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Offer(s) available on select new 2015/2016 models through participating dealers to qualified retail customers who take delivery from March 1 to 31, 2016. Dealers may sell or lease for less. Some conditions apply. See dealer for complete details. Vehicles shown may include optional accessories and upgrades available at extra cost. All offers are subject to change without notice. All pricing includes delivery and destination fees up to $1,725, $22 AMVIC, $100 A/C charge (where applicable). Excludes taxes, licensing, PPSA, registration, insurance, variable dealer administration fees, fuel-fill charges up to $100, and down payment (if applicable and unless otherwise specified). Other lease and financing options also available. 0% financing for up to 60 months plus up to $4,000 discount available on select 2015/2016 models. Discount is deducted from the negotiated purchase/lease price before taxes. Certain conditions apply. See your dealer for complete details. Representative Financing Example: Financing offer available on approved credit (OAC), on a new 2016 Sorento LX 2.4L FWD (SR75AG)/2016 Forte LX MT (FO541G) with a selling price of $29,342/$17,562 is based on 182/130 bi-weekly payments of $161/$104 for 84/60 months at 0% with a $0 down payment and first monthly payment due at finance inception. Other taxes, registration, insurance and licensing fees are excluded. *Cash Purchase Price for the new 2016 Forte Sedan LX MT (FO541G) is $12,495 and includes a cash discount of $5,067. Discount includes $500 competitive bonus** and $67 dealer participation. Dealer may sell for less. Other taxes, registration, insurance and licensing fees are excluded. Cash discounts vary by model and trim and are deducted from the negotiated selling price before taxes. &Representative Leasing Example: Lease offer available on approved credit (OAC), on the 2016 Rio LX MT (RO541G) with a selling price of $15,862 (including $1,500 lease credit discounts) is based on a total number of 130 bi-weekly payments of $69 for 60 months at 0%, with $0 security deposit, $300 down payment and first monthly payment due at lease inception. Total lease obligation $8,993 with the option to purchase at the end of the term for $5,069. Lease has 16,000 km/yr allowance (other packages available and $0.12/km for excess kilometres). **$500 Competitive Bonus offer available on the retail purchase/lease of any new 2016 Forte, 2016 Sorento, 2016 Sportage, 2016 Optima and 2016 Optima Hybrid from participating dealers between March 1 to 31, 2016 upon proof of current ownership/lease of a select competitive vehicle. Competitive models include specific VW, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Honda, GM, Ford, Jeep, Pontiac, Suzuki, Saturn, Chrysler, Chevrolet, Subaru, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Lexus, Land Rover, Infiniti, Acura, Audi, Lincoln, Volvo and Buick vehicles. Some conditions apply. See your dealer or kia.ca for complete details. ‡Model shown Manufacturer Suggested Retail Price for 2016 Sorento SX Turbo AWD (SR75IG)/ 2016 Rio SX AT with navigation (RO749G)/2016 Forte SX AT (FO748G) is $42,095/$22,595/$26,695. The Bluetooth® wordmark and logo are registered trademarks and are owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. The Sorento received the lowest number of problems per 100 vehicles among midsize SUVs in the proprietary J.D. Power 2015 U.S. Initial Quality StudySM. Study based on responses from 84,367 U.S. new-vehicle owners, measuring 244 models and measures opinions after 90 days of ownership. Proprietary study results are based on experiences and perceptions of U.S. owners surveyed from February to May 2015. Your experiences may vary. Visit jdpower.com. The 2016 Rio was awarded with the Clef d’or “Best in Class” by L’Annuel de l’automobile 2016. Visit www.annuelauto.com for all the details. Government 5-Star Safety Ratings are part of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA’s) New Car Assessment Program (www.SaferCar.gov). Information in this advertisement is believed to be accurate at the time of printing. For more information on our 5-year warranty coverage, visit kia.ca or call us at 1-877-542-2886. Kia is a trademark of Kia Motors Corporation. DL #30460.
Canadian Publications Mail Agreement #40009178, return undeliverable Canadian addresses to The Georgia Straight, 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 1W9
MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 5
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From AIDS to Zika: Institutional innovation and global health
Dr. Kelley Lee
Wednesday April 6, 2016 7PM SFU's Surrey Campus 250-13450 102nd Ave. Room 2600
Disease risks in our increasingly interconnected world make effective cooperation across borders more important than ever. However, global responses to diseases such as AIDS, SARS and Ebola in recent decades reveal serious flaws in the institutions responsible for collective health action. Professor Lee will argue that there is a need to shift the debate, from tinkering with the shortcomings of the WHO, to creating institutional innovations enabling health cooperation on a planetary scale.
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WORKSHOPS & EVENTS Manage Stress ~ Without Dis-tress Explanation-Demonstration-Practice RelaxAwayStress@shaw.ca
MOOD DISORDERS
SUPPORT GROUPS We have peer-led support groups all over the Lower Mainland for people with depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety led by well-trained facilitators. Group sessions during days, evenings, or Saturdays. For location and times of groups:
THERAPY GROUPS
www.mdabc.net 604-873-0103
STAY SOBER In recovery? Struggling with your sobriety? davidberner.com/stay-sober/
Women Survivors of Incest Anonymous A 12 Step based peer support program. Wed @ 7pm @ Avalon Women's Centre 5957 West Blvd 604-263-7177 also www.siawso.org
SUPPORT GROUPS Suffering from Chronic Pain?
Join the Vancouver Chronic Support Group to learn pain management skills. Every second Tuesday at the Waves Coffee House (private meeting room), 900 Howe Street (see site for details). vanchronicpain@gmail.com
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RECOVERY International FEAR? DEPRESSION? PANIC ATTACKS? Feelings that keep you from really living your life? A way out is where we come in. Weekly meetings. Call for info: 9am - 3pm Phyllis 604-931-5945 www.recoverycanada.org Healthy & loving relationships alluding you? CODA: Co-dependency Anonymous 12 step Recovery: 604- 515-5585
1807 Burrard St (@ 2nd) • 604.336-4448 1232 Burrard St (@ Davie) • 604-428-2420 2580 Kingsway (@ 34th) • 604-336-0420 2619 W. 4th Ave (@ Bayswater) • 604-336-6420 6657 Main St (@ 51st) • 604-336-7420 866 East Broadway • 604-876-2163
AFTER SUICIDE SUPPORT GROUP Meetings every other Wednesday 7pm Call Sylvia Cust, RCC, Counsellor at CHIMO Crisis Service in Richmond 604-279-7077 Richmond Caring Place, 7000 Minoru AL-ANON FAMILY GROUPS Does someone else's drinking bother you? Al-Anon can help. We are a support group for those who have been affected by another's drinking problem. For more information please call: 604-688-1716 Support, Education & Action Group for Women that have experienced male violence. Call Vancouver Rape Relief 604-872-8212 Equal Parenting Group - North Vancouver Support group for fathers going through the divorce process needing help. Call 604-692-5613 Email:nspg@mybox.com
5038 Victoria Dr (@ 34th) • 778-379-4420 1108 Richards St (@ Helmcken) • 604-891-1420 991 Marine Dr (North Van) • 778-340-2420 11295 Clearbrook Rd (Abbotsford) • 1-604-746-0420 5536A Wharf Street (Sechelt) • 1-604-885-0191 MORE LOCATIONS OPENING SOON!
Celebrate Vancouver Tree Week
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MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 7
8 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
CONTENTS pacific centre for reproductive medicine
pacificfer tility.ca
Doctors: Caitlin Dunne Jon Havelock Jeffrey Roberts Ken Seethram Tim Rowe Victor Chow Ken Poon
Davie and Hamilton streets. Fedor Dubiley photo.
11
BOOKS
Jennifer Teege discusses her gripping, inspiring memoir My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me, about how she stumbled upon a brutal family secret that changed the course of her life. > BY BRIAN LYNCH
IVF and Infertility
12
Reproductive Genetics
STYLE
Fertility Preservation
Vancouver innovator Some Product takes wild new abstracted patterns to athletic wear so you can make a statement while you sweat. > BY LUCY L AU
refer yourself today | referrals@pacificfertility.ca 604.422.7276
15
FOOD
Timber Gastropub has brought a tasty slice of Canadiana to the West End, as well as a decent selection of B.C.-brewed craft beers. > BY GAIL JOHNSON
16
WINE
Ideal soils and climate conditions contributed to the stunning growth of the South Okanagan wine industry from Oliver to Osoyoos. > BY CHARLIE SMITH
21
COVER
From building-covering public installations to the kind of travel shots you’ve never seen before, the citywide Capture Photography Festival shows the diversity of the art form.
START HERE 11 19 46 47 42 46 47 30
Books The Bottle Confessions I Saw You Real Estate Savage Love Straight Stars Theatre
TIME OUT 31 Arts 40 Music
SERVICES
33
MOVIES
Sweet Madame Sabali has a lot of heart; everyone loses in Batman v Superman; Knight of Cups turns out to be half-empty; Spike Lee drops a big bomb on Chi-Raq.
37
43 Careers 6 Healthy Living 41 Real Estate
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ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZE: All True Not a Lie in It, by Alix Hawley, KNOPF CANADA • Amity,
by Nasreen Pejvack, INANNA PUBLICATIONS • The Hunter and the Wild Girl, by Pauline Holdstock, GOOSE LANE EDITIONS • Martin John, by Anakana Schofield, BIBLIOASIS • Specimen, by Irina Kovalyova, HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS HUBERT EVANS NON-FICTION PRIZE: Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes, by Emily Urquhart, HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS • Made in British Columbia: Eight Ways of Making Culture, by Maria Tippett, HARBOUR PUBLISHING • The Real Thing: The Natural History of Ian McTaggart Cowan, by Briony Penn, ROCKY MOUNTAIN BOOKS • That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away, by Lorimer Shenher, GREYSTONE BOOKS • Tuco: The Parrot, the Others, and A Scattershot World, by Brian Brett, GREYSTONE BOOKS DOROTHY LIVESAY POETRY PRIZE: The Fire Extinguisher, by Miranda Pearson, OOLICHAN BOOKS • Foreign Park, by Jeff Steudel, ANVIL PRESS • Transmitter and Receiver, by Raoul Fernandes, NIGHTWOOD EDITIONS • Twoism, by Ali Blythe, GOOSE LANE EDITIONS • Where the words end and my body begins, by Amber Dawn, ARSENAL PULP PRESS RODERICK HAIGBROWN REGIONAL PRIZE: Ground-Truthing: Reimagining the Indigenous Rainforests of BC’s North Coast, by Derrick Stacey Denholm, CAITLIN PRESS • The Real Thing: The Natural History of Ian McTaggart Cowan, by Briony Penn, ROCKY MOUNTAIN BOOKS • Resettling the Range: Animals, Ecologies, and Human Communities in British Columbia, by John Thistle, UBC PRESS • Soviet Princeton: Slim Evans and the 1932-33 Miners’ Strike, by Jon Bartlett & Rika Ruebsaat, NEW STAR BOOKS • Tod Inlet: A Healing Place, by Gwen Curry, ROCKY MOUNTAIN BOOKS SHEILA A. EGOFF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE PRIZE: Are You Seeing Me?, by Darren Groth, ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS • The Case of the Missing Moonstone (The Wollstonecraft Detective Agency, Book 1), by Jordan Stratford, KNOPF BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS • Seven Dead Pirates, by Linda Bailey, TUNDRA BOOKS • The Truth Commission, by Susan Juby, RAZORBILL • We Are All Made of Molecules, by Susin Nielsen, TUNDRA BOOKS CHRISTIE HARRIS ILLUSTRATED CHILDREN’S LITERATURE PRIZE: Orca Chief, by Roy Henry Vickers & Robert Budd, Illustrated by Roy Henry Vickers, HARBOUR PUBLISHING • Peace is an Offering, by Annette LeBox, Illustrated by Stephanie Graegin, DIAL BOOKS • The Red Bicycle: The Extraordinary Story of One Ordinary Bicycle, by Jude Isabella, Illustrated by Simone Shin, KIDS CAN PRESS • Song for a Summer Night: A Lullaby, by Robert Heidbreder, Illustrated by Qin Leng, GROUNDWOOD BOOKS • This is Sadie, by Sara O’Leary, Illustrated by Julie Morstad, TUNDRA BOOKS BILL DUTHIE BOOKSELLERS’ CHOICE AWARD: A Taste of Haida Gwaii: Food Gathering and Feasting at the Edge of the World, by Susan Musgrave, WHITECAP BOOKS • Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders, by Eve Lazarus, ARSENAL PULP PRESS • Light Years: Memoir of a Modern Lighthouse Keeper, by Caroline Woodward, HARBOUR PUBLISHING • Orca Chief, by Roy Henry Vickers & Robert Budd, HARBOUR PUBLISHING • Vancouver Vanishes: Narratives of Demolition and Revival, by Caroline Adderson, John Atkin, Kerry Gold, Evelyn Lau, Eve Lazarus, John Mackie, Elise & Stephen Partridge & Bren Simmers with an introduction by Michael Kluckner and photographs by Tracey Ayton & Caroline Adderson, ANVIL PRESS THE WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED APRIL 30 AT THE LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR’S BC BOOK PRIZES GALA AT GOVERNMENT HOUSE IN VICTORIA • BC BOOK PRIZES AUTHORS WILL BE ON TOUR APRIL 11–29 THE BC BOOK PRIZES SOIRÉE IS ON APRIL 6 AT STUDIO RECORDS • SEE WEBSITE FOR DETAILS
VICTORIA BINDERY
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Tel: 1-800-387-7722 Email: info@worldvision.ca Web:www.worldvision.ca
10 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
BOOKS
Illuminating evil’s shadow
J
ennifer Teege says she’s come to believe in a kind of fate. How else to account for the day eight years ago when, at the age of 38, she chose a book randomly from the shelves of her local public library in Hamburg and discovered her close family ties to a figure of legendary evil? To that point, her life had been marked by struggles to belong. Because Teege’s birth father was Nigerian, her skin colour meant she’d stood out from friends and classmates during her childhood years in Munich. “Growing up in Germany as a biracial girl was not very common,â€? Teege recalls for the Georgia Straight in warm, finely inflected English, speaking by phone from her home in Hamburg. “I was integrating well because I spoke German—I mean, it’s my mother tongue and I don’t have an accent. So somehow I was part of it, but somehow I wasn’t.â€? Added to this was the confusion she often felt while being raised in the family that had adopted her after she’d spent her earliest years in an orphanage, still in contact with members of her birth family. “I wasn’t adopted as a baby, so I always knew that I had a biological family,â€? she explains. “I knew my mother; I knew my grandmother. And only when I was seven years old were the ties cut. So it was a strange situation. I think I was always someone who was living in between two different worlds.â€? Still, among her loving adoptive parents and two brothers she had grown into a buoyant, outgoing woman who travelled widely and spent five years studying in Israel. When she returned to Germany, she got married and had two sons of her own. She enjoyed her job in an advertising agency. Despite bouts of sadness and depression, she was settled. She knew who she was. Until that August day in Hamburg’s central library. The volume in Teege’s hand was titled I Have to Love My Father, Don’t I?. Its contents, she realized in growing shock, were based on a long interview with her birth mother, grappling with the deeds and legacy of the woman’s father—Teege’s biological grandfather: Amon Goeth, commandant of the Nazi concentration camp PĹ‚aszĂłw, a man known for murderous sadism in his treatment of prisoners.
Jennifer Teege stumbled upon a cruel family secret that changed her life.
In her short, gripping, and inspiring memoir My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me (written with journalist Nikola Sellmair), Teege recounts her reeling emotions as she confronted this brutal family secret, beginning with the fact that the unrepentant war criminal to whom she was now, suddenly, connected by blood was the same one portrayed by Ralph Fiennes as the incarnation of psychopathic cruelty in Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List. What follows is a document of an agonizing internal conflict over personal identity and the question of inherited guilt, carried out in the long shadow of some of history’s worst crimes. Crucially, Teege says now, this process meant abandoning the widespread and ultimately reassuring sense that Nazism was a kind of epidemic of demonism, rather than the work of otherwise ordinary human beings. This was “very, very important, especially because most people only know Amon Goeth through the movie,� she says. “The problem that I have is that when you talk about someone who is evil, who is a monster, it somehow implies that it is something that is laid upon him. And it’s not true, because when you do something evil, it’s a decision—you decide who you want to be and you decide what you do. So it’s not that he’s a monster and so forth, but it was his decision how he wanted to live. And therefore, actually, in the end he was convicted as a war criminal because he was responsible for what he did.�
The tangle of human nature was especially deep in the case of her grandmother, whom Teege remembered as a caring, easygoing woman who displayed no racism toward the lodgers she took in later in life, and especially toward Teege herself. How to reconcile these memories with the woman who had once lived comfortably next to the fences of PĹ‚aszĂłw and who spoke only in adoring terms of a charming late husband? “If you look at my grandmother, it is more complex,â€? Teege observes. “She wasn’t convicted after the war—I do believe that she was guilty, but in a legal sense she wasn’t convicted. So she was standing more for all these shades that a person has within himself. “It was something that was difficult for me to grasp,â€? she adds, “how she could have had these two different faces.â€? It took years of painful therapy and introspection for Teege to leave behind the early torments of her discovery, when she searched the mirror in panic for any physical resemblance to her grandfather. Eventually, she arrived at the knowledge that “there’s no Nazi gene.â€? Even the lifelong depression began to lift when she came to see it as the symptom of a poisonous secret radiating shame and fear, passed down through generations and weighing on her psyche even before she knew of any connection to Amon Goeth. Sharing her story, particularly with her close Israeli friends and with students learning about the Holocaust, has brought a profound sense of freedom. “I’ve had events with survivors, people who’ve been in PĹ‚aszĂłw,â€? she says. “And if I meet up with them, if I see how they react, how important it is for them to be around me, how much they want to meet me, how happy they finally are when they see that the line did not repeat itself, and when they do hug me or when they are so open, at a moment like this I feel truly blessed. I think it was meant to be. It was something I needed to find out. So I’m really happy, because if I didn’t find out, I would also never be able to find my true identity.‌I somehow do know what my purpose in life is.â€? -
MASTER
COUNSELLING CLASSES TAUGHT BY A FACULTY OF VANCOUVER-BASED PRACTICING PROFESSIONALS
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Learn more at a Thursday 5pm info session:
April 14 or May 19
City University of Seattle in Vancouver, BC 789 West Pender Street, Suite 310, Vancouver
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Jennifer Teege discusses My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me in a special presentation by the Chutzpah Festival, on Saturday (April 2) at the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre.
The Georgia Straight | Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly | Volume 50 Number 2518 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 1W9 www.straight.com Phone: 604-730-7000 / Fax: 604-730-7010 / e-mail: gs.info@straight.com Display Advertising: 604-730-7020 / Fax: 604-730-7012 / e-mail: sales@straight.com Classifieds: 604-730-7060 / e-mail: classads@straight.com Subscriptions: 604-730-7000 Distribution: 604-730-7087 EDITOR + PUBLISHER Dan McLeod ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Yolanda Stepien GENERAL MANAGER Matt McLeod EDITOR Charlie Smith SECTION EDITORS
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ecodivabeauty.com MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 11
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PE TER WALL DOWNTOWN LECTURE SERIES SPRING 2016
“Climate Change Denial: Where do we go from here?” An evening with Naomi Oreskes, climate change activist and historian of science, Harvard University. She is co-author of the best seller Merchants of Doubt, the troubling story of how a cadre of influential scientists have clouded public understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda. Moderated by CBC meteorologist Johanna Wagstaffe. Tuesday, April 5, 2016, 7:30 pm at the Vogue Theatre, 918 Granville Street, Vancouver. Doors open at 6:30 pm. Tickets are free but must be reserved and are in limited supply. Visit pwias.ubc.ca Some Product designer David Briker incorporated the jagged, sharp lines from photos of a shattered mirror into his newest athleticwear line, Glass.
“along with our polarized politics and the effect of fossil-fuel lobbying — we have underreacted to the reality of dangerous climate change.”
— Naomi Oreskes
The Wall Exchange is a community program created by the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at The University of British Columbia to provide a public forum for the discussion of key issues that impact us all.
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Vancouver company abstracts activewear > B Y L UCY LAU
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olid shades of crisp indigo, tan, and soft pink may be washing retail stores for spring, but inside yoga classes, spin studios, and weight-training sessions, where “summer bodies” are determinedly being sculpted, you may notice another trend taking shape: a mishmash of dizzyingly offbeat patterns that have become increasingly reserved for stretchy, sweat-resistant fabrics. “The athletic world and the fashion world—there’s sort of this symbiosis that’s happening,” says David Briker, owner and creative director of Vancouver-based fashion line Some Product, by phone. “I think it’s cool. It’s about time that athletic wear started looking good.” A former graphic designer, Briker is no stranger to abstract prints. He founded Some Product, a brand of locally made, art-inspired lifestyle wear for men and women, during the early 2000s, stirring things up at a time when rocking the words Abercrombie & Fitch in collegiate lettering across your chest was considered the epitome of cool. Indeed, the designer was never into the tacky catch phrases and rhinestone-encrusted logos that dominated the “heyday of graphic Ts”, instead gravitating toward a punkinfluenced aesthetic that has since evolved into an amalgam of punchy patterns drawn from pop culture. “I was just always a graphic person and I was good at graphics,” he says. “It was just something that I sort of fell in love with doing.” As the primary designer for Some Product, Briker has decorated silky, skintight frocks with portraits of Marie Antoinette; dolman tunics with psychedelic imagery; and men’s boxer shorts with playful pop-art comics. More recently, he crafted a collection of high-contrast statement leggings inspired by a Grace Jones performance, where the eccentric diva sported nothing but bikini bottoms, headpieces, and white body paint.
