Archive for September, 2011

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 #336 | Location: Commercial Drive, around Falconetti’s? or was it the Libra room?

This story was found Wednesday night, when I HAD TO go out for a walk to clear my head from all the coding I had been doing all evening. It was about 11pm already and it was starting to rain, so I didn’t know if the project was going to be done. I said to myself that I was going to go from my house to the closest open coffee shop, and if it happened, it happened. And it did. He was walking out of one of those restaurants to have a smoke when I took the opportunity to tell him about this. He was super cool with it and told me the story behind this tattoo:

“When I was younger I joined a circus here in Vancouver, actually it was just a few blocks down from here. I spent about 4 years of my life with them and this was their symbol. They were called ‘Ailanthus’. Ailanthus is a weed that grows about anywhere and once you get it is extremely hard to get rid of. But the story is a bit more interesting than that since this symbol has always been popping up randomly in my life.

I did a busking tour across Canada, 10 different cities. It was the most successful money-making venture I’ve ever been in. I made probably about 7 grand in under two months just playing my drum. It’s a lot of money for playing drums. So I kept seeing this symbol everywhere. It just kept popping up in different places. Finally when I was in Quebec city I said ‘alright! I’m gonna get it tattooed’. And I got it tattooed by a Mexican in a really old shop in an old part of Quebec. He had brought in a fake tattoo portfolio, and I was his first tattoo on anybody other than himself. It got super infected. I was so pissed, I wanted to get my money back, but of course they didn’t give it back. The dude got fired shortly after tho, so that was ok. Then I waited for about two years to get it touched-up here at The Fall.

Also, my dad chose this symbol as his company’s logo without even knowing that I had it tattooed on me. It is the Celtic trinity knot and for me it represents that all points in the universe are interconnected. Just keep walking the path and you’ll meet yourself everywhere.”

That was an impressive story. It is quite fascinating when people seem to have a symbol that follows them around. There have been a couple of stories with this similar coincidence before in the project, but I think no story has had this level of coincidence. Very neat.

Thanks stranger!

For 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!

Last October, local design firm Green over Grey planted North America’s largest and most biologically diverse green wall, with over 10,000 plants and around 120 species covering nearly 2,680 square feet. Because it was installed last autumn, the wall just finished its first summer season, where it filled out into a lush, vertical oasis. I’m sure some of you saw some articles that were circulating around the web a little while ago. And just in case you’re wondering, it’s in Surrey not White Rock!

If you’re curious, the North-South dividing line between Surrey and White Rock is 16th Ave, or North Bluff Rd. Over the years I’ve found that many people living in South Surrey, and even businesses, often refer to the areas south of about 20th Ave as White Rock. There’ve even been proposals put forth a couple of times over the years to give parts of South Surrey to White Rock, since the communities are closely linked in terms of amenities and commercial services, and divided from the northern parts of Surrey due to a large area designated under the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR). For now, however, the Semiahmoo Library will continue to showcase the growing investments (see what I did there?) in the community by the City of Surrey.

And speaking of Surrey and investments, the new City Centre Library, designed by Bing Thom Architects, complete with its own green roof, had its grand opening on Saturday! It really is a fantastic sign of things to come for Surrey, so be sure to head out and pay it a visit – it’s only a few minutes walk from Surrey Central Station. If you’re curious to see the Semiahmoo Library and its green wall, why not grab a bus from Bridgeport, Surrey Central, or King George and head south. And while you’re down there, be sure to enjoy the beach at White Rock before autumn really makes its arrival known :)

Archives of the Nicholson Road project can be found HERE.

Last Thursday the internet in Vancouver got hit with a tidal wave of blog posts, tweets and Facebook posts about this year’s Best Of Vancouver! Hundreds of businesses and organizations celebrated the announcement that they were winners and runners up in The Georgia Straight’s annual issue dedicated to all things worth celebrating. The Best Of issue is available on newsstands now and I am super proud to announce that for 3 years running we’ve been voted into the top 3 in the BEST LOCAL BLOG category! Also, 2 years running we’ve been locked in as Vancouver’s “3RD BEST TWITTERER” (for our @VIAwesome account that you should be FOLLOWING!).

I would like to send a HUGE thank you out to all of our editors and contributors who make us a top notch hyper-local resource, to all of our readers and supporters, to those who voted for us and, of course, to the kind folks at the Georgia Straight who continue to spearhead the largest non-political ballot in the city year after year! See all of the winners by picking up a copy on the street or clicking HERE.

