Sad Mag: Issue 1 by SAD Mag

ISSUE 1 | AUTUMN 09 | FREE

www.sadmag.ca

Eat your heart out, Vancouver

The Future

is Sad

NUMBER OF PEOPLE HAVE ASKED US in the months leading up to this, the debut of Sad Magazine, “So, what’s the deal with ‘sad’ anyway?” The title of our publication, along with a few other decisions we’ve made along the way, were the result of a quick brainstorm that clicked with everyone. We huddled over tea last Christmas and asked ourselves: what do we think of when we think of Vancouver? Rain, cold, glass, concrete, sad—Sad Mag! However, as Vancouver’s young writers and artists have come together this year to flesh out our vision in this first issue, the name assumed a more substantial meaning. Vancouver isn’t sad, not really. We just haven’t been looking hard enough. The first issue of Sad Mag is brimming with alternative accounts of art and culture in Vancouver that made us think, made us laugh, and even made us cry. We hope you find inspiration in the genuine voices of some extraordinary Vancouver citizens featured here by the way they infuse artfulness and loveliness into the life of this city. We hope Sad Mag makes you happy. Take a look and let us know what you think by visiting our website, www.sadmag.ca, where you’ll also find additional material that didn’t make it to the print edition. Thanks for reading, Sad Mag

Behind the scenes at the cover shoot. Photo: Rob Seebacher.

A Good Life The Clean and Simple Philosophy of Jessie Li

10 The Nature of Designing Things A Conversation with Gastown’s Award-Winning Designers

14 Like a Lady The Living Theatre of Cameron Mackenzie

22 Colour, Texture, Decadence, Magic The Legend of Burcu Ozdemir

25 Cascadia Defied Victoria’s Ill-Fitting Presence in the Pacific Northwest

28 Person, Place, & Thing Jazz Man, 101 East Hastings & Feature Presentation

FEATURED CONTRIBUTORS Kristina Fiedrich | Illustrator Cover and Cascadia Defied Kristina Fiedrich graduated with a BFA from Thompson Rivers University in 2005, and received a post-graduate certificate in printmaking from Capilano College in 2007. Since then, she has been focusing on etching and drawing techniques, showing her work locally and internationally. Kristina currently lives and works in Vancouver. “My work breaks down into two categories: mischievous and serious. I like making people uncomfortable. I hope to offend people some of the time, and make people look twice all of the time. After all, what is the purpose of making art if not to create a stir?” Racan Souiedan | Writer Cascadia Defied Racan Souiedan began working in Vancouver’s independent music industry at the age of thirteen, before playing and singing in a series of short-lived bands and performing briefly as a stand-up comedian. He recently finished work on a $200 film paying tribute to the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, and is now planning a stage adaptation of Jonathan Lynn’s 1985 feature Clue. Racan is currently busy completing an honours degree in history at Simon Fraser University. “I love Victoria immensely, but the city’s landmarks and museums, while great in their own right, don’t reveal the complete picture by any stretch. There’s a complicated story waiting beneath the surface.” Ghassan Shanti | Makeup Artist Like a Lady Ghassan Shanti is a twenty-four-year-old Palestinian makeup artist. He was raised in California and Jordan, and has lived in Vancouver for three years as a convention refugee “because being a homo is not okay in Jordan.” Ghassan got his start in makeup artistry when he was fourteen, when he would wait until his mom and aunt were asleep to practice on their faces. They didn’t wake up during his midnight makeovers, and Ghassan chose to do makeup professionally at age eighteen. He works in Vancouver on a freelance basis for fashion photography, and acts as Cameron Mackenzie’s exclusive makeup artist for drag performances. “Working with Cameron has been as much an education in makeup as being his friend has been an education in growing up. He helped me to realize that you can be a young fag with a self-destructive past, transcend it, and still cultivate self-worth and self-respect.”

Publisher Sad Magazine Publishing Society Editor in Chief Deanne Beattie Creative Director Brandon Gaukel Lead Designer Lon Garrick Managing Editor Justin Mah Production Manager Megan Lau Contributing Writers Deanne Beattie, Adam Cristobal, Tom Cullen, Justin Mah, Stacey McLachlan, Stephanie Orford, Lauren Schachter, Racan Souiedan Contributing Photographers and Illustrators Eric Cairns, Daniel Elstone, Kristina Fiedrich, Brandon Gaukel, Jimmy Hsu, Julie Jones, Laura Nguyen, Eric Thompson Cover Art Kristina Fiedrich Sad Magazine Publishing Society Board of Directors Deanne Beattie, Hubert Chan, Iris Dias, Brandon Gaukel, Robert Lutener, Matthew McGale Sad Mag would like to thank: Paul Beja, Geist Magazine, Sean Horlor, Sean Lee, Joni Morris, Shawna Park, Rob Seebacher, Katie Stewart, Carlie Thauvette Sad Mag is published four times a year by the Sad Magazine Publishing Society, 732 E. 11th Avenue, Vancouver BC, V5T 2E5. Email: info@sadmag.ca. Contents Copyright © 2009, Sad Magazine. All rights reserved. www.sadmag.ca www.facebook.com/sadmag www.twitter.com/sadmag