Now, Briker has tapped into another emerging trend with Some Product’s latest line of activewear, Glass, available at the company’s Vancouver studio (507–402 West Pender Street). The lively designs, in icy violets and turquoises, resemble exactly what the collection’s name suggests: glass—the remnants of three shattered mirrors, specifically— which Briker photographed. The sharp, jagged lines have been transferred onto quick-dry sports bras, cropped Ts, leggings, and shorts (from $38), where they glow like tubular neon lights atop dusty charcoal backdrops. “The athletic stuff is a more abstract, less figurative thing,” he says. “I try to do stuff that has a certain sort of dynamic quality to it, stuff that equates itself with athletic activity and that can translate to lifestyle wear as well.” Other sport and lifestyle brands have realized the style potential in workout wear too. Athletic giant Nike has incorporated kaleidoscopic geometrics, leopard, and even luxe snakeskin prints into its training gear and its runners continue to push creative boundaries with outlandish floral, ombré, and polka-dot themes. At home, yoga powerhouse Lululemon embraces a mix of abstract patterns interlaced with cheeky mesh cutouts, while Public Myth’s Kitsilano shop categorizes its graphic sportswear under “Active Prints”: a collection of leggings, shorts, and cami bras covered in stardust, animal, and camouf lage motifs. Strangely enough, the wild patterns seem to have caught on less with guys, unless you’re counting the textured Yeezys that continue to occupy the wish lists of countless sneakerheads. The launch of Some Product’s men’s activewear later this year, however, may mean you’ll soon be seeing even more eye-catching prints at your weekly Pilates sessions. “It’s reflective of people’s lifestyles,” says Briker. “People lead active lives and they want to look good [at the gym], and there’s nothing wrong with that.” -
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14 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
FOR OUR EDUCATION
OUR FAMO US APPETIZ ER
FOOD
Timber serves up Canadiana cuisine right
R
obson Street has its share of tourist shops selling maple syrup, smoked salmon, and shirts emblazoned with totem poles and beavers, spots that Vancouverites roll their eyes at if they notice them at all. If only travellers could take home a slice of Canadiana that’s being served up at Timber Gastropub. It’s a place that local food lovers seeking a down-toearth dining experience will want to make a point of visiting too. The kitchen in the chillaxed joint is helmed by Chris Whittaker, who’s also executive chef right next door at Forage in the Listel Hotel. Given that restaurant’s success, the Listel leaped at the chance to open another venture when the art gallery that previously occupied the Timber space closed last year. You will not find items like sea-urchin mousse or oyster emulsion here, nor will your plate be decorated with edible flowers or dots of pretty Timber Gastropub stays true to the north with Canuck fare from mushroom poutine to bison burgers. Nelson Mouellic photo. purées. Hallelujah. This is distinctly Canadian comfort food done well. wood from Fraser Common Farm, a by the Vancouver Aquarium’s buttery pastry. Served in a mini Timber is, much like Canucks them- cooperatively run community farm Ocean Wise program. With a knack cast-iron pan with a side of zingy selves, unpretentious and easy to like. in the Fraser Valley; the banquettes, for unfussy dishes that please the house-made ketchup, this heft y You’re greeted at the front door by meanwhile, are upholstered with old palate, he’s a chef for up-and-com- serving would satisfy a lumberjack. Deaner, a stuffed Canada Post mail- ing talent to look up to. Bison shows up again in a honkin’ beaver; peeking bags. The music And while the items on Timber’s burger, the thick patty topped with out of the Jervis is heavy on the menu, such as mushroom poutine, Gelderman Farms bacon, grainy Street window True North: Neil mac ’n’ cheese, perogies, ketchup mustard, caramelized onion, and Gail Johnson is a fake goose Young, 54-40, Gor- chips, and—death to dieters—deep- cheddar cheese. For carnivores seeknamed Terry. (They’re named after don Lightfoot (and, thankfully, no fried cheese curds, are not fancy ing something a little lighter, consider the shotgunning headbangers from Nickelback). The only thing missing (with prices ranging from $3 to $20), the chopped-steak salad. Mediumthe 2002 Alberta-set mockumen- is a video loop of Canada Vignettes the quality of the fare is fi rst-rate. rare slices of meat, along with slices of tary Fubar, which gained a cult fol- like “The Log Driver’s Waltz”. Take the tourtière, a French- a smoked and pickled egg and a trio of lowing.) Servers wear plaid shirts, Whittaker is a champion of sus- Canadian meat pie that tradition- huge onion rings, top iceberg lettuce jeans, and tool belts as aprons; tainability, forging strong relation- ally takes centre stage at late-night with a Jersey blue-cheese dressing. there’s a Coleman cooler here, a pair ships with local growers and helping Christmas celebrations in Quebec. House-made bannock comes with of snowshoes there. It might sound implement the hotel’s strict zero- It’s typically made with pork and a dark-purple chutney made with haslike too much, but the Canadian waste and energy-reduction poli- beef, but Whittaker’s version is kap. The berry gets its name from the theme is fun, not overdone. Check cies. As at Forage, all of the seafood loaded with ground bison and elk, Japanese word for Lonicera caerulea, out the seat backs made of reclaimed on Timber’s menu is recommended the meat piping hot within golden, a fruit-bearing shrub; it’s also known
Best Eats
High five
FOOD SHOW The eighth annual Fraser Valley Food Show is taking place at the Tradex Exhibition Centre (1190 Cornell Street, Abbotsford) from Friday to Sunday (April 1 to 3). Food lovers talk to local growers and producers at more than 100 exhibit booths, with many glutenfree food options available on-site. A cooking stage will feature demonstrations by celebrity chefs, including Bob Blumer (above) from the Food Network’s Surreal Gourmet and Hidekazu Tojo from Tojo’s Restaurant. Guests can enjoy sausage-making competitions, and cheese and wine seminars, or sample drinks from a pavilion offering beer, wine, and spirits. This year’s show includes an “edible garden”, featuring salad bowls, herbs, and gardening techniques. There’s also a new craft market, which offers interior-decorating items. For hours and tickets, visit www.fraservalleyfoodshow.com/. -
Five places to find cherryblossom-inspired foods
1
LUCKY’S DOUGHNUTS (various locations) Eat a limited-edition sakura doughnut that’s almost too pretty to devour.
2
MARKET BY JEAN-GEORGES (1115 Alberni Street) Try a delicious five-course sakura tasting menu and pair it with Junmai sake.
3
THE URBAN TEA MERCHANT (1070 West Georgia Street) With a cup of cherry-blossom tea, indulge in sakura tea macarons.
4
SAKURA DAYS JAPAN FAIR (5251 Oak Street) Enjoy Japanese festival food, premium sake, and a Japanese tea ceremony on April 9 and 10.
5
MINAMI YALETOWN (1118 Mainland Street) Check out a sakura menu that includes rolls made with sakura blossoms and salt.
2 FOR 1 ENTRÉE SPECIAL
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Meal ticket
BOB LIKES THAI FOOD
TIMBER GASTROPUB 1300 Robson Street; 604-661-2166. Open from 11 a.m. Monday to Thursday and from 10 a.m. Friday to Sunday, closing at 1 a.m. every night except Sunday (midnight).
FOOD
(with the purchase of beverages)
THINGS TO DO
as blue honeysuckle or honeyberry. It tastes a bit like a cross between a raspberry and a saskatoon berry. Even the cocktails have a Canuck twist. The Tree Planter is a pleasing gin-based drink with Douglas fir syrup, lime juice, whisky bitters, and a pinch of pepper; maple-infused bourbon, meanwhile, is mixed with blackwalnut bitters and fresh orange juice and peel in the Lumberman’s Arch. The wine list is straightforward: six varietals each of red and white, including Covert Farms’ MDC and Road 13’s Old Vines Chenin Blanc. I love that the drinks list has an entire section dedicated to caesars. People living in this part of the West End—who, up until now, haven’t had a pub to call their own—will flock here for the draft offerings: 10 in total, all from around here, including Postmark Brewing’s IPA and Strange Fellows Brewing’s Saison. A flight of four is $15. Then there’ s a flight of whisky for $19. (Rest assured, Fubar fans, that cans of Old Style Pilsner are also available.) The dessert roster is a patriot’s dream too. You’ve got Timber Bits, little doughnut holes dusted in icing sugar and plopped on a spoonful of the resto’s version of Nutella. The oozing, warm butter tart with rye ice cream is spritzed with Canadian Club for a potent reminder you’re north of the border. It’s the best damn butter tart I’ve ever tasted. You can even order a Nanaimo bar— one that’s been deep-fried. As Terry and Deaner would say: give ’er! -
(second entrée of equal or lesser value) Valid un April 17, 2016. Not valid with other coupons until or other in-house offers or event nights. G Gratuities based on TOTAL bill before discount.
Cocktail of the week
SAKURA FUBUKI Celebrate Vancouver’s 10th annual Cherry Blossom Festival with a drink that’s as delicate as the gorgeous petals blooming across the city. Topped with light whipped cream and a sprinkling of hibiscus sugar to evoke the image of a soft cherryblossom cloud, this fanciful delight is made from two kinds of sake— Momokawa Pearl, a creamy spirit that bursts with tropical notes of coconut and banana, and Kazeyo, a refreshingly earthy sake fit for new imbibers—plus sweet cherry brandy and maraschino liqueur. But like the budding cherry blossoms, it won’t be around for long. Find it at Minami Yaletown (1118 Mainland Street) until April 17. -
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MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 15
FOOD
Wineries blossom from Oliver to Osoyoos > B Y C HA RL IE SM I TH
blocks, and starts to get a sense of how the grapes are developing each year,” McNolty said.
T
he Okanagan Valley has become a mecca for wine lovers from across North America, but many British Columbians are unaware of how important one small 40-kilometre stretch has been in the region’s success. On the drive from McIntyre Bluff north of Oliver to the U.S. border south of Osoyoos, there are 39 wineries, according to Tony Munday, executive director of the Oliver Osoyoos Winery Association. “Over 60 percent of the grapes that grow into the entire B.C. wine industry are produced inside our borders,” Munday told the Georgia Straight by phone from his office in Oliver. “Having the most amount of grapes in this area, we also have one of the densest populations of wineries to go with it.” Veteran winemaker Michael Bartier of Bartier Bros. told the Straight by phone that a combination of factors, including very young soils and more light in the growing season, has created ideal conditions for growing exceptional wines. The retreat of glaciers and the melting of an ice dam some 10,000 years ago caused soil and rock to come rumbling over McIntyre Bluff into the area around Oliver. “It’s all been transported here from elsewhere,” Bartier explained. “We’re farming on quartz. We’re farming on gneiss. We’re farming on granite. We’re farming on limestone. We have this incredible suite of soils.” Bartier said that this gives wines produced in the Oliver-Osoyoos region their mineral tastes, enhancing their complexity. Another industry veteran, Bruce Schmidt of Intersection Winery, described Okanagan grapes as being more “fruit-forward” than those produced in any other wineproducing country. “Even if it’s the same genetic subtype of grape and it’s imported here and put in our ground as opposed to somebody else’s ground, it expresses differently,” Schmidt told the Straight by phone. The association’s annual Pig Out! event will bring together chefs from eight local restaurants for a feast on April 30. Meanwhile, the Half Corked Marathon Weekend (May 27 to 29) features a 17.8-kilometre running event with winetasting and fruit stations along the route. The association introduced a lottery system to cope with the demand by potential entrants. “It’s a 1,000-participant race,” Munday said. “This year, we had over 4,000 people register to get tickets.” Below, you can learn more about 12 wineries in the region.
C. C. JENTSCH CELLARS 4522 Highway 97, Oliver
Moon Curser Vineyards grows less common grapes in B.C., such as Tannat, Tempranillo, Touriga Nacional, and Carménère..
BARTIER BROS. 4821 Ryegrass Road, Oliver
Winemaker Michael Bartier is a stickler for growing the right types of grapes to match the terroir. He defines this as all natural influences on a site, including soil and climate. In a phone interview with the Straight, he acknowledged that his Cerqueira Vineyard in Oliver is “lousy” for Cabernet Sauvignon. So he didn’t plant any of those vines there. “Our site is outstanding for Cabernet Franc, Sémillon, and other varieties as well,” Bartier said. “We’ve done a very good job, I think, of matching up the terroir to the grape varieties.” In 2009, he and his brother, Don, an accountant, formed a partnership to operate two vineyards. (The second is in Summerland.) Last year, they built their own winery, which produces 3,000 cases annually. This came after Bartier had created several awardwinning wines for other companies. “There’s a lot of science and there’s a lot of intuition and instinct, as well,” Bartier said of his work. “But I’ll tell you, it’s a pile of hard work. I finished our pruning this morning. That’s a two-month job. I’m thrilled.” Bartier said that he doesn’t “make” wine, he grows it. This philosophy reflects the importance of farming in the overall process. And he insisted that other wineries are not his competitors, they’re his colleagues. “Really, if the region doesn’t have
16 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
credibility, no winery will have credibility,” Bartier said. “You need more than just a cluster of wineries. You need a cluster of really good wineries.” Visitors to his tasting room are presented with “outstanding educational materials”. “We want people to get value, primarily through understanding wine and understanding the Okanagan. Typically, what we do revolves around those themes.” SIGNATURE WINE: Bartier Bros.’
Sémillon is created from grapes grown in the Cerqueira Vineyard.
BURROWING OWL ESTATE WINERY 500 Burrowing Owl Place, Oliver
Eleven guest rooms, a 25-metre outdoor pool, a restaurant with glorious views of a 56-hectare vineyard, and a strong environmental ethic: what’s not to like about one of the region’s most celebrated wineries? Founded by Jim and Midge Wyse in 1993, Burrowing Owl takes pride in creating wines that are made to age, according to their daughter, Kerri McNolty, who oversees the marketing. “The Sonora Room is important to showcase how our wines pair with cuisine, first and foremost,” McNolty told the Straight by phone. “The wines that we serve in the Sonora Room are typically wines that are no longer available for sale—our library
wines. It gives people an opportunity to see how wines they may be cellaring themselves are developing.” Her mom has focused on the hospitality. The goal is to give guests a warm and genuine experience lacking pretentiousness. McNolty’s dad, a former developer and engineer, oversaw the growth of the business, a task largely taken on by her brother, Chris Wyse, when he became president in 2007. According to McNolty, the vision, look, and feel of the winery are all the product of family discussions. And the wines have won scores of awards. “I think the key for us is we get enough heat that we’re able to ripen some of those Bordeaux varieties, like Cabernet Sauvignon, that just can’t ripen in other regions of the province,” McNolty said. The winery works with the Burrowing Owl Conservation Society of B.C. to re-establish this species in the South Okanagan, Nicola Valley, and Lower Mainland. McNolty revealed that her company has generated $850,000 through fees collected in the tasting room to help cover the cost of a captive-breeding program. She described her parents’ relationship with burrowing owls as “very authentic”. SIGNATURE WINE: The Meritage, a
Bordeaux-style blend of the best of the varietals, is created with the help of a consultant from France. “He tastes the different grapes from the different
Chris Jentsch hails from a family that has been farming in the Okanagan since 1929, but he was pushed into the winery business against his will in 2013. That’s because there was a surplus of grapes over the previous winter and a commercial winery wasn’t interested in buying his crop. “I couldn’t give away the grapes,” Jentsch told the Straight by phone. “We had no choice but to process them.” It also meant refurbishing and retooling his old packing shed to convert it into a winery, hiring a winemaker (Amber Pratt Jones), and obtaining the proper licensing. Jentsch said that in the first year, the winery produced the equivalent of 14,500 cases, including 11,000 cases of bulk wine to finance the business. This came three years after he and his wife, Betty, lost their house in the Testalinden Creek mudslide. “When I look back on it now, I don’t know how we did it,” Jentsch said. “It is a true mom-and-pop operation.” Despite this beginning, C. C. Jentsch Cellars has enjoyed tremendous success in competitions. But Jentsch is still under no illusions about the challenges facing wineries. There are the long hours, not to mention all the marketing that’s necessary to succeed. The J in his surname is pronounced like a Y, which he’s used to great effect in radio advertisements. SIGNATURE WINE: The Syrah has
racked up awards, and Jentsch said that it’s being presented in master classes around the world. He’s also excited about his Bordeaux blend.
CHURCH & STATE WINES 4516 Ryegrass Road, Oliver
Many wineries in Oliver Osoyoos Wine Country are family operations, but the Pullens go further, bringing in cousins and uncles. Perhaps that’s because they also operate a winery in Victoria in addition to the winery and 48-hectare vineyard on the edge of Coyote Bowl in the South Okanagan. “The first day we were out there, there was a coyote running across the bowl,” John Pullen told the Straight by phone. “The name kind of stuck.” Pullen said that Church & State Wines does not cross-blend its grapes between the two wineries. In Oliver, the focus is on growing vines see next page
that thrive in the hot, dry climate and rocky soils, such as Bordeaux, Chardonnay, Marsanne, and Viognier. Church & State Wines produces 25,000 cases per year. “We operate on a blend of very traditional handcrafted winemaking techniques, and we’re trying to utilize the best and newest technology to elevate our quality as high as we can,” Pullen explained. The push for excellence has resulted in six best Canadian red awards since 2009, according to Pullen. And the Lost Inhibition series of red, white, and rosé wines has also attracted kudos in wine publications. They’re sold with 200 irreverent labels carrying such phrases as “You’re So F*cking Classy,” “Abso-Frickin-Lutely Perfect”, and “Chill the F*ck Out.” Pullen pointed out that the Church & State Wines tasting bar is a little more boisterous than what people might experience at other wineries. There’s an outdoor patio, which seats up to 30 people, overlooking Coyote Bowl. SIGNATURE WINE: “The Quintes-
sential blend has always been kind of our flagship Bordeaux blend,” Pullen said. “It’s consistently ranked in the top five red blends from the province.”
COVERT FARMS FAMILY ESTATE 300 Covert Place, Oliver
On the north side of Oliver is a winery unlike any other in the region. It has Highland cattle, Barbados blackbelly sheep, Bresse chickens, Berkshire chickens, and grey geese. There are
have to do farm tasks,” Uhlemann said. “So they actually have to wash out barrels or dig a hole and put a post into it, or carry watermelons down to the river and feed them to a pig. It’s hilarious and fantastic.” SIGNATURE WINE: “The one we hang our hat on is the Amicitia, which is a Bordeaux blend,” Uhlemann said. “It’s consistently won international awards. It’s a big juicy red wine with layers of complexity and subtlety.”
HESTER CREEK ESTATE WINERY 877 Road 8, Oliver
Church & State’s minimalist tasting room has plenty of glass, concrete, and marble. There’s also an outdoor patio with a magnificent view of Coyote Bluff.
even some llamas on-site, according to Covert Farms Family Estate operations manager and executive chef Derek Uhlemann. “They keep the coyotes away,” he told the Straight by phone. Gene Covert is the winemaker and his wife, Shelly, is a registered holistic nutritionist. Uhlemann said that Covert, a third-generation farmer, replanted the farm in 2005 because he and his wife wanted to provide a sustainable environment for their kids. Their goal is to create a natural ecosystem that promotes the production of wine, as well as organic foods that are in stores across Western Canada. “I like to grow sunflowers next to our vineyard and that attracts a lot of birds and insects, which in turn increases the hawk population,”
Uhlemann said. “There’s so many hawks now that we don’t have any bird problems in the vineyard.” He noted that alluvial soils are ideal for producing “the big reds”, which are created with “minimal intervention”. The farm is producing 3,200 cases of wine per year. “We have two acres of Zinfandel on this property, and that almost accounts for 20 percent of Canada’s production,” he said. Covert Farms hosts a farm dinner series, weddings, and a gruelling adventure race called the Freak’n Farmer, which this year takes place on September 24. It was featured last year on The Amazing Race. “We’ll see up to 500 racers come and do an obstacle course, but they
When reached by phone, hospitality director Roger Gillespie says he has been a purchaser of Hester Creek wines since the late 1990s. At that time, he was managing the Wickaninnish Inn’s Pointe Restaurant in Tofino when he put his first Hester Creek Cabernet Franc on the menu. “It was actually our first $10-plus glass of wine, which in those days was a big deal,” Gillespie recalled in a phone interview with the Straight. “It’s tough to find them under that now.” He said that the same Cabernet Franc has retained a similar flavour profile, demonstrating the consistency of the winery’s old vines. The vineyard was planted by Italian immigrant Joe Busnardo in 1968, making it one of the oldest in the region. In 2012, Gillespie joined Hester Creek Estate Winery, whose management team includes owner Curt Garland, president Mark Sheridan, and winemaker Rob Summers. “There are two types of winemakers,” Gillespie
said, “one that makes wine that they want to make and one that understands the business. That’s certainly where Rob excels. He understands what people want and he understands what type of winery that Hester Creek is and the type of wines we need to deliver in order to be successful.” Gillespie pointed out that the winery produces 35,000 cases a year of “good-quality, well-priced wines”. “We get a little gentler cooling period through the evening because we lose the sun a couple of hours earlier,” Gillespie stated. “The vines get a chance to rest a little bit.” Hester Creek Estate Winery also has a 45-seat restaurant, Terrafina, with another 24 seats on the patio. There are six Mediterranean-style suites in the Villa at Hester Creek, as well as cooking classes. “I’ve had people stand on our patio and say, ‘Wow, this is incredible. This is just like when we were in Tuscany last year, only you have lakes,’ ” he said. “That put it in perspective for me.” SIGNATURE WINE: Hester Creek is
the only Okanagan winery that produces Trebbiano, which is a northern Italian variety.
INTERSECTION ESTATE WINERY 450 Road 8, Oliver
Co-owner Bruce Schmidt says he’s been in the B.C. wine industry since 1980. And it’s given him lots of time to reflect on what B.C. must do to move to the next level. In a phone interview with the see next page
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Handcrafted wines by Bertus Albertyn 3 974 H i g h w a y 97 O l i v e r, B C | w w w. m a v e r i c k w i n e . c a i n f o @ m a v e r i c k w i n e . c a | 7 7 8 . 4 3 7. 3 1 3 3
MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 17
Wineries blossom
from previous page
Straight, he said that France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal have been building wine into their DNA for five or six centuries. In Canada, people have only been making wines in a serious way for 50 years. A fair amount of that was done by European immigrants keen to replicate wines from their home countries. As a result, he said, Canadians still don’t think of Canadian wine as their most important beverage. “Immigration is important to the country,” Schmidt acknowledged. “They should have their own wines, for heaven’s sake. But in order for us to succeed, we’re going to have to become connected in another way—in a very solid way and an enduring way.” In 2005, Schmidt and a partner bought a fruit orchard and converted it into a four-hectare vineyard. Their objective was to create authentic wines that reflected the region. “If you’re not authentic, you’re rarely reproducible,” Schmidt said. “Number two, there is no reason why we shouldn’t be as dogmatic about our own identity as any other country is about theirs.” He’s a fan of Merlot in the OliverOsoyoos region and Pinot Noir in the Central Okanagan. That’s because these grapes express themselves particularly well in those terroirs. “If you’re going to be producing Merlotbased wines, you have to make a decision as to whether you want to absolutely let that grape do its thing or force it to be something more average,” he declared. “We have taken the former. The same goes with Pinot Noir.”
Intersection Estate Winery derived its name from being on one of the more significant intersections on Highway 97. According to Schmidt, the winery produces about 4,000 cases a year. At the end of April, Intersection will launch what he calls “the first public wine school”, called Vinstitute. The price hasn’t been set yet, but Schmidt revealed that it will be open for three sessions per day.
May, we’ll be open seven days a week from about 11 in the morning until 5:30 in the afternoon. We also have a small patio outside, which is licensed. You can bring your own food and sit outside and have a glass of wine.” SIGNATURE WINE: “By the time
you go through the process of learning all these grape varieties and how to make them, you have to love all of them. I wouldn’t be able to pick one.”
SIGNATURE WINE: “Merlot is real-
MOON CURSER VINEYARDS
ly important for us,” Schmidt said. “Cabernet Franc is really important. Our Cabernet Franc is the most popular wine in our tasting room.”
MAVERICK ESTATE WINERY 3974 Highway 97 (north of Osoyoos)
Winemaker and viticulturist Bertus Albertyn says he practises a “back to the future” approach at his familyowned winery in the South Okanagan. “I’m not very fond of using fertilizers and chemicals,” the South African expat told the Straight by phone. “We’re really making wine in a very traditional, Old World style.” After obtaining a degree in viticulture and oenology from Stellenbosch University, he went to work for South Africa’s giant Wellington Co-op Wine Cellar. Then he was employed by a small, family-owned winery. His wife, Elzaan, has a medical degree, and she was eager to rejoin her family in Canada. In 2005, her parents, Schalk de Witt and Lynn Safroniuk, bought a 20-hectare grapegrowing site north of Osoyoos. Four years later, Albertyn and Elzaan joined them.
3628 Highway 3 East, Osoyoos
River Stone Estate Winery produces a Bordeaux blend. Gordon Wylie photo.
“This is an old organic-fruit farm,” Albertyn said. “We had the ability to start it from scratch.” After arriving in Canada, Albertyn made wine for Burrowing Owl. The first vintage at Maverick was created in 2011; nowadays, the winery produces about 5,000 cases a year. Albertyn said the family focused on growing grapes that were best suited for the desert soil near Osoyoos. “So we’re growing mainly Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, and Syrah,” he noted. “Those are our four main varietals.” In addition to single-varietal wines, there’s a sparkling wine, Ella, that blends 20 percent Chardonnay with 80 percent Pinot Noir. Its spring release will be celebrated at the winery on May 14 and 15. “We have a fully operational tasting room,” Albertyn said. “Starting in
Chris Tolley and his wife, Beata, have chosen the road less travelled. In early 2002, Beata had a good job as a controller of a small radiology company in Calgary. Tolley was working for a high-tech firm that had just won a major contract from General Electric. They chucked aside their careers and moved to New Zealand to study viticulture and oenology at Lincoln University. After graduating, they bought a small property in Osoyoos and called it Twisted Tree Vineyards. The original name didn’t make any reference to the area. And they decided to grow grapes that were not typically seen in the Okanagan, such as Tannat, Tempranillo, Touriga Nacional, and Carménère. “We wanted to see how they do in the Okanagan,” Tolley said by phone. “It’s been quite successful, actually. We seem to get the awards internationally where we’re able to enter our wines with similar varieties.” A marketing consultant advised the Tolleys to change the winery’s name to Moon Curser Vineyards, which harks
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back to the Gold Rush era. As a border town, Osoyoos was once a haven for gold-smuggling miners who relied on the moon to get back into the United States. The label features the Okanagan Valley’s famous ponderosa pines. The winery’s tasting room has a nice view of Anarchist Mountain. “It’s sort of a parklike setting, but it’s very boutique,” Tolley stated. Last year, Moon Curser made 5,100 cases of wine, which was up from 4,800 cases the previous year. SIGNATURE WINE: Border Vines 2009 won Decanter magazine’s regional trophy for best Canadian red wine, but Tolley doesn’t consider Moon Curser to be a “Bordeaux blend” house. Touriga Nacional is topping his list these days.
