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Have you been following my 50 Coffees Series? Jenny Yoo from Making Contact on Evolution 107.9FM has, and she’s been enjoying it so much that she approached me for an interview about it. It aired on 107.9 earlier this afternoon, have a listen below if you’re interested in the ins and outs of this series of posts…
Call the Pacific North West (or ‘Gnarthwest’) what you want: ‘geographically isolated’ or ‘culturally insular’, Vancouver’s location affords us some unique (and awesome) societal and cultural characteristics. For decades, Vancouver has promoted and nurtured its Skate / Snow / Surf scenes, creating a modern municipality wherein these trademark lifestyles are constantly manifested.
Despite these ‘subcultures’ being deeply engrained in our city’s identity, the ‘Bros’ and ‘Bro-ettes’ who partake in them are often still perceived in a negative light. Being charged with clinging to adolescent ideals and fuelling an ambitionless path with parties and substance abuse, the Bros seem to have the odds stacked against them. In terms of legitimizing their pursuits and finding a place in the ‘real world’ to apply them, it is often misconstrued that they showed up to the skate park late… and are pushing mongo.
Ray Gordon’s Throttled exhibit takes us into the world of traditional hod rods and vintage motorcycles through pictures. The 25 colour photos show us Gordon’s favourite spots including drag strips, bike shops, and “secret forts”.
However, this view that the Bros of the world are ill-equipped to tighten up their shoelace belts and button down their plaids when it comes to doing business, is one that the KnowShow confronts head on. Last week, the bi-annual, Vancouver based KnowShow (in 2010 it was held in Calgary) saw over 300 brands hold down real estate in the convention centre to interact with over 2000 retailers from across the country. The reps were repping, buyers were buying and bigtime orders were made over Caesars and PBRs that could prove to sink or swim brands through the upcoming seasons.
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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, Alcatraz, Supernatural and Once Upon a Time showcase our city in similar fashion and sometimes put a celebrity actor or two in the frame. |
Mega-producer J.J. Abram’s new sci-fi mystery island series Alcatraz premiered last week in back to back episodes with the final big set piece on the roof of the Dominion Building downtown. Alcatraz, which is about a secret agency dedicated to finding and catching inmates from the infamous San Francisco prison gone missing 50 years ago and reappearing today, opened to 10 million viewers and a 3.3 rating on FOX, making it the second biggest drama premiere this TV season. next to modern fairy tale series Once Upon a Time on ABC. So the two biggest new hit American dramas both film in Vancouver. Coincidence?
“302 Vanished. 3 Must Find Them” is Alcatraz’s tagline. Of the 3, petite blonde-bobbed Sarah Jones is the surprise action star : chasing a suspect who turned out to be her Alcatraz inmate grandfather in our introduction to her police detective character Rebecca Madsen in the pilot. She’s the one doing the running, the jumping and sassing her superiors with classic lines like “Thanks for being a dick about it”. Her partner Jorge Garcia as Alcatraz expert Dr. Diego “Doc” Soto has a way with a sharp wisecrack, “You’ve built the Bat Cave underneath Alcatraz” (as you’d expect from Lost’s Hurley), and her mysterious new boss Sam Neill as Emerson Hauser makes a great mean face as he looms above a drugged Rebecca with the ominous words ”Welcome to Alcatraz”, but neither man is one for action.
Apart from the 3, the other person of note in this secret squad is Hauser’s equally mysterious partner Lucy Banerjee played by Parminder Nagra of ER, who is shot by the sniper convict Ernest Cobb during the filming of the second episode and then revealed to have her own past life on Alcatraz as hasn’t-aged-a-day Dr. Lucille Sengupta. I spotted the Gastown alley crime scene but haven’t seen Nagra on location yet.
I wrote about and photographed the filming of some of the first half-dozen episodes in my YVRshoots series post published in mid-October.
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SCENE AND HEARD showcases the independent music scene here in Vancouver. With 28,249+ artists, boasting 131,173+ 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. |
What a sweet deal we have for you today! Vancouver band The Ruffled Feathers are set to play the first Steamwhistle Unsigned show in Vancouver on Thursday alongside Sidney York, and Treelines…AND tomorrow they will be releasing two songs from their latest album ‘Oracles’ (will be released April 3rd) BUT VIA readers can get one of them today!!! Take a listen to “All My Cities” below and then click the download arrow to get it for free!
So on top of that, the band ALSO created a playlist of Vancouver indie music for your listening pleasure. Click the images below to hear their picks and then be sure to come to the Biltmore on Thursday for the show, it’s going to be great!!!
All My Cities by The Ruffled Feathers by VIAindie
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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!
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Welcome to the Austin Heights neighbourhood of Coquitlam!
Over the past few years, the City worked hard on a neighbourhood plan to guide development of the area. I have to say, it’s a great location geographically, and the vision they have for a village on a hill is pretty grand. Like Capitol Hill and Burnaby Mountain, Austin Heights is elevated up above much of the surrounding landscape, on top of Blue Mountain. Climb up a few stories (or 19 in the case of one of the first developments, The Austin), and you can see most of the major town centres in Metro Van including Guildford, Whalley, downtown and uptown New West, Edmonds, Metrotown, Lougheed, Brentwood, and downtown Vancouver; along with the Fraser River, the North Shore Mountains, and so many of the other sights we’ve grown to love around here (even Deer Lake!).
Of course, being Coquitlam, it’s right close to nature as well – like the 176-acre Vancouver Golf Club across the street, or Blue Mountain park, complete with a few big picnic shelters and stone barbecue.
And all of this, just a quick jaunt down the hill to North Road and the soon-to-be Evergreen Line. Oh, and sometimes it snows :)
Archives of the Nicholson Road project can be found HERE.
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I recently read a theory that going for 50 coffees with people you’ve never met is the entrepreneurs equivalent to the theory that doing anything for 10,000 hours will make you an expert on it. While I get the idea, 50 coffees is far easier than practicing something for ten years, and while I’m far from lazy I’ve decided to set out on a fairly simple mission: over the next 50 weeks I’m going to invite 50 interesting Vancouverites, most of whom I have never met before, to go for coffee. I’m going to use this as an exercise in networking for myself and for V.I.A. while also using it as a platform to introduce you to some people who are doing really cool stuff in the city you live in.
COFFEE #20 |
Meet Spencer Chandra Herbert. The current MLA for the West End of Vancouver and the BC NDP Official Opposition Critic for Tourism, Culture, and the Arts. He keeps an office right in the thick of things on Denman street and encourages residents to come in and express their concerns or generally give feedback or ideas on what they want to see from the Provincial government.
We met at his office and then walked over to Delany’s Coffee House to chat. Spencer is the first politician I’ve met with for this series and seeing as I was fairly clueless to the way provincial politics work I asked him for a crash course on the ins and outs and exactly what his role is. He gave me the skinny on what goes down at the parliament buildings in Victoria, what he does with his time when he’s not sitting in the legislature as well as his history as a Vancouver Park Board commissioner. He also clued me in to something that I thought would be driven purely by civic politicians: the new rent bank that’s supposed to be launching this spring that will provide people who are temporarily down on their luck a loan to cover their rent. He was the convener of the first meeting about that project and worked as a connector between the City of Vancouver and various partners involved. Learn more about the project in THIS story published by the Province.
Learn more about Spencer and the work he does at his web site SpencerChandraHerbert.ca and stay tuned as I plan to meet with a handful of other politicians for this series. Perhaps a prominent BC Liberal, a Green and some folks from city hall?
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