24/604 is the new Vancouver lifestyle show that will take you on a journey to introduce you to some of the gems of our city! From active activities, to amazing places to eat, and the best spots for a night out, we’ve partnered with V.I.A. to bring you a new segment each week here on the blog. 24/604 is a locally created show by Red Line Media Inc, and Produced by Var Bhalla and Derek Wong.

Summer is just around the corner and that means outdoor events around town are popping up.  One of the best for delicious food, great deals, and a fun atmosphere is the Richmond Night Market.  Nightlife Host Christina Meng grabs her change purse for a chance to taste some international snacks and do a little bargaining.  Join her as she shakes its up.  The Richmond Night Market Opens May 17th.

For more information Follow us on Twitter at @24604tv and Like us on Facebook at fb.com/24604

24/604 airs every week on the Shaw Community Channel (Channel 4) on Tuesdays at 2pm & 9:30pm, Saturdays at 8am, and Sundays at 1:30pm.

Many times a day, the people you see crossing the street or meet in your travels make you smile and wonder, “What is their life like? What is their story?” A photographer is compelled to capture these individuals’ image to communicate their unique stories—to take a portrait that reflects their personality and the world they live in. For me (@tallulahphoto), this evolved into a passion to photograph these everyday people, whose unique souls reflect not only the zeitgeist but the joy and colour that comes from living on the West Coast.

Portraits from the Vancouver People Project will be featured in Vancouver Is Awesome as a precursor to a future photographic exhibit featuring the wonderful characters who contribute to the fabric of Vancouver.

CHYCHO

Age: I’m a Gemini in my 40s

Born: Tehran, Iran

How long have you lived in Vancouver? I arrived here in the late 70’s as a child.

Occupations: I’ve been an environmental geophysicist, a comic book publisher, I’ve run a dating site, been a gambler and played the money markets. Now I teach math and create math instructional videos.

Passions and Interests: I have many: politics, economics, games, technology, futurology, creative commons, collaborations, and the liberation of data and science and shamanism. All of it really comes down to analysis and interaction.

What do people know you for? It depends where they know me from and how we interacted.

Thoughts on Vancouver? It’s home! The parks, swimming in the summers, the diversity, the ‘crazy’ people, foods from around the world, how BC Bud has been a major contributor to the growth of the cannabis culture in the world, as well as the ease of access to psychotropic plants. Some of the projects, ideas and information that have originated in Vancouver have had a profound effect on the world stage; think Adbusters and Greenpeace. On the minus side, I think public transportation is over priced; it should be free. The benefits would be: less accidents, better air quality, less road maintenance and reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.

Tallulah’s Musings

I found out from a friend that Chycho, who teaches and tutors mathematics, creates lessons in the urban environment, films it and then uploads to YouTube. The city is his schoolroom—areas that are not easily visible, underneath bridges or those desolate industrial areas where skateboarders hang out. The space must have a wall large enough to function as a board for writing. His tools are chalk, a tripod and a video camera. The backdrop for this portrait was underneath the Burrard Street Bridge. He is filming the lesson: Introduction to Ratios and Their Relationship to Fractions (The Language of Mathematics IV #147).

From 1934 to 1979, street photographer Foncie Pulice set up his camera on Vancouver city sidewalks and snapped candid shots of people strolling by. For almost half a century, he took thousands of photos, unwittingly capturing moments in time, the history of a city, and the lives of British Columbians.

Now documentary filmmaker Melanie Wood and British Columbia’s Knowledge Network are bringing these photographs together – collecting them from albums around the province and giving them a public home. Photo negatives of Foncie’s images do not exist. He destroyed most of them when he retired. Until now there was no central archive or collection.

Here are some thoughts from one of the subjects of this photo:
“Dad and I at the PNE.”

This is a story about Vancouver, about British Columbia, and about it’s people… so they need your help. Visit Knowledge.ca/FonciesCorner to add your photos and stories to the collection.

