Archive for October, 2011

“Alexa Lupul is an analog girl in a digital world. She executes her projects with an innate understanding of new school graphic design aesthetics, balanced perfectly with old school sensibilities. Her calligraphy skills are impressive, and so is her knowledge of rock ‘n roll.

You see, Alexa has a thing for so called “cheesy dad rock”. She once paid $100 to go see ACDC in Tacoma. She’ll admit it. Young, Jagger, Morrison & Plant, she’s an expert on them all, you could say her work is an amalgamation of each one of their fucked up and beautiful personas.

Her artistic design skills are as genuine as it gets, she’ll spend the time to get to know each client and seems to effortlessly translate their ideas into beautifully appealing and original work. Constantly inspired by her home city of Vancouver, Alexa has a natural ability to recognize exactly what’s missing here, to conceptualize projects of her own and to bring them to life in her work.

This palindrome named, Barista by day, 60’s rock ‘n roll incarnate’s time is coming, and Vancouver will be a much better city with her work out there to see. You just wait. ”

- Romany Williams

The Proof

01 My desk at home.

02 Some of my sketchbooks. I just bought a new one. Exciting.

03 We had the amazing experience of visiting Jim Rimmer’s (RIP) letterpress studio in school and I scored this awesome tiger print!

04 Some of my records and books. My uncle let me raid his vinyl collection years ago to start me off. I love typography books and finding old gems at Value Village, then buying them solely for their covers and illustrations.

05 Crab Park is one of my favourite spots to hang in Vancouver. Perfect place to play bocce or frisbee. There are always cute dogs, plenty of sun or shade,  and it’s never too busy.

06 I have a super dorky thing for My Little Pony….and unicorns.

07 Our back porch! The best.

08 in my time between school and pursuing graphic design as a career I’ve learned to make a mean cappuccino.

The Questions

What neighborhood do you live in?
Strathcona. In a big old character house on the edge of Chinatown.

What do you do and where?
By day, I’m currently making coffee in Chinatown to pay the bills. But as often as possible, I’m working as a freelance graphic designer. I’m living in Strathcona and love being in this area of Vancouver right now. Cool new things are popping up everywhere.

What are you working on?
Finishing up a project doing packaging and promotional materials  for a friend whose starting up a skin care line, where she makes all her products in her kitchen. Currently in the process of coming up with some new projects, and looking for people to collaborate with.

Where can we find your work?
www.alexalupul.com

SCENE AND HEARD showcases the independent music scene here in Vancouver. We interview some of our favourite local artists, post weekly guest playlists comprised of Vancouver artists and ‘Last Week in Music’ highlights some of the concerts happening around the city…

Remember all those awesome shows that I told you about last week? Well, I didn’t go to any of them. Instead, I was fighting a flu-like cold, where I had a fever and chills at the same time. It wasn’t all bad, I slept in a blanket fort and watched lots of hockey!

AND LUCKILY! The wonderful Leigh Eldridge fought off her own cold to go to a show and sent me some of the photos. Yay friends! She caught the Zeus show at the Biltmore, with Sun Wizard and Daydream Vacation. Check out the shots below.

THIS WEEK IN MUSIC: …uhhhh. There isn’t much. I don’t think too many bands want to play on Halloween. But there ARE a few things going on with music for you to enjoy. Thursday, Kathryn Calder is at the Biltmore. Friday, (I’m going to miss it but) there is a ZOMBIE BEATLES COVER BAND ft members of the SSRIs at The Rickshaw. So cool. Saturday I’m going to try to get to the Gay Nineties/Oh No! Yoko/Aardvark Robinson show at the Dodson Rooms. and Monday the wonderful Hannah Epperson will be at Cafe Montmartre. And of course during the entire Halloween weekend, there is an insane amount of things happening at The Waldorf…click to check out what!  HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

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

Whoa – I just had a flashback to Art History class again. It was in direct response to a photograph in the pool by Robert Fougere, and it reminded me of the work of Eadweard Muybridge. In the 1870′s, California Governor Leland Stanford commissioned Muybridge, and English landscape photographer living in the US, to use this new-fangled photography thing to answer an age-old question: when a horse is in full gallop, is there any point in time when all four hooves are off the ground at the same time? Muybridge used a series of cameras in a line, all set up to have the shutters triggered as the horse passed by. It took a few years to perfect the process, and Stanford had his question answered – there was indeed a moment when all four hooves left the ground. Muybridge went on to devote the rest of his life to studying human and animal locomotion using the techniques he developed, and inadvertently created the predecessor to moving pictures in the process.

