JULY 18 - 25 / 2019 | FREE Volume 53 | Number 2687
SILICON VALLEY
Tech giants go north
EPIC TIME TRAVEL
Aerial dancers cross mountains and seas
MIGRANT ARRESTS VPD defends its record
Folk Fest Larkin Poe’s Rebecca and Megan Lovell will bring their distinctive southern sounds to Jericho Beach Park; plus, Sam Roberts, Desirée Dawson, Aerialists, and the Hamiltones
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CONTENTS
July 18-25 / 2019
10 COVER
Larkin Poe will be part of the 42nd annual Vancouver Folk Music Festival at Jericho Beach Park. By Alexander Varty Cover photo by Robby Klein
7
TECHNOLOGY
Numerous Silicon Valley companies are opening new offices in Vancouver. Here’s why. By Kate Wilson
15 ARTS
THE DUELING PIANOS
The Orchid Ensemble, Aeriosa Dance, and Chimerik collaborate on a journey into Chinese mythology. By Alexander Varty
19 MOVIES
Veteran filmmaker Mike Leigh talks fascism, morality, and the history behind his epic new film, Peterloo.
9 :3 0 P M - 1:3 0 A M
By Adrian Mack
20 FOOD
EV E RY F RI DAY & SATU RDAY I N J U LY
Vancouver’s newest Vietnamese eatery serves plantbased dishes without compromising on flavours. By Tammy Kwan
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e Start Here 21 THE BOTTLE 5 CONFESSIONS 17 DANCE 9 HOROSCOPES 20 HOT TICKET 20 I SAW YOU 18 MOVIE REVIEWS 5 NEWS 6 REAL ESTATE 23 SAVAGE LOVE 17 THEATRE
e Online TOP 5
e Listings 17 ARTS 14 MUSIC
T H E PA RQ W I N N E R W I L L REC E I V E A T RI P TO L AS V EG AS TO C O M P ET E AT T H E TO U RN EV E N T O F C H A M P I O N S G R A N D F I N A LS FO R Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly Volume 53 | Number 2687
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4 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JULY 18 – 25 / 2019
AC/DC might play Vancouver on final world tour. Ultra-high-speed rail could work from Vancouver to Portland. Oppenheimer Park campers aren’t real problem, say workers. Richmond RCMP warns of purse and cellphone snatchings.
GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight @GeorgiaStraight
The Georgia Straight is published every Thursday by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. Copies are distributed free every week throughout Vancouver, Burnaby, North and West Vancouver, New Westminster, and Richmond. International Standard Serial Number ISSN 0709-8995. Subscription rates in Canada $182.00/52 issues (includes GST), $92.00/26 issues (includes GST); United States $379.00/52 issues, $205.00/26 issues; foreign $715.00/52 issues, $365.00/26 issues. Contact 604-730-7087 if you wish to distribute free copies of the Georgia Straight at your place of business. Entire contents copyright © 2019 Vancouver Free Press, Best Of Vancouver, Bov And Golden Plates Are Trade-Marks Of Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp. SUBMISSIONS The Straight accepts no responsibility for, and will not necessarily respond to, any submitted materials. All submissions should be addressed to contact@straight.com. Canadian Publications Mail Agreement #40009178, return undeliverable Canadian addresses to The Georgia Straight, 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C, V6J 1W9
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NEWS
VPD discloses its dealings with CBSA
V
by Carlito Pablo
ancouver police made 183 queries to federal immigration authorities during an eight-month period ending May 23, 2019. That’s an average of almost 23 per month, based on a report to the police board chaired by city mayor Kennedy Stewart. According to the police report, queries directed to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) involved undocumented migrants as well as those with legal immigration status. Of the 183 requests for information, 87 percent—or 159 of them—were regarding people who were the subjects of complaints or suspects in police investigations. Thirty-six people were detained under the federal Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) as a result of the queries. For context, the report’s author, Drazen Manojlovic—director of the planning, research, and audit section of the Vancouver Police Department—noted that the VPD arrested about 10,000 people in the same eight-month period. Manojlovic pointed out that queries made to CBSA accounted for 0.1 percent of the total arrests during that time, while the IRPA detentions corresponded to 0.02 percent. “These results support the VPD’s publicly-stated position that enforcing IRPA is not an organizational priority,” Manojlovic wrote. Of the 183 queries, 32 were about persons reported missing and CBSA was contacted as part of efforts to locate them. Manojlovic noted that there was only one case when the VPD got in touch with CBSA about someone who was a victim, witness, or complainant. “In this lone instance, a victim wished to return to her home country and, in concert with her nation’s consulate, the CBSA was contacted to facilitate this process,” Manojlovic related. Manojlovic wrote the report to update the board about the VPD’s access to police services without fear policy, which the board approved in July 2018. The guidelines provide that police are to neither ask for nor dis-
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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. The VPD insists that its access to police services without fear policy is working well, but Sanctuary Health’s Byron Cruz thinks it’s just lulling migrants into complacency.
close the immigration status of a person who seeks help from them. The policy was intended for victims, witnesses, and complainants. Byron Cruz is with Sanctuary Health, a group that helps undocumented migrants access health-care services. Cruz claimed that based on what he and his group are hearing, people without legal immigration status do not trust the police even though the VPD has its access without fear policy. “It just created a false expectation that people were safe,” Cruz told the Georgia Straight in a phone interview. According to Cruz, a common experience is that migrants are asked to produce their passports when they come in contact with the police. “They’re just a nice title, but what happens is totally the opposite,” Cruz said about the policy.
Following the police board’s direction, Manojlovic recalled that the VPD has consulted community organizations about the guidelines. According to Manojlovic, there was a suggestion that the access without fear guidelines should be “expanded to include people who VPD officers are investigating”. However, Manojlovic stated that the VPD views that measure as “detrimental to its policing and public safety mandate”. “While the VPD will assist victims, witnesses, and complainants who are undocumented migrants,” Manojlovic wrote, “the VPD is not agreeable to disassociating with CBSA, particularly when it comes to individuals who are being investigated for an offence.” The report is included in the police board’s agenda for Thursday (July 18). g
ports NEWS OF THE WEEK
IT’S OFFICIAL. After seven years in Whistler, the Ironman Canada triathlon is moving back to its original home, Penticton, in 2020. The final event in Whistler on July 28 includes a 3.8-kilometre swim in Alta Lake, a 180-kilometre bike ride, and a 42.2-kilometre run that finishes near the Whistler Olympic Plaza. The first Ironman event was held in Penticton in
GROUP CLASSES
ASTROLOGY & TAROT
1983. The founder, race director, and architect was Vancouver fitness guru Ron Zalko, who knew it would draw participants from B.C., Alberta, and the United States. It remained in Penticton until 2012 before moving to Whistler. Next year, Ironman athletes will once again experience the joys of Okanagan Lake. Let’s hope they don’t encounter its mythical monster of the deep, Ogopogo. g
Scan to confess 3 summers ago I went to UBC Emerg. and was treated by a student doctor. I was sick with the flu and he was so kind and gentle. He told me I could tell him anything, he would never judge me. I couldn’t. He had no idea the hell I... (con’t @straight.com)
Not Fair I am at a job that’s boys club that I am not a part of. Its hard to explain but the guys play poker together on weeknights and they entertain clients at strip clubs. I have never been invited to play poker or invited to... (con’t @straight.com)
The fear of getting close I’m in the best relationship of my life. My partner is super supporting and kind, but I’m also so terrified to let them get close to me. There’s so much going on right now and I’m still too scared to let them know about it.
Work Crush I like having them. It’s something small to look forward to every day. Yet even though I have no serious intention towards them, it’s always a little sad to find out they have a girlfriend. Oh well. He’s still fun to watch for.
Type A I wish I could be one of those people who wakes up in the morning with energy and likes to get stuff done. I have always been kind of jealous of the go-getter type... (con’t @straight.com)
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Tenant mayor Stewart’s claims don’t quite add up
V
by Charlie Smith
ancouver mayor Kennedy Stewart likes letting voters know that he’s a tenant. It’s part of his political brand. He often says that he came to the city 30 years ago as a young man with a hundred bucks in his pocket. He worked hard, rented apartments, went to school, and made something of himself. It makes him sound like he has a lot in common with the 51 percent of renters in the city. That’s his political base. These voters enabled him to barely win the 2018 election. Stewart played the tenant card earlier this month when he claimed that he couldn’t afford a $1.5-million duplex on the East Side on his mayoral salary. That’s because this would require—in his words—an income over $300,000, as well as a down payment of $300,000. With a fixed-rate mortgage and no down payment, this would cost almost $11,500 in monthly payments, or just over $137,000 per year, which is out of the reach of almost all Vancouver tenants. Stewart’s comment came before he voted in favour of a market-rental development to create 121 new dwellings on Fraser Street. But is he really on par with other tenants? Let’s look at the facts. Stewart is paid a mayoral salary of $174,258, plus an annual supplement of $3,048. He collects $575 per meeting of the TransLink Mayors’ Council or any of its committees. He’s paid $397 per board or committee meeting at Metro Vancouver that lasts less than four hours. He receives $794 per meeting at Metro Vancouver that lasts longer than four hours. Through TransLink and Metro Vancouver, Stewart should easily clear another $10,000 in 2019. Meanwhile, his wife, Jeannette Ashe,
Kennedy Stewart could afford a condo but he remains a tenant by choice.