A Good Life The Clean and Simple Philosophy of Jessie Li

As told to Justin Mah Photography by Jimmy Hsu 7

N CHINA YOU’RE FACED WITH A LOT OF UPS and downs in business. I was once at the peak of my life, then suddenly lost everything one day. It’s determination, I think, determination that kept me going—just thinking on the bright side. When problems come up, just face it and don’t give up. One should be hardworking, kind and honest; this is my personal philosophy. I came to Canada because the living environment in China is not good; China’s social structure is not good. I had trouble finding things to do here because my English is poor. I was on the computer one day, looking at ads, and found this Laundromat, and I phoned to ask about it. I found out that it was close to where I was living, so my husband and I decided to buy the Laundromat. I feel laundering is a service, and it allows people to save time, and allows them to do something more meaningful. They have their own hobbies, they can save time and do the things that they enjoy. So I feel happy. At the Laundromat there are a lot of people from different places, so it’s nice. This is a place where people can rest and interact. Here people can interact, you know? Also customers love it when I fold their clothes nicely after washing them. This will save them a lot of time, and once they go home they will feel very comfortable wearing their clothes. I’ve noticed one problem, one social phenomenon here: in Canada there are a lot of single-parent families. Women are not so bad, but I notice men especially when they’re the ones taking care of the kids; every time when they bring clothes here, it’s often very messy and dirty. It gets my spirit down. I empathize with these families. So I work extra hard to clean their clothes, hoping that it will lighten their situation, so that when they bring the clothes home to their kids, they can concentrate on their own work. Washing their clothes is like washing their fatigue away. At the Laundromat I provide a service for customers, and they give you nice compliments. They say that they are very satisfied; then I feel good inside. This makes me happy—it’s very simple. In life you don’t have to do something great and famous; a good life is reflected in the small, simple life. 

The Nature OF Designing Things A Conversation with Gastown’s Award-Winning Designers

bakery across the street, we can clear our view, too. The FEW EAGER TOURISTS SCATTER THE strangely empty streets in Vancouver’s Gassoftwall slides aside, weightless, folding into a fraction of its town, their shirts sticky with sweat and their full size, politely allowing the street scenes and sunshine to tongues stained from tasting gelato a few take centre stage. The softwall waits patiently to be needed blocks away. There is one storefront on the block that again; this is the nature of the product. Softwalls are there bursts with colour—a florist, marigolds when you need them, and gone when half price today—but the rest of the you don’t. They are simultaneously By Stacey Mclachlan block is grey, grey, grey. fluid and structured, and perfect for Climb up one set of stairs from the Photography by Laura Nguyen urban spaces. For Stephanie Forsythe and Todd street to molo design’s production stuMacAllen, directors of molo design, dio and life is noticeably different. The space shapes our lives and creates the borders and contexts lofty space glows as daylight shines through the long, slender in which we live. The designers’ pieces reflect our need for wall of ivory paper blocking their street view. This is molo’s flexibility in our home and public spaces. signature “softwall.” Today, it acts as a curtain, shielding Forsythe and MacAllen’s first collaborations were as us from the dreary afternoon with its thousands of delicate students at Dalhousie’s School of Architecture in Halifax. honeycomb folds. The softwall stands tall, wrapping the Together, they gained acclaim through design competitions. room in a cool white light. It is like looking through a cloud, Their impressive designs included floating drinking glasses, thick yet transparent, into the vague shapes of the world seating, walls, and lamps. In 2003, the design team shaped below. When the sun finally arrives, clearing the muggy the prototypes for their “soft” structures. That same year, atmosphere away and driving people onto the patio of the

Opposite: Molo design directors, Stephanie Forsythe (left) and Todd MacAllen (centre), at work.

they founded molo to produce their unique creations for the clamouring public. First came their walls, and then round, comfortably knobby stools—“softseats”—that unfurl unexpectedly from unimpressive stacks of cardboard, like Chinese lanterns. Today, molo products gently straddle the border between form and function. Their softseating and softwalls are exhibited in international art museums and shows, including the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art. However, molo’s comfortable, durable, and flexible designs look just as fitting in your home. Safely cocooned from the world behind softwalls, Forsythe, MacAllen, and Sad Mag pulled up three well-worn paper stools and talked about cardboard construction, art, space, and inspiration. Sad Mag: What is it about paper and cardboard that appeals to you? Stephanie Forsythe: When we first started, we were at a stage where we’d sold all our tools to go back to school. We were sitting in a small workspace in downtown Vancouver figuring out how to make things, and found we could make things with paper. We could fold and cut. It was a real blessing because if there were conventional tools around us, we might just have continued to fabricate things in a way we were used to fabricating them, but it was nice to sit down and work with something in such an immediate

way. Paper has this abstract quality to it that’s inviting to the imagination. It can become anything. Everyone plays with cardboard boxes and paper growing up, and artists through the centuries have worked with cardboard. SM: As architects by trade, both of you have designed large buildings. How do you feel about finding yourselves working on a considerably smaller scale?