RIVER STONE ESTATE WINERY 143 Buchanan Drive, Oliver
Edmonton native Ted Kane caught the wine bug at a very young age. By the time he was 18, he had developed a fascination with the fermentation process and was making wine at home. “I went through all the various stages of being a home winemaker but was always looking for something bigger, something of higher quality,” Kane told the Straight by phone. “So I started out with fresh fruit, and then I went on to kits. And, through reading, I learned how to analyze a chemical analysis of the wines.” He also figured out how to tweak the composition to adjust acidity levels. But he eventually realized that see next page
Who & Where the heck are these guys? 6 minutes south of Oliver, BC A “Golden Mile Bench” Winery Home of many International Awards
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18 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
FOOD he needed grapes from B.C. to make better wine. “I was very much a wine geek,” Kane said. “I also had a real passion for all growing things.” He made his living as a respiratory therapist for 13 years but never stopped thinking about agriculture. He installed a greenhouse beside his house and experimented with growing cherries and grape vines. “I was learning pruning, trellising, training…all for a future hopeful date in my mind that I could start up a vineyard and winery.” In the fall of 2001, he and his wife bought raw land and an 800-squarefoot farmhouse in Oliver. Kane knew that the desert, very dry climate, and sufficient water supply presented the perfect growing conditions. “Basically, it was cactuses and sagebrush when we got to it,” he recalled. “I had an eye for what I wanted to do.” He planted vines with a Bordeaux-style blend in mind, which he dubbed Corner Stone. Kane also included some vines that would produce white wine because he knew that if he ever had a wine shop, he would need this on the shelves. River Stone Estate Winery began by producing about 900 cases a year, and the annual output has since increased to 2,300 cases. SIGNATURE WINE: Kane said that
Corner Stone, a bold Bordeaux-style blend, has up to five varietals, depending on the vintage. It always has Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Cabernet Franc, and has also included Malbec and Petit Verdot.
ROAD 13 VINEYARDS 799 Ponderosa Road, Oliver
“As we move forward, we are focusing more and more on our own varietals,” Luckhurst stated. “In particular, I’m very, very proud of our Syrahs. I think that’s really going to be the future for our vineyard.” STONEBOAT VINEYARDS 356 Orchard Grove Lane, Oliver
Tim Martiniuk has a lofty title as cofounder and general manager of Stoneboat Vineyards. But in a small family business, that doesn’t mean he gets to avoid the grunt work. “I’ll be out mowing the lawn one day and doing paperwork the next,” Martiniuk told the Straight. “The wine business requires a lot of hard work. But at the end of the day, we all consider ourselves really lucky to be in an agricultural business and to be able to be creating a fantastic product that people enjoy so much.” Martiniuk’s parents, Lanny and Julie, are two of Oliver’s wine pioneers. Lanny has been growing grapes for 33 years and, according to Tim, still gets into the vineyard at 6 a.m. “We follow a philosophy that Dad calls ‘thoughtful farming’,” he said. “We aim always to achieve balance in the vineyards so that nature takes care of the problems that you might otherwise be combatting.” At Stoneboat, there’s a focus on minimizing the use of chemicals. Martiniuk said that is because any intervention with vines, grapes, or wine can interfere with the honest expression of the fruit. He quipped that after decades of growing fruit, the family finally opened its winery in 2005 when there were “sufficient resources”—i.e., children—to perform the labour. Martiniuk and his two brothers, senior foreman Chris and founding winemaker Jay, have both since found time to obtain university degrees. “Jay is doing his master’s degree at UBC and is working at the Wine Research Centre,” Martiniuk said. “He’s doing studies of native yeasts in our vineyards.” Rather than applying commercial yeasts, Martiniuk said that Stoneboat sometimes relies on yeasts already present on the grapes, particularly with Pinot Noir. Jay is examining genomic sequencing of these wild yeasts. “There are multiple strains of yeast that are not commercially available and that are in our vineyards,” Martiniuk said. The wine shop is in a refurbished 1940s farmhouse that includes a grand piano. And the winery takes its name from an old farming tool called a stoneboat, which resembles a sled. “You drag it behind a horse or tractor when you’re picking rocks off the land—and pile them on the stoneboat,” Martiniuk said. “That was how our home vineyard was first cleared back in the 1950s when it was an orchard.”
Even though Road 13 Vineyards has emerged as one of the more successful wineries in the Oliver-Osoyoos area, no one can accuse general manager Joe Luckhurst of developing any airs. His motto is that “it’s all about the dirt.” According to Luckhurst, his family-owned company puts a “ton of man-hours” into the vineyards. “We farm very, very hard,” he told the Straight by phone. “And we say ‘dirt’ rather than ‘terroir’ because it just feels a bit more genuine for us.” Luckhurst grew up in Lantzville on Vancouver Island, where his parents were in the lumber business before they bought a summer home beside Osoyoos Lake. His father noticed there were wineries in the area, and in 2003, he bought one that was creating about 700 cases a year. “He’s always been a hard worker and the kind of guy who likes to work with his hands,” Luckhurst said. In 2008, the business was rebranded as Road 13 Vineyards, and according to Luckhurst, it’s producing about 40,000 cases per year. There are two tasting rooms and one of the winery’s series is named Honest John’s after former B.C. premier John Oliver, who ruled from 1918 to 1927. The town of Oliver was SIGNATURE WINE: “Our Pinot Noir and our Pinot Gris are really named after him. Stoneboat hallmarks because they’re SIGNATURE WINE: The Chenin so expressive and so honest,” MarBlanc from vines planted in 1968 tiniuk said. “They’re two of the wines established the winery’s reputation. that we’re best known for.” -
The limestone at Stoneboat Vineyards adds outstanding minerality to its wines, including its signature Pinot Noir.
What makes Oliver so great
T
his edition of the Georgia slight stylistic nods to the MediStraight has partnered with terranean is always on point, and Oliver Osoyoos Wine Coun- the epic view from the restaurant’s try so readers can get to know perch can’t be beat. its wineries and their respective stories a little more intimately. Over here 4. THE ADVENTUROUS SPIRIT at the Bottle, it’s prompted me to re- OF CHRIS AND BEATA TOLLEY flect on the region and my personal Hey, I love South Okanagan Syrahs experiences there through various and Cabernet Francs as much as anyone, but I alsips and travels. ways enjoy when This week, in no winemakers particular order, break the mould, I’ve listed my Top Kurtis Kolt particularly when 10 favourite things about British Columbia’s Oliver they do it so well. Chris and Beata Tolley of Moon Curser VineOsoyoos Wine Country. yards toil with things like Touriga 1. IT’S A DESERT I cannot tell Nacional, more commonly known you how much I love it when skep- as a Portuguese port wine grape, tics think that Canada, of all places, and Arneis, a white, flinty and citwouldn’t have the capability to prop- rusy variety that usually calls Piederly ripen red grapes, and then I mont, Italy, home. Their wines are get to drop the truth-bomb that the generally made in small batches, so Southern Okanagan is literally a de- grab them when you can. sert, with scrubby sagebrush, cacti, rattlesnakes, and the whole nine 5. SHAKING HANDS WITH yards. During the summer months, CHRIS JENTSCH Long-time Okathe region’s hotter than California’s nagan farmer Chris Jentsch is the guy behind C.C. Jentsch Cellars, a Napa Valley. True story! gentle giant of a man whose strong, 2. THE CHENIN BLANC VINES enveloping handshake exudes decAT ROAD 13 VINEYARDS Some ades of hearty farming experience of the oldest vines in the Okanagan and makes my own handshake Valley, the Old Vines Chenin Blanc seem downright dainty. A warm, vineyard at Road 13 was planted in humble gentleman, he and his wife, 1968 and constantly produces one Betty, allow (kick-ass) winemaker of my favourite wines of any region. Amber Pratt Jones to shepherd The current 2014 vintage is as good their family’s fruit into laudable as any, with plenty of pear, brioche, bottlings, including a much-achoney, and mineral notes and a fresh claimed Syrah, which has acquired squeeze of lime. A steal at $27. a good pile of medals.
The Bottle
3.
TUCKING IN AT MIRADORO
The wines of Tinhorn Creek Vineyards have been consistently enjoyable for over two decades now, from their tropically refreshing Gewürztraminer to their Oldfield Series Cabernet Franc, loaded with red berry, cocoa, and spice. While those two wines alone make Tinhorn Creek a destination worth visiting, it’s an absolute must when in the area to grab a table at the winery’s Miradoro Restaurant. Chef Jeff Van Geest’s celebration of local fare with
7. MICHAEL BARTIER’S DEEP ROOTS One of B.C.’s most re-
nowned winemakers, Bartier over the years has been a part of putting Township 7, Road 13 Vineyards, and Okanagan Crush Pad on the map, along with assisting Meyer Family Vineyards and Painted Rock Estate Winery get established in their early years via his in-demand consulting services. Born and raised in the region, he’s put down further roots by establishing his own winery, Bartier Bros., which means we needn’t worry about him moving on to other, faraway ventures. The guy also gets extra points for his affinity for the woefully unsung Sémillon variety.
8. WHITE RHÔNE–INSPIRED BLENDS Wineries like Le Vieux Pin
and Church & State Wines have been drawing much-deserved attention to the Rhône’s Viognier, Marsanne, and Roussanne varieties, all of which harness the Okanagan’s sunshine, mineral-rich soils, and natural acidity quite well. I love that we’re seeing more and more wineries play around with these opulent, fruity, nutty, charismatic grapes. 9. CULMINA’S DECORA I’ve long
been a fan of Austria’s Grüner Veltliner variety because of its bracing acidity, prismatic citrus character, and handiness with mineral expression. Why it’s taken this long for someone in the Okanagan to make wine from it is anybody’s guess, but boy, am I stoked with Culmina Family Estate Winery’s take on the 6. STONEBOAT’S STONES A sim- grape, dubbed Decora. It’s everyple stroll among the vines of Stone- thing I’d hoped Okanagan Grüner boat Vineyards will have you noti- could be. cing smooth, rounded rocks with chunks of white calcium carbonate 10. BILL EGGERT OF FAIRVIEW covering various parts of the sur- CELLARS Okanagan winemaking face. That calcium carbonate, also veteran Bill Eggert is known for wellknown as limestone, adds some structured, broad-shouldered red stellar minerality to its wines, wines that aren’t shy. They’re a good particularly the Pinot Noir, which reflection of the man himself, a shootis consistently one of my favour- from-the-hip guy who tells it like it is ite British Columbian wines. At and has been a proponent for many $24.90, it also offers tremendous political aspects of the industry, particularly truth in labelling. value.
road13vineyards.com MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 19
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At Beau Photo, we’ve seen many changes over the years, but our commitment to all things photographic continues. Beau Photo is proud to be part of the Capture Photography Festival. This is a unique opportunity to see the diversity of the photographic medium and we encourage everyone to check out at least one exhibition.
Beau Photo Supplies 1520 West 6th Ave. Vancouver, BC 604.734.7771
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The motion studies of early photographer
B Y AM ANDA S IEB ER T
Eadweard Muybridge walk the fine line between scientific documentation and artistic exploration—a line Vancouver-based artist Adad Hannah happily navigates in his series of photographs being exhibited as part of the 2016 Capture Photography Festival. The festival, returning for its third year, will celebrate lens-based art throughout Vancouver during the month of April. In addition to hosting more than 50 gallery exhibitions as well as a series of themed panel discussions, Capture seeks to create a dialogue about the photographic medium by showcasing four major public-art installations. Following eye-opening discussions with the creative minds behind these works, the Straight takes a close look at each exhibit, including Hannah’s playfully artful study of polka dots.
Constructing photographic truths on the Canada Line Installed at nine Canada Line stations in Vancouver and Richmond, the first is a series of works that speaks to the theme Lying Stills: Constructing Truth With Photography. (Stations along the line housed work in Capture’s 2015 festival as well.) The images are meant to prompt questions about narrative construction, photographic manipulation (both in camera and in postproduction), and the conscious stylistic choices that a photographer makes when creating a photograph.
Turning a lens on public art Major installations at the Capture Photography Festival play with everything from shipping containers to tricks of the eye Hannah’s piece, titled An Arrangement (Polka Dot Case Study) 1, 2, 5, is displayed on the exterior of the Vancouver City Centre Canada Line station at Granville and Georgia. Hurried passersby may not see past the turquoise ceramic bowls suspended among a busy pattern of polka dots, but a closer look will reveal that the ceramics—constructed by Hannah himself in the Egyptian-paste style—are being held up by a contortionist hidden within the monochromatic pattern. “I wanted to play with the idea of truth, to create something that sort of floats in this strange space between real life and a representation of that life,” Hannah says in an interview with the Straight at a coffee shop across the street from his installation. Hannah says his fascination with Muybridge—the subject of his Ph.D. thesis—stems from a curiosity about where the pioneering photographer’s greater interest lay: in science or in art. Like Muybridge’s work, Hannah’s photographs focus on the raw elements contained within the frame of the image—nothing more, and nothing less. “These pictures, more than anything I’ve done, don’t have a narrative,” Hannah says. Unlike his past works— tableaux vivants that inspire a thousand story lines—Hannah says his new pieces are much more literal. “Humans have this narrative drive, which means that anything we see, we try and make sense of by creating a story around it.” With these images, Hannah says, creating a narrative is difficult.
THINGS TO DO
The Capture Photography Festival features work by Ryan McKenna, Erin Siddall, and Sean Arden (above) and Adad Hannah (below left). Amanda Siebert photo.
“That’s what I like about it—it becomes more about the visual, which makes you think about the medium, and what makes a photograph.”
Modernism, photography, and the Dal Grauer Substation Over on Burrard Street, the historic Dal Grauer Substation will once again be embellished with photographic art as part of Capture—this year by photographer Stephen Waddell. The landmark building, a 1954 collaboration between architect Ned Pratt and artist B.C. Binning, has long been considered a great early work of Vancouver’s modern movement. In his diptych, which sees two vertical images displayed on either side of the front face of the building, Waddell raises questions about the very medium of art. In The Collector, viewers will observe a man with his back to the camera, toting a collection of sculptures through a public plaza. In Showroom, a life-size statue is turned to face the corner of a marble showroom. “I see this as a conversation about both the transiting and display of artworks: who moves them, who looks at them, and how we look at them,” Waddell says at his East Van studio. For Waddell, the plastering of his work onto the surface of this particular building stirs up questions of whether or not the philosophies of modernism would agree with photo-based public art at all. “The architecture is contingent upon ideas dealing with modernism that circulated in the 1950s, and whether or not we see it as a success or failure, it’s a language that never invited photography,”
Waddell says. “It invited flat colour, abstraction, ambiguity, but never photography in that neorealist way.” The challenge, Waddell says, was bringing the two ideas together. “I thought, ‘How could it be awkwardized and made possible?’ I think that what I’ve done is a bit of an imposition.”
Lonsdale Quay’s Viewpoint container installation Artists Erin Siddall and Sean Arden are excited to see their project Burrard Inlet Big Camera installed at the docks at Lonsdale Quay over two years after they were invited to participate in the collaborative work, which has come to be known as Viewpoint. Curated by Cate Rimmer, the piece located at the North Vancouver port is constructed out of two shipping containers. Siddall and Arden’s work turns the top unit into a camera obscura— a device crucial to the early development of the camera—that will project a live view of Burrard Inlet onto an interior wall of the structure. During a phone call, Arden, who has spent more than 12 years researching stereoscopic 3-D communication techniques and their applications in art, tells the Straight that the camera obscura will be constructed using a periscope to project light down from above the structure. “Traditionally, in camera obscuras, you can change the view. This one is fixed, but it uses the same sort of idea,” Arden says. “It’s like a mirrored periscope.” The device will use a lens that Arden has electronically modified to mimic the tilting and shifting movements that see next page
ARTS High five
Editor’s choice INJURIOUS BONDING We could recommend this play just on its title alone. But Rajiv Joseph’s Gruesome Playground Injuries is as original as its name, following an accident-prone risk-taker and a psychically wounded woman who meet up, time after time, in various hospital emergency rooms over the course of 30 years. Director Chelsea Haberlin is a great, gutsy match for the material. Pippa Johnstone and Kenton Klassen star as the perma-damaged duo whose friendship leaves them battered, bloodied, and bruised. Gruesome Playground Injuries is at Pacific Theatre from Friday (April 1) to April 16.
Five events you just can’t miss this week
1
ONEGIN (At the Arts Club’s BMO Theatre Centre to April 10) Our critic called it “thrilling”. ’Nuff said.
2
BUILDING AN ATLAS (At the Equinox Gallery until April 16) Eadweard Muybridge’s century-anda-half-old studies in motion are hotter than ever.
3
SELF & OTHERS (At Untitled Art Space on April 6) Stunning self-portraits by photo master Aline Smithson.
4
ROCKET MAN (At the Orpheum on April 1 and 2) The stars align: astronaut Chris Hadfield sings with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.
5
JULIAN MCCULLOUGH (At the Comedy MIX from March 31 to April 2) His casual observations on everything from diners to honeymoons crack us up.
Guest pick PHOTOGRAPHIC SURVEY Our arts insider this week is painter David Wilson, celebrated for his Vancouver cityscapes. Here’s the show he’s most looking forward to this week: “I’m excited to see Brian Howell’s 25-year career as a photographer surveyed in his upcoming exhibition at Winsor Gallery. His ability to conceptually examine A retrospective of Brian Howell’s photo diverse subjects, ranwork spans a quarter of a century. ging from celebrity impersonators to consumption and more, is both challenging and accessible—all the while creating work that you would be thrilled to hang on your walls.” Brian Howell: A Survey runs at the Winsor Gallery from Saturday (April 2) to April 26.
MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 21
TW THI O S S WE HO EKEN WS D ON LY PRESENTS
COMPANHIA URBANA DE DANÇA (BRAZIL) ID: ENTIDADES & NA PISTA
Turning a lens
from previous page
a large-format camera makes. Siddall says the work causes viewers to focus intently not on what they are seeing, but on how they are seeing it. “When you’re giving yourself the time to adjust to an image and waiting for your eyes to change, you’re thinking about how your eyes are adjusting,” she says. “It’s not like a screen or a photograph that’s lit—it’s indiscernible at first and becomes more discernible.” She describes the visual process as meditative and contemplative, and one that lends itself to thoughts of ongoing redevelopment, the gentrification of the waterfront, and the area’s constantly shifting industrial landscape. The second half of Viewpoint, a film by Ryan McKenna, speaks precisely to that history. Beneath Arden and Siddall’s work, the second container will be turned into a viewing gallery for Vision in 1792, a film that takes a close look at what Burrard Inlet might have looked like at the time of George Vancouver’s arrival. “I was looking at colonialism, but I wanted to look at it through a different lens,” says McKenna during a phone interview with the Straight. He describes the film as his idea of what a Coast Salish shaman might have foreseen while watching Vancouver’s ships approach the Squamish Nation. Following the arrival of the newcomers, the shaman envisions longhouses being built, and sings a coming-into-the-house song. McKenna says his Scottish and First Nation heritage means he “lives in both worlds”, teaching in the city and travelling home for hunting and cultural events with his family in Canoe Creek in the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation, near Williams Lake. “I’m doing my best to share the culture with people, and give them a chance to reflect on something without having a negative opinion attached to it,” says McKenna.
Photography, housing, and Hot Properties For the fourth public installation, Jim Breukelman’s images of Vancouver’s pristinely kept ’30s- and ’40s-built homes will be displayed on 10 Pattison billboards throughout the city. Curator Meredith Preuss says the images, collectively titled Hot Properties, draw attention to the “parallel sociocultural moments” associated with the redevelopment of Vancouver after Expo 86 and what’s occurring in our current, post-Olympic climate. “When he was taking these photographs after Expo, we were in a similar era where the pace of development really accelerated in an unprecedented way,” Preuss says in a telephone interview with the Straight. The bungalows in Breukelman’s depictions are immaculately cared for, some with white picket fences and most with perfectly manicured lawns and gardens. When they’re compared to the shoebox-sized condos and cramped dwellings of today, it becomes clear that our definition of the word home has changed drastically. “There are cycles that exist within redevelopment, a sort of tradeoff,” says Preuss. “It forces people to think about homes in a way that is more fundamental than what the current conversation allows for.” Curating an exhibit that reflects such a contentious issue in the city was no mistake—Preuss says that part of the reason she chose the work is that the subject is on viewers’ minds. “We look for work that is critically engaged and is also accessible on a number of levels,” she explains. “Public artwork, as least as far as what Capture does, is about embracing the publicness of it, and what the audience might be thinking.” The Capture Photography Festival launches on Friday (April 1) at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre. All works will be completed by Saturday (April 2), with the exception of the Canada Line installation at the Yaletown-Roundhouse station on April 15.
“...SO WONDERFUL THAT IT SEEMS MIRACULOUS.” —NEW YORK TIMES “...ALMOST SHOCKING IN THEIR INDIVIDUALITY AND PHYSICALITY.” —DANCE MAGAZINE
Friday, April 15, 2016 7:30pm at The Chan Centre
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22 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
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Travel photography takes an artful new turn > BY ROBIN LA UR E NCE
T
emples and shrines, fruit sellers and fisher folk, thronging cities and barren deserts— photographs taken in distant lands can be highly charged, both culturally and politically. The history of photography is toxic with examples of westerners using the medium to stereotype or exoticize nonwestern subjects. Ethnographic, expeditionary, and travel photographs have all perpetuated inequitable power relations. In Asia and Africa, particularly, people and landscapes remain vulnerable to the camera’s still-colonizing gaze. These dynamics are well understood and consciously resisted by two local photo artists whose metaphorrich works are on display during the Capture Photography Festival. Josema Zamorano is exhibiting his recent series of experimental Japanese images at the Back Gallery Project and Valerie Durant is showing her documentary photographs of Africa at the Ukama Gallery. Both artists bring an impressive depth of knowledge and experience to the why, what, and how of their creative practices. Zamorano, who was born in Tepic, Mexico, moved to Vancouver in 2006 to earn a Ph.D in interdisciplinary studies at the University of British Columbia. Before that, while based in Mexico City, he gave up his well-paid job in telecommunications to return to university to study literature and philosophy. “Everybody surrounding me—my friends, my family—was saying, ‘You are so stupid! What are you doing?’ ” Zamorano recounts. Speaking with the Straight at the Back Gallery Project, he adds that he has never regretted his choice. While attending the National University of Mexico, he began taking street photographs, exploring the camera’s relationship to issues of
Vancouver-based Josema Zamorano abstracts a Japanese streetscape using multiple exposures in Sandokai Osaka #1.
identity. Since arriving in Vancouver, during and after his UBC studies (he now teaches part-time at Capilano University), he has been pushing the formal and technical capacities of his medium. “I’ve been going from doing straight street photography to a more experimental type of work,” he says. Much of Zamorano’s experimental photography is linked to extended trips he has taken through Eastern Canada, China, Morocco, and most recently Japan. “I try to start a trip by trying to clear out my mind,” he says, “without having a very clear idea of what I’m going to do.” During time spent in Morocco in 2014, for instance, he began to make gestures with his camera, using a very slow shutter speed. “I was painting with light, smudging light and
colour in the street scenes in a way that things are semiabstract, sometimes recognizable, sometimes not.” While travelling around Japan last year, Zamorano sought to reconcile his interest in urban subjects and European existentialism with Zen Buddhism. He encountered references to Sandokai, a poem by the eighth-century Chinese Zen master Shitou Xiqian, also known as Sekito Kisen, and was struck particularly by the line “Grasping at things is surely delusion.” Rather than attempting to fix a scene in a single shot, he used multiple exposures, taken from different perspectives. The effect suggests a sense of flux and, as his exhibition statement explains, “the merging of the relative and the absolute”.