earned $94,260.29 as a Douglas College professor in the 2017-18 fiscal year, according to the school’s financial statements. This puts the couple’s annual household income in the $280,000 range. Sure, it’s shy of the $300,000 figure that Stewart quoted, but it’s easily enough to afford to buy a condo in many areas of Vancouver. Stewart, 52, even has job security if he loses the 2022 election, unlike members of council who are paid a lot less. That’s because he’s on leave as an associate professor at Simon Fraser University. That’s to say nothing of the approximately $1.2 million he earned as an MP from 2011 to 2018, which comes with pension eligibility when he turns 55. This “renting” mayor of Vancouver is a clever man. But in politics, it’s possible for him to be too clever by half. Especially when it comes to yammering about being a renter and inserting his personal housing choice—he is a voluntary tenant, after all—into discussions about the city’s housing-affordability crisis. g
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HIGH TECH
Silicon Valley is coming to Vancouver
W
by Kate Wilson
hen Amazon announced its expansion into Vancouver in April 2018, an almost imperceptible shift happened in the local tech ecosystem. With the exclusion of Microsoft’s move into the city in 2016 to establish a two-floor, 750-person office, the technology landscape has been dominated by small startups with 50 or fewer employees. Although breakout local successes like Hootsuite, Avigilon, and Slack have made a name for themselves in Silicon Valley, few Bay Area companies and Seattle giants would have considered the locale to be a noteworthy tech hub. Over the past year and a half, that perception has changed. Amazon may have been one of the first to look northward for a new Canadian expansion, locking down a residency in the Canada Post building and bringing 4,000 new technical jobs to the city, but it’s far from the last. In fewer than 12 months, a group of Bay Area businesses has turned to Vancouver to set up new headquarters or hire new employees. These companies range from some of the largest names in Silicon Valley to scrappy up-and-comers. Project-management software service Asana and delivery specialists Postmates are each valued at more than US$1.5 billion, making them bona fide tech unicorns. Both are currently hiring in the city. The $23-billion Lyft, too, is advertising for technical positions in the Lower Mainland. Gmail project-management suite Streak, Bluetooth finding device Tile, HR–management platform Zenefits, data-collection company Segment, virtual-environment creator Parallel
Asana’s new Vancouver team is now hiring in the city, choosing the location for its top talent and highly rated universities.
Domain, and mobile-marketing platform Swrve are just a few of the other Valley businesses now looking for staff in Vancouver. That microtrend is not a coincidence. In the view of Raghwa Gopal, president and CEO of Innovate B.C.—a Crown agency that funds entrepreneurial support programs— the arrival of these Bay Area companies is only the start of the snowball effect. “I think it’s just the beginning,” he tells the Georgia Straight on the line from his downtown office. “Companies tend to form clusters, right? It’s very difficult to do anything until somebody gets started. This will be the starting point. You just get one or
two that make that move, and then you’ll see another three or four, and eventually it just becomes the place to be. Once people see that Lyft is hiring or starting to set up shop over here, or Streak, or Asana, I think a lot more companies will start to feel comfortable about doing that. So we’re in the very early stage, but all of this time while we’re looking at these companies, that’s a great indication that we’re starting to get that attention.” C J PROBER, CEO of Bay Area darling Tile, is inclined to agree. Hailing from Winnipeg, the University of Manitoba and McGill grad made the leap to California at the height of the dotcom boom. After stints at McKinsey, Elec-
tronic Arts, and GoPro, he was recruited to the Tile board before taking over as CEO last September. One of his first moves was to look back at Canada to find the perfect place to open the company’s new headquarters—and to do so, he needed to find the city that could supply the talent for the company’s diverse requirements. Tile’s product helps people find the things that they’ve misplaced, anything from wallet and keys to luggage, headphones, or even pets. By attaching the small square to an item, users are able to locate it using an app on their phone that fires out a Bluetooth signal and connects with the chip. If an item is out of range, the Tile app will call upon its network of
users. As soon as someone running the software comes within range of the lost item, it will automatically send a message to the owner letting them know where it is. As a result, Tile’s finding platform has to deal with about one billion location updates a day—no small feat. To coordinate all its users, the company must maintain a watertight cloud service, a task that requires highly specialized knowledge. And because it primarily sells products from its website, Tile has to operate a seamless direct-to-consumer ecommerce platform. With that variety, the company’s new office required a number of highly trained engineers to grow and maintain its services. “Throughout my career, I’ve had teams in Vancouver, the Toronto area, and Montreal, and I’ve always had really great success building engineering teams, in particular up in Canada,” Prober tells the Georgia Straight from the boardroom of Herschel Supply Co., the Vancouverbased luggage company and Tile partner. “When I joined as CEO in September, one of the first things I told the teams is that we’ll need to grow more quickly, and we’ll need to expand our talent base, so let’s look at Canada as an engineering hub for us.” Prober’s exploration led to a thorough evaluation of Canada’s largest cities. Montreal, Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver were each vetted for what they could offer. In the end, Tile settled in Vancouver because of its rich talent base. The city’s location was a bonus for the company: operating in the same time zone and reachable by a direct two-and-a-halfhour flight, Vancouver is the most see next page
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accessible jump-off point for the Bay Area. Add to that the city’s cultural similarities to West Coast America— think left-leaning progressives with a love of nature—and Prober was confident that setting up a headquarters in this city was the strongest choice. The office was officially announced at the end of May. “Right out [of] the gate, we’re going to hire 20-plus people, but really, the sky’s the limit on how big the team grows here,” Prober says. “We’re continuing to grow our team in the Bay Area too, so it’s not like we’re shifting people—it’s just lifting all boats. We want to build up a new team here. We’ve hired a leader for the office, and he’s already hired a couple of people, so we’re racing to build our pipeline.” Asana, one of the world’s premier project-management tools, saw similar potential in the city. Well known for both its paid and free offerings, the company counts Airbnb, Uber,
Sony, Disney, NASA, and 50,000 others as loyal customers. Currently entering another growth phase—the business is looking to expand from 500 employees to 700 by the end of the year—Asana needed to increase its footprint internationally and found Vancouver to be a perfect fit. “To hit that [hiring] goal, we designed a process to look at different geographies…to really identify what the different spaces were and what was right for us,” Vancouver site lead Niranjan Ravichandran tells the Georgia Straight by phone. “Some of the really salient things that stuck with us for Vancouver was that there’s a really strong market and talent quota. There are such a lot of startups with a strong entrepreneurial spirit. There are also really good schools, and there are lots of engineering graduates from those schools, like SFU, UBC, and BCIT. Those were our primary drivers.” Asana executives made the decision to set up a Vancouver office late last
year, and when the posting came up, Ravichandran jumped at the chance to move to the city. Prior to heading north, the engineer had spent his career in California, first working for LinkedIn on mobile-related projects before joining Asana when its head count was less than 50. Seven years later, he’s enthusiastic to experience the culture that the city has to offer. “I didn’t have any affiliation with Vancouver before moving here,” he says. “I had friends who were from the area, but that’s basically it. So no direct relation. I was excited when this role came up because there were a lot of advantages to having a team move up there to set up the office for success.…It’s a superexciting market, a superexciting opportunity, and that’s why I’m here. I definitely love the city so far—I’ve been here for just a few months, but I’m really liking it.” Asana’s Vancouver team has been established to take advantage of the city’s access to talent. Primarily in development, its employees are dedicated to working on the entire product, including engineering, product management, and design. To help make the transition to the Canadian city seamless, Asana moved three people from its San Francisco office (including Ravichandran) to ensure that the brand remained consistent. Since being here, the Vancouver site lead has noticed a number of Valley businesses setting up shop in the city. “I definitely have seen a few companies, at least, in the vicinity of where we’re located,” he says. “I’m curious to see how this trend continues and how it plays out…I think more Valley companies moving here is exciting because it will help the ecosystem develop. I think, in general, more opportunity is great for engineers—and for anyone in general, it’s better to have more opportunities.” ALTHOUGH RAVICHANDRAN is positive about the effect of Valley companies moving into Vancouver, others in the industry have some
Innovate BC’s Raghwa Gopal believes more Bay Area companies are coming.