WE TEND TO FOLLOW THE PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE. Todd MacAllen: That’s something that has always been a part of how we worked and wanted to work; it’s not a surprise to be doing what we’re doing right now. We’ve always had an interest in other avenues, exploring design materials or ways of thinking about space. It wasn’t ever just about buildings. Even in architecture school, it was always about printmaking, painting, and ceramics.

SM: Besides paper, what inspires you? There’s clearly some influence from honeycomb in your softwalls and seating. Do you intentionally look to nature when designing? SF: Looking at a flower or leaf or seashell in nature, you can see that there’s one geometry that everything grows out of. Just watching what the honeycomb does, and then intuitively shaping and following the fanning movement that’s inherent to it, that’s something more beautiful than anything we could predetermine. SM: Do you think your ideas about space will ever find their way outside of the home? TM: It’s really infinite. We tend to follow the path of least resistance. Anything we can do that presents an opportunity to create an idea and follow it through with hands-on materials and work, we’re up for it. SM: Last January you completed a hands-on project in Alaska, in collaboration with musician Ethan Rose. SF: The Northern Sky Circle [an outdoor room and public art piece made of snow] was particularly rewarding because it provided an opportunity to transform a public space in the city. The process of construction and the end result was something that was somewhere between art and architecture, permanent and temporary. It was built very concretely in space, but at the same time we knew that it would melt away. It had so many different freedoms about it. It was amazing just being able to watch people interact and engage with it, and watch people run around the top, jump from wall to wall—all the things no one would let you do if you told them you were going to build this in a public space. We’re always trying to find what we’re looking for in our work, because most of all, it’s not just about building a business, it’s about having a life and being able to explore life through design. The idea of being able to alter public space is really interesting to us.

SM: In addition to the Alaskan frontier and living rooms around the globe, your work is currently on display internationally in museums and galleries. Your work balances form and function beautifully, and as a result, you’ve been embraced by both the art world and, well, the real world. TM: It’s fortuitous. I think it’s just naturally our place, to straddle those different things. Stephanie and I feel that art is a way to explore the world. Something is art if it gives me a way to look at things for the first time with fresh eyes. SF: Art and design are interchangeable worlds, in many ways. If you were to define them separately, you might talk in terms of the utility of a designed object, but certainly something can be both artful and useful. It begins with us exploring things, but by the very nature of designing something, we’re putting something back into the system, something for other people to experience. Our designs will help people explore the world in different ways and from different perspectives than the ones we started with. 

LIKE A

LADY The Living Theatre of Cameron Mackenzie

before she becomes absorbed into the crowd, towering on HE’S BEAUTIFUL. ISOLDE IS FLUTTERING as she talks animatedly about the club, the event, and high heels and turning heads as she moves. Isolde is a Barbie the people in attendance while I study her face. The doll come alive—an extravagant beauty that leaves me in delicate arch of brow, the porcelain skin, and the childlike wonder. soft, pink lips compose a lavish femininity that betrays the She is, after all, the most beautiful woman in the room, basement East Vancouver club where though physically male. we’re talking. My false eyelashes and Isolde N. Barron is the cheeky By Deanne Beattie red lipstick become heavy on my face and elaborate creation of Cameron and I feel strange, even awkward as Photography by Brandon Gaukel Mackenzie, a theatre actor and director based in Vancouver. Isolde I compare myself to this woman, as is a not a PR stunt for Mackenzie’s though I were facing my mother after theatre company, Zee Zee Theatre, but she would work well playing in her makeup case at a more tender age. Is it shame as one. The flawless character speaks for Mackenzie’s methI’m feeling? Or awe? odic theatre training and promises even better things from I realize she’s the kind of lady my mother hoped I the detail-oriented performer to come. When one watches would become with a little more practice. She talks generMackenzie’s spontaneous theatre in Isolde, it’s not difficult ously about her friends and her boyfriend. She stands up to imagine what he could do with a proper stage, a theatre, straight and introduces me to strangers while her hands and even a modest budget. make soft gestures, indicating warmness, openness, and a Isolde was created out of Mackenzie’s desire to bring tender touch. There’s not a hair out of place. Isolde has to decadence and a performer’s craftsmanship to Vancouver go too soon, and flashes me a confident, unapologetic smile

Makeup by Ghassan Shanti Styling by Toban Ralston 15

MOST PEOPLE SEE THE HILARITY, THE INSANITY OF A GENDER SWITCH. IT'S MAGICAL. IT'S THEATRE RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE. drag. While the city has its share of queens, particularly in downtown Vancouver’s Davie Village, Mackenzie craved a big show. During a few months’ stay in Toronto with partner Dave Deveau, Mackenzie got his first taste of theatrical drag. “David is a drag groupie,” he tells me, “And in Toronto I started adoring drag as well. We would go out often and see a few queens we loved. They were brilliant. It is such a bizarre art form, if you look at it as an art form.” However, on returning to Vancouver, the couple felt disappointed in the drag queens they encountered. “I was really struggling against the downtown scene,” Mackenzie says about that time, a couple of years ago. “The artistry just wasn’t up to snuff. Some drag queens didn’t know their lines. They were not actually performers, so they put on a pretty dress, but they were just so awkward on stage and moved like a man in heels. They paced the stage, but they didn’t really have a show.” The pair was watching one particularly awful show when a side comment turned into a really electric idea. “David leaned across to me and said, ‘You could do this better.’ And I thought, ‘I can do this better!’” Mackenzie got his start in theatre as a young child growing up in the exceedingly conservative South Africa. At his school, like many others in the area, the annual sports week engaged the entire school population in games between the school’s houses, or divisions. His school concluded the week with a play festival that gave the fair-skinned Mackenzie— prone to heat sickness—a respite from the boyish rough-andtumble sports week. “I remember thinking, ‘This is what I can do.’” It became an area where he would excel.

