturdy sunflower that comes to us courtesy of Pamela De Mark. Really stunning colours here – that blue is deep and rich, the yellow is bright and pure and the green is absolutely vivid. It’s a fun and colourful image of summer.

On the other hand, I see in this sunflower that summer has reached it’s pinnacle and we now are faced with undeniable evidence that September, and everything that comes as part of the deal, is right around the corner. The sunflower’s petals begin to droop, it’s head becomes too heavy for it’s neck, and inevitably all we will be left with is a big cookie tray of Spitz™.

Until then, here is Sunflower from above.

Gary

I started this project called A Stranger A Day to overcome my shyness and talk to people. The challenge: talk to a stranger a day for a year of my life and try to convince them to let me take a picture and share a story. Since most tattoos have a story behind them, this will be my conversation starter and a common thread that links them all. Every week I will be sharing the story of the week here on Vancouver Is Awesome. Join me in this Stranger a Day adventure and let me know what you think!

Stranger #317 // Location: McAllen, Texas

This week the Vancouver-based A Stranger a Day project moved to southern lands. Although I was on vacation, I wanted to see how different or challenging it would be to continue with the project elsewhere. To be honest, I found it ‘easier’ to approach strangers in Van (perhaps because this type of projects are expected, given the interest in arts and culture that exists in Vancouver and the huge student population —let alone the love this city has for ink!). Anyways, I couldn’t wait to publish this story as it is one of the most impressive ones I’ve found through the project. This was collected at a mall in Texas. The family and I were on our way out, but for some reason, and almost instinctively, I went up to him and told him about the project. Maybe he just had a chill vibe, who knows. He instantly told me he had a great story to share, and let me publish it here. I first took the picture of this piece on his neck. Then he told me the deal behind it:

“About two years ago a friend of mine and his girlfriend were at a bar, and you know, they left and both got into a bad car accident. Both of them passed away together. It was very emotional, he was pretty young, only 22. So all of us, friends, had a benefit thing for the family, and his mom let us take some of his ashes and mix them with tattoo ink. And all of us, maybe 30 or 40, got tattoos. So his ashes are actually in this tattoo. A part of him is now with all of us. Even his mom got a tattoo. It was pretty sad, everybody knew him; he was friends with everybody.”

This was crazy! He asked me how was this compared to other stories. I definitely told him this had to be one of the most impressive ones. “Yeah, just the fact that his mom let us use his ashes…”, he said. Wow. I thanked him a bunch for sharing and he wished me good luck with the project. This project always makes my day. Now, back to Vancouver!

Let me know what you think.

Thanks stranger!

To check out the daily strangers click here: astrangeraday.com

Nicholson Road is an ongoing photo project aimed at sharing and celebrating the different communities in Metro Vancouver. Each week Vancouver Is Awesome will be featuring an image from the previous week, shot in one of the many ‘hoods around town in order to draw your attention a little bit outside of the hyper-focus that we usually have on the City of Vancouver. Metro Vancouver Is Awesome, and you should get out and explore it!

Now. I’ll start off by saying: you’re right, UBC isn’t under the administration of the University Endowment Lands, but it is within the UEL’s geographical boundaries so we’ll just go with it this week :)

I found myself out there last weekend for a conference (the 2011 BC Youth Summit for Sustainable Transportation) and was lucky enough to stay on campus for a couple nights. Never having lived in residence during my time at SFU, I found this to be rather exciting. The best part about the dorms? Why the views, of course!

Out one window was the sprawling campus; building upon building following East Mall out to Thunderbird Stadium. Looking further to the west, the Ladner Clock Tower rose above the library and treetops, framed by the Salish Sea/Straight of Georgia, with Gabriola, Galiano, and Vancouver islands in the distance. Out another was Bowen Island and a view up around Lighthouse Park and into Howe Sound. And to the north, the towers of downtown Vancouver stood out above the forests of Pacific Spirit Regional Park.

A few more facts for you, regarding the image above:
- The Ladner Clock Tower was built in 1968, and named after Dr. Leon Ladner, in honour and memory of Thomas Ellis and William Henry Ladner – yes those Ladner brothers.
- The glass-walled building behind it is the Arthur Erickson-designed, Walter C. Koerner Library, built in 1997.
- The larger structure just in front of the clock tower is the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, identifiable by the stone facade of the Main Library (facing the Koerner Library), built in 1925. The Centre is also home to Canada’s first Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS) which is basically a big ol’ robotic organizer, complete with climate control and room for 1.8 million volumes/items.
- The west coast is gorgeous! But then you already knew that.

UBC has so many cool things to discover and explore, so hurry up and get out there while there are still seats on the 99! ;)

(And if you’re wondering, Canada Post gives locations within the UEL a Vancouver mailing address, even though the area isn’t administered by the City of Vancouver… As if all of this wasn’t confusing enough!)

Archives of the Nicholson Road project can be found HERE.

V.I.A. is proud to be a co-sponsor of the RIO theatre‘s Friday night Midnight Cult Classics! Coming up in September are 5 absolute gems of cinema. Dress up in costume for $1 off the $8 ticket price and join the fun!

Check out all 5 of the theatrical trailers for these films below. How fitting is it that the first word one of the Turtles says in this first one is …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

The annual Victory Square Block Party is coming up soon! In case you’re unaware, Music Waste and Megaphone Magazine have been teaming up since 2004 to present this free event in Victory Square Park that celebrates both community and the city’s local music scene. It promises to be a great party and an awesome last blast of summer that’ll support the great work that Megaphone does for the Downtown Eastside: all proceeds from the event’s sponsors and the day’s raffle will go toward this local magazine that is sold on the streets of Vancouver by homeless and low-income vendors.

We asked two of the festival’s organizers – Sean Condon of Megaphone and Cameron Reed of Music Waste – to share their favourite moments from the ghosts of Victory Square Block Party‘s past. Here’s what Sean had to say…

“While there have been a number of memorable events and music sets, my favourite Victory Square Block Party moment was last year’s Apollo Ghosts set. Lead singer Adrian Teacher epitomized the spirit of what the Block Party is about by getting right into the thick of things with the crowd. He got people off their butts and dancing, brought people onto the stage to sing along, including one of the Megaphone vendors (pictured), and even left the stage to bike around the park while his band played on. It was such a fun and wild moment and it reminded me why we put this festival together—to bring people together from different backgrounds and show how we can use our public space for something both fun and meaningful. It was all the more memorable because the Block Party had taken the year off in 2009. As Teacher biked around the beautiful Victory Square Park with the sun beginning to set over the crowd, it reminded me why it was so important to keep this festival going.” – Sean Condon

Photo: Adam Krawesky

The Victory Square Block Party goes down in the public park at Cambie and West Hastings on Sunday, September 4th from 2-9PM. It’s FREE. You should totally go.
…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>