Author Archive

We’re co-sponsoring a ping pong tournament this coming Thursday presented by The Quiet Life! It’s free to register to compete or if you just feel like showing up to watch and have some free drinks and appys then that’s cool too. HERE is the facebook event page.

The Quiet Life is a small clothing company out of Los Angeles that was founded by my old friend and mentor, Andy Mueller, in 1997. Our friends at Supra Distribution (remember their Home Grown?) are now distributing the line in Canada.
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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 fourth part I want to share something that I didn’t know existed until a couple years back. I made the discovery late one night while searching the shallow water of the shoreline for a toad that I thought I heard calling. Freshwater crayfish!!! Here’s Rob holding one that we caught…

In the past we’ve caught ones at this lake that were about five times this size, like tiny lobsters! We gathered up a huge potful of them and cooked them up and ate them, as a matter of fact. My wife thought they tasted like mud but I thought they were delicious. If you do a Google image search for freshwater crayfish you’ll either get very frightened by what you find or very excited depending on how much you like shellfish or similarly dislike insecty type things in the water. Jones Lake is full of these things.

Here’s what happened shortly after the above photo was taken. Rob learns the hard way how not to hold a crayfish…

Stay tuned tomorrow when I reveal whether or not we caught any fish on our adventure!

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!

Released on DVD a year and a half ago, Billy Connolly’s Journey to the Edge of the World is one of my favourite travel and adventure series. Beautiful, charming and funny could be words to describe the comedian himself but his trip across Canada (that goes through Vancouver briefly and ends ups on Vancouver Island) that’s been captured on video and sometimes appears on PBS can easily be summed up in those words as well. In his own words, “I like people who laugh easily and readily, and I’ve been blessed with an ability to communicate with strangers.”

Have a look at this trailer then either keep your eyes on PBS or ask your local video store if they’ve got it…

Also of note, Billy is going to be appearing at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in late November. That’s all the information I have right now but hopefully will have more on it shortly.

Imagine 2020. In just ten years, Vancouver will be the greenest city in the world. A vision this bold cannot be realized alone. That’s why the city is inviting you to talk green to them. Share your ideas for making Vancouver the greenest city in the world. Help them make the critical choices. Help them prioritize between blue-sky visions and immediate opportunities. This is your city – make it better. Between now and October 7, add your voice to this life-changing conversation. Share your ideas or vote on the ones you like. The City of Vancouver has ten greenest city goals. Learn about all ten, and tell them how you think they can best be achieved at www.talkgreentous.ca.

GOAL #3: Green Buildings
All new construction carbon neutral; improve efficiency of existing buildings by 20%

Vancouver has the greenest building code for new houses in North America, the first net-zero multi-family building in Canada, the greenest neighbourhood in North America – Southeast False Creek – and a requirement that all major new rezonings achieve at least the LEED Gold standard.

CHALLENGES:
We can mandate that new construction is built green, but this only gradually transforms our overall building stock. It is much more difficult to address energy efficiency and the environmental footprint of existing buildings. Energy is cheap in BC, so homeowners, tenants and business owners have less urgent motivation to use energy wisely.

twitter.com/greenestcity | facebook.com/greenestcity
Text “talktome” to 778.938.3424 to get updates and be entered for prizes

It’s Ask A Curator day! What does that mean? Essentially it means that you can pose a question for a curator of one of many Canadian museums and galleries via Twitter, including a few of your favourites (and ours, hi Vancouver Police Museum!) here in Vancouver. Learn more HERE.

THE OFFICIAL WORD:
‘Ask a Curator Day’ on September 1st 2010 will open the door to these experts with a unique worldwide question and answer session which will let interested members of the public put questions to museum and gallery curators.

We are using the popular website Twitter to host ‘Ask a Curator’. You can find a list of participating cultural venues in the ‘who to ask?’ section of this website, or simply follow the hashtag #askacurator on September 1st to follow the questions other people are asking.

Ask a curator follows a similar successful event called ‘Follow a Museum’ which took place in February 2010.

Nope, it’s not the Lotto 649 growing and growing, it’s those pesky and glorious sockeye salmon making their way up the Mighty Fraser River this year! Up from a concerning 1.5 million in last year’s run, the first estimate was 25 million, then it was 30 million, and now it’s climbed to 34 freakin’ million. Take it easy, fish! Wowzers.

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 third part I want to share the beauty of the destination that my gutless little car would never make it to: Jones Lake! I struggled with whether or not I should actually share the name of the spot with you because there is an unwritten code about blowing up incredibly precious spots like this, but I figure if you’re inclined enough to visit Jones Lake (which is technically called Wahleach Lake) and you have the means and the time to go all the way out there, then you’ll probably appreciate it’s splendor. Plus there’s a massive sign on Highway 1 between Chilliwack and Hope that says “JONES LAKE” that you can’t miss, so it’s not exactly the biggest secret in the world.

The lake is (obviously) super beautiful. It’s also (not-so-obviously) a partially man-made lake/reservoir that is managed by BC Hydro and is constantly producing electricity through it’s powerhouse. This lake most likely helps power the computer you’re reading this on right now! HERE is a technical PDF that has some of it’s history.

The above photo was taken around the halfway point to the end of the lake. This photo below was taken at the very end of the road. Literally. There used to be a bridge going across this skinny part of the lake and you can see what remains of it. Suede Peterson here is standing on one of the logs that used to stretch across the water, stay tuned to the next two parts to see if he (we) caught anything.

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!

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

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!

Every day we share a single photo from our Flickr Pool shot by one of our faithful and talented readers (that’s you!). Today’s photo was taken by our friend Dano Pendygrasse, it’s called “Preparing for flight” and the caption is “Fall is coming and the geese are testing out their flight patterns.”.