We’re sharing a couple of Foncie photos here on V.I.A. each week leading up to the premiere of the documentary film being released in the summer. Share your memories (or the ones you find in your parents’ and grandparents’ archives) and become a part of Vancouver’s history!

VANCOUVER DAZE showcases and highlights the lifestyle and cultural scene of our beautiful city, uncovering all the INTERESTING THINGS, misadventures, and shenanigans beyond social functions and local happenings. We fiercely promote all the fun times, food, culture, and entertainment the city has to offer, along with the creative minds behind them. Follow more of my work/coverage over at RICKCHUNG.COM and on Instagram at @RICKCHUNG.

Volume 118: Disaronno‘s The Mixing Star cocktail competition at Reflections lounge inside the Rosewood Hotel Georgia on May 14, 2013. Hashtag: #MixingStar / #Disaronno. More photos available on Flickr.

This Italian liqueur’s global cocktail competition hit the west coast for day of mixology recipe judging and tapings.

On this afternoon, contestants showcased their eclectic drink concoctions to a panel of local judges. Upstairs, Disaronno threw a social lounging endeavour with their own cocktails including a fairly refreshing Disaronno sour (above).
…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Here’s a great video from our friends at the Pacific Salmon Foundation showcasing how a donation from Newalta helped bring a super interesting project to life in a public park in West Vancouver, in turn helping ensure a future for our Pacific Salmon…

Back in 2010, when our main @VIAwesome Twitter account had only 3,750 followers, we called on the 9 mobile carriers who were operating in Vancouver at the time. We made THIS BLOG POST in which we joked that we were using an ancient 90′s brick phone (which wasn’t too far off from the truth), then we seriously pleaded the case for a telco to come to our rescue and help bring us into the world of smartphones. TELUS was the first to answer the call (pun intended), and we’ve enjoyed a mutually beneficial partnership with them ever since. They’re an awesome Vancouver-based company that not only delivers great products and services, with ultra-responsive customer service (have you seen them on Twitter?) and also does a ton of COMMUNITY GIVING to charities and non-profits ($44,000,000 worth in 2012). Their business is really in tune with what we do over here.

It’s crazy how far we’ve come in the almost three years since they came on board as a Community Sponsor. We’ve increased our Twitter followers by almost 10 times (as I type this we have 32,197 Followers), we’ve placed as one of Vancouver’s top 3 Twitter accounts 2 years running in the Georgia Straight’s BEST OF, and TELUS has really helped us get here. And in that relatively short amount of time, the technology of the phones we use has also come a long way.

Pictured below are the phones I’ve used in the past 3 years with TELUS. Next to the Motorola Brick is the Motorola Backflip which is the first phone they connected us with, and which I used for about a year. I then went to the iPhone 4, which I also used for about a year until I discovered how incredible the Samsung Galaxy S3 was for Instagram (SUCH. VIVID. PHOTOS!). I dropped the S3 one day and the screen was totally destroyed, so I decided to give the new BlackBerry Z10 a chance, until I was offered the S4… which I jumped at.

The Brick, Motorola Backflip, iPhone 4, Samsung Galaxy S3, BlackBerry Z10… and the Samsung Galaxy S4

The craziest thing in this timeline, to me, is that when I got my second smartphone (the iPhone 4) I thought that was it. I figured it was the best thing going and that I would stick with it for as long as I’ve stuck with using a Macbook. As a creative director, I’ve been toting around different variations of Apple laptops for almost 15 years now; it’s just always been the platform that “we” use in the creative sector. When I initially made the switch from my iPhone to the Galaxy S3 my main concern was that I wasn’t going to be able to sync my calendar from my laptop to my phone, and that the operating system would be weird. As it turned out the calendar synced seamlessly (go figure!), and I ended up liking the Android operating system as much as IOS, some of the features even moreso. And getting onto that S3 really was the catalyst that set up my “Aha!” moment when I realized that I’m fairly agnostic when it comes to the operating system on my phone. Apple is not the end-all-be-all; I even took the BlackBerry 10 OS for a good spin for the last couple of months with ease, and I enjoyed it.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>