Mackenzie continued taking drama in high school after his family moved to Canada, and followed up with a Diploma at the University College of the Fraser Valley in theatre. Shortly after, he found himself at the nationally recognized acting conservatory Studio 58 at Langara College. The intensive program taught him something about performing pieces he was only truly passionate about. “I ended up not doing well in terms of what they wanted from us as professional actors,” Mackenzie says about Studio 58. “I had such a need to be perfect and to please that the work suffered.” After failing or just barely passing most of his acting courses in the first three terms, the school gave him a choice: quit now, or return next semester as a production student, working behind the scenes. “At that time being a bad actor meant being a bad person,” he says. “It’s really hard when someone tells you that you’re bad at what your dream is. You’re there, putting your heart on the line, and it feels like they’re telling you, ‘Your heart is bad.’” Mackenzie took time and space away from the acting school, spending a year in Australia before returning to finish the program as a variety student in a part-production, part-performance capacity. His pride trampled, Mackenzie worked as a stage manager and director so that his former peers could shine in the spotlight. Some of his peers and instructors looked at him as a failed performer while Mackenzie got down to work, learning every detail of the business. He learned dance, voice, and movement as well as stage construction, design, and management, and developed his capability as a director. His perfectionist tendencies thrilled in the opportunity to be involved in every aspect of the show. In a final creative project before graduation from Studio 58, Mackenzie gave a standout performance in a show entirely of his own design. Drawing from personal experience to write a monologue he could invest himself in, and a character he believed in, the actor in him emerged once again. “It was an experience that reminded me, okay, I can do this.” Mackenzie learned that his best performances as an actor were the ones that were close to his heart. Isolde was so much a part of Mackenzie already that he felt fully confident in his ability to act her out. Not long after his Studio 58 experience, Mackenzie dreamed up the queen while sitting in Montmartre Café on Main street during a poetry reading. His mind drifting through a recital from an especially bland poet, Mackenzie tuned in long enough to catch the reader’s reference to Tristan and Isolde. “I thought, ‘Isolde. That’s funny. Is old. Is-old-andsomething.’ Using the N as the middle initial in the place of ‘and’ is a fabulous little trick in drag names.” Mackenzie’s father suggested “Barron” after a couple of tries at “Isolde N. Cranky” and the like. “I liked it,” he says. “It suited my sensibility. ‘Isolde N. Wrinkly’ would have been a bit too camp for me.”

Isolde is, as Mackenzie describes her, a classic queen— feminine, but not “tranny.” “She is the purified version of my feminine nature,” he says. “Isolde is glamorous and classic, and larger than life, and a trouble-maker, and the centre of attention, but she has a good heart. She loves being beautiful. She is a perfectionist. “It’s me, but it’s me if you took all of the boy bits out of me. Even when I was seven and eight years old, my parents would have parties and barbeques where people would get drunk and have a great time. I used to come out in my mom’s heels, and a bra strewn over my head, and I’d basically pretend to be a prostitute asking everyone for five rand. I honestly think that was Isolde. “Isolde gives me a façade, and strength, and beauty, and individuality.”

T WAS ISOLDE THAT SCREECHED ONTO THE stage, but I didn’t know who she was at the time. It was my second or maybe third time at Bent, a since-retired East Vancouver queer dance event that spilled, technically, into the west side of Vancouver at the ANZA club between Main Street and Cambie. Bent was bursting seams and betraying borders in a lot of ways. For one, Bent was always too full, and turning people away when it looked like the line outside wasn’t going to get any smaller. For another, it welcomed everybody: gays, lesbians, straight allies, trannies, drag queens and drag kings, and everybody was made to feel safe there. Even the bathroom gender signs were covered to convert them into shared bathrooms. This, at times, must have done more to remind guests of their sexual identities than forget them. It was only when I went to the former women’s bathroom to check on my face paint that I realized in a flash of shame that I had dressed as a sailor boy for the under-the-sea themed evening and not a sea wench like other women would have done, without a thought about it. A half-naked pirate leaves the bathroom to make room at the mirror before I can think to myself, does that make me strange? Thankfully, not here. It was Isolde that screeched onto the stage—a large, loud Ursula the sea witch from the Disney film The Little Mermaid. The terrifying and seductive octopus lip-synched “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” to a slim, boyish, South Asian Ariel. Isolde enchanted the sweaty audience on the dance floor below where we stood, holding our breath, until we could holler and cheer when the song was over. How she held us in that song! How spectacular we all felt in our oddity! All of us were some sort of queer or another— even those of us who were straight—and we could throw off our worry about it, and just have fun. “The more I think about it,” says Mackenzie in a coffee shop years later, “The more I believe we are the emissaries of the queer community. It was a drag queen who threw the first heel at Stonewall.”