reservations. Dominated by startups, the city’s tech industry hosts a deep pool of highly qualified professionals who are paid significantly less than their U.S. counterparts. When large companies arrive with deep pockets, smaller businesses worry that their top talent will be lured away and they will struggle to compete. Concerns, too, have been raised about big tech increasing the unaffordability crisis. After Amazon and Microsoft’s arrival in the Seattle area, for instance, almost 20 percent of the prime office real estate was scooped up by the companies, leaving little for smaller businesses. As more individuals chasing tech jobs moved to the city, traffic became significantly more congested, and as people became better paid, housing and rent costs shot up faster than in any other major American urban centre during the past two years. Seattle’s cost of living is now 24 percent higher than the U.S. average. Innovate B.C.’s Gopal, however, thinks that as more Silicon Valley companies choose Vancouver, the benefits will overcome any issues. In particular, he believes that the
arrival of new businesses will force local companies to pay workers more across the board, helping all tech-sector employees. “[At the moment], there’s a lot of negative talk about the cost of living [in Vancouver], high house prices, stuff like that,” he says. “And if we continue to keep wages at the same scale that they are today, we’ll always have that issue. By some of these companies coming in here and hoping to elevate the earning power a little bit, it will definitely help to close the gap. So it may not sound like it on day one or year one, but overall it definitely has a positive impact. [When] earning power increases, [and the] cost of living doesn’t continue to rise exactly at the same pace, then it closes the gap. Over the years, in the longer term, it think it will be a good thing for the city.” Because the offices being established have fewer than 50 employees each, Gopal believes that poaching shouldn’t be too much of an issue and that Vancouver will not face the same issues currently plaguing Seattle. Instead, he sees the increased call for talent as a huge opportunity for the graduates coming out of the Lower Mainland’s educational establishments. “[We] have some great institutions that continue to produce some pretty high-skilled workers,” he says. “Immigration is another avenue for us to bring high-skilled workers—and this new trial of the PNP [provincial nominee program], where employers can get approval within 14 working days, is helping to get more talent. So I wouldn’t say that there won’t be some poaching. But I think all those benefits outweigh that particular concern.” As the Vancouver ecosystem becomes increasingly attractive to international companies, the tech network will start to shift away from small, homegrown startups to a checkerboard of local and bigbrand businesses. “I think this is going to grow into something really big,” Gopal says. “This is just the starting point.” g
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JULY 18 TO 24, 2019
by Rose Marcus
rom potential or prospect to reality, a completion reached, or an important deadline surpassed, the recent lunar eclipse has cemented the time-hascome moment in some significant way. What is destined to end, to begin, or to change form holds greater-thanaverage potency. Eclipse action will always accelerate the karmic side of relationships and circumstances. What’s next? Through Sunday, the stars move along a fluid track. What is now setting in place will continue to unfold, evolve, and qualify itself in the days, weeks, and months to come. Thursday, Venus/Neptune holds good promise for lovers, dreamers, creators, and rescue missions. The transit is also good for chilling out, but know it is easy to overspend or overindulge. Friday, Mercury retrograde backs out of Leo to revisit Cancer. It’s an appropriate transit to prioritize home and family, to regroup or review, and for feeling the way along to a better comfort zone. Marking the halfway point of the retrograde cycle, Mercury and sun join forces. The day can shed a brighter light on a dilemma, an evaluation process, a money matter, or relationship wants and needs. It can also help you to clarify, to move past resistance (yours or theirs), and to get it better sorted out. The sun in Leo, starting Monday night, boosts confidence levels and opportunity to create more of the good stuff. The week ahead is an active one for news, trendsetting, money, unexpected meet-ups, and people on the go. Building to Thursday, Mars/Jupiter, a take-flight transit, is good for marketing, putting yourself out there, fun-seeking, and for travels of body, mind, or soul.
can evaporate through the weekend. Mercury retrograde exits Leo on Friday, but it will be back mid–next month. While Mercury retrograde in emotional Cancer stirs it up behind the scenes, the sun in Leo, starting late Monday, provides fresh fuel. Mars in Leo keeps the momentum building to Thursday.
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Whether it’s a sense and feel or a reality, as of Thursday you are over the hump and onto a next page. Letting go or taking it on, Venus/Neptune makes it easier to accept/embrace. On a backtrack of Cancer, Mercury retrograde aligns with the sun on Sunday and Venus on Wednesday. Both enhance intuition and your ability to connect, create, enhance, and gain. September 23–October 23
Coming off the eclipse action of the week, you can feel inspired or depleted. Through Sunday, don’t sweat it; aim for ease and simplicity. Mercury retrograde in Cancer, starting Friday, can stir up the emotions or the past. Don’t buy into fear, regret, or worry. Monday’s sun in Leo, Wednesday’s Venus/Mercury, and Thursday’s Mars/ Jupiter are good for a boost in energy, opportunity, pleasure, and profits. October 23–November 22
Go with what comes easiest or is most readily available. There’s no need to force what isn’t coming naturally, especially through the weekend. Mercury’s backtrack into Cancer, starting Friday, is ideal for putting personal needs and family first; for travels of the body, heart, ARIES or mind; and for reconnecting with March 20–April 20 folks you haven’t seen for a while. This week’s lunar eclipse has Sunday through Thursday stokes extaken you over a significant thresh- pectation and anticipation. old. Now that you have a better sense SAGITTARIUS regarding what you are working November 22–December 21 with, you’ll gain better mileage out As of Thursday, the presof creative endeavour and the opportunity at hand. Starting Friday, Mer- sure is off. From here, you’ll gain a cury retrograde in Cancer loans you better feel for how to play it next. a better feel for where to plant your- A conversation, plan, or emotional self and how to play it next. Sunday journey moves along a fluid track through the weekend. Leo month, onward, the getting is good. starting late Monday, and Mars/ TAURUS Jupiter (on a buildup to Thursday) April 20–May 21 brighten your outlook and your Giving in, letting go, or prospects. Pleasure and reward are opening up is easier done through on the increase. the weekend. Venus/Neptune sets an CAPRICORN optimum backdrop for relaxation, December 21–January 20 romance, volunteering, and creativDid the recent lunar eclipse ity. As of Friday, Mercury retrograde backs into Cancer. Over the next hit you hard or put you in stop mode? week, you’ll gain a better feel, a fresh Thursday to Monday, the stars move insight, or greater incentive. Sun- onto an easier, more fluid track. day onward begins an improvement Venus/Neptune can defuse tension curve for connecting, communica- and create opportunity. If you extions, and social and money matters. perience further drain or loss, look to Sunday onward to offer you a reGEMINI prieve, a second chance, and/or to set May 21–June 21 bigger wheels in motion. As of Thursday, the going AQUARIUS gets easier, the rough edges smooth January 20–February 18 out (comparatively speaking). FinThursday/Friday, the work ishing the month and its retrograde tour in the sign of Cancer, Mercury and the working it out move to an retrograde marks a good time to take easier-going track. Even so, there’s a vacation, to regroup, resume, or more to address through the weekget back in touch. Starting Monday, end and the week ahead. Sunday onpleasure, opportunity, and reward ward helps you to do just that. By the are on the upswing. Wednesday to end of next week, you should see a positive trend regarding a conversaFriday keeps you well on the go! tion, relationship, plan, or financial CANCER matter. Good news travels fast.
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—— JULY/AUG 2019 M AY R A CRACING I N G & E&VEVENTS ENTS 20 1 9 —— F R E E A D M I S S I O N | R AC E T I M E S 1 : 5 0 P M
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June 21–July 22
Venus in Cancer in trine to Neptune on Thursday can put you on the receiving end of hope, inspiration, or opportunity. It favours chilling out, taking a vacation, spiritual replenishment, creativity, or romance. Starting Friday, Mercury retrograde on a revisit of Cancer is also good for a regroup. The sun in Leo, starting Monday, and Thursday’s Mars/Jupiter kick it up a notch.
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July 22–August 23
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February 18–March 20
Thursday, Venus/Neptune can inspire hopefulness, creativity, spirituality, romance, or compassion. On the other hand, it can be easy to lose your way or to overindulge. For the weekend, the Pisces moon makes for mostly smooth sailing too. Even so, you’ll feel a stronger pull, a tiger in the tank, or a momentum building from Sunday through next Thursday. g
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JULY 18 – 25 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 9
folk fest
Larkin Poe reflects on southern roots by Alexander Varty
d ETYMOLOGISTS AND genealogists could easily go astray when parsing the origins of Rebecca and Megan Lovell, the sisters behind innovative blues-rock act Larkin Poe. “Love” jumps out of their last name, but if you think their family tree is all sweetness and light and shiny fruit, you’d be way, way off-base. Lovell actually derives from louve, or “shewolf” in French, and that’s a fit description for two young performers whose music has a powerful bite. “Typically, you’d use that word in French to describe someone who is wolfishly bad-tempered,” says the otherwise open and sunny Rebecca Lovell, in a conference call with her sister from their homes in Nashville, Tennessee. “So I think that our name kind of suggests some of the really crazy, manic people in our family tree—the least of which, of course, would be Edgar Allan Poe.” The band, in fact, is named for the sisters’ great-great-great-great-grandfather, a relative of the Baltimore author. The Lovells readily confess to a fascination with the southern-gothic genre, as expressed in Edgar Allan’s eerie poems and short stories. But they’re equally drawn to the mythology of the blues—especially as voiced by the semilegendary preacher and pimp Skip James, whose “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues” they cover on their latest recording, Venom & Faith. As the title of the new disc suggests, they’re proud of where they’re from—but they recognize the dark side that’s also present in their heritage and their region. “We love the juxtaposition of faith and the snake-handling churches up in the mountains, and the fact that people walk among us that live that sort of lifestyle,” Rebecca explains. “That’s one of the reasons that I love southern culture so much—the incompatible ideas that walk side by side. We don’t have to get too specific, but I think it’s fairly apparent, in some terms, as to maybe what we’re referencing. There’s a lot of turmoil and a lot of cognitive dissonance in the way that southerners can sometimes live.” Venom & Faith never gets explicitly political, but maybe it doesn’t have to: the idea of young white southerners finding strength and beauty in black music still packs some of the punch that it did back when Gregg and Duane Allman were inventing southern rock 50 years ago. On a musical level, the record finds the Lovell sisters moving relentlessly forward—as expressed in the unexpected horn section that blossoms out of the ultratrad field holler “Sometimes”, or the postmodern soul drum patterns underpinning “Ain’t Gonna Cry”. ”I think that with our last two records, we’ve at least found the trail,” Megan says, when asked what the future might hold for Larkin Poe. “We may not know where the trail goes, but we’re on it. Certainly, we’ve enjoyed producing ourselves, playing the majority of the instruments on the record, and having the freedom to strip it back and make it sound the way that we envision. Still, we’ve definitely dabbled in a lot of different directions in our career, everything from bluegrass to very hard rock, so who knows what we might mix into the next record? “But whatever we do, we hope that it will always sound like Larkin Poe,” she continues. “We feel that we’ve found our voice in the past couple of years, and no matter what we do, it will always have that stamp of us on it.” Larkin Poe plays the Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s main stage at 8:40 p.m. on Friday (July 19). For more information, visit www. thefestival.bc.ca/.