His Sandokai images range from busy intersections in Tokyo and night markets in Osaka to temples in Kyoto. Buildings shift and shimmer, trees hover in midair, people take on a wavering, multifaceted aspect, as in a cubist painting. “I tried to create a space to… open possibilities,” Zamorano says, “to reconsider reality.” By contrast, Durant’s photographs appear more straightforwardly documentary. It’s their environmental and social-justice themes that distinguish and enrich them. Titled Interweave, her show examines how the overconsuming, gas-guzzling ways of developed nations are affecting indigenous populations—those who live off the land—half a world away. “Extreme weather events and
increased temperatures.…are having impacts on food and water security and human health, particularly in Africa,” she writes in her exhibition statement. “Those who contribute the least to climate change are emerging as the most affected.” An interdisciplinary artist with a background in sculpture, design, and architectural planning, Durant got up close to her subjects during a fiveyear stint in South Africa from 2006 to 2011. While her husband worked for the United Nations on an HIV/ AIDS program, she undertook a project for the British government on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in their foreign offices, and shot photographs for the One Africa campaign of the International Organization for Migration. She also earned her master’s degree in community and regional planning at the University of Pretoria. “I did a specialization in the effects of climate change on human health,” she tells the Straight in her photo-filled Vancouver home. During this period, Durant travelled extensively through Africa, meeting with and photographing farmers and fishers and road workers and shopkeepers. She also took shots of the places where they lived and worked, and the changing landscape around them. From a convenience store in Ethiopia to a market stall in Uganda, and from a sand dune in Namibia to a wildfire in South Africa, her colour photographs are vivid and challenging, but not without hope. “I believe in the strength of people,” she says, “that, given the understanding, we can make social change.” The Capture Photography Festival presents Josema Zamorano’s exhibition, Sandokai, at the Back Gallery Project from Friday (April 1) to April 21, and Valerie Durant’s exhibition, Interweave, at the Ukama Gallery from April 1 to 28.
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24 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 25
ARTS
Artist hits the road for love > B Y LU C Y LA U
I
t’s a word that carries one of the most elusive definitions in the English language. Bards have waxed poetic about its emotional depths; musicians have penned ballads concerning its heartbreaking consequences; and children have described it with an unintentionally comedic quality worthy of viral status. But for local artist Angela Fama, none of it felt right. “It was like the Hallmark holiday definition, and then the Webster’s dictionary definition, is just a feeling of strong, constant affection for another person, which just seemed really shallow,” she explains of the term love in a phone interview with the Straight. “And I just wanted to challenge that for myself, I guess.” A photographer with a background in illustration, Fama decided to tackle the subject in a way that only a crazily ambitious artist would dream of: through an epic, 17,000-kilometreplus road trip across North America, where she’d snap images of strangers in her 1977 RV turned makeshift photo studio along the way. The journey led Fama to discuss the concept of love with more than 300 individuals, but it also allowed her to fuse her skills in fine arts and studio photography into one neat piece. “It seems like a natural progression from the past comparative portraits I’ve done,” she says. “I started a bit with the ego, and now I’m getting to the root of the heart.” Throughout Fama’s trek, which took place in June and July of last year, she visited over 20 communities across Canada and the U.S. and invited strangers into her camper to speak about their experiences of love. She interviewed Hutterites from a small farm in Claresholm, Alberta; locals and tourists strolling through Portland’s hip Alberta Arts District; ebullient
Angela Fama used her 1977 RV as a photo studio to snap pictures across North America of people talking about their thoughts on love. Katie Huisman photo.
attendees of the Albuquerque Pride Parade in New Mexico; and Vancouverites at the Cherry Blossom Festival and residents of Richmond during the first and final stops of her tour. In a conscious effort to look beyond her preconceived notions of people, Fama approached any and all adults and recorded every conversation she had. She photographed each participant in four head-on poses: eyes closed, eyes open, in contemplation, and speaking. And though the artist admits that the trip ended up being more than she’d bargained for (“I learned a lot about local terms for desert air,” she says with a laugh), the diverse encounters made the long drives—and, at times, the unbearable heat—worth it. “The beautiful thing that came from it is every single person that came in and sat with me shared,” says Fama. “So no matter how hard it was getting, that was the juice that kind of kept me going. It took days to get to this one spot for four hours, and suddenly there’s this beautiful opening of people.” The results of Fama’s journey will manifest themselves in the artist’s most daring project to date, What Is Love, which will be showcased at this year’s Capture Photography Festival,
happening between April 1 and 28. Fama will share her journey in a small, 286-square-foot room, which is meant to resemble the intimate nature of her beloved RV. Here, attendees will be immersed in an audiovisual experience, where images and recordings of participants will be presented in visceral unison. “Bring your lunch, come and sit with it,” advises Fama. “It will be a good couple of hours looped.” The artist also has plans to have all 300-odd images printed and her audio recordings transcribed, both online and in a limited-edition book. The image-heavy tome, which will be available for private order following the show, is Fama’s way of continuing the dialogue surrounding love and the weight it holds visually and culturally across a vast number of communities. “I hope that it gets people thinking and connecting inwards and then, hopefully, sharing. Just starting that conversation,” she adds, “and I’m gonna say with happiness, it’s already started.” What Is Love is at the Burrard Arts Foundation as part of the Capture Photography Festival from next Thursday (April 7) to May 14.
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In pieces like the hyper-energized Na Pista, Companhia Urbana de Dança mixes the hip-hop of Rio’s streets with other forms. Renato Mangolin photo.
Brazilian street dance rises up out of favelas > B Y JAN ET SMITH
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onia Destri Lie had a full dance life before her return to Rio in 1997: she’d trained with the likes of Pina Bausch and Twyla Tharp, choreographed for movies and fashion shows, performed with Brazilian Suzana Braga’s company, and taught for several years in Germany. But almost none of that experience could have prepared her properly for the next phase of her career. Having piqued her interest while she was in Germany, hip-hop became Lie’s main focus back in her homeland. And the casting calls she held in Rio de Janeiro to produce hip-hop events changed her life. Masses of young men from Rio’s sprawling, violence-plagued favelas would show up to audition. None of them were formally trained, but she was struck by how many had their own powerful take on dance. “These guys come from outside the city, so I didn’t realize how good they were,” the affable, energized artistic director explains to the Straight over the phone from Brazil, barely containing the passion and enthusiasm that have helped her build a world-class company out of nothing. “I thought, ‘Okay, I’m gonna do something!’ I didn’t have any money. I just had the desire.” And so her Companhia Urbana de Dança was born in 2004, made up entirely of street dancers representing the cultural feijoada that is the real Brazil—black, indigenous, and European. The company now wows audiences around the globe with its athletic mix of street, hip-hop, samba, contemporary, and capoeira, and it’s finally coming to Vancouver on its first Canadian tour. But getting it started was far from easy for the eager Lie, who had trained in the disciplined world of ballet from a young age before moving into contemporary dance. “It was too good to be true. I didn’t know how much to work with them,” says Lie, adding that she grew up in a suburb of Rio where she never saw life in the favelas. “At first they didn’t trust me. They were always late, they lived really far away—so the first tries were not really good. Then I realized I was going too fast. So the first year was just to have a company—just to have some hip-hop dancers together. “But once I understood their problems, they made me a better human being. It took about two years to learn to not raise my voice and not complain and to understand how hard it was for them,” she continues, describing how some dancers told her they couldn’t make it to rehearsal because occasionally there were violent drug dealers outside their front door
and they simply couldn’t leave their homes. For many, it was also an arduous two-hour-plus bus ride into the city for practice. “I understood the company could be a safe place. I got to understand the way they think.” The roster of dancers has changed over the years, each bringing his own, colourful mix of Brazilian forms—the only training grounds often the baile funk scenes at clubs and discos around the favelas. For one of the pieces Lie is bringing to Vancouver, the partyhappy Na Pista (“On the Dance Floor”), she’s added her first female dancer to the crew. But in choosing all her dancers, she’s held to one tenet: “They have to be good human beings. I can teach them dance. I cannot change them completely. And the desire has to be there. If you don’t have the desire, you can’t be here.” Lie says the dancers have a lot of input into the creative process. Some pieces grow directly, though not necessarily overtly, out of their stories of violence, racism, and poverty. Others, like ID: Entidades, read as sophisticated, flowing deconstructions of hip-hop. Lie explains the movement as a kind of metaphor for Rio, a city where the ugly and beautiful coalesce: she’s taking the dancers’ gritty experiences and turning them into something poetic. Meanwhile, the soundtrack features heart-pumping scores that run from electronic to Brazilian indigenous. The result is reportedly exhilarating, earning raves. The normally reserved New York Times even called the company’s dance “so wonderful that it seems miraculous”. Lie points to one big reason her dancers speak so directly to audiences: “When they go on-stage, it’s for real. They don’t go to play,” she says. “It’s to give something and receive something. It’s life!” Of course, Lie, through perseverance and passion, has also given her dancers something: they may once have had little hope of leaving the favela, but now she’s taking them around the world. The first tour to the U.S., in 2010, found many of the performers with tears in their eyes during the curtain call. “And I was crying too,” Lie says. “It was beautiful.” More than anything, Lie has come to understand her performers. “If you look to my dancers today, they are gentlemen. Now they understand the power of being a black, young, talented man in Rio,” she says with pride. “We also teach in a lot of favelas and in a lot of theatres here, so they are changing not just their own stories.” DanceHouse presents Companhia Urbana de Dança at the Vancouver Playhouse on Friday and Saturday (April 1 and 2).
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Munish Sharma (left) stars with Conor Wylie, Shaker Paleja, and Craig Erickson in the economic thriller Invisible Hand, Tim Matheson photo.
"Reclaiming Hope was quite a remarkable evening, members of the community coming together in a spirit of exploration and healing. This is theatre that reaches out and connects. A fascinating and profoundly theatrical event."
Hand takes on funding and fundamentalism > B Y A NDR EA WA R NE R
I
The play also affords space to the concept of belonging, something that Sharma himself closely identifies with as a first-generation South Asian Canadian. (His parents moved to Canada from India.) Bashir, who is Pakistani but grew up in the London suburb of Hounslow, returns to his homeland looking for that sense of home, Sharma says. “Bashir might be focused on bigger ideals of bringing governments down or whatever, but he still wants a place, he still wants to help people,” Sharma says. Playing the fundamentalist Bashir is a significant departure for Sharma. A self-described “goof” who loves sketch comedy (he counts the sketch group I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Chicken among his credits), Sharma says the majority of his roles are lovable characters. “There’s a little more guile and fire in Bashir. It feels like quite the opposite of who I am every day and as an actor.” In fact, for the last several years, Sharma’s most consistent role has been Socratease, his burlesque persona. “Pi Theatre is the reason I started doing burlesque four or five years ago,” Sharma says, recalling a Pi fundraiser where actors were asked to try new things. Pi’s artistic director, Richard Wolfe, put him in touch with burlesque artist Burgundy Brixx and Sharma was hooked. “The Vancouver burlesque scene is quite amazing, they’re like my family.” Wolfe also helped encourage Sharma to write his first one-act play last year, the dark comedy Mrs. Singh & Me, which won Pick of the Fringe. But Bashir is his first major opportunity to showcase his versatility as an actor. “Richard has been very supportive of me for years,” Sharma says. “When he offered me this role he said, and I won’t forget this the rest of my life, ‘Munish, I’ve seen you for years, you work very hard, you’re a committed performer. This is a role you deserve and I want to give you this chance.’ I’m very thankful for that.” -
t’s the fourth day of rehearsal for the cast of Pi Theatre’s newest production, the Canadian premiere of Ayad Akhtar’s The Invisible Hand. Outside, it’s the bustle of Chinatown on a Saturday afternoon. Inside, it’s a scene of captivity, tense and taut and volatile, as actor Munish Sharma paces the tapedoff stage dimensions. His character, Bashir, is among three men holding an American banker for ransom. Sharma himself is never more than 10 feet away from a large map of Pakistan, which is off-stage—and dotted with red pins, a visual reminder that while the play is fictional, its reference points are very real. In The Invisible Hand, Akhtar, who also wrote the Pulitzer Prize– winning play Disgraced, manages to craft something that’s equal parts thriller and lesson in economics, exploring the intersection of Wall Street, capitalism, and the earliest seeds of Islamic extremism. All three kidnappers have different motivations, but it’s Sharma’s portrayal of Bashir—and his seething contempt as he lashes out at the “wealthy Americans looting our country, taking our water away from the people”—that is most palpable. When Bashir violently assaults one of his co-conspirators, it feels like all the air disappears from the room. “Once I got ahold of the script, the character kind of screamed out at me,” Sharma tells the Straight with a smile, during his lunch break. Bashir might seem like a bad man, but Sharma is impressed with the nuances of Akhtar’s script, and how the play forces the audience to confront its preconceived notions about money, religion, and extremism. “Money doesn’t have a religion per se, but some people view money as a religion,” Sharma says. “We watch things on TV and we see shapes, like a face, and we make that face evil, but nobody ever asks, ‘Where does this money come from? How does this work? Can’t we just cut somebody off of those Pi Theatre presents The Invisible funds?’ It plays a huge factor. How are Hand from Tuesday (April 5) to April 23 at the Cultch’s Historic Theatre. fundamentalists getting funded?”
NORMA WINSTONE • APR. 1 @ 8 PM British jazz vocalist extraordinaire with Capilano University’s own “A” Band and NiteCap
THE BLACK HEN TRAVELLING ROADSHOW REVUE • APR. 2 @ 8 PM
Special musical revue with Steve Dawson, Roxanne Potvin, Alvin Youngblood Hart & Russell DeCarle
LEMON BUCKET ORKESTRA • APR. 14 @ 8 PM Canada’s only balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punksuper-band
– David C. Jones, OutTV
Reservations Recommended at 604.871.0508 or rsvp@theatreforliving.com
April 1 & 2, 7:30pm
Scotiabank Dance Centre 677 Davie St $10 at the Door
more info:
CHOR LEONI Erick Lichte
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Friday April 8, 2016
| 8 PM
RYERSON UNITED CHURCH
Saturday April 9, 2016
| 2 PM
WEST VANCOUVER UNITED CHURCH
Saturday April 9, 2016
| 8 PM
RYERSON UNITED CHURCH
TicketsTonight.ca | 1.877.840.0457
Glorious music sung in honour of the stunning place we call home. GOVERNMENT
FOUNDATIONS
CORPORATE
MEDIA
FRI APR 8 2016/ 8pm
Anoushka Shankar C H A N C E N T R E AT U B C Tickets and info at chancentre.com
“One of the most gifted musicians in her generation of Indian classical artists”– Los Angeles Times
Tickets: 604.990.7810 • Online: capilanou.ca/centre Capilano University • 2055 Purcell Way • North Vancouver
MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 29
ARTS
Onegin thrills with acting, music, and design TH E AT RE
a fabulous romantic jumble, which John Webber lights with trademark drama. Jacqueline Firkins’s costume designs are so gorgeous they could spark a romantic Russian revival. And, with its quirky hand gestures and Cossack vivacity, Tracey Power’s choreography is a delight. Early on, when they’re setting the scene, the actors sing, “Oh dear Father up in heaven, release us from boredom.” With this show, he did.
ONEGIN By Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hille. Based on the poem by Aleksandr Pushkin and the opera by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. Directed by Amiel Gladstone. An Arts Club Theatre production. At the Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre on Wednesday, March 23. Continues until April 10
You’re lucky to be alive right
> COLIN THOMAS
2 now. Do you know why? Be-
cause you get to see Onegin. The show isn’t perfect, but Jesus, does it have a vision! It’s thrilling. Director-writer Amiel Gladstone and musical director and writer Veda Hille have reimagined Aleksandr Pushkin’s verse novel Eugene Onegin as a modern meditation on our compulsion to tell ourselves stories about love. Onegin is a dandy from St. Petersburg, “a city built on vanity and silt”. When he visits the country estate he inherited, he meets Tatyana, who lives on a neighbouring property. We’re in 1819, and Tatyana has been primed by romantic literature: “Now I understand those feelings in my books,” she sings. “He has pierced me with a single look.” In the most beautiful song in the score, Tatyana pours out her heart to Onegin: “I must show you all I am. The blood, the bone.” And she is crushed when Onegin brushes her off: “I am not made for this.” Gladstone and Hille package all of this in postmodern vivacity. The actors set up a drinking game with the audience: every time somebody in the cast says lyubov, the Russian word for “love”, everybody will take a shot. Hille leads a three-piece band called the Ungrateful Dead. Actors grab hand mikes and strap on electric guitars. As terrific as all of this is, Act 1 presents challenges. In 19th-century Russia, it was a given that young men
DOOST (FRIEND) By Camyar Chai. Directed by Camyar Chai and Chelsea Haberlin. A Neworld Theatre production. At the Cultch’s Historic Theatre on Tuesday, March 22. No remaining performances Andrew Wheeler and Meg Roe are part of a pitch-perfect cast in Onegin, a musical that brilliantly reimagines the Russian classic. David Cooper photo.
would fight duels; Pushkin fought several and finally died in one. But that’s a harder plot twist to sell in the 21st century, when we’ve come to expect psychological contextualization, which this show doesn’t deliver. Why is Onegin such an arrogant shit? Why does the man who challenges him become so enraged? Because I couldn’t find satisfying answers to these questions, I admired Act 1 of Onegin more than I felt it. But Act 2 lands in loneliness and regret, which are much easier for contemporary audiences to understand—at least, they are for this audience member. Having killed a man, Onegin recognizes the depth of his debasement, and he starts seeking romantic love as a form of salvation. In Act 1, Alessandro Juliani, in the title role, nails the character’s narcissism as he sings about how fucking hot he is, but his performance expands in Act 2, in which he makes the character’s longing deeply moving. Near the top of the show, the cast
A TOUCHSTONE THEATRE ENCORE PRESENTATION
sings, “Look around/Look around/ Look around/Do you see someone worth dying for?” Well, this whole company is worth dying for. As Tatyana, Meg Roe moves effortlessly from guilelessness to painful self-containment. Vocally assured and physically precise, Josh Epstein, who plays Onegin’s best friend, Vladimir, is a performer of the first rank. And Andrew McNee, who plays a number of roles, brings the house down in a cabaret number in which he poses like a showgirl on top of Hille’s piano. Seasoned pros Caitriona Murphy and Andrew Wheeler, as well as gifted newcomer Lauren Jackson, round out the cast. They’re all fantastic. Hille and Gladstone’s score is a major accomplishment. For all of its strengths, Act 1 gets repetitive musically, but with its recurring themes, the score in Act 2 is tremendously satisfying. A massive red velvet curtain, candles, stacks of books, and industrial light fixtures make Drew Facey’s set
There are lots of people of col-
2 our in this cast, which is great.
And Doost (Friend) presents a minority cultural point of view: also great. But, artistically, the show is a bit of a mess, which is too bad. There’s a core story. Richard Newman plays Tosca, who feels adrift when Javad, the Sufi teacher who helped him to bring order to his life, dies. Once that’s been established, the narrative jumps back in time and we watch Javad grow from childhood eagerness into adult wisdom. But the telling of this story is pretty loose. Some of the conventions that writer Camyar Chai and his codirector, Chelsea Haberlin, employ are decipherable—maybe. When Javad is young, Sofia Bunting Newman speaks his text and Nadeem Phillip emotes wordlessly. Is Phillip playing Javad’s true, inner self? Perhaps; as Javad matures, Phillip finds his voice and takes over the role as Bunting Newman fades away. In other stretches, I had zero idea what was going on. Luc Roderique plays an artist—complete with a cliché silk scarf—who is painting a portrait of a Sufi master. Self-contained
at first, the artist suddenly starts hurling paint around ecstatically, in mime, beneath a projected image of Tosca being crucified. What the heck? And why did people keep laying dinnerware and then clearing it? There is one passage that works beautifully. In a metaphor for his spiritual journey, Javad rides his bike uphill. Phillip mimes manic pedalling as Bunting Newman holds a single bicycle wheel on a rod and spins it. Then Javad reaches the top of the mountain. He throws his hands over his head, and his body twists and turns with the wheel as he zigzags his way down the slope. It’s an image of liberation and it’s lovely. Still, there are other problems. I’m sure the Sufi tradition contains much greater wisdom than I managed to glean from this script. Performers say things like “We are one but the veil has hidden us in duality” and “Plant the tree of friendship, harvest the fruits of love.” (The latter is a quote from the esteemed poet Hafez.) I’m not knocking these ideas, but they didn’t help me to gain insight into the particularities of Sufism. Performed by six musicians, the songs are often spaciously meditative. But there are too many songs, and if you don’t speak Farsi, most of them deliver limited information. In the end, though, there’s an undeniable and very welcome spirit of generosity about this offering. One of the performances is very skilled. Phillip, who was last seen as the dithering young bisexual in Cock, delivers a charmingly openhearted and simple portrait of Javad. And all of the performances, including those from the nonprofessionals in the cast, are gifts. The evening ends on an ecstatic note, with joyous singing and everyone in the audience clapping along. But I wished that I had understood more of what preceded it. > COLIN THOMAS
NOW PLAYING
a Firehall Arts Centre Production
Excruciatingly good theatre: it feels like open heart surgery.
AT THE ARTS CLUB!
7 PERFORMACES SOLD OUT! “YOU’RE LUCKY TO BE ALIVE RIGHT NOW... BECAUSE YOU GET TO SEE ONEGIN ”
– VANCOUVER COURIER
—Colin Thomas, The Georgia Straight
A Killer Co m e d y
By Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hille
!
meg roe. photo by emily cooper
photos by Tim Matheson
Every so often you meet a play…that brings you to your knees. This is Late Company. – PRISM MAGAZINE
“WILDLY CREATIVE. ONEGIN IS PERFECTION” —Mark Robins, Vancouver Presents
community partner | 2015–16 season
goldcorp stage at the bmo theatre centre
“Dead Metaphor is dead serious, but it’s still seriously funny,”
colleen wheeler and scott bellis. photo by emily cooper
A SHARP COMEDY ABOUT CHANGING YOUR LUCK
- The San Francisco Examiner
DIRECTED BY Chelsea Haberlin
Directed by KATRINA DUNN Starring: MICHAEL KOPSA GERRY MACKAY ARTHUR MACKINNON LINDA QUIBELL KATHARINE VENOUR
STARRING Meghan Gardiner Mike Gill Carmella Sison Donna Spencer Jovanni Sy Alec Willows Tickets from $23 604.689.0926
604.251.1363 or tickets.thecultch.com
280 E Cordova FirehallArtsCentre.ca
30 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
BY DAVID LINDSAY-ABAIRE
STARRING COLLEEN WHEELER
stanley industrial alliance stage
ar ts/ timeout
A CONCERT FOR
SYRIAN REFUGEES
< < < < < < < < <
All proceeds from this event will be donated to the local fund which has sponsored and supported them
THEATRE 2OPENINGS DEAD METAPHOR Chelsea Haberlin directs George F. Walker’s play about an ex-sniper who returns to Canada from Afghanistan and struggles to find work. Apr 2-23, Firehall Arts Centre (280 E. Cordova). Tix from $23, info www.firehallartscentre.ca/.
Elvira Voskanyan
Takuhi Sedefci
Alice Antranikian
VIOLIN
PIANO
VOICE
Palig Kochkarian
Lori Kulahian
Karni Kochkarian
VIOLIN
PIANO
VIOLIN
Programme features compositions by Bach, Gomidas, Khachaturian, Prokofiev and Babajanian.
LATE COMPANY Touchstone Theatre presents Jordan Tannahill’s play about bullying, teen suicide, and restorative justice. Directed by Katrina Dunn. Apr 5-9, The Cultch (1895 Venables). Tix $27/22, info tickets.thecultch.com/.
April 8, 2016 At Performance Works on Granville Island, 1218 Cartwright Street Doors open 7:30. Performance begins 8 pm sharp
THE INVISIBLE HAND Richard Wolfe directs the Canadian premiere of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar’s drama about a kidnapped American trader in Pakistan. Apr 5-23, The Cultch (1895 Venables). Tix from $20 , info www. thecultch.com/events/the-invisible-hand/.