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

There is an old expression that goes a little something like this: ‘time flies when you are having fun’. And you know what? I truly believe it – today marks my 250th Daily Flickr Pickr post! It seems like just yesterday that I was fumbling my way around WordPress for the first time, taking the torch from Dano, and from Bob before him. But these posts (and all of the post on Vancouver Is Awesome for that matter) aren’t about us: they are about you, the faithful and talented reader!

Simon Clarke is a Vancouver photographer who never lets a little precipitation keep him from taking photographs – which is a good thing because, um, it rains a little here in Vancouver. Instead, Simon looks for the silver lining that every clouds possesses and creates an interesting image in the process. In fact, he seems to consistently create memorable photographs in diverse weather conditions, proving that anything is possible on the second day of autumn.

Gary

Hurray! So awesome Vancouverite and friend of VIAindie, Ali Milner, who is on Cover Me Canada on CBC, made it into the next week of the competition!

This week on the show she covered Jann Arden’s ‘Insensitive’ and did a bang up job …check it out below! (And click here to see the full episode.)

So in order for her to continue on, she needs VOTES, Facebook likes, YouTube views, Tweets (she’ll totally write you back), and support from our awesome community.

So click on those links above and check out some more videos she’s done after the jump including last week’s cover! …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

This series had its genesis when I began photographing Vancouver area location shoots in the summer of 2010 to get over a post-Olympics funk. Film and TV productions like Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, Fringe, Supernatural and The Killing showcase our city in similar fashion and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame.

Little is known about Vancouver writer and director Neill Blomkamp’s latest sci-fi project Elysium, which has been filming here for the past three months, except that it makes good use of our city’s visual effects expertise and stars a bald, buff Matt Damon as some kind of future being.

It’s not surprising about the visual effects if you know that Neill Blomkamp dabbled in 3D animation and design as a teen in South Africa and then studied it at the Vancouver Film School when his family moved here. After graduation, he worked as a 3D artist for two local visual effects companies, while branching into directing live-action shorts. He returned to his birthplace of Johannesburg to film his Oscar-nominated first feature District 9 about extra-terrestials (“Prawns”) kept in an Apartheid-like government camp. Despite his international success, Blomkamp is still based here and  a proud booster of the local film industry. For example, the post-production work on Elysium will be done in Vancouver next year instead of being farmed out overseas like it usually is.

So what is Elysium about? That remains a mystery but “We’re Building the Future and We Need You” signs for a spaceship construction company Armadyne popped up at this year’s Comic-Con in San Diego, part of a viral campaign similar to the one done for District 9 at an earlier Comic-Con.  Armadyne dot net is looking for mega-construction engineers, zero g welders, quantum networkers and experts in zero g coupling and multi-generational planning to build a massive spaceship that can transport an entire colony of people — “Taking Mankind into the Future.” Last month I watched Elysium film scenes of this spaceship, with Matt Damon inside, crash-landing on a mansion facade and lush garden set at a vast gravel field at Kent and Boundary in Vancouver, often used by film crews for green and blue-screen filming.

The blue rectangles are the spaceship, the fake palm trees have no fronds, and the small piles of sand seem to represent the Baja dunes in Mexico. Some might complain I’m undoing movie magic with photographs like these, but the contrast between this raw blue screen scene and what we will see in theatres makes me more awestruck at what a VFX-whiz like Blomkamp can accomplish. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

SCENE AND HEARD showcases the independent music scene here in Vancouver. With 26,816+ artists, boasting 124,019+ tracks, the CBC Radio 3 web site is the absolute ultimate authority, and the home, of independent music in Canada. With that massive library along with tools for members (free to join!), we’re taking advantage of what they’ve set up by bringing you a fresh batch of music every week featuring local groups who have tracks (entire albums, even!) on the R3 site.

On to week four of the PPP Top 20 showcases, and we got another great band to make another great playlist for us to start your week off wonderfully…so thanks to The Matinee! They’ll be playing this Thursday at the Red Room (you can get tickets here) alongside Behind Sapphire, Redgy Blackout, and Treelines.