Performers at the 2019 Vancouver Folk Music Festival include (clockwise from left) blues-rock sister act Larkin Poe; R&B and gospel group the Hamiltones; and singer-songwriter Desirée Dawson, who plays with her eponymous trio.
lot of hate,” 2E relates. “That’s what we’re all about. When you come to a Hamiltones show, it’s all about the experience of having fun. So, more d CAN YOU IMAGINE Mahalia than anything, we just look forward Jackson improvising a soulful ode to bringing a great time to wherever to a young billy goat? No. Could we are.” the Rev. C.L. Franklin have made a viral-video hit out of Drake’s chart- The Hamiltones play the Vancouver Folk topping “Hotline Bling”? No. And Music Festival’s main stage at 9:45 p.m. on could contemporary gospel music’s Sunday (July 21). For more information, visit reigning star, Tasha Cobbs Leonard, www.thefestival.bc.ca/. get away with singing Marvin Gaye’s lascivious “Sexual Healing” within DAWSON CROSSES OVER, the holy confines of a Baptist church? FROM YOGA STUDIO TO EDM Hell, no. But the Hamiltones have done all d THE DEBATE’S BEEN going on these things and more. Beginning as for years: does competition benefit background vocalists for R&B singer the arts? So far, no comprehensive Anthony Hamilton, moving into answer has been found, but Dework with roots legend Ry Cooder, sirée Dawson knows one thing for and now branching out on their sure: CBC Radio’s Searchlight talown, the Hamiltones are blurring ent contest is a competition with a the lines between the secular and the difference, and winning it makes a sacred with the same kind of aplomb difference, too. “I recommend it to every artist as their heroes Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke. They’re a phenomenon I know, because it’s been super, super that could only have been born in the helpful for all that I’m up to right American South, where the African- now,” the local singer-songwriter reAmerican church remains a vital ports in a telephone interview from source of strength and commun- her home. Dawson won the 2016 ediity, but they’re already going global tion of the contest, and since then thanks to their combination of vocal her career has been trending steadily upwards—as shown by the million agility, eff usive humour, and faith. “We don’t necessarily write about Spotify plays her digital single “Hide” salvation or hope,” Tony Lelo ex- has received. “The cool thing about Searchlight plains in a conference call with his bandmates J.Vito and 2E from their is that with a lot of other contests, home state, North Carolina. “But, they kind of own the rights to your you know, through our songs the stuff,” she explains. “But Searchlight message of love is a message of God. was literally, like, a platform, and Our god is a god of love, so when then they were like, ‘Here’s a bunch we sing about love, we’re just sing- of prizes! Here’s how we can support ing about the love that God gives us, you the best! Now go out into the and teaches us how to give to other world and use these things and grow people. We use our music as an av- and be great.’ That’s really the vibe enue to just express love, and the dif- that I got from the whole process. “I also feel like I got a really nice ferent languages of love, and the different situations that you go through connection with a lot of people at CBC, and now my music is constantin and out of love.” And when the three sing about ly playing,” she continues. “I’m very bling, billy goats, and blunts? Well, grateful for that.” Of course, Dawson wouldn’t they’re just having a good time, something the Hamiltones intend to have won the contest if she hadn’t share with this weekend’s Vancouver been able to mobilize the support of her fans, and in that regard she Folk Music Festival crowd. “It’s going to be a 60- to 75-minute, has the benefit of two separate but action-packed show, full of a lot of compatible musical directions: solo, crowd participation and a lot of stuff ukulele-strumming folksinger, and that you can carry home, mentally electro-soul chanteuse with produand spiritually, that is good for the cers such as Pegboard Nerds and soul in a world that’s full of a whole Kicks N Licks. HAMILTONES SING OF GOD’S LOVE, BUT ALSO BILLY GOATS
10 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JULY 18 – 25 / 2019
“For a while, it was a little bit difficult for me to leave my ukulele and voice, that being my main thing. But I ended up releasing stuff with some pretty well-known producers in the EDM world, and the response I was getting back was the same as when I’m playing at a yoga studio, crosslegged on the floor with my ukulele,” the 28-year-old musician and yoga teacher says with a laugh. “I realized that as long as I feel good with it, people will respond to it in a beautiful way. And so genre is something I don’t really attach myself to anymore, because it’s not really the point. “I’m going to mix up whatever I want,” Dawson adds, “because I’m a mix of so many things. And, really, we all are.” The Desirée Dawson Trio plays the Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s Stage 5 at 5:10 p.m. on Friday (July 19). For more information, visit www.thefestival.bc.ca/.
ROBERTS AIMS TO HOLD UP A MIRROR TO HIS TIMES d WE HAVE GOOD news and bad news for fans of the Sam Roberts Band. The Montreal indie rockers will soon complete their long-awaited follow-up to 2016’s TerraForm—but you won’t hear any of it on Saturday (July 20), when Roberts and company will close the second night of the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. On the line from his home in la belle province, Roberts reports that he’s been “toying” with the idea of debuting some of the new songs at Jericho Beach Park, but has chosen to keep them secret for now. “I think I want to wait until the record is done, and then start playing it,” he reasons. “We’ll be playing it enough for the rest of eternity, so we’ll give it its full gestational length.” He’s not above dropping a few clues to the as-yet-untitled record’s contents, however. “Lyrically speaking, the world is all over the map right now, and it’s hard not to want to talk about it. It’s hard not to want to… if not offer an opinion, at least hold up a mirror to the times that we’re living in,” Roberts says. “That’s part of the responsibility of a songwriter or an artist, and at the same time sometimes you have to focus on
relief, and on celebrating the good things in life. So I’m trying to find a balance between those two things on this record. “Like, one song is called ‘Take Me Away’, just for example,” he continues. “It’s a call to be pulled out—to be dragged away, if needs be—from the repetitiveness of daily life. And I don’t mean going to your job; it could be anything, just the bad news hammering us between the eyes all the time, and the way we almost seem to get off on bad news, until it comes to your own front door. I find it very tiring, but it seems to be part of the human experience, to have to deal with the mundaneness of routine and the repetitiveness of information. And one of the ways for me to break out of that is to write about it—and in this case to write about being rescued from it. “That’s one of the beautiful offshoots of being able to write music—being able to write yourself out of your own troubles,” he adds with a laugh. The singer-guitarist also notes that one of the perks of his job is being able to lift others out of theirs, and with that in mind he’s willing to reveal some of what he has in mind for Saturday night. “Every show that we play, I try to in some ways sculpt a bit of a journey: different kinds of energies, different places, different modes of reflection, and just wild abandon,” he explains. “I have a tendency to lean heavily on the wild abandon, ’cause I like seeing people lose that sense of themselves in the midst of a crowd and just join into the energy and turn off that selfconscious, inward-looking eye that governs so much of how we feel and how we interact with the world. “A concert,” he continues, “is one of the best ways of turning that off and just letting yourself go and letting yourself be part of a greater whole. We see the best of the human spirit at concerts, I think—with the odd mishap here or there. But, for the most part, we get to see people at their best, in the throes of communion.” And if predictions for a warm and mostly sunny weekend hold true, Roberts is just fine with that. “People need to sweat,” he observes, “when they’re listening to rock ’n’ roll music.” The Sam Roberts Band plays the Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s main stage at 10 p.m. on Saturday (July 20). For more information, visit www.thefestival.bc.ca/.
THE NORWEGIAN FIDDLE IS AERIALISTS’ SECRET WEAPON d IN MUSIC AS in life, hybridity is everywhere. Still, are there mornings when the members of Aerialists wake up not knowing what kind of band they’re in? “Oh, absolutely!” says fiddler Elise Boeur, taking a break from “staring out at the ocean and watching baby ravens flop around” on Mayne Island. “I think if we had our druthers, we’d probably use about eight hyphens. But, for us, that’s part of the beauty of it. Like, each of us has a really strong connection with a tradition of our own, and this band is sort of the playground where we get to lean on that background and then do whatever we please, really. I honestly think, you know, that one of the simplest ways to describe it would be Celtic rock, but that means so many things to so many people that it isn’t really quite what we’re trying to convey.” It’s telling, perhaps, that the Toronto-based ensemble convened when its core members were all
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MUSIC
Family chaos helped Lucky focus
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by Mike Usinger
amily life changes everything, as Zachary Lucky learned when he had to rethink his world after becoming a dad. For most of his adulthood, the Saskatchewan-born and newly Ontario-based singer-songwriter lived out of a suitcase, initially as a member of alternative-leaning bands, and later as an alt-folk turned sombrecountry solo artist. That nomadic lifestyle was the realization of a dream. From the easygoing love letter to Canada that was “Everywhere a Man Can Be” to the ghostly “South Carolina Murder Ballad”, his last record, 2016’s Everywhere a Man Can Be, was loaded with references to being on the road. It also captures a time when Lucky got word that he was going to be bringing another human being into the world, with “Sell All You Have” chronicling his leaving the Prairies for Orillia to start a new, more domestic chapter in his life. “In the last four-and-a-half years I’ve ventured into the realm of being a father,” Lucky says from his home in Orillia. “It’s been a bit of a juggling act, trying to figure out how to be a good parent, making sure you’re home for the birthdays and important moments, but also realizing that the only way you can make a living as a musician these days is being on the road.” One of the spinoffs of the wonderful chaos is that it’s helped make him more focused. “It has changed my perspective—
enrolled in Boston’s jazz-oriented Berklee College of Music. Harpist Màiri Chaimbeul hails from Scotland’s Isle of Skye and speaks fluent Gaelic. Guitarist Adam Iredale-Gray grew up on the Gulf Islands and has roots in Irish music, but sometimes switches to an electric instrument with electronic effects for more of a postrock approach. And the Vancouver-raised Boeur might just be Aerialists’ secret weapon, bringing the wildness of Norwegian traditional music into the band’s beautifully eclectic sonic mix. “The Norwegian fiddle tradition plays with form in a way that other fiddle traditions I know about don’t,” she comments. “Like, they have these long melodies that are built out of little melodic fragments, and the fiddler actually has the capacity to improvise
Zachary Lucky has to balance the demands of his career with those of fatherhood.