Tickets: $30
Tickets Start at
$25
SCHUBERTIADE
Purchase by Credit Card 1.800.838.3006
CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL
Online purchase with Credit Card
APRIL 12, 14 & 15 I VANCOUVER PLAYHOUSE
www.vancouverhelpsrefugees.bpt.me
2ONGOING
Wilhelm August Rieder
THEATRE DANCE MUSIC COMEDY LITERARY EVENTS ET CETERA GALLERIES MUSEUMS OUT OF TOWN
On the occasion of its 48th Anniversary, the Armenian Cultural Association of BC presents
For info: 604.839.2108
RECLAIMING HOPE Theatre for Living presents an interactive-theatre piece starring David Diamond. To Apr 2, 7:30 pm, various Metro Vancouver venues. Info 604-871-0508, www.theatreforliving.com/ present_work/reclaiming_hope/reclaiming_ hope_index.html.
8 late great chamber works of Franz Schubert 10 brilliant musicians from around the globe 1 CHANCE TICKETS: 604 602 0363 I vanrecital.com
Jack Stephanian
straight choices
SEASON SPONSOR:
PERFORMANCE SPONSORS:
Kurt Gagel l Ann Harding l Allison Hart l Richard & Lynda Spratley
R E A LTO R S
HUMOUR US Did you miss out on the Chutzpah Festival this year? Relax. Chutzpah!PLUS is here. You probably know humorist Jonathan Goldstein from his years of hosting WireTap on CBC Radio. He’s also much-published in all your top U.S. and Canadian rags: your New York Times Magazines, your GQs, your Reader’s Digests. And he shows up a lot on NPR’s This American Life. But there’s only so much you can do on radio or in print. To get the full Goldstein effect, you want to see him in person. Goldstein plays the Norman and Annette Rothstein Theatre on Thursday (March 31) at 8 p.m. THE CROWD Studio 58 presents the world premiere of Canadian playwright George F. Walker’s newest work. Directed by Patrick McDonald. To Apr 3, Studio 58 (Langara College, 100 W. 49th). Tix $20-25, info www.studio58.ca/. ONEGIN The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hille’s new musical, based on the poem by Pushkin and the opera by Tchaikovsky. To Apr 10, Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre (162 W. 1st). Tix from $25, info 604-687-1644, www.artsclub.com/. GOOD PEOPLE The Arts Club Theatre Company presents David LindsayAbaire’s comedy that explores why some people manage to escape from the situations into which they are born and some don’t. To Apr 24, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage (2750 Granville). Tix from $29, info www.artsclub.com/. OBLIQUE STRATEGIES Risky Nights presents a live-theatre event that explores the lives of the millennial generation as they come of age in a world of
DON’T MISS IT! MARK PADMORE tenor PAUL LEWIS piano
Tickets start at
$25
Sunday April 10 at 3pm CHAN CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
SCHUBERT I SCHUMANN I BRAHMS I WOLF An intoxicating lieder recital brims with “bliss and longing” (The Guardian), as the acclaimed tenor & pianist perform some of the most beautiful compositions of the Romantic era.
TICKETS: 604 602 0363 I vanrecital.com SEASON SPONSOR:
CONCERT SPONSOR:
IN ASSOCIATION WITH:
Elaine Adair
see next page
MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 31
Arts time out
from previous page
“THE YEAR’S MOST ORIGINAL FILM
CAPTURES THE NATURE OF LOVE IN THE 21st CENTURY.” Esquire
straight choices
uncertainty. To Apr 3, 8:15 pm, Studio 58 (Langara College, 100 W. 49th). Admission by donation, info www.studio58.ca/.
DANCE 2THIS WEEK
COLIN FARRELL RACHEL WEISZ JESSICA BARDEN OLIVIA COLMAN ASHLEY JENSEN
COMPANHIA URBANA DE DANÇA DanceHouse presents a high-energy fusion of hip-hop, samba, capoeira, and contemporary dance in boldly imaginative choreography by Brazilian choreographer Sonia Destri Lie. Apr 1-2, 8 pm, Vancouver Playhouse (600 Hamilton). Tix from $35, info www.dancehouse.ca/. SFU REPERTORY DANCERS IN FOUR VIEWS Event features new choreography by Sarah Chase, MAYCE Collective, Judith Garay, and Heather Meyers, as performed by advanced SFU dance students. Apr 6-9, 8 pm, Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre (149 W. Hastings). Tix $15/5, info www.facebook.com/ events/1675473776041433/.
MUSIC
ARIANE LABED ANGELIKI PAPOULIA JOHN C. REILLY LÉA SEYDOUX MICHAEL SMILEY BEN WHISHAW
2THIS WEEK UBC SYMPHONIC WIND ENSEMBLE: A FRANK TICHELI FESTIVAL UBC Symphonic Wind Ensemble performs music by resident composer Frank Ticheli. Apr 1, 12 pm, Chan Shun Concert Hall (6265 Crescent Rd., Chan Centre at UBC). Free admission, info www.music.ubc.ca/. UBC CHOIRS: GLORY AND HONOUR The University Singers, UBC Choral Union, and Marcus Mosely Chorale perform works by John Legend, Hairston, Clausen, Erb, and Walker. Apr 1, 8 pm, Chan Shun Concert Hall (6265 Crescent Rd., Chan Centre at UBC). Tix $8, info www.music.ubc.ca/.
F R O M ACA D E M Y AWA R D ® N O M I N AT E D V I S I O N A RY
YORGOS LANTHIMOS
EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT NOW PLAYING! 88 WEST PENDER • 604-806-0799
Check theatre directories for showtimes
THE VANCOUVER SOUTH AFRICAN FILM FESTIVAL
APRIL 8TH – 10TH GOLDCORP CENTRE FOR THE ARTS SFU WOODWARD'S
SEXUALLY SUGGESTIVE SCENES
GROUND/TERRE Pianist Xenia Pestova and tabla player Shawn Mativetsky perform an eclectic programme of new music for piano, toy piano, Indian harmonium, and tabla. Part of the 88 Tuned Bongos series. Apr 1, 8 pm, Western Front (303 E. 8th). Tix $15, info www.western-front.myshopify. com/products/88-tuned-bongos-groundterre-toy-piano-harmonium-and-tablas/. EKACHAI JEARAKUL The Vancouver Classical Guitar Society presents the Thai classical guitarist. Apr 2, 7 pm, Pyatt Hall (843 Seymour). Tix $35/25/20, info www.vancouverguitar.org/events/ekachai-jearakul/. UBC BANDS: A FRANK TICHELI FESTIVAL UBC Symphonic Wind Ensemble, UBC Concert Winds, and clarinetist Liam Hockley perform music by resident composer Frank Ticheli. Apr 2, 8 pm, Chan Shun Concert Hall (6265 Crescent Rd., Chan Centre at UBC). Tix $8, info www.music.ubc.ca/. WHOOSH! MUSIC FOR WINDS & VOICE Erato Ensemble performs works by Bach, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams, Stefan Hintersteininger, Lucas Oickle, Ray Hsu, Leila Lustig, Rob McKenzie, Jacqueline Leggatt, and Leslie Uyeda. Apr 2, 8 pm, Orpheum Annex (823 Seymour). Tix $15-30, info www.eratoensemble.com/. VICTORIA SYMPHONY 75TH ANNIVERSARY TOUR Tania Miller conducts pianist Stewart Goodyear and the Victoria Symphony in a concert of works by Michael Oesterle, Grieg, Copland, and Stravinsky. Apr 3, 2 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 Smithe). Info www.vancouversymphony.ca/.
NEW TERRAIN It’s probably fair to say that you’ve never heard anything like the Ground/Terre Duo, unless you’re lucky enough to have access to a magical world where the complex rhythms of the Indian tabla meet the tinkling sonorities of the toy piano. Those, along with the more familiar concert grand and the mildly exotic harmonium, are the province of keyboardist Xenia Pestova and percussionist Shawn Mativetsky, who’ll close the Western Front’s 88 Tuned Bongos piano series on Friday (April 1). And if the instrumentation isn’t compelling enough, consider this: the program includes works inspired by Syrian textiles (Monica Pearce’s brand-new damask) and Judas Priest’s duelling guitarists K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton (the irrepressible Nicole Lizée’s Metal Jacket). Did we say you’ve never heard anything like this? Neither have we.
COMEDY 2ONGOING THE COMEDY MIX 1015 Burrard, Century Plaza Hotel & Spa, 604-684-5050, www. thecomedymix.com/. Comedy club with pro-am night Tue at 8:30 pm, showcase Wed at 8:30 pm, and featured headliners Thu at 8:30 pm and Fri-Sat at 8 and 10:30 pm. Cover $8 Tue, $10 Wed, $15 Thu, $18 Fri, $20 Sat. 2JULIAN MCCULLOUGH Mar 31–Apr 1 2DARCY MICHAEL Apr 7-9 2JERRY ROCHA Apr 14-16 2SEAN PATTON Apr 21-23 2PETE ZEDLACHER Apr 28-30 2MARK FORWARD May 5-7 2BEN GLEIB May 12-14 2GABRIEL RUTLEDGE Jun 2-4 2CHAD DANIELS Jun 9-11 YUK YUK’S COMEDY CLUB 2837 Cambie, 604-696-9857, www.yukyuks.com/vancouver. Comedy club with Top Talent Tue at 8 pm, amateur night Wed at 8 pm, and professional headliners Thu-Fri at 8 pm and Sat at 7 and 9:30 pm. Cover Tue $10, Wed $7, Thu $10, and Fri-Sat $20. 2SEAN TWEEDLEY Mar 31- Apr 2 2EDDIE DELLA SIEPE Mar 31–Apr 2 2SUNEE DHALIWAL Mar 31–Apr 2 LAFFLINES COMEDY CLUB 530 Columbia St., New Westminster, 604-525-2262, www.lafflines.com/. 2KEVIN FOXX Apr 1-2 VANCOUVER THEATRESPORTS LEAGUE Some of the world’s most daring and innovative improv. Improv After Dark (every Fri and Sat, 11:15 pm); Off Leash (every Wed and Thu 9:15 pm); Rookie Night (every Sun, 7:30 pm); TheatreSports (every Wed,Thu, Fri, and Sat, 7:30 pm; every Fri and Sat, 9:30 pm). Mar 30–Apr 6, The Improv Centre (1502 Duranleau, Granville Island). Tix $8-22, info www.vtsl.com/.
2THIS WEEK AN EVENING WITH COMEDIAN JONATHAN GOLDSTEIN Comedy by the former host of CBC program Wiretap and a frequent contributor to NRP’s This American Life and The New York Times Magazine. Part of Chutzpah Plus. Mar 31, 8 pm, Norman Rothstein Theatre (950 W. 41st). Tix $29/25/21 (plus service charges and fees), info www.chutzpahfestival. com/performances-tickets/comedy/ an-evening-with-jonathan-goldstein/.
THE ASSEMBLY CLOWN CABARET Highlights include performances by Lisa Voth, Naomi Steinberg, Cat Main, Jessica Gabriel, M. Pyress Flame, Yvonne M Chartrand, Emma Claire, Kate Bateman, Sharon Bayly, and Melissa Aston. Apr 2, 8-11 pm, Revue Stage (1601 Johnston Street). Tix $15, info www.assemblytheatre. wordpress.com/.
LITERARY EVENTS 2THIS WEEK JENNIFER TEEGE IN CONVERSATION Marsha Lederman leads a conversation with Jennifer Teege, author of My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past. Apr 2, 8 pm, Norman Rothstein Theatre (950 W. 41st). Tix $29/25/21, info www.chutzpah festival.com/performances-tickets/theatre/ jennifer-teege/.
ET CETERA 2THIS WEEK A SPRING FLING WITH MIGHTY MIKE MCGEE & FRIENDS Evening features stories, poetry, humour, and talk rock, with accompaniment by the East Van Beast Band. Mar 31, 8 pm, WISE Hall (1882 Adanac). Tix $15/10, info www.facebook. com/events/239062613103528/.
don’t miss out! For up-to-the-minute, searchable Arts Time Out listings, visit
www.straight.com
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL Event strives to nurture emerging talent, engage community, and spark public dialogue about photography as an art form and a vessel for communication. Highlights include public installations, tours, films, a Speaker Series with artist talks, and panel discussions. Apr 1-28, various Metro Vancouver venues. Info www.capturephotofest.com/.
GALLERIES VANCOUVER ART GALLERY 750 Hornby, 604-662-4719, www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/. 2MASHUP: THE BIRTH OF MODERN CULTURE (exhibition offers an international survey of mashup culture, documenting the emergence and evolution of a mode of creativity that has grown to become the dominant form of cultural production in the early 21st century) to Jun 12
MUSEUMS
PROCEEDS GO TO
S SCHEDULE AND TICKET G R AVAILABLE AT VSAFF.O
You Are It A bracingly honest look at how friendship develops CREATED BY DEB WILLIAMS & SHERRY J. YOON
THE MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UBC 6393 NW Marine Drive, 604-822-5087, www.moa.ubc.ca/. 2(IN)VISIBLE: THE SPIRITUAL WORLD OF TAIWAN THROUGH CONTEMPORARY ART (works by seven contemporary Taiwanese artists who explore the coexistence of modernity and tradition while showcasing the significance of the spiritual world of Taiwan) to Apr 3 2IN THE FOOTPRINT OF THE CROCODILE MAN: CONTEMPORARY ART OF THE SEPIK RIVER, PAPUA NEW GUINEA (exhibition features the carvings of Papua New Guinea’s Iatmul people) to Jan 31, 2017
OUT OF TOWN 2THIS WEEK
CULTURAL PARTNER
MARCH 30 - APRIL 2
THE FISHBOWL ON GRANVILLE ISLAND #100 - 1398 CARTWRIGHT STREET
tickets at bocadellupo.com 32 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
ISLE OF THE ARTS FESTIVAL Take part in 60 workshops and seven events over 10 days, each one crafted to bring out the artist within. Mar 31–Apr 10, Gabriola Island. Info www.artsfest.artsgabriola.ca/.
TIME OUT ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit listings online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.
MOVIES REVIEWS LE COEUR DE MADAME SABALI Starring Marie Brassard. In French, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.
The French title of this sweetly mysterious
2 comedy translates as The Heart of Mrs. Sabali.
That tells you a lot, because an organ transplant irrevocably alters the life of a mousy woman named Jeannette, played by Marie Brassard, whom some viewers may find more quirky than charismatic. She leaves a sexless relationship in search of new love and finds an ardent suitor (Tu Dors Nicole’s Francis La Haye) who paints lobsters on tree rings. He may have other strange inclinations. Meanwhile, that new organ keeps pulling Jeannette in the direction of the family of a murdered African woman who donated it. This leads to several musical interludes with blind Malian singers Amadou & Mariam, as well as some misunderstandings when the dead woman’s young son (Youssef Camara) starts getting too attached. And then there’s the fact
And my heart will go in
A surplus of colour-coordinated pregnant women is among the oddball details in Quebec-based director Ryan McKenna’s inspired Le coeur de Madame Sabali.
has set his considerable resources on the problem of how to kill a god. His solution is pulled straight from the pages of The Dark Knight Returns. Although the conA vital organ transplant animates sweet Madame Sabali ; Batman and Supes should have tried rock, paper, scissors text is completely different, the tactics and even the that our off beat heroine’s many female cowork- specific imagery are pure Frank Miller. Snyder’s ability to re-render these iconic comicers happen to be pregnant at the same time. Following all that? It doesn’t matter, really, be- book poses is his strength. He and cinematogcause story isn’t the chief appeal of this 80-minute rapher Larry Fong serve up glorious shots full of feature by Winnipeg-trained, Quebec-based direc- edge lighting, smoke, and glowy beams, through tor Ryan McKenna, working from a story by Becca which one may discern Batman, Superman, or Blackwood, who also did the fantastic costume and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), another “metahuset design—both of which emphasize shocking man” who wanders into the third act to help the fields of bright primary colours, especially around lads with Doomsday, a Kryptonian badass enthe fictional railroad company where everyone in gineered by squirrelly maniac Lex Luthor (Jesse the story seems to work. A quirky treat on many Eisenberg). The “Art of” tie-in book might be the levels, this one may leave you scratching your head best way to enjoy their work, collectively. As a movie, perhaps not so much. It’s too vioat times, but it’s got plenty of heart. > KEN EISNER lent and intense for kids. As a peripheral fan of comics, I appreciated getting its references, but BATMAN V SUPERMAN: where’s the fun? No one would want to be this DAWN OF JUSTICE Superman from this movie, except at the gym. Starring Ben Affleck. Rated PG.
Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel featured elegant
2 visuals and a truly buff Henry Cavill in the
blue tights, but the climactic battle puzzled and irked many viewers. Compared with the Avengers, who have their issues but always rescue civilians, Supes flattened downtown Metropolis without a second thought for anyone’s safety and then snapped Zod’s neck. Is that the mien of a hero? Snyder’s sequel supplies a cynical answer: no, not until you’re faced with something worse. Then the people will claim the villain, and cheer for him. Laboriously exploring superheroism (it may set a record for most actual TV pundits pontificating on the religious meaning of a fictional protagonist), the movie aspires to be real, groundbreaking, and important in a way that can only recall Will Arnett’s Batman in The Lego Movie, a film with more wit, fewer “it was only a dream” montages of gloom, and, truth be told, more believable special effects. At least Ben Affleck is allowed to seem admirable. His Batman is weary and brutal. Understandably terrified of Kryptonians, and over his previous “no killing” policy, the Caped Crusader
WEEK IN WIDESCREEN
KNIGHT OF CUPS
Directed by Terrence Malick. Starring Christian Bale. Rated PG.
There’s a tenuous connection between tarot cards and everything that happens (or, more often, doesn’t happen) to the numb protagonist of this latest wedge of awkward cinematic poetry from Terrence Malick. Christian Bale plays Rick, a screenwriter or director or something—we never see him or anyone else actually working. In Malickland, everyone simply drifts from place to place, via planes, classic cars, and a team of editors who chop ordinary experience into buckshot blasts of contrasting locations and moods. As Rick flits between Hollywood pool parties, desert sunsets, beachfront apartments, and Las Vegas playrooms, Bale masters a special kind of open-mouthed dismay. His indifference proves contagious. The newly prolific Malick has never been known for his ability to tell basic stories. The Tree of Life was anomalous in that it centred
2
from Vancouver’s indiest filmmaker, Ross Munro, plays like an adaptation of a particularly droll graphic novel. Munro stars as Mitch, the legacy whiner of the title, a 50-year-old nebbish locked in an eternal, if polite, conflict with life, the universe, and everything. When his old buddy Dunc (Robert David Duncan) shows up after 30 years, the two embark on a long, dark night of kvetching, with Dunc eventually forcing his constitutionally unhappy friend into a brothel run by right-wing Cuban exiles. Find out if that’s the midlife medicine Mitch really needs when Munro’s amiably gonzo flick screens at the Vancity Theatre on Tuesday (April 5). -
What to see and where to see it
1
BLUE VELVET Pabst Blue Ribbon will presumably be on the menu when David Lynch’s sick little game-changer from ’86 gets a 30th-anniversary screening at the Rio Theatre on Thursday (March 31). Anyone caught with Heineken gets their ear lopped off.
2
MUSTANG Made by Turkish-born, Paris-
A LEGACY OF WHINING The second full-length feature
3
> KEN EISNER
CHI-RAQ Starring Samuel L. Jackson. Rated 18A.
In the decades since Do the Right Thing, Spike
2 Lee has courted controversy and tackled big
themes, especially in his documentaries. His features don’t get the kind of kudos or distribution he used to enjoy, and while the new one makes a claim for relevance, so far it has mostly courted controversy, for what Chicagoans see as a trivialization of their city’s military-grade mortality rate. By now, you’d think Lee would at least know what he’s doing on a technical level. But ChiRaq—an update of Lysistrata moved to the Windy City—is a mess. The film can’t decide if it’s satire, musical theatre, or a full frontal attack on gang culture. As an artist, Lee doesn’t have to pick a tone, but it would help, especially when the entire film is locked into a rhyming-couplet scheme that the see next page
MOVIES
The projector
Local heroes
on a recognizably human Texas family. Even there, he seemed incapable of writing believable, let alone compelling, conversation. In this one, he cheats the narrative by having everyone whisper improvised dialogue he can then layer randomly on the soundtrack. (Typical line: “Remember how happy we were?”) Despite their eagerness to work with him, Malick has an uncanny ability to expose the limits of even the best performers. Playing Rick’s various girlfriends in unspecified hunks of time, Cate Blanchett, Freida Pinto, Imogen Poots, and Natalie Portman—the bastard!—engage in banal acting exercises that are then chopped up and reassembled to suggest the basics of life, love, and striking effective poses while a camera whirls around you. Antonio Banderas, Cherry Jones, Wes Bentley, the disembodied voice of Ben Kingsley, and a gnomic Brian Dennehy also help populate this empty landscape. Did I mention that Fabio plays himself? Content very much aside, Malick’s combination of spectacular imagery (again courtesy of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki) and sublime classical music (with Ralph Vaughan Williams setting the tone) has > RON YAMAUCHI never been more ravishing. Knight of Cups is best taken, then, as a two-hour wash of audiovisual experience. Drugs mandatory, of course.
Blood noodles
based Deniz Gamze Ergüven, this 2016 Oscar contender finally gets a screening or two in Vancouver. Think The Virgin Suicides, but way less precious. Mustang comes to the Rio Theatre on Sunday and Tuesday (April 3 and 5).
THE BACKWARD CLASS “Genuinely
moving and inspiring”, according to the Straight’s Craig Takeuchi, this acclaimed doc about a school for “untouchables” in Bangalore screens at the Vancity Theatre as part of UBC’s centennial celebrations on Saturday (April 2).
CHONGQING HOT POT After a preamble involving masked
bank robbers, this Chinese potboiler, opening Friday (April 1), settles into the occasionally very violent story of three old school friends and business partners who want to offload a dud restaurant built into one of the titular city’s warren of underground caves. It’s all quite mad, and not in a particularly inspired way, but Hot Pot does at least look pretty great, with Chongqing looking like a pristine Mega-City One from Judge Dredd. Credit the filmmakers with maximizing their location, location, location. Go to Straight.com for our full review. MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 33
Chi-Raq
CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR from previous page
director and cowriter Kevin Willmott figure best captures the flavour of Aristophanes’s fifth-century-BC play about a female sex strike intended to make warriors hit the Pause button. The best thing about this concept is its one-man Greek chorus, played by Samuel L. Jackson in an array of garishly coloured suits. The rest of the cast, led by Drumline’s Nick Cannon as a gangbanging rapper and Mad Men’s Teyonah Parris as his hot-number gal pal and the leader of the abstinence pact, seems less comfortable. Jennifer Hudson as a grieving mother, Angela Bassett as a world-wise intellectual, and John Cusack (with his shoe-polish hair) as a rabble-rousing priest all seem to be visiting different movies. And many of the extras in elaborate set pieces stand around stiffly, not knowing what to project. Contentwise, Chi-Raq covers the worthiest bases, from the glorification of drugs and guns to the curse of mass incarceration. But instead of fitting too much into a very long 127 minutes, Lee belabours the same points again and again, repeating songs and images he used earlier. Ultimately, this is neither tragedy nor farce. Anybody know the Greek word for boredom?
past battles in their sleep, with that earth-digger outside disturbing the bones of ancient armies. Will viewers buy all this? It hardly matters. The rhythms of this twohour meditation may be unfamiliar to most popcorn-munchers, but the cleverly made Cemetery is packed with so much wry humour, gentle mystery, and strange beauty—the soldiers have “anti-snoring machines” that change colour like mood rings—almost anyone would enjoy spending some time there. Some.
Starring Jenjira Pongpas. In Thai, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.
Soldiers in a remote, bucolic
2 setting are struck by an odd
form of sleeping sickness that finds them semipermanent guests at a quiet country hospital. Even the people still walking around seem to be under some kind of spell in this latest, whimsically dreamy venture from Thai writerdirector Apichatpong Weerasethakul. He has a weakness for folktales, animistic curses, and reincarnation, as seen in similarly themed films like Tropical Malady and Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. Here, what starts as a naturalisticappearing look at (admittedly offthe-main-path) life becomes increasingly unhinged—not that it seems to bother anyone doing the unhinging. Things centre on Jen (Jenjira Pongpas), a middle-aged woman with legs of uneven length and an occasionally seen American husband. As a child, she attended the school converted to this hospital, where she volunteers. She’s befriended by Keng (Jarinpattra Rueangram), a medium and possible government spy who can communicate with the snoozing soldiers, although that’s not necessarily connected with > KEN EISNER their morning hard-ons.