Another bonus this week, I’ve added a video of the band’s to the post…and if you click on it, within 3 seconds you’ll instantly see why I like it so much. :)

Rohan The Record Store, an advertisement illustrated by Rand Holmes

Rohan’s, the Record Store, an advert by Rand Holmes in the Georgia Straight, April 6, 1972. Rohan’s was located at 2865 West 4th Ave, Vancouver, a building which remarkably still exists today, now occupied by The House Gallery Boutique, which today specializes in some very fancy handmade gowns and dresses. But back in the 1970s, Rohan’s was a musical destination. By 1973 however, Rohan the Record Store had closed down, and in its place the musical venue Rohan’s Rockpile opened up just down the street at 2723 West 4th Avenue. BCBusinessOnline described the venue with the following caption recently: “In the 1970s, Fred Xavier’s club hosted eclectic hometown bands who performed for love instead of money. And then there was the night The Who came to play after an arena show.”

Why was Rohan’s such a destination? Perhaps these insights from Wikipedia can shed some light:

Because restrictive liquor laws forbade live music in ordinary bars, there was no long-standing popular music tradition of the kind associated with places with more liberal entertainment laws. During the 1960s when popular youth culture flourished (in spite of all restrictive laws), clubs such as the Retinal Circus on Davie Street in the West End and Rohan’s Rockpile in Kitsilano were the hubs of the hippie scene.

Some further reminiscing appears on the tribute page for Rohan’s Rockpile over at PNWBands.com. Here’s a few words from Roger Stopmerud:

Rohan’s was perhaps my favourite place for live music in Vancouver.  As far as I can remember, it was the very first local club that had it’s own sound system and lights. The place was tiny, no more than a storefront. Service was self-serve for the polite, and table service if you had patience to wait for your order.Fred Xavier ran the place. It was a favorite with local musicians, and Fred hired the most interesting of local scene. He also had acts from out of town/country.

I worked there as the sound man for my good friend Richard Stepp band Shakedown. After our first night Fred came up to me and said he
has never heard better sound there. But the praise was unneeded, as the clubs mixing board was exactly the same as ours. Easy…..

Local FM radio station CFRO (Co-Op Radio 102.7 broadcast a live hour or two every week there.

Some of the bands I remember seeing there include:

Alexis (Radlin) and her fantastic band of heavyweights
Rocket Norton Band
Bruce Miller Band
Foreman Young Band
Shakedown
Dave Paul & The Silver Dollar Band (featuring Lindsay Mitchell (Prism))
Danny Mac (MacInnis) and The Cement City Cowboys
Danny Tripper
…..and a whole bunch more……

Roger Stomperud, January 2008

I noticed on the same website that Gunnar Roger Stopmerud died on the 4th of July, 2008, so I’m glad he took a moment to preserve those fond memories!

A few more ads for Rohan’s, the Record Store appeared in the weeks after the advertisement above, including the ad below from the May 4th issue of the Georgia Straight. In true hippie fashion, the ad simply said: “Thank you”, and showed a caricature illustration of 3 employees of Rohan’s: Gordy, Thora, and Fred (Fred Xavier was the owner).

Rohan’s advertisement, illustrated by Rand Holmes

I wasn’t certain how long the record store operated at 2865 West 4th Avenue so I checked the Criss Cross reverse directories from the era, and saw Rohan’s was listed in 1972, but it was not listed in 1971 or 1973. The 1972 directory also showed Mark Grady, The Inter-High Student Society, and The Oganookie Standard (an underground highschool newspaper) all had phone numbers at the same address. Once Rohan’s Rockpile had moved down the street, the house at 2865 had a host of tenants. Michael Kluckner recalls in 1974, it was used as the office of the West Broadway Citizens Committee, the most radical of the stop-development groups in Kitsilano which organized protests against high-rises, the loss of affordable housing, and the like. I’m told the storefront was also used as an orthopedic furniture store at some point, and by the mid-1980s, it had become The Heart and Soul Psychic Centre for a few years. It was in 1987 when the current tenant, the dressmaker The House Gallery Boutique moved in upstairs. Some 6 months later, she took over the ground floor, and she hasn’t looked back! Incidentally, she’s also the great granddaughter of legendary Vancouver photographer Philip Timms!

The fact that this modest storefront home at 2865 West 4th Avenue still stands today is fairly significant when you look at the encroaching development all around it. Be sure to take note of the building the next time you pass by 4th Ave West, and much like you should when you pass by the Smilin Buddha, pay your respects to Vancouver’s musical roots.