The one constant running through honestly, it’s kind of lit a bit of a fire under my ass over the past four his work is that Lucky sounds old years,” Lucky says. “It’s made me want to work harder, not necessarily more, but to try and be a little more wise with how I use my time.” When he started playing solo in his early 20s, Lucky was heavily influenced by the grey-skies folk of artists like Iron & Wine, which coloured his monochromatic 2012 fulllength, Saskatchewan. Everywhere a Man Can Be veered towards beautifully downcast altcountry. That had everything to do with Lucky discovering the great Townes Van Zandt. “He’s like the gateway drug,” he says. “As soon as you hear him, you realize there’s a whole world behind that door. Townes Van Zandt was the snake that bit me that sent me down that path. He’s responsible for the journey from folk music to whatever you want to call what I’m doing now.”
before his time. Don’t expect that to change on his untitled next album, a stripped-down affair that’s recorded and ready to roll out once all the scheduling logistics are worked out. Lucky says the way he sings isn’t an affectation; he sounded that way long before the kids arrived and sleep became a fond memory. “I’ve always felt like an old soul,” he says pensively, “and I’ve always hung out with older people. It’s just my nature, and I don’t know what that is, honestly. But it definitely comes through in the songs.” g The Zachary Lucky Trio plays the Mission Folk Music Festival on July 28.
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within that. It’s not really considered improvising; it’s just like playing the tune. But you can find a little segment of melody that you like and just repeat it until you’re satisfied before moving on, or you can go back to it as a part of the tune if you’re like, ‘Oh, I really didn’t say enough with that fragment.’ “That was a really exciting concept for me that just related more to classical music and to other folk music,” Boeur adds. “There’s also this whole microtonal element that’s still really present in Nordic music, whereas it’s been sort of washed out of a lot of the Celtic musics around. So it’s a really exciting sound.” g Aerialists play the Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s Stage 4 at 10 a.m. on Sunday (July 21). For more information, visit www. thefestival.bc.ca/.
A GROOVE BY THE WATER, COME FEEL THE VIBE. A NIGHT FOR THE GROWN & SEXY 35+
We Play Disco, R&B, Motown sounds and more
JULY 18 – 25 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 11
MUSIC LISTINGS CONCERTS JUST ANNOUNCED POST MALONE American singer, rapper, songwriter, and record producer, with guests Swae Lee and Tyla Yaweh. Sep 16, 8 pm, Rogers Arena. Tix on sale Jul 19, 10 am, $199.50/ 149.50/99.50/79.50/49.50. FRANK CARTER & THE RATTLESNAKES British punk-rock band featuring former Gallows and Pure Love frontman Carter. Oct 8, 8 pm, Venue. Tix on sale Jul 19, 10 am, $15. BLACK JOE LEWIS & THE HONEYBEARS American blues, funk, and soul artist. Oct 9, 8 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $20. SONGHOY BLUES Desert blues from Timbuktu, Mali. Oct 12, 9 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $20. BLACK LIPS Punk rockers from Atlanta, with guests Blue Rose Rounders. Oct 15, 9 pm, WISE Hall. Tix on sale Jul 19, 10 am, $25. THE INTERRUPTERS Ska-punk band from L.A., with guests Skinny Lister and Sharp/ Shock. Oct 16, 7 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Jul 19, 10 am. ALIEN WEAPONRY Metal trio from New Zealand. Oct 24, Biltmore Cabaret. $30. SHOVELS & ROPE American country-folk duo, with guest John Paul White. Oct 25, 9 pm, Commodore Ballroom. Tix on sale Jul 19, 10 am, $30. PENELOPE ISLES Indie-rock quartet from Brighton, England. Oct 29, Biltmore Cabaret. $16. RYAN MCMULLAN Singer-songwriter from Ireland. Oct 29, 8 pm, WISE Hall. Tix on sale Jul 19, 10 am, $15. RICH AUCOIN Indie-rock musician from Halifax. Oct 31, Biltmore Cabaret. $25. TINY MOVING PARTS Emo revival band from Minnesota, with guests Fredo Disco and Standards. Nov 2, Fox Cabaret. $22.50.
THE BABE RAINBOW Psychedelic rock band from Australia. Nov 7, 9 pm, Fox Cabaret. Tix on sale Jul 19, 10 am, $17.50. THE BUILDING Singer-songwriter from Youngstown, Ohio, with guest Heather Woods Broderick. Nov 9, Biltmore Cabaret. $14. JAY PARK Korean-American hip-hop/R&B artist. Nov 10, Orpheum Theatre. EZRA COLLECTIVE Jazz quintet from London. Dec 14, 7:30 pm, Fox Cabaret. Tix on sale Jul 19, 10 am, $16. LEIF VOLLEBEKK Canadian indie-folk singersongwriter. Jan 25, 8 pm, Imperial Vancouver. Tix on sale Jul 19, 10 am, $25.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 17 JON BELLION Rapper from New York. Jul 17, 7 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tix $65/49.50/39.50.
THURSDAY, JULY 18 ROCKET TO RUSSIA FEST Punk-rock music festival. Jul 18-21, 7-11:30 pm, WISE Hall. $15-70. TY KOCH Eighteen-year-old Vancouver blues-rocker, with guests Jane Doe, Dante’s Paradise, and Holy Tokes. Jul 18, 7:30 pm, Railway Stage and Beer Café. $10. SLASH FEATURING MYLES KENNEDY AND THE CONSPIRATORS Guitarist for Guns N’ Roses leads his own band, with guests Joyous Wolf. Jul 18, 8 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
FRIDAY, JULY 19 THE STARLING EFFECT Local indie-rockers, with guests A New Craze and Kinetoscope. Jul 19, LanaLou’s Restaurant. $10. VANCOUVER FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL Annual music fest features mainstage performances by Corb Lund, Larkin Poe, Le Vent
MISSION FOLK MUSIC FESTIVAL
JULY 26 28 TO
20 FRASER RIVER 19 HERITAGE PARK
HOT TICKET
RED TRUCK BEER’S TRUCK STOP CONCERT SERIES
(July 20 at Red Truck Brewery, 295 East 1st Avenue) Not to go on about this, but Red Truck Beer’s insanely excellent Mexican Lager would be reason enough to head down to the company’s Brewery Creek location this weekend. On Saturday, though, you’ve got an extra incentive to kill six or seven hours just off Main. The second installment of the Truck Stop Concert Series will see headliner Devin Dawson joined by a strong roots-oriented supporting cast that includes the Matinée, Colleen Rennison, the Abrams, JoJo Mason, and Tim & the Glory Boys. The only thing that might make the day more perfect is the addition of a band calling itself the Red Truck Beer Mexican Lager Mariachi Band. Dare to dream. du Nord, and Midnight Shine (Fri); the Sam Roberts Band, Basia Bulat, Dwayne Dopsie & the Zydeco Hellraiser, and Front Country (Sat); and the Hamiltones, Rebirth Brass Band, David Hidalgo & Steve Dawson, and Tsatsu Stalqayu (Sun). Jul 19-21, Jericho Beach Park. PARTYFEST 2019 Featuring performances by Devours, Shitlord Fuckerman, Freak Dream, Spencer Owen Timeshare, Joey Chaos and the Ghosts, and Okibi. Jul 19, 8 am, Red Gate Arts Society. $10. AHFOMAD Featuring performances by Nigerian Afro-pop superstar 2Baba, Congolese recording artist Ferre Gola, Mexico’s Golden Ganga, and B.C.’s OHR Africa Collective, Nanya and Jaap. Jul 19, 7 pm, Vogue Theatre. $45/55. THE RACONTEURS American rockers featuring Jack White of White Stripes fame. Jul 19-20, 8 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. July 19 SOLD OUT, July 20 $89.50/85/70/55.
SATURDAY, JULY 20
MICHELLE WRIGHT | BEATON-PLASSE | GEOFF BERNER | ÉLAGE DIOUF DIYET & THE LOVE SOLDIERS | CÉCILE DOO-KINGUÉ | LEAF RAPIDS ZACHARY LUCKY | IRISH MYTHEN | PODORYTHMIE | RAW HONEY ROADS UNKNOWN | OKTOPUS | SCHRYER, HILLHOUSE, DOBRES RICK SCOTT & NICO RHODES ROOTS & GROOVES | STRANGELY TURKWAZ | JESSE WALDMAN | JOHN WELSH & LOS VALIENTES | ZIGUE
Folfloowlk! your
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MARCEL FENGLER German Techno phenom, with guests K.A.S.H. and Nancy Dru. Jul 20, 10 am, Open Studios. $25. TRUCK STOP CONCERT SERIES Red Truck Beer presents performances by Devin Dawson, JoJo Mason, the Matinee, the Abrams, Tim Neufeld & the Glory Boys, and Becca Hess Jul 20, Truck Stop (Red Truck Brewery). TRIBUTE TO CHRIS CORNELL Honouring the life and music of the late Chris Cornell. Jul 20, 7:30 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. $20. LOSCIL AND SECRET PYRAMID Vancouverbased ambient electronic artists. Jul 20, 8 pm, SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts. $15. WAAX Rock band from Australia. Jul 20, 8 pm, Fox Cabaret. $15.
Daystage & Evening Main Stage Performances Global Food Court and Bistro | Camping Wee Folks Area | Artisan Market | Festival Choir
SUNDAY, JULY 21
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IRANIAN, ISRAELI AND TUNISIAN ARTISTS WORLD MUSIC NIGHT Concert led by Shahin Najafi. Jul 21, 7-9 pm, Vancouver Playhouse. $35-120.