> KEN EISNER
NO HOME MOVIE A documentary by Chantal Akerman. In French, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.
In a sad twist, legendary film-
2 maker Chantal Akerman herself Samuel L. Jackson is a one-man Greek chorus in Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq.
The women bond with one young man (Banlop Lomnoi) in particular, and he becomes a kind of son to Jen. No one is perturbed by the loose, unexpected connections between people and places, or by increasingly bizarre explanations of odd behaviour, as with the travelling saleswomen who claim to be ghosts of long-gone Laotian goddesses. Turns out the soldiers are simply reliving
died last fall—probably by suicide— soon after her beloved mother’s death. Her final film, the facetiously titled No Home Movie, presages both passages. That setup makes this two-hour Movie sound fairly dramatic, while the reality is anything but. Akerman tests your patience right from the start, with almost five minutes of a tree blowing in a windstorm. Later, there are even longer segments showing uneventful drives across an unnamed desert (presumably in Israel, where the Belgian
FILM FESTIVAL
> KEN EISNER
FROM PALM D’OR WINNING DIRECTOR OF “UNCLE BOONMEE”
Cultivating g Film Appreciation pp
“A MEDITATION ON DEATH, THE SPIRIT WORLD AND UNQUIET GHOSTS”
* IMAGINE * CREATE * ENJOY * Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street Roundhouse Community Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews R Rio Theatre, 1660 East Broadway
— THE GUARDIAN
“MESMERIZING” “THE MOST BEAUTIFUL FILM — GLOBE + MAIL OF THE YEAR”— CINEMA SCOPE
Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth Regular admission: $6 child/youth/senior; $9 adult Opening Night Gala: $12 child/youth/senior; $15 adult (includes reception)
MARCH 31 - APRIL 3
BIRDS OF PASSAGE Les oiseaux de passage OPENING NIGHT GALA DIR Olivier Ringer | Belgium, France | 2015 | 84 min • In French with English subtitles
For her tenth birthday, Cathy’s father gives her a duck egg, and warns her the duckling will think the first person it sees is its mother. Against all odds, that first person is not Cathy, but Margaux. Unfortunately Margaux’s parents believe she is unable to care for this pet from her wheelchair. The two friends embark on an adventurous journey to set the duckling free in its natural habitat. FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 6:30 PM, VANCITY THEATRE* SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2:00 PM, VANCITY THEATRE TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 12:00 PM, VANCITY THEATRE * FOLLOWED BY R2R’S OPENING NIGHT PARTY!
HOW TO STEAL A DOG
개를 훔치는 완벽한 방법 DIR Kim Seong-ho | South Korea | 2014 | 84 min • In Korean with English subtitles
9
Ji-so is a ten-year old living in a pizza truck with her mother and younger brother. Desperately wanting to live a normal life, Ji-so decides she’ll get a house on her own. She finds a poster of a missing dog offering a five-hundred-dollar reward, and comes up with a plan to find a dog, steal it, and return it for the reward. SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 11:45 AM, VANCITY THEATRE TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 10:00 AM, VANCITY THEATRE
T.I.M. - THE INCREDIBLE MACHINE
DIR Rolf Van Eijk | Netherlands | 2014 | 82 min • In Dutch with English subtitles
11
Tibor is teased because his family can’t afford a new robot. He discovers his resilience and tries to save his oldest and truest friend, an outdated T.I.M. in desperate need of repair. Inventive art direction and cinematic landscapes offer a live-action journey to an imaginative, and not-too-distant future. Exploring themes of self-sacrifice and hope, this touching film will remind audiences of the true meaning of friendship. SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 6:00 PM, VANCITY THEATRE
SUNDAY FUN DAY
films + workshops 6 Bring the whole family to see an amazing selection of animation, live-action, and documentaries from around the world. Then take part in hands-on animation workshops. SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 10:30 AM - 4:30 PM ROUNDHOUSE COMMUNITY CENTRE
Pancake Breakfast Come early and enjoy our all-you-can-eat breakfast of homemade pancakes and sizzling bacon. We’ll also have juice, and gallons of hot coffee for the grown-ups. Vegan and gluten-free options are available. SUNDAY, APRIL 10, 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM ROUNDHOUSE COMMUNITY CENTRE
Special price: $5 per person, includes films + workshops and a pancake breakfast
Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth is grateful for the support of:
Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s
= Guest(s) via Skype
Tickets: www.r2rfestival.org | Message line: 604-224-6162
34 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
director lived part-time). And even after we first see Natalia Akerman puttering around her neat Brussels apartment, it’s almost 30 minutes before anyone speaks. Once they start gabbing, whether in the kitchen or sometimes by phone or Skype, there are nuggets of information, occasionally about how Akerman’s Polish-born parents (barely) escaped the Holocaust and came to Belgium, where Chantal would be born, in 1950. And there is much evidence of the deep love between daughter and maman. But the film, shot entirely on low-grade digital cameras and rarely framed for beauty, is stingy with rewards. It also depends heavily on the viewer’s investment in her history with cinema and kitchens—especially regarding formally rigorous breakthrough films like Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels and the short “Saute ma ville”, which depicted women held captive by their domesticity, and their unpredictably violent reactions to that. Both those tales, among others, are excerpted and explicated by the chain-smoking filmmaker in I Don’t Belong Anywhere: The Cinema of Chantal Akerman, an illuminating hourlong doc paired opening night and one further date with No Home Movie.
CEMETERY OF SPLENDOUR
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MOVIES
Festival showcases Pondo’s plight > BY NI KKI C E LIS
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* LITTLE EARTH BROKEN WINDOW FUNDRAISER WITH * SMASH ALLEY * MOTORAMA * TRAILER TRASH HERO & THE BEER BANDITOS * MG GRAVEYARD * RAFFLE & 50/50 * FRI APR 8
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T
he struggle for progress is both perpetual and global. For South Africa’s Pondo people, on its surface, it’s a conflict between tradition and the opportunity for development, as Australian mining company Mineral Commodities Ltd. and the government both lobby to extract titanium from the country’s resource-rich Wild Coast. Even deeper, the contention lies within familial blood as Pondoland’s Amadiba community debates whether or not the opportunity really belongs to them. “It’s a complex argument,” says filmmaker Ryley Grunenwald, calling the Georgia Straight from Rouen, France, about her documentary feature The Shore Break, which makes its local premiere at the Vancouver South African Film Festival (VSAFF) next Friday (April 8). Filmed over three years, the visually arresting doc captures just a slice of the Pondo people’s 12-year struggle over land rights. Nonhle Mbuthuma, one of the film’s central characters, provides a memorable metaphor for the ongoing situation. “It’s like when you take the frog
The Shore Break delineates the issues that South Africa’s Pondo people face.
out of your room and then when you turn your back it’s coming in your room again,” she remarks. “No matter how long, we’re going to play this in-and-out together.” Adding complexity, Mbuthuma is against the mine while favouring the development of the community. “They want the resources every South African should get,” explains Grunenwald. On the other side is Mbuthuma’s cousin Zamile “Madiba” Qunya, who
argues that mining and the government’s concurrent plans for infrastructure will spare the community from poverty. But while the promise of jobs, a hospital, and education seems all too enticing, it would likely come at the cost of the Pondo’s culture, traditions, and, most of all, land. The situation has become even more critical since the completion of the film. Last week, one of the most vocal opponents of the mine, Sikhosiphi “Bazooka” Rhadebe, was assassinated in front of his family by unknown assailants posing as police. The Australian mining company denied any connection to the shooting. However, this wasn’t the first time someone died over the issue. “There were three deaths before this one. The first was someone who got shot point-blank in the head in 2000, others were potential poisonings that were never proven,” says Grunenwald. “But with the corrupt police in the area being pretty much on the side of the promining people, one can’t really rely on the police to prove any of those cases. This must be really stressful for the whole community. I can go back and live a normal life, but
they have to continue fighting this battle. They really need all the international support they can get.” VSAFF cofounder David Chudnovsky says The Shore Break reminded him that the issues of development, inequality, and the environment are international in scope. “We immediately saw the connection that we see in the issues of Canada’s indigenous communities. We’re struck by how similar the issues are,” Chudnovsky told the Straight. “When I watch a movie like that, it underlies the connections between us and our neighbours.” Grunenwald wanted to portray the story as fairly as possible, as both sides offer compelling arguments. “I can see where each are coming from, but my opinion is between the two,” she says. “It’s not a black-or-white issue, there’s a lot of complexity around it. We want to give the audience a chance to think for themselves.” The Vancouver South African Film Festival runs from April 8 to 10. Find more information at www. vsaff.org/ . Check Straight.com for reviews, features, and notes.
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MUSIC G-Eazy’s latest album is called When It’s Dark Out, but the spotlight appears to be shining brighter on the rapper every day. While the West Coast wordsmith has been on the mainstream’s radar for a few years, stemming from the breakout success of his ’60s-pop-sampling “Runaround Sue” single, the last couple of months alone have seen a major uptick in demand for the rhymer born Gerald Gillum. Case in point, the Vancouver stop of his current tour was initially booked for the 5,000-capacity PNE Forum before being bounced to the triple-sized Coliseum next door. When the Straight reaches G-Eazy on his cellphone, he’s ordering a triple-shot latte in a Bay Area coffee shop to help him get through a busy weekend that’ll have him hitting the studio to hammer out a stack of feature verses for other artists, hopping on a plane for a gig in Texas, and then blasting off to Europe. A week before this, he was smashing massive crowds Down Under. It’s been hectic, but the globetrotting hip-hop star reports he also managed to sneak off the grid to enjoy a luscious, snowcapped northern California mountainscape. “I just disappeared,” he says of his brief time off, an Instagram pic of a golden retriever on a highway serving as proof of the getaway.
2
The passion is paying off
Some say G-Eazy’s devotion to Brylcreem borders on the pathological, just because the rapper tours with an entire separate trailer for the stuff.
“It’s a real story, and it’s taxing to go there,” he says of the cut, which he explains is too tough to play every night. “I broke down He’s come a long way from hawking his demos on halfway through recordthe street, but G-Eazy’s work ethic hasn’t changed ing it the first couple of “I turned my phone off and went somewhere times. I knew there would be a challenge in perwithout Wi-Fi. I went up to the mountains, just forming it. I also didn’t want to do it so many times sitting and doing nothing. It felt great.” so that it became muscle memory.” The rise of G-Eazy is catalogued early on When G-Eazy taps into a different kind of darkness on It’s Dark Out, with the record’s “Random” point- “Sad Boy”, a song that takes a Drake-style look at ing out above a powder-keg kaboom of beats the rigours of fame, where being on top can leave and rocket-screech synths that he’s no overnight you feeling twisted and isolated. The song isn’t success. At face value, it’s a self-assured anthem exactly a sob story, as he calls himself an asshole about how the “young, rich, and handsome” MC for complaining about the acclaim. is currently cashing cheques and signing body “It’s an extremely different lifestyle than the parts, but he notes that is because he’s “put in the one your friends and family are living back hours and stayed passionate”. Back before the home,” the rapper explains. “There’s a distance buzz, he was just a teen recording tracks in his that grows between you and your loved ones. bedroom. At the time, he was lucky to even hawk And all that shit wears on you, man. It’s not half a dozen demos out on the streets. really natural to live a Saturday night for 15 days “I would buy a bunch of blank CDs and burn in a row, but that’s the reality of tour.” copies of the albums that we were making,” he As he does in “Sad Boy”, G-Eazy is quick to recalls fondly of his early entrepreneurial efforts. point out in conversation that the nonstop grind “I bootlegged Photoshop and taught myself how isn’t as bad as he’s making out. When you’ve to use it so I could design covers. I would take it gone from working solo in your bedroom to condown to a local print shop in downtown Oak- quering stadiums worldwide, you have to know land and put them in jewel cases and sell them you’re doing something right. out of my backpack. It was real DIY. “ “I’m literally having these conversations with Several mixtapes and two studio albums later, myself, like, ‘Cheer the fuck up, what’s wrong with G-Eazy’s solid work ethic has brought him to you? You’ve dreamed of this forever. Be appreciatop-tier status on the stadium circuit. Accord- tive of all these blessings that have come your way.’” > GREGORY ADAMS ingly, he’s talking about an excess of riches and pleasures on hedonistic bangers like “One of Them”, as well as on the perception-melting G-Eazy plays the Pacific Coliseum on Wednesday (April 6). after-hours number, “Order More”. There’s more substance to When It’s Dark Out than Champagne and a bag full of molly, though, with the vocalist digging deep into personal tragedy for “Everything Will Be OK”. The rap ballad traces Gillum’s youth, from the Some touring acts have deliriously ribald storbreakup of his parents’ marriage, to his mother ies of life on the road, detailing all manner of finding new love with a woman named Melissa, to a heartbreaking scene of the rapper finding debauched goings-on. Yung Lean’s tour tales, on the that woman dead following a lethal overdose. other hand, are nothing short of terrifying. A few It’s an especially raw look at his past, and one weeks ago, some gun-wielding lunatic in Pittsburgh he wasn’t sure he could bring to his fan base, randomly fired seven shots in the direction of Lean’s bus. Then, on March 27, the Stockholm-based especially in a turned-up concert scenario.
Rapper Yung Lean has terrifying true tales from his time on tour
2
CHECK THIS OUT
POUR HIM ANOTHER Give Kiefer Sutherland full marks for singing about what he knows. The 24 star—who served 48 days in jail for DUI in 2008—just released a hard-drinkin’ country single called “Not Enough Whiskey”. A FLAT RESPONSE When Justin Bieber pulled out of
DIARRHEA PLANET Nashville garage-punkers Diarrhea
Planet will be playing the Rickshaw Theatre on Friday (April 1). We know what you’re thinking. Given the date, you’re probably suspicious that Diarrhea Planet isn’t a real band and that this is some sort of April Fools’ Day prank. Like, you’ll show up to find the Rickshaw closed, with a note on the door reading “Sucker!” Well, Diarrhea Planet is, in fact, a real act, and Stereogum recently described its set at South By Southwest as one of the highlights of the festival. So stop being so skeptical. We will say, though, that if there were a real diarrhea planet, we would never, ever visit it. -
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MUSIC Let’s talk about
You gotta see
rapper and his Sad Boys Entertainment crew were all set to hit the stage at Minneapolis’s Fine Line Music Café when things went sideways. Reached in Billings, Montana, Lean—known to his parents as Jonatan Aron Leandoer Håstad—says, “We were just at the venue, and we were about to play—it was an early show—and they were like, ‘Minor problem. There’s been a bomb threat.’ ” A Reddit user had posted said threat online, announcing that an explosive would be detonated at the club, supposedly by a U.S.–based wing of ISIS. Håstad picks up the story: “Then we get escorted by a security guard to the bus, and then when we’re in the bus a police officer comes in and says, ‘There’s a timer that has been found in a trash can, and it’s set to explode at 7 o’clock when the show starts.’ And that was at 6:57. The funny thing is, that cop was just lying. There was no timer. They were just trying to scare us, I think.” Even with no actual bomb in sight, the venue’s management was sufficiently spooked to cancel the show at the last minute over what was a rather transparent Internet prank. All things considered, you can’t blame Håstad for not being overly fond of touring. “I don’t think I really like it,” he admits. “Well, I like the fact of going around in different cities and, like, seeing people and stuff. That’s sick. And you get a lot of work done. I love having a bus, but I don’t really like all the attention.” Yung Lean has received plenty of that since the video for his track “Ginseng Strip 2002” went viral in 2013, when he was just 16. His laconic flow and odd product references—especially his bewildering veneration of Arizona Iced Tea—were bracingly offbeat, as was his seemingly contradictory mixture of braggadocio and melancholy. On Yung Lean’s sophomore long-player, the recently released Warlord, the trap-inspired trillwave beats—provided mostly by Sad Boys Yung Gud and Yung Sherman—are as potent as ever, but anyone looking to the lyrics for insight into the world of Håstad is going to come up short. The Swedish MC is notoriously reticent about his personal life in interviews, and he tends to keep such details out of his songs, too. So just how much of him is in there? “A little too much, I think,” he says, “but you have to know me to understand what I’m referring to.”
a Las Vegas meet-and-greet, fans were offered the chance to snap selfies with a life-size cardboard cutout of him. We imagine most would have preferred to get their US$2,000 back.
DEAN DADDY Puff Daddy has announced plans to open a prep school in his home neighbourhood of Harlem in New York City. Classes will include How to Ruin a Great Police Song and Beating Up Your Son’s Football Coach With a Kettlebell. WORSE THAN O-TOWN Former boy-banders Nick
Carter, A.J. McLean, Howie Dorough, Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick, and Erik-Michael Estrada have come together to record a song for the Old West zombie-exploitation film Dead 7. For some reason, Justin Timberlake declined to take part.
Fresh and local THE BAD BEATS HIS VENGEFUL HAND Anyone can stumble through a cover of “Louie Louie” or “Wild Thing”, but tackling Shocking Blue’s beyond-classic “Send Me a Postcard” requires serious cojones. The Bad Beats prove themselves up to the challenge on the fantastically lo-fi His Vengeful Hand, an album released on Germany’s garage-fixated Soundflat Records. Aimed at those seriously obsessed with vintage Ray-Bans and Farfisa organs, the 12-track outing kicks off with the hypnotic “Knock Yourself Out”, cranks the fuzz to 16 for “Puttin’ It Down”, and out-Stones early Mick and Keith on “Love Has No Time”. And if that isn’t enough to establish the Bad Beats as East Van’s official garage kings, cue up “Send Me a Postcard” and ask yourself what anyone ever saw in the Hives or Mando Diao. MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 37
Yung Lean
from previous page
Constructing a separate public persona is a time-honoured hip-hop tradition—listening to a Rick Ross record probably won’t tell you a damn thing about William Leonard Roberts II—but sometimes the line between fact and fiction gets blurry. “It started off as a character,” Håstad admits. “Yung Lean was everything Jonatan wasn’t. And then as time went by, I started doing more and more Yung Lean–type things. You know, Jonatan and Yung Lean just became friends.”
> JOHN LUCAS
Yung Lean plays the Vogue Theatre on Thursday (March 31).
Dawson’s approach is different, and sometimes different is good Steve Dawson isn’t the most accompedal-steel-guitar player in Nashville, and he’d be the first to admit it. But the modest Canadian is well on his way to being among the busiest, and that has a lot to do with growing up right here in Vancouver, B.C. “I’m getting called because I don’t play like the other kids. And I think I don’t play like the other kids because I never really learned properly,” the Tennessee transplant says with a laugh, reached at his home in Music City. “I kind of have a slightly different approach, but I didn’t set out to be different,” he continues. “I just never learned all the stuff I would have learned if I’d been around here, I guess. That’s what they keep commenting on: ‘Oh, that’s really different from what we’re used to!’ Which is good, I guess, because I keep getting called back.” Dawson’s going to get busier once Nashville’s A-list producers discover everything else he can do. His tough new Solid States and Loose Ends CD makes a strong case that he deserves a place in the electric-slide-guitar pantheon alongside his idols Lowell George, Ry Cooder, and Sonny Landreth. It also showcases his work on mandolin, Mellotron, and a variety of acoustic guitars, in addition to some unusually incisive songwriting, most notably on the dystopian “Broken Future Blues”. While the record compiles songs written over several years—here and in Toronto, as well as in Nashville—that tune in particular is inspired by some of the less savoury aspects of his new life south of the border. “Living in the South is so foreign, in certain ways,” Dawson reports. “When I look around I sometimes think that I could be in East Van; it kind of looks the same, and people aren’t that different, really. But then certain things happen and you realize ‘Okay, we’re not in Vancouver anymore!’ Like, I was in a studio the other day and the engineer was packing a .45. That kind of thing doesn’t happen in Vancouver that much.” For now, pistol-packing knob-twiddlers are a rare sight in Dawson’s own Henhouse studio, where both the in-house rhythm section and most of the clients carry Canadian passports. Dawson has recently produced albums for roots veteran Linda McRae, folk-pop songwriter Christa Couture, and No Sinner blues belter Colleen Rennison, and he doesn’t mind admitting that he sometimes poaches Blackie and the Rodeo Kings bassist John Dymond and drummer Gary Craig from his Nashville neighbour and fellow Canadian, Colin Linden. The two Torontonians anchor most of Solid States and Loose Ends, and also help make the stay-and-play Henhouse an attractive destination for other northern talent. Increasingly, though, Dawson is making his own mark as a frontman, and as something of an impresario, too. His new Music Makers and Soul Shakers podcast series compiles wonderfully informal interviews with everyone from
2 plished
Always too curious for their own good, the members of Winnipeg’s Living Hour had to see for themselves where that mysterious staircase in the cellar of the Burton Cummings Theatre led.
jazz adventurer Bill Frisell to rock pioneer Duane Eddy; listen to it at www.stevedawson.ca/makers andshakers/. And his Black Hen Travelling Roadshow Revue, which hits Vancouver this weekend, is an opportunity to hang out with some of his favourite people, both on-stage and off. The current incarnation features Dawson and local bassist Jeremy Holmes backing indierock songwriter Roxanne Potvin, Prairie Oyster singer Russell DeCarle, and Mississippi blues titan Alvin Youngblood Hart. “Jeremy and I are going to be the house band, basically,” Dawson says. “Every person is going to do a little miniset with us backing them up in the first half, and then in the second half we’re all going to be onstage together, and there’ll be lots of interplay and messing around with everybody else’s songs.” It sounds like fun—even more fun, maybe, than showing up for a studio gig at the corner of Chet Atkins Place and Merle Travis Way, pedal steel in hand. > ALEXANDER VARTY
Steve Dawson and the Black Hen Travelling Roadshow Revue play North Vancouver’s BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday (April 2).
Winnipeg’s Living Hour set out to create its own little sonic world Guitarist Gil Carroll comes across as a man
2 with big expectations for Winnipeg’s Living
onboard, that really changed everything. She had that beautiful voice that pushed us into the more shoegaze-y, dreamy kind of stuff.” As one might extrapolate from that brief recap, Living Hour does indeed draw heavily on shoegaze and golden-era college rock, but the quintet’s influences don’t stop there. There’s a smoky Americana haze to the album opener, “Summer Smog”, while waves of apocalyptic surf and hypnotic organ propel “There Is No Substance Between”. Those who miss ethereal icons like the Cocteau Twins, meanwhile, will find plenty to love in “Feel Shy”. What instantly stands out on Living Hour is that the record sounds like summer, a perfect sonic backdrop for golden, sun-saturated afternoons. That is indeed the vibe the group was going for, even if the weather was anything but summery during the recording process. “It’s honestly been a while since we did the record,” Carroll says, “but I’m 99 percent certain we recorded in the winter, like in February. But soundwise it’s not wintery, and that’s because we were out to create our own little world. We didn’t want to make something that sounded like any other Winnipeg band. I definitely wanted to tap into a unique kind of headspace. I’m super into the Winnipeg local scene, and I love tons of the bands that come out of here, but I really wanted to create something that people might think was weird.” By “weird”, he presumably means a sound like nothing that’s ever come out of the ’Peg, as opposed to, say, a Prairie version of the Butthole Surfers. Cue the plans for world domination, which include an upcoming five-week assault on the U.S. and then European dates in May. “We’re going to be on the road a lot, and we’re totally excited,” Carroll relays. “We haven’t really toured a lot, but we’ve already met so many great bands and cool people. The only bad part can be the driving. Winnipeg is pretty isolated and we only have a minivan—nothing fancy—so things can get a little tight. But we’re all super close and really good friends, so the dynamic is strong. We get through it together.”
sang tenderly about seeing everything “from Bangkok to Calgary” during the wistful “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”. Beautiful allusion aside, this hasn’t been the case for the band, which is still discovering new things on its worldwide exploits. A recent tour in Southeast Asia, for instance, found the group falling for the ages-old majesty of Batu Caves near Kuala Lumpur and, judging by bassist Nicholas Harmer’s Instagram account, some ever-present, fur-covered locals. “When we first got there it was like, ‘Oh my goodness, it’s monkeys! This is incredible! I’ve never seen monkeys running around!’ And by the end of it, we were like, ‘This place is lousy with monkeys,’ ” Harmer says with a laugh while recalling the trip over the phone from his home in Seattle. “They’re sneaky. They run up, and you’ll be standing there with your water bottle, and they’ll yank it out of your hand. They go very quickly from something adorable to a nuisance.” Death Cab for Cutie is having fun on the road even when not sightseeing. That the group is riding this high may be surprising, considering its latest album, Kintsugi, was made under some fairly depressing circumstances. For one, much of the full-length hints at the dissolution of Gibbard’s marriage to singer-actor Zooey Deschanel. Whether in the whisky-soaked, relationship-eclipsing “Black Sun”, or when the singer returns “to the scenes of these crimes” on the anthemic “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive”, the subject matter is pretty bleak. Harmer would argue that it’s just honest. “One thing I’ve always been proud of him [Gibbard] for, and something that I’ve always been inspired by, is that he’s always tried to write about subjects, events, feelings, and emotions that are happening to him, and the people around him, in the present tense,” Harmer says. “Lyrically, you can hear him grow up and move through life.” Adding to the growing pains was the fact that guitarist Chris Walla, who helped found the band in the mid-’90s, announced he was leaving Death Cab midway through the making of Kintsugi. He finished the album, but Death Cab for Cutie’s lineup is now down to Gibbard, Harmer, and drummer Jason McGerr. The live show adds multi-instrumentalists Dave Depper and Zac Rae. The personal and professional departures meant Death Cab for Cutie had to rebuild. The feat is reflected in the album title, which alludes to the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. Sonically, the record fills the cracks with electronic ambiance. “Little Wanderer” is lined with digi-spiked beats and watery, “Enjoy the Silence”–period Depeche Mode guitar, while “Good Help (Is So Hard to Find)” is a glitter-ball-lit kiss-off to the rich and famous. Despite these added textures, the group hasn’t turned its back on 20 years of musical history. Gibbard’s sentimental, soft-touch vocals, for instance, are a dead giveaway that this is still Death Cab. “One of the most important tasks in front of us, as a band, is to make sure that we never make a person who got a Death Cab for Cutie tattoo regret getting it,” Harmer explains of an apparent legion of ink-soaked adorers. “It sounds kind of funny, but by that they made a lifelong commitment to our band, and I don’t want to turn into the kind of band that’s a fraction of what it once was because we were too proud to hang it up when we needed to.” With Death Cab for Cutie heading out on a Canada-wide stadium tour with Metric this week, it seems as if practising Kintsugi patched the band up pretty good.