IT WAS A DRAG QUEEN THAT THREW THE FIRST HEEL AT STONEWALL. The Stonewall riots are infamous in queer history, marked as the very beginning of the American gay rights movement. The Stonewall Inn was located in Greenwich Village in New York City, an area that attracted an artistic, alternative, and oddball population that included homosexuals and drag queens. The Stonewall Inn was known to locals as a gay bar and nightclub. A police raid of the Inn in the early morning of June 28, 1969 was prompted by an investigation by the Public Morals Squad to arrest cross-dressers and transsexuals in particular.

But the raid went awry. The club attendees first resisted the police officers’ orders, and then actively rebelled against them. A crowd outside the club grew quickly, and a riot erupted. The crowd set small fires, and picked up anything they could find to use as weaponry—coins and pipes and spare bricks. Their rebellion was one of the first aggressive attempts by the gay community to preserve their rights. The first anniversary of the Stonewall riots was the first-ever gay pride parade in New York City, a date at the end of July that is celebrated even today in liberal metropolitan cities around the world. “And yeah,” Mackenzie goes on, “everybody’s an individual, everybody’s special, blah, blah, blah. But when you’re in heels and makeup, people say hello to you on the street, or smile at you. There’s something about being a queen that makes it okay for people to say ‘hi.’ Most people see the hilarity, the insanity of that kind of gender switch. It’s magical. It’s theatre right in front of your face.” Mackenzie’s situation in the East Vancouver queer community makes this remark particularly poignant. The divide within Vancouver’s gay population between the Davie Village and the Commercial-to-Main East Vancouver queer is not a stark one, but it is palpable. In broad strokes, the affluent West End is home to the gay man who lives to party and never settle down. Lower-income East Vancouver is more inclusive to the lesbian woman who rents a house and settles down early. Drag queens, though outwardly similar in both communities, become beacons for the kinds of social and creative life that constitute each of them. “I feel an affinity for East Van queers,” says Mackenzie, “more so than downtown queers. I feel that I am accepted more for who I am, as opposed to as a stock character. When I go to Odyssey, and certainly Celebrities, I really feel out of place if I’m not wearing the right thing, if I don’t have the right body, or if my hair isn’t done right. I don’t think I’ve ever felt like that at the Oddball.” The Oddball is another event, like Bent, that was hosted by a group of creative, productive individuals for the purpose of having fun, not by a business for the purpose of earning profit on Davie Street. Both Bent and Oddball have since retired their party schedule, but they remain the best example of the types of East Vancouver events that tend to attract a more expressive crowd. “They don’t identify as gay first,” says Mackenzie, “they’re artists, and they’re trying to make a life for themselves.” Mackenzie assumes the identity of an East Vancouver artist well, imposing his personality and politics into every

role he takes. However, his drag is first and foremost a fabulous affair that brings humour and style to the sometimes-onerous political atmosphere south of False Creek. It’s all about having fun, and making people happy. “I’m a sentimental person,” Mackenzie says. “I feel an affinity for this community. And I’m quite satisfied with my parttime gigs at fundraisers, queer parties, and East-Van-style parties here.”

MET WITH MACKENZIE AGAIN DURING A sticky Vancouver heat-wave. Shopkeepers kept their lights low and doors closed, and Main Street was deserted of the usual strollers, donning the façade of a scorched ghost town as we searched for a place that could serve us. He and I decided on a pub where a single waitress slinked languidly between the tables filling up glasses of ice water. We sat in silence and chewed on ice cubes until my excitement bubbled up again and I demanded to see his engagement ring. “It’s a drag queen ring but that’s what I am,” he purred as he fanned his left hand to show off the ring, a chunky yellow gold piece with two rows of diamonds. Mackenzie had just become engaged to his boyfriend and business partner, Dave Deveau. He looks content. He’s arrived. Mackenzie’s theatre company, Zee Zee Theatre, has been almost two years in the making, and already has one successful production to its name. Whale Riding Weather premiered in February this year to rave reviews and packed audiences. Their second production, Nelly Boy—written by Deveau and directed by Mackenzie—will premiere in October. Mackenzie slackens his usual demeanor, softening to say, “It dawned on me that I have done exactly what I wanted to do, without pedantically following that dream. I don’t have to control everything to get what I want.” He explains to me that from the time he was in high school, he wanted to direct plays and own his own production company. However, Zee Zee Theatre was not another step in a detailed plan for his life, but part of a natural and organic progression as an artist, indeed a departure from his penchant for control. He speaks sincerely and with passion about the mission of his theatre company, to speak for the marginalized— especially those in the gay community—and to focus on brilliant little moments of humanity. And in the softness there, I think, this man is beautiful. 