MONDAY, JULY 22 DEERHUNTER Rock band from Atlanta. Jul 22, 9 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. Note: moved from original date of July 15 and original venue of Commodore. $35.
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14 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JULY 18 – 25 / 2019
DAVID FOSTER Grammy-winning pop songwriter and producer. Jul 23, 8 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. $64-164. WILLIE WATSON American bluesgrass-folk singer-songwriter and founding member of Old Crow Medicine Show. Jul 23, 9 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. $20.
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MIYAVI Japanese guitarist and singer-songwriter. Jul 25, Vogue Theatre. MUSIC LISTINGSare a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit events 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.
arts
Hybrid vision spans Mountains & Seas by Alexander Varty
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art meet-cute love story, part video game, part exploration of ancient Chinese mythology, Crossing Mountains & Seas has been, from its inception, an exercise in cultural and artistic hybridity. Encompassing the music of Vancouver’s Orchid Ensemble (whose leader and erhu player Lan Tung initiated the project), the vertical movement of Aeriosa Dance, and the computer-generated projections of the Chimerik new-media collective, it is also big, bold, and in many ways unprecedented. Certainly, it’s hard to think of any artistic undertaking—in North America, at least—that has taken as its starting point Shan Hai Jing, a more than 2,000-year-old collection of legends, fables, and battle stories that Aeriosa founder and Crossing Mountains & Seas choreographer Julia Taffe compares to a cross between the Bible and Aesop’s Fables. Even after premiering the work in Nanaimo last week, as part of Crimson Coast Dance’s InFrinGinG Dance Festival, Taffe is still coming to terms with the size and the scope of Crossing Mountains & Seas’ source text. For one thing, there’s the difficulty of reading Shan Hai Jing in English translation, which removes the pictorial aspect of Chinese calligraphy from the original. Then there’s the epic’s vast and fantastical cast of characters, a bewildering menagerie of part-human, part-reptile, part-bird, part-fish, and part-mammal creatures. Shan Hai Jing, Taffe explains in a telephone interview from her Ucluelet home, is “a really ancient book that has been reimagined through history because of the loss of the original text, and because of the nature of the Chinese language, with its different representations of meaning.…It’s also very much a list of things, and so in that way it’s a very long read! But it is something that permeates deeply into Chinese culture, and has for such a long time. And the thing that was so interesting in that, for me, was the hybridity, and how that hybridity was really accepted as normal. So for all of us it felt very advanced compared to today, where we think we’re
From left: Lan Tung of the Orchid Ensemble and Aeriosa’s Julia Taffe reimagine a 2,000-year-old Chinese book of legends. Photos by Nenad Stevanovic and Sarah Race
so modern and yet we have to label and compartmentalize and identify everything, and everything is ‘other’.” Crossing Mountains & Seas illustrates that modern tendency through its love-story component, involving two video-game obsessives—one a young white woman, the other a young Asian man—who have to confront their own prejudices and social stereotypes before realizing that they might enjoy more than just an online friendship. Mostly, though, they communicate by texting—and through their role-playing adventures in the virtual reality of a new, Shan Hai Jing–themed video game. Both are represented by media elements and by Aeriosa’s choreography, shared by Taffe and Chengxin Wei, which presents the real world through the crouched, phone-focused figures of Alex Tam and Thoenn Glover. It’s when the action shifts to fantasyland, with Cara Siu joining Tam and Glover to portray a variety of reptilian
I see different qualities of movement exhibited by different living creatures. – Julia Taffe
and birdlike avatars, that things take flight—quite literally. Aeriosa’s specialty is aerial dance, a fusion of gymnastics, silk work, and contemporary choreography in which the performers are suspended in harnesses above the stage, and this proves an effective way of conveying the truly uncanny nature of Shan Hai Jing’s alternative universe.
Perhaps counterintuitively, Taffe says that choreographing for a mythological turtle or a pair of onewinged birds is not as much of a stretch for her as depicting the earthbound cyberlovers. “That’s actually somewhere I’m really comfortable,” she explains. “I have an interspecies family; I’ve always had animals and been interested in animals, and have also had experiences in nature with animals. Therefore I don’t see movement as only a human thing. I see different qualities of movement exhibited by different living creatures, and even by things like the wind and cycles of waves.…So, for me, it’s about identifying the qualities of movement that I’m interested in, and then expressing that through the dancers. Like, how does a fox move? How does a dragon move? Those are things that have always been, for me, at the root of my choreography.
“I have a harder time with human gestures,” she adds, laughing. “How do you represent drinking a cup of tea in choreography? That would be more of a challenge for me than saying ‘Please make a dolphin dive.’ ” Taffe might also have a hard time letting Crossing Mountains & Seas go. The massive production will get only a single showing in Vancouver, with no immediate plans for further mountings. But the process of building it, the choreographer says, has been one of immense growth for all members of the team, and she hopes that the complex piece will be revisited soon. “I’m really proud of it, I’m really excited, and I don’t feel like the work is finished,” she notes. “I feel like there’s more life in it, so I’ll be interested to see how it evolves.” g The Orchid Ensemble, Aeriosa Dance, and Chimerik present Crossing Mountains & Seas at the Vancouver Playhouse on Saturday (July 20).
Del Rio’s art of the insult has no filter
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by Guy MacPherson
h, the power of television. Five years ago, Roy Haylock had spent almost 20 years in bars doing drag. The grind—and Grindr—was getting to him. He was all set to hang up his gowns and go straight—or at least be his regular gay self, without all the accessories. “At that time, I think it was 18 years of doing drag,” he says over the phone from his home in Los Angeles. “That was old-school drag. At the time, the gay scene had changed quite a bit because we were going into Grindr and the phone apps and all that stuff. In my day, you would go to a gay bar and you would meet people, go see a show. Now everybody’s on a goddamn phone. It’s a different world. I just saw the paint on the wall changing and I thought, ‘I don’t know if I can do this anymore.’ Not because the world was changing, but because I was getting older and tired of the late nights and schlepping to the bar and nobody cared. After a while I thought, ‘This has been a lovely run but it’s exhausting and tiresome and expensive,’ and I thought I’ll end at 40 and that will wrap things up.” And then TV came calling. Haylock auditioned for RuPaul’s Drag Race, eventually winning it all in Season 6, and hasn’t looked back since. Now his stage persona, Bianca Del Rio, is—according to Vulture, anyway— the most powerful drag queen in America. It’s not something he trumpets.
Put it this way: I can wear three wigs at one time and three pairs of eyelashes. That’s some strength there. – Roy Haylock
Bianca Del Rio, a.k.a. Roy Haylock, revels in being “Don Rickles in a wig”. Photo by Rene Koala
“Next week they’ll say I’m the worst one,” he says with a laugh. “They just create this shit. It really means nothing. As long as I’m working, I’m happy. I don’t care what list they put me on.” Just how powerful is she? “I can’t benchpress shit,” Haylock says. “Put it this way: I can wear three wigs at one time and three pairs of eyelashes. That’s some strength there. And
I roll my eyes extensively, so they get a good workout on a daily basis.” The self-deprecating performer—who also deprecates everyone else—has called his Del Rio character “Don Rickles in a wig”, “a clown in a wig”, and “a man in a wig”. There’s absolutely no pretence with this insult-comic diva. She’s a combination of Rickles, Lisa Lampanelli, Joan Rivers, and Dame Edna. “I just always state the obvious because I don’t take myself seriously,” Haylock says. Del Rio has toured every continent except Antarctica. This year alone, Del Rio either
has already been or is going to Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Hong Kong, the Philippines, South Africa, nine countries in northern Europe, the U.K., and Ireland. That’s in addition to a 45-date North American tour, which hits Vancouver on Friday (July 19). Haylock moved into comedy by volunteering to kill time while other performers had costume changes. Two minutes became five and then 10. Now, Del Rio does 90 minutes and you can’t shut her up. Haylock found his comedic voice, he says, right away. “Oh God, three drinks and a microphone and I found it!” On Del Rio’s ever-changing tour, she talks about anything and everything with practically no filter. She accepts offence as part of the job. “A lot of people are like, ‘That’s crude!’ Look, it’s not for you; it doesn’t mean it can’t happen in the world,” Haylock argues. “Lighten the fuck up. Younger people will tell me, ‘You can’t say that!’ I can say whatever the fuck I want; you don’t have to like it and I’m not here to please you. Obviously, I’m not for you. But I refuse to have a 13-year-old girl on Twitter tell me, a 44-year-old drag queen, ‘You can’t do that! I’m offended!’ Go fuck off. That’s not how the world works.” g Bianca Del Rio’s It’s Jester Joke tour hits the Orpheum on Friday (July 19).