Hour, and his optimism is well-founded considering what the group’s accomplished on its eponymous debut album. Originally issued last year in hipperthan-hip cassette format, the full-length got a proper release in February of 2016 on Portland’s indie-cool Lefse Records, and the band won a new round of praise for its languid strain of shoegaze-y pop. As thrilling as it is to get nods from the likes of Paste and Stereogum, it’s also possible the easygoing musician is just happy to be part of a group that’s a little more serious than past projects he’s been involved in. Like, for example, the two-man Velvet Underground–obsessed > MIKE USINGER act featuring his future bandmate in Living Hour, drummer Alex Chochinov. “That band probably wasn’t executed to a Living Hour plays Fortune Sound Club on Saturlevel of excellence or anything” Carroll says day (April 2). with a laugh, on his cell from Winnipeg, where he’s doing some pre-tour chores. “We were definitely doing Velvet Underground stuff, along > GREGORY ADAMS with Silver Jews and Built to Spill. That’s where the initial influences for what we’re doing now On Death Cab for Cutie’s Plans album Death Cab for Cutie plays UBC’s Doug Mitchell came from—’90s indie and lo-fi kind of stuff. from 2005, frontman Ben Gibbard Thunderbird Sports Centre on Friday (April 1). But then once we got Sam [Sarty], our singer,
38 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
Death Cab for Cutie rebuilds after personal, professional departures
2
FRIDAY APRIL 01
Road to WSSF w/ SkiiTour at Happy Ending Fridays
FRIDAY APRIL 15
Graves w/ Rico Uno + More! at Happy Ending Fridays
FRIDAY APRIL 08
FRIDAY APRIL 08
Hip-Hop Karaoke (HHK) w/ Flipout & DJ Seko (early show)
SUNDAY APRIL 17
Bilal hosted by Emotions w/ Raeliss, Omar Khan + more!
FRIDAY APRIL 29
West Coast Smokers Bowl w/ Snoop Dogg DJ Set
TUES APR 02 Flipout, Seko & Sailor Gerry WED APR 06 A Tribe Called Red DJ Set *Sold Out* SAT APR 09 Leftside Takeover w/ Seko Sailor Gerry & Dkay
TUESDAY APRIL 12
Boi-1da (The 6ix) at Happy Ending Fridays
SATURDAY APRIL 30
Flat White - Virgil Abloh at Happy Ending Fridays
DJ Pump w/ Seko & Sailor Gerry at Sup Fu? Saturdays
THUR APR 14 The Sound of Music Fundraiser TUES APR 19 Matterhorn Improv 420 Edition TUES APR 26 Låpsley w/ guests
. WITH GUESTS: HOT PANDA
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MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 39
ELLIE GOULDING British pop sensation performs on her Delirium World Tour, with guests Broods. Apr 1, doors 6 pm, show 7 pm, Rogers Arena (800 Griffiths Way). Tix $62.25/47.25/32.25 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
music/ timeout CONCERTS < CLUBS & VENUES < OUT OF TOWN <
CONCERTS 2JUST ANNOUNCED THE SMALL GLORIES & JENNY RITTER The Rogue Folk Club presents Canadian folk duo coheadlining with indie-folk vocalist. Apr 9, 8 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th). Tix $20/16, info www.roguefolk. bc.ca/concerts/ev16040920/. YOUNG EMPIRES Canadian rock band tours in support of first full-length album The Gates. May 19, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix on sale Apr 1, 10 am, $18 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. THE SMOKERS CLUB TOUR Music by Cam’Ron, the Underachievers, G Herbo, Smoke DZA, and Nyck Caution. May 31, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Vogue Theatre (918 Granville). Tix on sale Apr 1, 10 am, $40 (plus service charges and fees) at Red Cat, Zulu Records, and www.ticketfly.com/. THE SADIES Canadian rock band, with guests Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet. Jun 3, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix $25 (plus service charges and fees) at Red Cat, Highlife Records, and www.ticketweb.ca/. FITZ AND THE TANTRUMS Los Angeles indie-pop band tours in support of upcoming self-titled studio album. Aug 24, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Vogue Theatre (918 Granville). Tix on sale Apr 1, 10 am, $45 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
2THIS WEEK YUNG LEAN Swedish rapper and producer. Mar 31, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Vogue Theatre (918 Granville). Tix $30 (plus service charges and fees) at Red Cat, Zulu Records, and www.ticketfly.com/. THE WILD FEATHERS American rock ’n’ roll band tours in support of sophomore release Lonely Is a Lifetime. Mar 31, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Venue (881 Granville). Tix $17 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. RA RA RIOT American indie-rock band tours in support of upcoming album Need Your Light. Mar 31, 8 pm, Biltmore Cabaret (2755 Prince Edward). Tix $18 (plus service charges and fees) at Red Cat Records and www.ticketfly.com/, info www.mrgconcerts.com/. METRIC AND DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE Canadian indie-rock band coheadlines with American alt-rock band on their Lights on the Horizon tour. Apr 1, doors 6 pm, show 6:45 pm, Thunderbird Arena (6066 Thunderbird Blvd., UBC). Tix $60.50/56/40.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
STOP THE PIPELINES. START THE MUSIC Benefit concert in support of the Unist’ot’en Camp featuring Five Alarm Funk, the Boom Booms, and Jack Garton and the Demon Squadron. Apr 1-2, 7:30 pm–1 am, The Imperial (319 Main). Tix $25/20, info www.facebook.com/ events/1140920752605738/. DIARRHEA PLANET Nashville punk-rock band performs in support of latest release Aliens in the Outfield, with guests Music Band and Dead Soft. Apr 1, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix $12, info www. facebook.com/events/1669102193342317/. VENTANAS AND ORKESTAR SLIVOVICA Caravan World Rhythms presents Toronto-based trans-Mediterranean ensemble and Vancouver’s premiere Balkan brass band. Apr 1, 8 pm, Seven Dining Lounge (53 W. Broadway). Tix $18, info www.caravanbc.com/. NORMA WINSTONE British jazz vocalist performs with “A” Band and NiteCap. Apr 1, 8 pm, BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts (2055 Purcell Way). Tix $35/32, info www.capilanou.ca/centre/. INPOWER SHOWCASE FUNDRAISER Rappers and DJs Nostalgix, PSLCD, Nala AG, Gdubz, $hawry, Just K, Rozan, and Raeliss perform in support of Vancouver Rape Relief. Apr 1, 8-10:30 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $10, info www.fortunesoundclub.com/. THE DECIBEL MAGAZINE TOUR 2016 Metal music by Abbath, High on Fire, Skeletonwitch, and Tribulation. Apr 2, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix $35 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. GOLDROOM Los Angeles-based electronica musician and producer. Apr 2, doors 8 pm, show 8:30 pm, Biltmore Cabaret (2755 Prince Edward). Tix $15 (plus service charges and fees) at Red Cat, Zulu Records, and www.ticktetweb.ca/. CULLEN OMORI American indie-rock singer-songwriter and Smith Westerns member tours in support of debut solo album New Misery. Apr 2, doors 7 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $12 (plus service charges and fees) at Zulu, Red Cat Records, and www.bplive.ca/. ATLAS GENIUS Australian indie-rockers tour in support of latest release Inanimate Objects, with guests Skylar Grey and Secret Weapons. Apr 2, doors 6 pm, show 7 pm, Venue (881 Granville). Tix $25 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. ORCHARD PINKISH HILLBILLY SOUL REVUE Local bluegrass band, with guests Trailerhawk, Cass King and the Next Right Thing, and Eddy D & the Sex Bombs, Apr 2, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings). Tix $10 (plus service charges and fees), info www.facebook.com/ events/578015239020581/. BLACK HEN TRAVELLING ROADSHOW REVUE Night of songs, stories, and downhome music by Steve Dawson, Roxanne Potvin, Alvin Youngblood Hart, and Russell DeCarle. Apr 2, 8 pm, BlueShore Financial Centre for the Performing Arts (2055 Purcell Way). Info www.capilanou. ca/blueshorefinancialcentre/15-BlackHen-Revue/. KILLSWITCH ENGAGE American metalcore band plays tunes from new album Incarnate, with guests Memphis May
APRIL 6 ADAM
Fire and 36 Crazyfists. Apr 3, doors 6 pm, Vogue Theatre (918 Granville). Tix $46 (plus service charge) at www.ticketfly.com/.
FATHER JOHN MISTY Los Angeles folkrock singer-songwriter tours in support of latest release I Love You, Honeybear, with guests Tess & Dave. Apr 5, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 Smithe). Tix $35/25 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. CIARA American R&B singer-songwriter tours in support of latest release Jackie. Apr 5, doors 8 pm, show 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix $32.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. DALANNAH BOWEN BLUES BENEFIT Benefit for long-time local musician, activist, and humanitarian, featuring performances by numerous Vancouver blues artists. Apr 5, doors 6 pm, show 7 pm, Fairview Pub (898 W. Broadway). Minimum donation $15 at the door only, info www.facebook.com/events/ 1706688949547968/1708949859321877/. A TRIBE CALLED RED Canadian electronica-First Nations trio, composed of DJ NDN, Bear Witness, and 2oolman. Apr 6, doors 9 pm, show 10 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix $20 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. GENERATION AXE Hard-rock guitar heroes Steve Vai, Zakk Wylde, Yngwie Malmsteen, Nuno Bettencourt, and Tosin Abasi perform together and separately. Apr 6, doors 6:30 pm, show 7:30 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre (650 Hamilton). Tix $89/65/39 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
don’t miss out! For up-to-the-minute, searchable Music Time Out listings, visit
www.straight.com
G-EAZY American hip-hop artist performs on his When It’s Dark Out Tour. Apr 6, doors 6:30 pm, show 7:30 pm, Pacific Coliseum (Hastings Park, 100 N. Renfrew). Tix $45 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
CLUBS & VENUES ALEXANDER GASTOWN 91 Powell, 778-379-0407. 2DENZEL CURRY Apr 1 2GRAVEZ Apr 9 2ROYCE DA 5’9” Apr 28 2BLACKBIRD BLACKBIRD AND CHAD VALLEY Apr 30 AT THE WALDORF 1489 E. Hastings, 604253-7141. Three separate rooms, including Tiki Room, Tabu, and the Hideaway. Woo Hoo Simpsons Trivia every 3rd Mon., Tank Gyal & guests Thu; three-room party with Vinyl Ritchie, Casual Encounters, and ping pong/arcade games Fri; Tiki Bar Sat. BACKSTAGE LOUNGE Arts Club Theatre, 1585 Johnston, Granville Island, 604-6871354. Vancouver’s only live-music venue on the water, with music nightly. Hot Jazz Jam night on Tue. BILTMORE CABARET 2755 Prince Edward, 604-676-0541. 2RA RA RIOT Mar 31 2SOPHIA DANAI Apr 1 2GOLDROOM Apr 2 2THE PROVINCIAL ARCHIVE Apr 15 2BEND SINISTER AND BOREAL SONS Apr 22 2THE BIG PINK Apr 25 2WILD NOTHING Apr 26 2BLEACHED Apr 28 2AIDAN KNIGHT Apr 29 BIMINI PUBLIC HOUSE 2010 W. 4th, 604733-7116. Twenty-four taps of rotating and interesting craft beers. Pub trivia Mon; beer club Tue; Wing Wed; dance party Fri-Sat; happy hour 3-6 pm.
COBALT 917 Main, 778-918-3671. 2FREAK HEAT WAVES Mar 30 2LITTLE GREEN CARS Mar 31 2PRINCE RAMA Apr 2 2BANE Apr 5 2MATTHEW LOGAN VASQUEZ Apr 9 2MODERN SPACE Apr 15 2FAT WHITE FAMILY Apr 23 2DAY WAVE Apr 30 COMMODORE BALLROOM 868 Granville, 604-739-4550. 2WOLFMOTHER Apr 1 2THE DECIBEL MAGAZINE TOUR 2016 Apr 2 2CIARA Apr 5 2MIIKE SNOW Apr 9 2THE ARCS Apr 11 2GARY CLARK JR. Apr 12 2SPIRIT OF THE WEST Apr 14 2COLLECTIVE SOUL Apr 17 2ST. GERMAIN Apr 18 2COURTNEY BARNETT Apr 19 2LUSH Apr 21 2ADAM CAROLLA Apr 22 2YELAWOLF WITH FEFE Apr 23 2ZHU Apr 28 2YEARS & YEARS Apr 29 2THE AGE OF ELECTRIC Apr 30 DOOLIN’S IRISH PUB 654 Nelson, 604605-4343. Live music Sun-Thu, with acoustic soloist or duo Sun-Wed and live band Thu DJ Fri-Sat. FORTUNE SOUND CLUB 147 E. Pender, 604-569-1758. 2ROAD TO WSSF SKIITOUR Apr 1 2INPOWER SHOWCASE FUNDRAISER Apr 1 2CULLEN OMORI Apr 2 2OPERATORS Apr 5 2A TRIBE CALLED RED Apr 6 2BILAL Apr 12 2LAPSLEY Apr 26 FOX CABARET 2321 Main. 2MU “II” ALBUM RELEASE Mar 31 2ELEPHANT REVIVAL Apr 7 2ROCOCODE Apr 8 2RAPP BATTLEZ WEZT COAZT Apr 16 2JASON COLLETT Apr 26 FRANKIE’S 765 Beatty, 778-727-0337. Coastal Jazz presents live jazz and blues throughout the weekend (Thu-Sun). FUNKY WINKER BEANS 37 W. Hastings, 604-764-7865. 2SCARYOKE WITH WENDY 13 Apr 1 2SMASH ALLEY, MOTORAMA, TRAILER TRASH HERO & THE BEER BANDITOS, MG GRAVEYARD Apr 2 2ZUCKUSS, VACUUS, TERRREFY Apr 8 2REDS, OBSCENE BEING, AK-747’S, BEAVERETTE Apr 9 288 MILE TRIP, MAMMOTH GROVE, WISER FOOL Apr 16 HARD ROCK CASINO VANCOUVER 2080 United Blvd., 604-523-6888. 2TONY ORLANDO Apr 9 2GEORGE THOROGOOD Apr 21 2JOE SATRIANI Apr 24 THE IMPERIAL 319 Main, 604-868-0494. 2POLICA Mar 30 2STOP THE PIPELINES. START THE MUSIC Apr 1 2QUANTIC Apr 9 2AURORA Apr 10 2PETE YORN Apr 11 2THE STORY SO FAR Apr 18 2SLOAN Apr 20 2MAKE A DATE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE WITH ONE GIRL CAN Apr 21 2JORDAN KLASSEN Apr 27 2TORTOISE Apr 28 2BOMBINO Apr 30 IVANHOE PUB 1038 Main, 604-608-1444. Pub with live bands on weekends and open jam night Sun from 4 to 8 pm. Open at 9 am with breakfast and daily food specials. No cover. 2BLIND PIGEON Apr 1 LAMPLIGHTER PUBLIC HOUSE 92 Water, 604-687-4424. Pub trivia with Nice Guys Inc. Tue; bourbon and bingo Wed; Rocksteady with DJs Arems, Hoppa & Rexx Thu; FKYA DJs Fri; DJ Antonia & Friends Sat. LIBRARY SQUARE PUBLIC HOUSE 300 W. Georgia, 604-633-9644. Free pinball Wed, Show Me Love ‘90s party Fri; Saturday Night Special dance party Sat. Canucks and Whitecaps pregame. MEDIA CLUB 695 Cambie, 604-6082871. 2KATRINA KADOSKI Apr 18 2THE SUBWAYS Apr 26 2STRIKER Apr 30 ORPHEUM THEATRE 601 Smithe, 604665-3050. 2FATHER JOHN MISTY Apr 5 2CHICK COREA AND BELA FLECK Apr 22 2RAFFI Apr 23 2JAMES BAY Apr 27 2ANDREW BIRD May 21 2FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS Jun 23
QUEEN ELIZABETH THEATRE 650 Hamilton, 604-665-3050. 2GENERATION AXE Apr 6 2TWENTY ONE PILOTS Apr 10 2RAIN Apr 20 2WOODY WOODMANSEY’S HOLY HOLY May 2 2PAUL SIMON May 26 2LAMB OF GOD Jun 1 2JOE JACKSON Jun 24 2MS. LAURYN HILL Jun 26 2SARAH McLACHLAN Jun 27 2TEDESCHI TRUCKS BAND Jun 28 2CASE/LANG/VEIRS Jun 29 2BRIT FLOYD Jul 16 2IL DIVO Nov 6 REPUBLIC 958 Granville, 604-669-3214. House, hip-hop, EDM, chart, and reggae. Open nightly from 10 pm to 3 am. RICKSHAW THEATRE 254 E. Hastings, 604-681-8915. 2DIARRHEA PLANET Apr 1 2ORCHARD PINKISH HILLBILLY SOUL REVUE Apr 2 2LA FIN ABSOLUTE DU MONDE Apr 7 2HIVES FOR HUMANITY BENEFIT CONCERT Apr 8 2MODIFIED GHOST FESTIVAL 2016 Apr 9 2HAYSEED DIXIE Apr 16 2SPACE JUNK Apr 23 2JOHNNY DE COURCY Apr 29 2THE FOOD Apr 30 RIVER ROCK SHOW THEATRE 8811 River Rd., Richmond, 604-247-8900. 2THE NYLONS Apr 9 2DIANA ROSS Jun 30 ROGERS ARENA 800 Griffiths Way, 604899-7400. 2ELLIE GOULDING Apr 1 2IRON MAIDEN Apr 10 2PAUL McCARTNEY Apr 19 2RIHANNA Apr 23 2THE WHO May 13 2SELENA GOMEZ May 14 2HEDLEY May 20 2CITY AND COLOUR Jun 3 2JAMES TAYLOR AND HIS ALL-STAR BAND Jun 11 2DIXIE CHICKS Jul 7 2ADELE Jul 20 2DEMI LOVATO AND NICK JONAS Aug 24 THE ROXY 932 Granville, 604-331-7999. House band Tattoo Alibi Sat & Mon; country band Locked & Loaded Sun; the Bulge and DJ Joe Pound Tue; Troys ‘R Us Wed-Thu. ST. JAMES HALL 3214 W. 10th, 604-736-3022. 2DAVID FRANCEY Apr 7 2BENEFIT FOR THE ROGUE AND ST. JAMES Apr 8 2THE SMALL GLORIES & JENNY RITTER Apr 9 2JONATHAN BYRD & CORIN RAYMOND Apr 17 VENUE 881 Granville, 604-646-0064. 2THE WILD FEATHERS Mar 31 2ATLAS GENIUS Apr 2 2NIYAZ AND ADHAM SHAIKH Apr 7 2RED FANG Apr 14 2THE FACEPLANTS Apr 15 2FILTER Apr 16 2GIN WIGMORE Apr 26 VOGUE THEATRE 918 Granville, 604569-1144. 2JOANNA NEWSOM Mar 30 2YUNG LEAN Mar 31 2KILLSWITCH ENGAGE Apr 3 2CLIMATE-CHANGE DENIAL: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Apr 5 2TINASHE Apr 10 2SANTIGOLD Apr 11 2HOPSIN Apr 14 2BOYCE AVENUE Apr 15 2BEACH HOUSE Apr 30 WISE HALL 1882 Adanac, 604-254-5858. 2A SPRING FLING WITH MIGHTY MIKE MCGEE & FRIENDS Mar 31 2LONESOME LEASH Apr 3 2DI SOCA FETE Apr 8 2MNGWA AND ZIMBAMOTO Apr 15
OUT OF TOWN 2UPCOMING HIGHLIGHTS WHISTLER WORLD SKI & SNOWBOARD FESTIVAL Annual snowsport celebration includes concerts by A Tribe Called Red, Sumner Brothers, Monster Truck, Railway Prophets, Dirty Radio, Bear Mountain, Mat the Alien, Five Alarm Funk, Chromeo, and Tim Hicks. Apr 8-17, various Whistler venues. Info www.whistler.com/wssf/.
TIME OUT MUSIC LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge. Submit listings online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.