COlour Texture Decadence

Magic The Legend of Burcu Ozdemir

OU’LL KNOW HER AT FIRST GLANCE AS fixture by reputation. She’s a raconteur and community the delightfully potty-mouthed and flamboyantly elder. She knows the name of everyone who walks by, and dressed woman stationed at Main and Sixteenth can tell a thousand funny anecdotes about Main Street’s Avenue. Wearing a charcoal-grey silk dress shot colourful characters. They are her family, her peers, and through with tiny colourful stripes and her comrades. polka dots, she radiates charisma from “There’s constant admiration, and the tips of her electric-blue varnished love, and networking between [people] By Stephanie Orford nails to her short, chic lightening bolt on Main Street, and that’s great,” Photograph by Julie Jones of hair. Burcu Ozdemir is the owner of Ozdemir says. “We all know each Burcu’s Angels—first a staple at Main other, we all know each other’s kids, and Broadway for thirteen years before moving to its new we all like red wine, and we all like local music and art.” location on Sixteenth Avenue. Around the Main Street community, Ozdemir goes Burcu’s Angels is a vintage clothing Mecca where by many names: “I have customers that call me ‘Burcoo,’ ‘Burgoo.’ My window cleaner calls me ‘Bushka.’ The bingo customers come for the clothes and more often, to visit Ozdemir, a shopkeeper by profession but a Main Street ladies call me ‘B’ or ‘Angel.’” Ozdemir met many of her Opposite: Burcu Ozdemir (left) with shop assistant Elan Ehman.

Main Street allies at the bingo hall down the street, where she was a fixture in earlier days. Its appeal, it seems, was in the mingling of so many types and backgrounds. “[Bingo is] for folks who wouldn’t meet otherwise. They meet there and they tell each other their stories.” The people she met at bingo have witnessed the major milestones in Ozdemir’s life. “With my second child I was in labour at bingo,” she recounts. “I had contractions. I was among other mothers who were breathing with me. They were all yelling at the caller, ‘She’s gonna have a baby for fuck’s sake! B8!’”

AS SOON AS CUSTOMERS SAY “NEVER,” BURCU IS INSPIRED TO CHANGE THEIR MINDS. Ozdemir’s various guises and monikers testify to the decades she’s spent on Main Street while the Mount Pleasant community between Seventh and Thirty-third Avenues rapidly evolves. As late as the mid-1990s, the neighbourhood was a lower-income, working-class community. “There was really not much but prostitution, drugs—[it was] desolate, kind of unsafe,” Ozdemir remembers. According to Ozdemir, it was dress-up, styling, and fashion that lent Main Street the beginnings of a positive transformation. Main Street metamorphosed “one drag queen at a time,” changing the look of the community—its people and its attitude. “We made it decadent,” she says. “It became normal to see eccentric, so-called eclectic artists, drag queens, all of us playing dress-up, running into traffic in our tutus. We made it safe.” Over the years, the promise of the “free box” outside Burcu’s Angels has been a reliable treasure trove. The box is the store owner’s offering to all members of the community, regardless of their income. “It took me many years to teach the difference between recycling versus charity. I despise charity. Even when I was a welfare mother I wore dark glasses to the food bank. I don’t like charity whether I’m receiving or giving it. I much prefer the concept of recycling. That way when you’re taking it I’m not doing you a favour. You’re doing me a favour by recycling it.” Burcu’s Angels is one Main Street business that cultivates community in spades. 24

Ozdemir says that when she first opened her store she, her friends, and a few of her fellow shop owners “wanted to make it diverse and interesting and exciting and queer, but we didn’t mean for it to get so posh.” So posh that many of her clients can’t afford to live around Main Street anymore. “Because [Main Street is] becoming more inaccessible and more fancy, the metamorphosis is no longer innocent and beautiful.” The thoroughfare has become increasingly hip, familyoriented, polished, and commercial. The increasing popularity of Main Street has raised rents. Many local small-business owners and lower-income individuals can no longer afford to be there, says Joel Bronstein, who’s worked in the Little Mountain Neighbourhood House for twenty years. The demographic living around Main Street is rapidly changing, and it’s important that organizations in the area “ensure there are opportunities for people to get to know each other,” he says. Bronstein emphasizes the importance of maintaining Main Street’s history and diversity. Perhaps Bronstein doesn’t need to worry, as the current citizenry continues to pursue art and cultivate community. Ozdemir, for one, pursues art in whatever role she can; she’s an arts patron and an artist. She is known as the vocal talent for the band Something About Reptiles. “I’m very lucky to work with some excellent jazz musicians. I translate Turkish music into English, which has never been done. It’s jazzified, it’s warped, it’s gypsy, it’s folk, it’s traditional, and it’s not.” Burcu’s Angels and the shops like it along Main Street boast a certain authenticity that attracts hipsters and artists to the area. Over the past ten years the younger demographic has claimed the community, some paying homage to the past in their vintage wares from Ozdemir’s shop. Among Main Street hipsters Ozdemir is known for her gift of style consultation, which she gives generously. She wants her clients to experience a style epiphany by finding the vintage pieces that speak to them and she encourages store visitors to experiment with colours and styles they’re not used to. “When people say ‘I never. I have never. I would never,’ actually you will,” she tells me. As soon as customers say “never,” Ozdemir is inspired to change their minds. Ozdemir uses her love of vintage clothing to encourage her customers to exercise their freedom of self-expression. Ozdemir wants each of her clients to find their magical piece of vintage. “What I do is I facilitate. I basically narrow it down to four words. At the other store it was colour, texture, fun, magic. Now [after fourteen years] I want decadence. So now it’s colour, texture, decadence, magic. “I’ve had enough fun. I want it to be more decadent, more substantial, less flimsy, less frivolous. So now when I say colour, texture, decadence, magic, it’s everyone’s definition, not just my own. “It’s really about breaking down all those norms and just playing dress-up,” she says. “At the end of the day that’s really what it’s about.” 