JULY 18 – 25 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 15
ARTS
Jessie winners defy status quo
I
by Katherine Dornian
ndigenous artists and voices from marginalized communities made a big impact at the 37th annual Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, held on July 15 at Bard on the Beach. Beginning with a lively MusqueamSquamish opening by drummer Rebecca Duncan, the theme of the evening was the celebration of theatre as a tool for social change. Winners and presenters challenged the community to keep amplifying stories of marginalized people. Indeed, this season was an important one for Indigenous theatre: Les Filles du Roi, a musical sung partially in Mohawk, won four awards (for set design, sound design, costume design, and Corey Payette’s direction); Kamloopa was nominated in seven award categories, winning three. Both plays were produced at the Cultch, which received the Vancouver NOW Representation and Inclusion Award. Kim Senklip Harvey, who won both the significant-artistic-achievement award (in the large-theatre category) and the Sydney Risk Prize for outstanding script by an emerging playwright for writing and directing Kamloopa, said the play “came out of my desire to portray Indigenous women as having a little bit of joy. I spent the early part of my career dying and crying on-stage, and I kind of said I was done.” Harvey also accepted the outstanding-production award (large theatre) for Kamloopa, giving a tearful speech about Indigenous representation that earned her a standing ovation. Celebrating efforts to amplify marginalized voices was a common theme in acceptance speeches, beginning with David Diamond, who was awarded the GVPTA Career Achievement Award for his work with the company Theatre for Living. Christine Quintana, accepting the award for significant artistic achievement (small theatre) with Molly MacKinnon for Never the Last, later added: “I want to encourage everyone in this audience to realize that whether you commission work, whether you direct it, whether you program it, whether you attend it, you have the chance to fuck the status quo, and I encourage you to do so!” Hosts Cheyenne Mabberley and Katey Hoffman capitalized on this with tons of inside jokes and merciless roasts. They were often crude, but very crowd-pleasing, with jabs like: “If you listen closely, you can hear the sound of the children of TUTS singing…outside, busking, because nobody pays them.” Some winners reflected on all the bizarre and anxiety-inducing parts of their career that managed to lead them to an award. Colleen Wheeler, accepting the award for outstanding performance by an actress in a lead role (large theatre) for Timon of Athens, thanked her partner, Josh Reynolds, for “helping me stave off panic attacks and general feelings of horror and dread”. David Paquet won the award for outstanding original script for Le Soulier, and got a big laugh as he pulled far too many sheets of paper out of his pocket, mumbling “This is not a good speech.” Le Soulier also won awards for sound design, direction (Esther Duquette and Gilles Poulin-Denis), and performance by a lead actor (Félix Beauchamp) in the large-theatre category. Other notable winners included Alannah Ong, who won the outstanding-supporting-actress award (small theatre) for The Ones We Leave Behind. Ong recently turned 79, and she declared the award the best birthday present she had received, remarking: “It’s never too late to search for your dreams.” g A complete list of winners can be found at www.straight.com.
16 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JULY 18 – 25 / 2019
ARTS
Mamma Mia! is a joyful celebration of women
Dancing on the Edge delivers emotional highs
MAMMA MIA!
DANCE
THEATRE
EDGE THREE AND EDGE FOUR
Music and lyrics by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus, and Stig Anderson. Book by Catherine Johnson. Directed by Shel Piercy. A Theatre Under the Stars production. At Malkin Bowl on Tuesday, July 9. Continues until August 16
d THEATRE UNDER the Stars’ production of Mamma Mia! is a surprise and delight at almost every turn. I genuinely did not know Mamma Mia! could be this good, and it’s all thanks to director Shel Piercy’s deft, clever touches and a charming cast that elevates the source material with energy, enthusiasm, and heart. This international blockbuster musical is now 20 years old, and as is the case with most jukebox-style productions, its plot is so thin it can hardly bear the weight of all of ABBA’s chart-topping songs. In a story set on a little island in Greece, 20-year-old Sophie (Keira Jang) is about to get married even though her mother, Donna (Caitriona Murphy), is not thrilled. Donna has raised Sophie as a single mother, but Sophie wants her father to walk her down the aisle. She discovers Donna’s old diary and learns that her father could be one of three men, so, pretending to be Donna, she invites all of them to her wedding. Shenanigans, of course, ensue. Piercy and choreographer Shelley Stewart Hunt do a marvellous job of keeping the sprawling cast in almost constant movement, and there are some hilarious dance scenes that will live on in my memory for a long time. One standout involves a variety of blow-up beach balls and flotation devices, and the other is a darkly disturbing and hilarious nightmare sequence wherein Sophie, who has gone her whole life without a dad, now finds herself surrounded by three. Under Piercy’s direction, Mamma Mia! is a joyful celebration of women, so it’s no surprise that the four female leads shine most brightly. Jang is wonderful as Sophie, a character who can, in less capable hands, be kind of annoying and vacuous. Her voice is clear and warm, and she’s a compelling presence on-stage. Murphy masterfully hits her stride with Donna in Act 2, delivering powerhouse performances of “Slipping Through My Fingers” and “The Winner Takes It All”. The most memorable moments belong to Donna and her two best friends, Tanya (Lori Zondag) and Rosie (Sheryl Anne Wheaton). The three actors have a palpable and believable BFF chemistry, and Zondag and Wheaton have a vivacity and zest that makes all of their numbers showstoppers. I left the theatre wet and cold, but with a ridiculous smile on my face and a head full of songs. I was a little shocked at my own feelings, because I was already thinking about seeing it again. “Mamma mia, here I go again/My my, how can I resist you?” the song asks, and it turns out I can’t. This production is magic. by Andrea Warner
THE DRAWER BOY
By Michael Healey. Directed by Alan Brodie. An Ensemble Theatre Company production. At the Jericho Arts Centre on Friday, July 12. Continues until August 14
d “WHAT’S IT LIKE, being around death and rebirth all the time?” A simple question, asked of someone who raises livestock for a living, takes on metaphorical weight in Michael Healey’s The Drawer Boy, a play about personal history where trauma is transformed in unexpected ways. Exploring the ethics of exploitation and expropriation,
by Katherine Dornian
At the Firehall Arts Centre on Wednesday, July 10. No remaining performances
Caitriona Murphy and Keira Jang star in Mamma Mia!. Photo by Lindsay Elliott
a search for authenticity uncovers a truth that uproots a pastoral façade. On an Ontario farm in the ’70s, budding actor Miles (Chris Lam) arrives unannounced on the doorstep of Angus (James Gill) and Morgan (Darcey Johnson), a pair of middleaged bachelors leading a simple, rural existence. Looking to inject a dose of reality into a devised play on farming, Miles volunteers to help on their land, gaining firsthand insight into the realities of their operation. Quickly, he discovers that Angus has amnesia and Morgan is reticent about its cause. Late one night, he overhears a story about the men’s past, explaining how a wartime brain injury robbed Angus of his means to make intricate drawings. Sneaking it into his play, Miles incenses Morgan, and secrets soon shatter the status quo. A tale about recollection, Healey’s play is a meditation on order and chaos, and the death and rebirth of stories forms the specific backbone that moulds philosophy into something emotional. Miles has intruded on the farm’s order to seek an authentic encounter, a “chaos” unrepresented on-stage. Yet this gritty truth is rejected by his theatre troupe, in the same way cost-conscious shoppers have refused farming’s hard economics. Both revelations foreshadow Morgan’s bandaging of the men’s past, by reimagining trauma through a lens of chaos. In recalling lost romances and life-changing incidents, Morgan has embraced a chaotic fiction that absolves him of personal responsibility for bleak outcomes, depriving Angus of an order that was once present. In later accepting Miles’s determination to take fault for his flaws, Morgan remedies his own by committing finally to the truth. Director Alan Brodie crafts an intimate experience through the use of thrust seating, where audience members surround a spartan kitchen backdrop. Set and costume designer Alaia Hamer furnishes the space with wood accents and rustic elements, with period appliances and a working sink. Atmospheric moods pass through Sara Smith’s lighting design, placing action in the auburn of dawn and dusk’s indigo. Sound designer Michael Chambers fills the room with bucolic calls of nature, and a dulcet guitar colours scene transitions. A farmhouse springs to life with these stage minutiae, where a powerful trio of performances comes courtesy of Gill, Johnson, and Lam. Clad in outsized denim overalls, Gill plays a soft giant with a veiled perceptiveness, while Lam’s versatility dually suits a youthfulness and guileless comic timing. Catalyzed by change, the characters of The Drawer Boy examine the proprietorship of knowledge, and vastly different ethical considerations can dictate its disclosure. When real and imagined narratives result in order or chaos, difficult choices must be made. by Danny Kai Mak
d THESE MIXED PROGRAMS offered a cross-section of new ways of expression from the Dancing on the Edge festival. Edge Three and Four saw some great choreography and some great emotional highs, proving that the most successful dances are the ones that come from the heart. The evening began with the first performance of Edge Four. It brought the highlight of the evening, the vivid and raw Off Centre. Dealing with powerful themes of identity and vulnerability, Sujit Vaidya’s beautiful choreography was set to strong percussive rhythms, all produced on-stage by drummer Curtis Andrews. Off Centre also featured Itai Erdal’s very cool lighting design, which did a great job of shifting the space of the dance to and from various sections of the stage. The dancers, Vaidya and Arun Mathai, had great synchronicity, and created wonderful tension as they mirrored each other, drawing closer and then pulling apart, as if they were two parts of a single person desperately trying to figure out who they are. Edge Four also featured Mahaila Patterson-O’Brien’s Mid-light, an intriguing study in movement featuring two very talented dancers. Eowynn and Isak Enquist transitioned from robotic to graceful and back again. The piece was in two parts, the first in complete silence and in unnaturally