Fast forward 140-or so years, and Robert has taken a similar principle but turned it inside out and compressed it into one single frame – 15 flashes from a strobe revealing the range of motion during a golf swing. We may never know how far the ball was driven, or if the current Governor of California was involved in any way.

Gary

A year ago I started a 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 was my conversation starter and a common thread that linked them all. Every week I have been sharing the story of the week here on Vancouver Is Awesome. This is the last story of the project as it is. :)

Stranger #365

Location: Kingsway, around Budgies

The 365th stranger! This is sort of unbelievable. When you think of it, a whole year of talking to someone completely unknown to you every single day, explaining why you are doing this and having them share something often very personal with you, is quite the journey. A daily act that started each day with a bit of nervousness; that depending how life went down every day, seemed challenging or @#$%^&*() impossible. A ‘fail’ here and there, but always, always, amazing and intriguing. I can’t think of many things that are this exciting every single day. It has been a humbling experience.

The last story was a good summary of the project: I talked to about seven people before I found one with tattoos willing to share. There was one who had a lot of tattoos but who was too busy to be the last stranger “I’m sorry. I’m cramming for a test right now, maybe some other time” , oh well. I’m glad I didn’t push, because tonight’s strangers would close circles. I was about to meet a friend for dinner, and about to leave the stranger hunt for the restaurant, when on my way there I saw a couple of individuals hanging out. I approached them and told them the usual. They both had a tattoos. The first one rolled up her sleeve and showed me something that looked very familiar. I recognized that tattoo and the story. She didn’t remember me, and I (as ashamed as I am to say) didn’t quite remember her. But it was this tattoo, stranger #40. That’s what happens when you meet strangers at the Foundation at 2am.

Her friend, however, had a tattoo I hadn’t documented before, and she was kind enough to share it. When she rolled up her sleeve, I spotted what you see above.

“My twin sister’s name is Becky, and when she was younger her email address used to be B3K1. She moved to Montreal and I got really drunk one night and decided I really missed her, so me and my best friend stick-and-poked this on.” —Then I asked about the anchor one. The classic anchor tattoo is one of my favourite tattoos, so it was a nice play of destiny to have this be on the last story. “Oh, about the anchor… my sister and I got the same anchor when we were about 18. That’s what that one is about.”

:] And that was that. I thanked them for sharing, shared the blog, told them about the show —still trying to hide my nervousness and my voice about to break (I was as nervous as the first time, maybe because it was the official last one), and went on my way.

Thanks strangers!

And thank you all. It’s been a blast. Hope to see you all at the event on Nov. 3rd (at Project space on 222 E.Georgia —at main). I don’t know how I feel now. I guess ‘Blessed’ is a good description. Thank YOU.

PS: although stranger stories won’t  be daily from now on, I will continue to collect them and post a stranger weekly here on Vancouver is Awesome.

For all the other 365 stories, click here: astrangeraday.com

This week Paul Anka was a guest judge on Cover Me Canada on CBC and he didn’t send ANYONE home…so Ali lives on!

Now it’s our turn once more to give her VOTES, Facebook likes, YouTube views, Tweets, and support from our awesome community…

Performing it in front of Paul Anka AND the world, Ali took on Put Your Head On My Shoulder with a rocksteady vibe!:

You can also watch the whole episode by clicking here…Paul Anka said: “You look great, you sound great, you’ve got a good set of pipes on you, and I gave you a lot of points for being so courageous and taking a song that no one would normal put in that kind of vibe!” AND THE JUDGES AGREED ACROSS THE BOARD! Way to go Ali!

SCENE AND HEARD showcases the independent music scene here in Vancouver. With 27,099+ artists, boasting 125,783+ 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.

With Halloween being a WEEK today away, all of the parties are happening this weekend. So to get you in the mood I (with a little help from twitter) scoured the R3 pages some of our favourite Vancoverites and found a few spooky songs, a few loud ones, a few silly ones and some great music in general.