CASCADIA

DEFIED Victoriaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ill-Fitting Presence in the Pacific Northwest

By Racan Souiedan Artwork by Kristina Fiedrich _____________________ 25

UTTING BELOW THE FORTY-NINTH parallel, Victoria, British Columbia is a world apart from much of the Pacific Northwest—Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. Victoria embraces the colonial heritage of Vancouver Island, with mansions and monuments dedicated to several founding fathers of British Columbia. Cascadia’s key cultural hubs, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, however, have never been in a position to survive on quaint gentility alone, forced rather to contend with rapid growth and urban sprawl. In Victoria’s defence, the city hasn’t always been characterized as a contemporary bastion of British imperialism. Rather, Victoria’s transition from the commercial and cultural capital of British Columbia to an idyllic tourist town can be traced back to a fateful decision by the directors of the Canadian Pacific Railway to select Vancouver as the line’s western terminus. Many government officials on Vancouver Island assumed that the Canadian Pacific Railway would cross the treacherous Seymour Narrows before ending its nation-building journey in Victoria. They thought wrong. Vancouver Island’s pitiable compensation from the federal government as a result of British Columbia joining the Canadian Confederation in 1871 took the form of a short-line railway operating from Esquimalt to Nanaimo, which was later extended to Victoria. The arrival of the inaugural passenger train to Vancouver in 1887 ushered in a completely new era for the Pacific Northwest, permanently supplanting Victoria’s status as the commercial and cultural capital of British Columbia. Victoria’s place within the contemporary Pacific Northwest is both problematic and unremarked. Surely the city has the most explicit sense of the region’s past, as many Edwardian buildings built before World War I remain. Destructive fires wreaked havoc on the pioneer communities of Seattle and Vancouver in the late 1880s. The Dominion Building and Sun Tower are among the only remaining Vancouver heritage sites. Portland has made an admirable attempt at preserving the popular Old Town neighbourhood located west of the Burnside Bridge, and the Oregon Historical Society is a wonderful source of information on the state’s heritage. Mostly, however, Seattle and Vancouver wholeheartedly embrace modern and hypermodern aspects at the expense of their historic pasts. Such is that Victoria’s cultural community is no competition for the prolific arts scenes of Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver. A disproportionately large community of retirees may be part of the reason, but other factors are also certainly at work. Victoria’s population is too small to sustain a dedicated film or music industry. In contrast, Vancouver is well-known and respected as Hollywood North, with an annual international film festival that only continues to flourish. Similar festivals in Victoria and Nanaimo are barely on the radar. At least the Victoria Symphony has managed to prosper at the Royal Theatre and the Farquhar Auditorium at the University of Victoria. Still, bands based 26

on Vancouver Island frequently find themselves marooned and unable to land gigs across the Strait of Georgia. Needless to say, there are few clubs available in Nanaimo and Victoria. If you need to see for yourself, just walk into a bar in the province’s capital and witness the crowd’s lack of enthusiasm as Victoria performers take the stage to deliver the same tired old batch of songs. In contrast, Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver venues typically play host almost nightly to artists and groups from virtually any combination of these cities, to the point that cross-border bills often go without mention by concert promoters. For any emerging Vancouver band, the weekend jaunt to Seattle and Portland is a true rite of passage, especially as a means of testing the road-readiness of band members before an extended haul across North America. Local groups like the B-Lines, Defektors, and Modern Creatures frequently make their way across the border and down the West Coast, so why is playing Victoria such a hassle? Even with a reliable ferry system, Vancouver Island is seldom a profitable destination.

VICTORIA WILL REMAIN THE PROVINCE’S COMMERCIAL AND CULTURAL CAPITAL OF YESTER-YEAR, A FACT THAT WE IGNORE AT OUR OWN PERIL. In another snub of legendary proportions, Mayors Sam Adams of Portland and Gregor Robertson of Vancouver recently signed an agreement pledging to set in motion a rapid railway service linking the Pacific Northwest in an effort to increase economic ties throughout the region; rather predictably, Victoria is, yet again, nowhere to be found under this proposed scheme. To any advocate of a cohesive Cascadia region, Victoria serves as the difficult case rising up in defiance. With only the most tentative links to Portland, Seattle, and Vancouver, Victoria has confidently developed into a sleepy tourist town mindful of British Columbia’s colonial history. Residents in Vancouver may persist in visiting Seattle with alarmingly greater frequency, but Victoria will remain the province’s commercial and cultural capital of yester-year, a fact that we ignore at our own peril. 