BAILIE
NO COVER
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40 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
LOOK FOR OUR
GETAWAYS
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Doors: 6:30 / Show 7:15 www.foxcabaret.com Tix: Beat Merchant, Zulu, Highlife, Red Cat & Neptoon
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Church aims to redevelop
A
church is embarking on a one-of-a- development partners Ivanhoé Cambridge and kind development in Vancouver’s Westbank Projects Corp. are downsizing the Cambie Corridor. project, which originally included 11 residenIt will be unlike the mostly condo- tial towers, new retail and office spaces, and minium projects along and around the six-kilo- community facilities. metre strip that starts in the north at West 16th Avenue and runs to the Fraser River in the south. THIS MAY BE the last spring for a Vancouver Oakridge Lutheran Church intends to re- community garden in Southeast False Creek. The owner of the property now wants to use develop its site just west of Cambie Street into a the land for a 12-storey condo development. below-market rental building. Together with a development partner, the Called the Olympic Station, the building will have 132 apartments and 172 church is in discussions parking spaces. with the City of VancouAurmon Development ver about the level of afhas filed an application fordability that will be put Carlito Pablo with city hall to rezone the in place. That partner is Catalyst Community Developments Society, 24,160-square-foot site at 371 West 2nd Avenue a nonprofit real-estate developer whose mis- from industrial to residential use. The garden was built in 2014 by the Shifting sion is to create affordable homes. “We see our project as kind of unique…an Growth Garden Society, a charity that acts as oasis in the Cambie Corridor,” Catalyst presi- temporary land manager for properties awaiting dent Robert Brown told the Georgia Straight in development. “We provide an opportunity for those landowners to make some use of their land a phone interview. Oakridge Lutheran Church has been at its before they develop on it by creating a valuable 585 West 41st Avenue location since 1956. In asset to the community,” garden manager Adrick rezoning and development applications with Brock told the Straight in a phone interview. According to Brock, temporary gardens play the city, the partners are seeking permits to construct a six-storey mixed-use building on an important role. “There’s a shortage of urban growing space the 15,770-square-foot lot. The property is across the street from in the city,” he said, “and so we serve that Oakridge Centre, which is up for a major re- function of giving people who might not have growing space an opportunity to plant.” development. Temporary urban farms are also good for The proposed church development will have 46 affordable-housing units on the upper four landowners while they wait for the right time floors, a new church and community space on to develop. A property designated for business the second floor, and retail space at street level. and other uses in Vancouver had a tax rate of “It’s going to be the only below-market rental 1.5 percent in 2015. If it’s classified for recreabuilding in that whole Cambie Corridor area,” tional and nonprofit use like a community garden, the owner pays only 0.5 percent. Brown said. The temporary garden in Southeast False The Canada Line transit system has spurred developments in the Cambie Corridor, which is Creek will have a spring opening on Sunday bordered by Oak Street to the west and Ontario (April 3). Shift ing Growth has readied compost for tillStreet to the east. In 2011, city council approved the Cambie ers of the 222 garden beds on the site. Figaro’s Corridor Plan to guide growth. As of October Garden will sell seeds, bulbs, and starts. Despite not knowing how long the garden 2015, the city had approved 31 rezoning applications in the area, including the one for will be around, Brock said: “We plan on running the garden as long as we can.” Oakridge Centre. Meanwhile, an open house about Aurmon These projects will produce 6,950 new housDevelopment’s Olympic Station project will be ing units, mostly condos. The Oakridge Centre redevelopment in- held on April 6 at the Creekside Community cludes 290 units of social housing. However, Centre (1 Athletes Way). -
Real Estate
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42 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
CAREERS & EMPLOYMENT EMPLOYMENT
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redhotdateline.com 18+ MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 45
savage love
I
was honoured to speak at JCCSF— Jewish Community Center of San Francisco—last week as a part of their Uninhibited: About Sex lecture series. The audience submitted questions on cards, which were ably put to me by Jourdan Abel, who was wearing a wonderful uterusthemed sweater. (Check out my Instagram account—@dansavage—to see Abel’s sweater!) Here are some of the questions submitted by the uninhibited JCCSF audience that Abel and I didn’t manage to get to during our conversation.
I had the best sex of my life with
my ex. He fucked me hard, had a huge cock, and made me eat his come with a spoon. I loved it. Needless to say, we were incompatible in other ways. My current BF is vanilla. Very. Vanilla. When I masturbate, I think about my ex and can’t help but wish my current guy would make me slurp his come up from a utensil. We are very compatible in other (nonsex) ways. Am I doomed to fantasize about my ex? You are—unless you open up to your current BF about what’s missing in your sex life and/or get his permission to get your hard-fucking/ spoon-feeding needs met elsewhere.
How do you
combat homophobic remarks in a culture that condones and promotes homophobic tendencies? You combat homophobia—and misogyny, its big sister—one terrified middle-schooler at a time. Bearing in mind, of course, that “terrified middle-schooler” is a state of mind, not an age bracket.
> BY DAN SAVAGE
Got any advice for a bi girl, What do you do when you can’t
formerly submissive, who wants to make your partner come? start dominating men? Me? I hand him back his dick and Move to San Francisco—oh, go get myself some ice cream—but wait. You’re already in San Francis- you shouldn’t do what I do when you co. Leave the house—get involved can’t make your partner come. Here’s in local kink orgs, if you aren’t al- what you should do: Keep trying, ask ready involved, check out local sex- your partner what they need, and positive events (bawdystorytelling. encourage them, if need be, to “fincom is a great place to start), and ish themselves off ” (without pouting, let people know what you’re look- without laying a guilt trip on them ing for. There’s no shortage of sub- about how they’ve made you feel inmissive guys in the Bay Area, and adequate, and without treating them no shortage of dominant women like they’re broken). Cheerfully offer up for mentoring women who are to hold ’em or play with their tits or curious about topping. eat their ass while they finish themselves off—or, hell, offer to go get ’em In gay male relationships, what ice cream. Whatever helps! can you say about the psychological boundary between being alpha in the Porn is so accessible today. How has it affected society? world and beta in bed? The boundary between Alpha in World/Beta in Bed is pretty fucking porous—it’s not studded with guard towers, barbed wire, and death strips, à la Berlin Wall. (Google it, kids.) That boundary only exists in our heads. And once we get that fact through our thick heads, not only do we discover that the alpha/beta boundary is easily crossed, we quickly learn that crossing it repeatedly—brutally and joyfully violating it at will—is a total blast.
Is Savage your real last name? It’s mine, too! My mother kept her maiden name, I took her name, and she’s a sex therapist! We’re both huge fans. Could you say hi to Dr. Linda Savage? She’ll die! Hi, Dr. Linda Savage! Please don’t die.
One positive effect (among many): Porn’s wider accessibility forced us to stop pretending there’s one kind of sex—heterosexual, manon-top—that absolutely everyone is interested in. Thanks to the Interwebs, we can track what people are actually searching for (it’s not all hetero), where they’re searching for it (a shout-out to the great state of Utah, which has the highest porn consumption rates per capita in the nation!), and how long they’re lingering over it (long enough to fi nish themselves off ). One negative effect (among many): The ubiquity of porn coupled with the general lousiness of sex education—in the United States and Canada—has resulted in porn doing something it isn’t designed to do and consequently does not do well. And that would be, of course, educating
young people about sex. If we don’t want porn doing that, and we don’t, we need to create comprehensive sex-ed programs that cover everything—hetero sex, queer sex, partnered sex, solo sex, gender identity, consent, kinks, and how to be a thoughtful, informed, and critical consumer of porn.
What is the one thing that con-
cerns you most about the current political climate/election cycle?
What is the etiquette when it comes to social media and open relationships? It all depends on the preferences of the couple/throuple/quad/squad in question. If a particular couple, et cetera, want to maintain the appearance of being monogamous, if they want to avoid stigma, judgment, freaked-out parents, et cetera, then they’re not going to want evidence of their open relationship popping up all over Facebook and/ or Instagram. If there’s internal disagreement in a particular couple/ throuple/quad/squad about keeping things quiet on social media, not outing the person(s) who wants to keep things discreet may be the price of admission their other partners have to pay.
Donald Trump getting the Republican nomination. I’m not at all concerned about the potential destruction/implosion of the GOP— those fuckers have it coming—but with the likelihood of political violence. I’m concerned that black and brown people—Mexicans, Muslims, African Americans—will be subjected to more political/social/eco- What was your favourite asnomic violence than they already pect of the orgy held in honour of are. People will die as a direct result your 50th birthday? of Trump getting the GOP nominaThe fact that I wasn’t invited. tion. This is a terrifying moment. #NotAnOrgyFan What kind of sexual fluid or act would you name after Donald Uninhibited: About Sex continues Trump? at the JCCSF through the end of May. Upcoming speakers and events Trump, as I pointed out in a pre- include Esther Perel, Seth Stephensvious column, already has an Davidowitz, Nicole Prause, Jules alternate/more accurate meaning. Howard, fi lms, poetry readings, and There is no authority higher than live musical performances. For a full the Oxford English Dictionary, schedule of events, visit www.jccsf. and here’s what you’ll find under org/arts-ideas/uninhibited/. trump at oed.com: “in reference to a sound like a trumpet…the act On the Lovecast, Dan chats with of breaking wind audibly”. So re- power poly kinkster Allena Gabosch member, kids, when you see Don- on poly complications: savagelove ald Trump standing in front of a cast.com . Email: mail@savagelove. microphone… Trump isn’t talking. net. Follow Dan on Twitter at www. twitter.com/fakeddansavage/. He’s trumping.
The Georgia Straight Confessions, an outlet for submitting revelations about your private lives—or for the voyeurs among us who want to read what other people have disclosed.
Scan to confess Real life I truly, deeply miss life before the Internet.
So annoying Nose hairs. Fuckin’ hate’m. Can’t use a trimmer as they give me ingrown hairs which hurt like a motherfucker so I have to pluck them out with tweezers. I do know nose hairs serve a purpose to your body but gosh are they annoying! Ear hair too! Christ!
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www.wildliferescue.ca 46 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016
I am amazed by people who have a good job, a loving partner, kids, a car, and property. How is it that folks can achieve such greatness when I can’t even attain a single thing on this list?
To: The girl at the bar Friday night I’m sorry I went to go find my friends and didn’t come back...the reason I didn’t come back was because you seemed like a really nice girl, I didn’t want to stay because I’m the type to sleep with a girl then leave at 6 am and I just couldn’t do that to you. I’m sorry if I offended you but you deserve better than that.
Visit
to post a Confession
Providing for the care and rehabilitation of injured, orphaned, and pollution damaged wildlife
straight stars March 31 to April 6, 2016
M
arch ends and April begins on a fired-up note thanks to Mercury and Uranus in Aries. Consider this planetary pairing as a key in the ignition. The month ahead has plenty more planetary triggers. Uranus aligned with Eris, the goddess of discord, is one of the main astrological explanations for the amped-up volatility. Off and on, the two will continue to stay hot and bothered through the start of 2018. They aren’t all bad, though. When passion combined with forward thinking is well directed, faster progress results. The weekend can be as productive or as social as you make it. Monday’s back-to-work runs best when you ease your way along or opt for creative rather than exacting projects. While go with the flow is also appropriate for Tuesday, the sun/ Saturn trine at day’s start brings something more substantial to go on. Also launching the day, Venus leaves Pisces for three-plus weeks in Aries, putting desire into play in some fresh and dynamic way. Let’s make love; let’s make money; let’s not make war! On Tuesday afternoon, Mercury enters Taurus. Something of a tempering influence, this transit helps us to pace ourselves a little slower/ better, to evaluate with less rashness and more thought. Having said that, Mercury and Venus say there’s good value in action. Wednesday could dish up a head start on Thursday’s super new moon in Aries. Triggered by Saturn (trine),
Pluto (square), and Uranus (conjunct), this new moon holds particularly rejuvenating, all-systems-go activation energy. As such, it’s an auspicious launch-it/springboard time. All fresh starts carry an extra-vibrant life force.
ﺎ
ARIES
March 20–April 20
You’re quick on the uptake Thursday. Mercury/Uranus’s cut-to-the-chase or out-of-the-blue sets plenty into motion. It’s all good/ all go for the weekend. Monday, you can lose focus or momentum, but Tuesday through next Saturday you’re sharp and on a great perk-itup. Venus into Aries makes you look, sound, and feel good/better. Express yourself! Passion is your best asset.
ﺏ
TAURUS
April 20–May 21
A revelation, insight, or surprise find could get you off to the races. Don’t overact or jump to conclusions, though. The weekend is great for a test drive, observing a special occasion, talking it through, and exploring better options. Venus into Aries and Mercury into Taurus on Tuesday put a fresh spin on it for you. Thursday onward, it’s go time!
ﺐ
GEMINI
May 21–June 21
Watch for news or fresh opportunity. An introduction, surprise conversation, meet-up, or fi rst try could be the start of something major. Friday through Sunday, right time, right place stays on ready dial-up.
> BY ROSE MARCUS
Monday/Tuesday, allow or ease your way into it, rather than force or push. Wednesday through Saturday, the new moon and sun/Uranus are on rev it up.
ﺑ
CANCER
June 21–July 22
Whether you decide to go for a little or a lot, now through this next week is an ideal time to reinvent. A new career track or project shows good promise. When in doubt, gather more facts or opinion. Monday/Tuesday, do what comes most readily. Next Wednesday through Saturday are hot-wired. Watch for news or an announcement, or for someone to surprise or push you.
ﺒ
LEO
July 22–August 23
Thursday/Friday can trigger or introduce it; next Thursday through Saturday can get it up and rolling or dish up something altogether new. The next week presents a window of opportunity, so by all means go where the heart leads. Despite the turbulence in the world, your stars are in good shape for travel. They’re also right for risk-taking. Get it while it’s hot!
ﺓ
VIRGO
August 23–September 23
Over this next week, your fighting spirit or your passion hits full steam ahead. Watch for someone or something new to fast-track you, especially Thursday and mid next week. Venus and the Aries new moon can dish up a new money-
maker, lover, or obsession. When ahead. A hot new love, new project, it’s hot, it’s hot. No doubt about that! or initiative is off to a great start. Next Thursday/Friday are your best CAPRICORN for sealing the deal.
ﺔ
LIBRA
September 23–October 23
A fresh wave of motivation, interest, product, or passion can overtake you now. Don’t let fear or doubt override what you know in your heart and mind as right and true for you. If you are uncertain, look to Venus into Aries, starting Tuesday, and next Thursday’s new moon to put more fuel in the tank. Mercury into Taurus refortifies your evaluation process.
ﺕ
SCORPIO
October 23–November 22
ﺊ
December 21–January 20
The stars keep major action centred on home, family, real estate, and security matters. A new address or personal-life situation can completely consume you. You could get on the move faster than you have planned or feel comfortable with. Whether by choice or by force, reinvention is well timed. Be a risk-taker.
ﺋ
AQUARIUS
January 20–February 18
Now is the time: mobilize, launch, act, get to the gym, et cetera. Try a new twist on an old favourite or go for something entirely fresh. Watch for an idea, trend, friend, agent, or news to burst onto the scene and/or to springboard you someplace good. On the spot is your best play. Let instinct and impulse take the lead.
To the plus, Thursday/ Friday can free you up, get you over the hump, provide an alternate solution or a piece of useful information. On the other hand, Mercury/Uranus could see you on an unexpected scramble or meltdown. Folks can be PISCES impatient and demanding. Saturday February 18–March 20 through Tuesday, it’s coming along. You have more going for Wednesday onward, the new moon you than you realize. Thanks to Merfires it up on and off the job. cury/Uranus and next week’s super SAGITTARIUS new moon, you’ll tap from a rich inNovember 22–December 21 ner wellspring. Venus in Pisces to next Blaze a trail; you are on Tuesday keeps potential, opportunity, fire now! Mercury, Uranus, and next and creativity well ignited. Monday Thursday’s super new moon provide can be a soft start, but the rest of the you with high-octane fuel. Your week is prime for action. creativity, intuition, and ingenuity demonstrate your special brand Book a reading or sign up for Rose’s of genius. Outside of Monday, the free monthly newsletter: www.rose next 10 days are great for full steam marcus.com/astrolink/.
ﺌ
ﺖ
> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < TALKED MUSIC ON THE 99 B-LINE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 28, 2016 WHERE: 99 B-Line Eastbound We talked about singing and playing music, and about OpenMicVancouver... I had to take my stop too soon, and wanted to connect with you. We seem to have a lot in common, especially our passion for song. It would be great to see you again, go for a coffee, or better yet, make some beautiful music together!
TAVERN AT THE NEW OXFORD
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 26, 2016 WHERE: Tavern at The New Oxford I asked you to come over to my friend's but unfortunately I was pretty drunk and pretty much was talking poppy cock. I thought you were nice Courtney. The Irish guy. Hit me back just to chat your biggest fan, this is Stan.
SKYTRAIN FACEPALM
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 25, 2016 WHERE: Lougheed
You asked me directions on how to get to the Seabus and I told you two different ways you could take. The train you ended up taking was the extra 5 min ride but no transfers. As you were getting on the train we both looked at each other smiled and waved goodbye. Anyway I really should have continued a conversation with you and asked for your number because you have the most beautiful blue eyes and amazing smile! If for some cosmic luck of a chance you see this I would like nothing more than to take you out to dinner.
SEASONS
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 25, 2016 WHERE: Pacific Coliseum Just before Porter Robinson you sat with me. We introduced each other and talked a bit but you left too soon. Thanks Sam, that made my night.
BEE TATTOO
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 24, 2016 WHERE: A Bus on Dundas St. We sat across from one another on a bus travelling up Dundas St. You had piercing blue eyes and a bee tattoo on your right ankle. We both had headphones in. I caught your gaze, but I was too shy to just say, “hello.” So, hello. Would you like to go for coffee sometime?
BRASH BABE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 24, 2016 WHERE: Uncle Abe’s on Main Street You: wearing a black dress with a red shirt tied around your waist sitting on the couch with your friends. Me: some poor sap sitting at the bar trying to work up the nerve to come talk to you. I wanted to say hi but found your confidence intimidating. Throughout the night I observed you taking shots, talking to strangers and sit by yourself while your friends were smoking all without any discomfort.
TRAVIS THE BOXER RACE-CAR DRIVER
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 26, 2016 WHERE: Alleyway, Powell St. Travis. You knew something was wrong before I chose to admit it to myself. You said you “were ESP”. You made me smile lots. You were funny in your white hat and in your humour. My dog and I waited for you on the bench, like promised, but I couldn’t wait much longer. I don’t like waiting. You had said yourself that I had done enough of that. You race cars and you win street fights. “I mean, wouldn’t you like to make 600 dollars in 93 seconds flat?” Yes Travis, of course I would. Hence the bandage on your nose. Oh Travis. Some people never come back from the liquor store.
FERGIES CAFE IN SQUAMISH
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 25, 2016 WHERE: Fergies Cafe, Squamish I was eating brunch with my friend on the patio of the cafe. You arrived after me. You are tall and handsome with a facial piercing. Would have liked to say hi but we were both preoccupied. I’m pretty sure you saw me too.
CHARLIE WESLEY AT THE CAMBIE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 22, 2016 WHERE: The Cambie
I talked to you for a bit but you left, before I could ask you if you were leaving.
TO THE SMALL PERSON GIRL AT REPUBLIC
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 21, 2016 WHERE: Republic
HI, I should have talked to you and got your number. I like you. Me; tallish and skinny. Maybe I’ll see you again!
ANDY LIVINGSTONE DOG PARKPRETTY IN PINK
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CHIVALROUS CHARMER @ RENEGADE STUDIOS
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 22, 2016 WHERE: Andy Livingstone Dog Park
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 21, 2016 WHERE: Renegade Studios
I was working, and asked you about your dog, mistaking him for a Rhodesian Ridgeback. I lingered, part to make sure the guy on the bike wasn’t bothering you, and part to surreptitiously check you out. You were lovely, wearing a pink shirt! As I drove away we locked gazes and you waved at me. Want to walk your dog? I know a few great places, as you might imagine.
Me: Black toque, green eyes w/large glasses. We were both walking up to the entry door and you swept in and held the door open for me with a captivating smile and spellbinding eyes... just wanted to let you know your chivalry turned me on immediately. Tell me how I can return the favour!
PRETTY BOY IN A PORSCHE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 22, 2016 WHERE: West 6th and Oak Street
ATTRACTIVE BRUNETTE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 18, 2016 WHERE: Dental Conference
I was in a cab with my girlfriend, & you were driving beside in a silver Porsche with your buddy. You pointed to your phone but by the time the cab driver slowed down so I could give you my number, you turned off 6th. I hope you see this so I don’t miss the chance to see you again.
We met at the dental conference towards the end of day on Friday and discussed your past work in sales and your recent job as a waitress. I gave you my business cards, but someone from your team came to ask you to return to the booth before I had a chance to ask for your contact details. I would like to continue our conversation.
ST. PATRICK’S DAY AT DOOLIN’S
CHEF AT DOOLINS ST. PATRICK’S DAY
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 17, 2016 WHERE: Doolin’s on Granville
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 17, 2016 WHERE: Doolins
We had drinks together for St. Patrick’s day at Doolin’s pub. We both got pretty drunk and I don’t think either of us got each other’s information before the night was done. It would be nice to chat over non-alcoholic drinks one day.
You pretended to be Irish but turns out you are part Dutch and a half dozen other nationalities. I thought there was a connection but didn’t get your number and your group was gone when I got back. Would like to take you out some time and see if there’s more.
SHY IN THE ELEVATOR..
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 21, 2016 WHERE: The Exchange
I am outgoing in real life but for some reason whenever I see u in the elevator I get really shy. You: handsome, Asian guy with a cute mole above your lip, and I think u drive a black Audi. Me: petite and attractive Asian girl with a secret wild side ;) We both live in the exchange... coincidence?? ;) Next time you see me in the elevator you should make the first move. I’ll make the next five...
BLUETS AT PULPFICTION
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 20, 2016 WHERE: Pulpfiction on Main I admired your blue hair. You recommended Maggie Nelson’s poetry. Now I’m blue that I didn’t ask you out for a coffee. Shall we?
CUTE WITH A COFFEE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 20, 2016 WHERE: Starbucks
We were waiting in line at Starbucks, you order a white mocha. It looked like you just finished yoga. I tried to catch your attention, but you were looking at your phone. I smiled at you at the sugar station. I would love to see your dazzling smile again. Coffee’s on me ;)
WAS IT REALLY A SIGN?
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 19, 2016 WHERE: Granville Station We locked eyes and smiled at each other as we past ways in the empty station. You licked your fingers saying mmmmm as you walked by so I had to take a second look. Girl, you are some fine looking candy!
WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?!
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DAN THE MCD MAN
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 14, 2016 WHERE: Yaletown Starbucks
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: FEBRUARY 25, 2016 WHERE: The Boxcar
We met at a coffee shop in Yaletown. It felt like we had an immediate connection. U were funny and tall with an irresistible boyish charm. Me; wise, mature and curious to know more. What happened to you?! We chatted a few times but now you seem cold and distant. Is everything ok? I hope I didn’t come on too strong but when I see something I want, I throw caution to the wind. Call me ;)
Shared some food on a whim this wild Thursday and then had some ciderswhere did you go?
YOUNG FATHERS
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 19, 2016 WHERE: Fortune
You: tall blonde with glasses. Me: short haired beardo. We stood next to each other, made eye contact, and smiled. At one point during the set we held hands. Never made that kind of connection before, hopefully we can meet for coffee ?
EATERY EATER
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 16, 2016 WHERE: The Eatery on Broadway We made eye contact as I was leaving. I made a show of how my white shoes were glowing under the black light. I saw you were looking at me through the window as I was walking away; I should have gone back and asked for your number. Nice baseball tee, maybe we can play some hardball this summer
TO THE TALL, SENSITIVENOSED CONSTRUCTION WORKER
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 18, 2016 WHERE: Cambie & Marine Walking down the sidewalk, I accidentally drifted into your personal space and you said I smelled good. Like a dumbass I replied that I needed a shower. You wished me good day and we parted ways. I should have looked you in the eye and smiled and told you I was available for future sniff tests. D’oh.
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 16, 2016 WHERE: 136 Brentwood
I saw you today for the first time again in a while. I was sitting at the back of the bus when you boarded and sat a seat ahead of me. I still think you’re cute, although you’re probably 5 years younger than me. I admit that I’m not interested in anything other than a physical relationship at the moment, but I don’t discount the possibility of more and I’d definitely be GGG. You: Brown hair, brown eyes. Me: Black hair, brown eyes.
HUSKY & CUTE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 18, 2015 WHERE: English Bay
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you: reading your book (I’d buy you an iPad... just sayin’) on the grass at English Bay. What caught my eye: your little red speedo, your cute yummy ass and your “mind-your-own-business-attitude”. Me: walking my dogs back and forth just to take a closer look at you. I’m pretty sure you noticed me. Will I see you this summer? You don't look local, but I think I have seen you around the village. Will you need someone to rub tanning lotion on your back? That could be me.
GIRL ON TRAIN READING A BOOK
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 14, 2016 WHERE: Commercial Broadway I sat across from you, you were reading a book I think you noticed me noticing you... then you got off at Broadway. I’ve never done this - but I’d like to see you again.
MÉDECINS SANS FRONTIÈRES CHARMER
VINYASA CUTIE
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BUS CRUSH!
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 17, 2016 WHERE: Karma Teachers
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: MARCH 11, 2016 WHERE: Davie Street by Pomme
We practiced next to each other at last week’s Thursday 6:30 class, flirted, and then made a plan to do the same class again next week... Wish I had seen you today! Let’s try again? And maybe beers after? Been thinking about you all week :)
Winnie, sadly the rain must have found you on Davie Street and drove you away, before I could wander back to talk with you...Uganda, Zimbabwe, MSF and Geoffrey Oryema. I wonder what else we could talk about? Was a pleasure meeting you :)... M.
Did you see someone? Go to straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _ MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 47
48 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT MARCH 31 – APRIL 7 / 2016