Have a listen and contemplate your costume…by the way…What are YOU going as this year? Also, did I miss any good Halloween-ish songs? Let me know and I’ll add them on (don’t forget, they need to be Vancouver artists and on R3)!

BONUS! While the songs might not be scary, these videos are! A We Are The City video with Zombies, The Zolas video with a haunted house, and a Black Mountain video, which has an owl…what? I’m afraid of birds. The rest of the video is a little freaky too. CHECK THEM ALL OUT AFTER THE JUMP!

[EDIT:] BONUS BONUS! Ask and you shall receive…

Vancouver band Philoceraptor tweeted me a link to THIS PAGE which has a song by colab band “The Holey Sheets”.
First of all…amazing name. Second of all…PERFECT!
I’ve also added the song (called ‘Razorblades in Apples’) into the playlist above and if you go to the page there is also a 2nd song called BOO…7mins of Halloween noised made by some of Vancouver’s finest.

AND YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THEM…for a minimum of $2, and ALL PROCEEDS ARE GOING TO UNICEF! So get to it!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

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!

Although Surrey is seen by many around Metro Vancouver as a car-era suburb, it has a rich history dating back to the 19th century just like many of the other municipalities in the region. One of the areas where this is most evident, is Cloverdale.

I’ve already given a bit of an overview of the early years for municipal government in Surrey, but I thought I’d expand a little on downtown Cloverdale.

At the intersection of the New Westminster Southern Railway, the BC Electric Railway (Interurban!), and the Great Northern Railway, Cloverdale developed and prospered as the early economic hub of Surrey. Clover Valley Road (present-day 176th), running parallel to the NW Southern tracks, became the main street through town on which banks, hotels, and other retailers set up shop. The pace of growth only quickened when the Interurban came through with a new station around 1912, shuttling passengers all the way from Abbotsford through New Westminster right into downtown Vancouver (They really knew transit back in the early 20th century!). Then in 1913, Clover Valley Road became known as the Pacific Highway, connecting the US Border to Old Yale Road in northern Surrey (which, at that time, connected New Westminster out to Langley and beyond – today’s Fraser Highway follows much of the original Old Yale route). Lastly, don’t forget about Milton Road and parts of McLellan Road becoming Highway 10, positioning Cloverdale on the route between Langley and Ladner.

With such a central location, and with access to excellent transportation and goods-movement routes, it’s no wonder Cloverdale blossomed… until sometime after King George Highway was created in 1940. With a shorter route to Blaine, featuring fewer large hills to impede goods movement, King George soon re-routed much of the traffic that would have otherwise passed through Cloverdale. Then the municipal hall moved out to King George and Highway 10 in the 60′s, and the huge Surrey Co-op packed up off to Abbotsford in the 70′s. From there on, the area started to shift into the more residentially-oriented bedroom community it is today.

But thankfully, Cloverdale has maintained it’s urban routes, complete with the Clova Cinema (Smallville anyone?), Clover Lanes, the Surrey Museum and Archives, and all kinds of historically-rich shops.

If you’re curious to learn more or see some photos of Cloverdale through the years, be sure to check Jack Brown’s Surrey History!

Archives of the Nicholson Road project can be found HERE.

Are you signed up for the Rain City Chronicles newsletter? They just released their first one today and by signing up you’ll be the first to know about their upcoming shows and ticket specials, and kept up-to date on news and exciting projects! Here’s what you missed…

“Today we are delighted to announce the release of Rain City Chronicles The Podcast. Our pal and producer Chris Kelly has been collecting audio from almost all our storytelling nights and you’ll be the first to hear it.

Click HERE to listen to Episode One featuring stories about “lessons” from Ian Rowe, Bob MacDonald and Cory Ashworth. In the next few days keep your eyes out for this podcast in iTunes so please download and share.

Mark your calendars for our next show November 3, 2011 and join us for stories and songs inspired by the theme “Duty Calls”.

We are very excited to announce our performer for the night will be the lovely and talented Jill Barber. Our storyteller line-up will be announced in just a few days.

Grandview Legion Hall
2205 Commercial Drive
Vancouver, British Columbia
Doors at 6pm, show at 7:00pm
Tickets available HERE.
Thanks to our friends at Pike for another great poster.