Person, place

and thing 1. Jazz Man 2. 101 East Hastings 3. Feature Presentation

1. JAZZ MAN by Tom Cullen Photograph by Eric Thompson

N POP CULTURE, JAZZ IS IMAGINED AS A live event punctuated by a pall of heavy tobacco smoke, the strong bite of a cocktail laden with gin, the sight of men and women hunched over their instruments, working frenetically to produce galloping melodies, and the excited buzz of conversation and applause in a dimly lit basement bar. With a music industry that emphasizes mass marketability over intimate experiences, this smoky image would seem to make jazz an obsolete genre. Cory Weeds begs to differ. As a nightclub owner and operator, Weeds has brought some of jazz music’s biggest names to Vancouver through his small but thriving record label, The Cellar Live. “Live” has released over fifty albums, all gleaned from performances at Weeds’s nightclub, the Cellar Jazz Club. Weeds’s efforts are an auspicious blueprint for records that capture the essence of a live performance. As a musician, Weeds’s goal, first and foremost, is to preserve the performances that come through his club nightly: “A band will come in and we’ll say, ‘Well, we’ll just record this, we’ve got the equipment,’ and they’re relaxed, they play their asses off, and then it turns out it’s really happening stuff. When you get the CD, it’s like a live performance took place and you’ve framed a picture of it, and you’ve got this picture that’s going to last forever.” As a salesman for his label, Weeds’s pitch is both an organic upwelling of emotion from a passionate aficionado and a calculated pitch from a savvy businessman. It is apparent just in talking to Weeds that he is the key component in his label’s success. In the cramped office that serves as the organizational hub of both his club and his record label, he leans forward and engages in a sales pitch for his label that is both rehearsed and spontaneous, like jazz.

2. 101 EAST HASTINGS by Adam Cristobal Photograph by Daniel Elstone

HIS IS THE RADIO STATION CAFÉ: small, simple, inconspicuous, and clean. The floor tessellates with hexagon after hexagon, interlocking like the geometric expanse of a hive. There is a gentle silence between the sudden bursts of

mist from the steam wand, and silence between the dissolving, dissipating clouds of brume, which stretch toward the distant ceiling, disappearing with the morning rush. The only hum is that of the espresso machine, “La Marzocco” emblazoned across its side in crimson. The hum gives way to the whirr of the grinder and the muffled finesse of exacting hands. Or perhaps the sound is the melodic hum of the gentleman across from you, nestled into his seat; or the barista, likewise nestled behind the bar. This is espresso, yet also honey. A rich, velvet shot suddenly melts into a lukewarm cup in twin columns, falling, flowing; it is sweet in taste and deeper in complexity than the syrups in vanilla, hazelnut, and almond. The nectar in your cup, the adorable little doppio espresso in your palm hums with caffeine, caked with the pollen of its blonde foam, its crema; alive, fresh, and born from the cocoon of a bean. Seconds, perhaps. A macchiato this time. The steam knob is twisted and the milk within the pitcher suddenly breathes with the wand. It becomes sweeter, lighter, a white chrome of balanced warmth, a honey in its own right. It falls into the espresso, soothing the surface with a silent dive through the crema. The barista leaves his mark with twin leaves in two cups, only to make you stop and realize: this is yours.

3. FEATURE PRESENTATION by Lauren Schachter Photograph by Eric Cairns

QUATTING FORLORNLY IN MY PARENTS’ garage, the family VHS player had been sentenced to eviction. It wouldn’t be sent to a bad place, just a thrift store, where it could spend its final days nestled among towers of videos—four for a dollar! On my snoops through decades of clutter, I prefer the stores that arrange their VHS tapes in a cabinet like they’re still in a home. Then I can gingerly remove a film from its spot, marvel at its thick-novel shape, and pleasantly imagine the staff after hours. Perhaps they’d clear a space on a pea-green sofa and watch the feature presentation through tracking snow, while losing kernels of popcorn in the cushions. Once upon a time, innumerable videos were enshrined in their own cupboard in our house. It was an eclectic collection. My sister and I were tempted by Pretty Woman, the forbidden tape; curious about those with handwritten labels, Prime Suspect II, Diana’s Funeral; and completely mystified by the nameless few. Guardian film blogger and VHS revivalist Barry Nicolson writes about the “lucky dip,” a perk unique to the VHS experience. Try it at home like I did: slip an unmarked tape into the player and you might revisit the ’94 Stanley Cup Final, as the Canucks in their almost-glory whirr and click across your screen.  29

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ZEE ZEE THEATRE presents

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nelly boy

by Dave

Deveau

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directed by camerON mackeNzie

featuring aLLaN ziNyk amitai marmOrSteiN October 22 - November 1, 2009 PaL theatre, 581 cardero Street www. zeezeetheatre.ca

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General Idea, Press Conference, 1977. video still.

Playing homage

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Kerstin Cmelka, Christos Dikeakos, Andrea Fraser, Rodney Graham, General Idea, Martin Kippenberger, Mark Leckey, Evan Lee, Martha Wilson and Ming Wong

Sept 10 to Nov 1, 2009

Contemporary Art Gallery

555 Nelson Street Vancouver BC Canada V6B 6R5 604 681 2700 www.contemporaryartgallery.ca

8/24/2009 5:22:25 PM