ARTS LISTINGS ONGOING CLASSIC THEATRESPORTS Two teams of performers are pitted against each other in competitive improv matches. Jul 16–Aug 31, 7:30-9:15 pm, The Improv Centre. From $10.75 THE TAMING OF THE SHREW The 2007 spaghetti-western version of Shakespeare’s work is the inspiration behind this Wild West love story. To Sep 21, Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. From $26. MOM’S THE WORD: NEST 1/2 EMPTY The Arts Club Theatre Company presents a new generation of laughs from the creative team behind the Mom’s the Word series. To Jul 20, Granville Island Stage. From $29. SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE Young Will Shakespeare has writer’s block. To Sep 18, Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. From $26. 7 STORIES A man contemplates his life from the seventh-storey ledge of a building in Morris Panych’s play. To Jul 20, 7:30 pm, The Havana Theatre. $26. ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL New staging of Shakespeare’s work set in India during the waning days of British occupation. To Aug 11, Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. From $26. THEATRE UNDER THE STARS Alternating performances of Mamma Mia! and Disney’s Newsies. To Aug 17, Malkin Bowl. IMPROV MONDAYS WITH MICHELLE Vancouver TheatreSports presents an improvcomedy melodrama. To Aug 26, 7:30-9:15 pm, The Improv Centre. From $10. VANCOUVER ART GALLERY aMOVING STILL: PERFORMATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY IN INDIA to Sep 2 aVIEWS OF THE COLLECTION: THE STREET to Nov 17 aALBERTO GIACOMETTI: A LINE THROUGH TIME to Sep 29 aVIKKY ALEXANDER: EXTREME BEAUTY to Jan 26 aROBERT RAUSCHENBERG 1965–1980 to Jan 26
bright light, the second in a digitallooking landscape in which their movements became expressive and lively. It was hampered by the purposefully inscrutable interlude, which broke up the continuity between them a bit, where phrases like “your story takes place a long time ago in a future that has not yet arrived” flashed up on a big screen. Still, there was a neat concept behind the piece. Later came the festival’s final performance of Edge Three, which began with a sharp contrast in quality to the rest of the evening. The 30-minute solo Dispositivo Móvel was so surreally unpleasant that surely that must have been its purpose, but it still felt like Brazilian artist Paulo Lima simply threw together every idea that could conceivably be a comment on the state of society. The piece featured Lima screaming a slam poem over and over, getting naked and pouring dirty water on himself, and eating dry oats in front of an electric fan; it was all so over-the-top that it was impossible to take seriously. Edge Three found itself again with Eltaconquenofit, created and danced by Alejandra Miranda and Juan Vil- WEDNESDAY, JULY 17 legas. It was a quietly tender piece AFIARA QUARTET Summer Music Vancouabout searching for moments of joy ver presents a program of works by Brahms in an unstable and frightening time, (Clarinet Quintet), Alland Gilliland (Klezinet), and had some really charming mo- and Dinuk Wijeratne (Two Pop Songs on Poems). Jul 17, 10:30-11:30 am, Christ ments, such as when Villegas lay Antique Church Cathedral. $42/38. still on the floor and then broke into MONTREAL JFL PREVIEW SHOW Standup dance while flat on his back. comedy by Erica Sigurdson, Ivan Decker, Edge Three and Four saw great- Sophie Buddle, Jacob Samuel, and host Ron est success with those pieces that Vaudry. Jul 17, 7:30-9 pm, Hood 29. $10. laid emotions bare. There were THURSDAY, JULY 18 some conceptual highlights, and LIEM An evening of poetry with Tess some great explorations of passion, TESS Liem and guests Adèle Barclay, David Ly, and showing that Dancing on the Edge Shazia Hafiz-Ramji. Jul 18, 7 pm, Massy Books. never runs out of things to say, or Free. see page 20 ways to say them. g
Come see the whole picture This summer, discover the unexpected side of Whistler with a transformative visual journey through Canadian art
audainartmuseum.com Located between Day Lots 3 & 4 in the centre of Whistler Village Emily Carr (1871-1945) The Crazy Stair (The Crooked Staircase) (detail) c. 1928-30
JULY 18 – 25 / 2019 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 17
MOVIES
The best defence is a Self-Defense REVIEWS
THE ART OF SELF-DEFENSE
Starring Jesse Eisenberg. Rated 14A
d FORGET TOXIC masculinity. The testosterone coursing through The Art of Self-Defense could be part plutonium. But is there anything funny about that? Well, if Chernobyl were a romcom, it would look something like this. Key to the comedy is the presence of Jesse Eisenberg—see, you’re laughing already!—as Casey Davies, the proverbial 98-pound weakling tired of getting sand kicked in his face. A dweeby accountant at a whatever company, he’s already low man on the macho totem pole when he’s badly beaten by motorcycle thugs on a simple errand to get dog food for his (you guessed it) dachshund. Vowing never to repeat that, Casey attempts to buy a gun, but gets distracted by an odd karate studio run by Sensei (Alessandro Nivola), who
Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg meet inside a hypermasculine karate school in writer-director Riley Stearns’s hilariously deadpan comedy The Art of Self-Defense.
boasts an overweening sense of self-importance. This meek fellow is surprised to find that he has some potential as a martial artist. Still, it
his new favourite music is metal, not adult contemporary. Confusing the antihero’s journey is the presence of one woman at the dojo, the tough-minded Anna (Imogen Poots). No matter what she does, her actions always seem a little too estrogenated for Sensei. But her approach to karate’s philosophical side is more in line with what Casey’s looking for, and this sets in motion his investigation into the group, and into what roles violence and gender play in modern life. That may sound serious, but in his sophomore outing, writer-director Riley Stearns favours a stylized, dryly artificial approach—as if space aliens were imitating human behaviour in order to fit in to a world they barely understand. The story can be surprisingly brutal at times, but it’s also funny enough to knock you off your feet.
by Ken Eisner will require a lot of lifestyle modification. “Everything should be as masculine as possible,” his new ROJO teacher insists, before telling Casey Starring Darío Grandinetti. In Spanish, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable
d A MILD-MANNERED gentleman sits alone at a restaurant table, waiting for his wife, while a gruff stranger— someone who looks like an angry cop—demands his table. Both have ’70s B-movie mustaches, and Rojo itself deploys the tacky zooms and jump cuts associated with the era. You may wonder which ’stache will win, but things aren’t that simple, and little is what it seems. The setting is small-town Argentina of 1975, and the seated man is a well-respected lawyer called Claudio (superb Almodóvar veteran Darío Grandinetti). The latter (Diego Cremonesi), we later learn, is called El Hippie, although he’s almost as old as Claudio and is hardly a counterculture figure. But paranoia is in the air, and strange mayhem ensues. The country is on the verge of its fourth military coup of the 20th century, kicking off the Dirty War shared by its neighbours in Chile and Brazil (and currently being revived there). Whole families are disappearing. And the movie begins with neighbours happily plundering a suddenly abandoned suburban home. But Claudio, his genteel wife (Andrea Frigerio), and their artistic daughter (the lead’s real-life offspring, Laura Grandinetti) are untouched by the upheaval most people are happy to ignore. Until a private detective (The Club’s Alfredo Castro) from Pinochet’s Chile arrives and starts asking Claudio about the missing Hippie. In the anti-Communist fervour of the day, anyone can be rojo, an image made literally red when the family makes a seaside trip to witness a daytime eclipse. Are there special glasses to protect your eyes from everything you shouldn’t see? Writer-director Benjamin Naishtat and Brazilian cinematographer Pedro Sotero purposely deployed mannered imagery and soapopera close-ups to generate a story that turns in on itself in the manner of Luis Buñuel’s movies of that tacky era. The effect is disorienting, sometimes disturbingly witty, and filled with portents of weird eclipses to come. by Ken Eisner
PUSH
A documentary by Fredrik Gertten. In English, Spanish, German, and Korean, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable
18 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT JULY 18 – 25 / 2019
d THERE WAS A time when the captains of industry put limits on how hard to grind the working class, since they knew they still needed someone to buy their damn products. How quaint that seems now, in a world with precious little industry, and not even that many actual captains running anything.
These days, the Benjamins call most of the shots—that’s why they call it capitalism—as laid out in Push, an unusually clear-headed documentary that sticks to one financial subject: real estate. It follows the globetrotting adventures of Ottawa’s Leilani Farha, who works for the United Nations as a Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing. The idea of adequate shelter as a basic human right, like decent health care, hovers in the background of her visits to troubled housing estates in Canada, Chile, the U.K., Korea, and elsewhere. Supposedly socialist Sweden is where she runs into renters battling absentee landlords from Blackstone, a multinational, based in the U.S., that specializes in running down older complexes in urban areas, driving out existing tenants, jacking up rents, and flipping the properties for quick profit. In South Korea, developers hire thugs to beat people who resist giving up cheap suburban land. And in London, foreign investors park their money in choice neighbourhoods and leave homes empty to accrue value (and clean cash) while quietly decimating whole communities. The disastrous Grenfell Tower fire is viewed by Farha—and by Swedish director Fredrik Gertten (Bikes vs Cars)—as a physical manifestation of a ramped-up war on the poor. And the struggle to rehouse survivors displaced by such calamities is compounded by governments investing public pensions in the same companies shoving people out of affordable homes. That is, in fact, the push this sharp-eyed movie’s vague title refers to. In the end, it wonders when, how, and if people will ever push back. by Ken Eisner
CRAWL
Starring Kaya Scodelario. Rated 14A
d WHEN IT COMES to waterborne terrors with teeth, there have always been three on my “scariest” list. The first, thanks to the traumatizing opening scene of Jaws, is the great white shark. Coming in a close second is the piranha, ’cause I heard as a kid that if you fell in the Amazon River a swirling school of those suckers could pick your bones clean in seconds. And then firmly entrenched at No. 3 is the 14-foot alligator, because, hey, have you noticed the evil eyes on those bad boys? After seeing Crawl, though, I gotta admit that death by gator has now rocketed to the top of my chart as far as nasty ways to kick the bucket while soaking wet go. Sorry, Spielberg. Kaya Scodelario stars as heroine Haley, whom we first see competing at a university swim meet in Florida. Swimming is her passion, and it ties her emotionally to her father, Dave (Barry Pepper), who always pushed her to excel and become an “apex predator” in the pool. But Haley also blames the long hours her dad spent focusing on her sport for causing the breakup of his marriage, and that whole unspoken family-drama thing will rear its ugly head just when ugly alligator heads with evil eyes and fiercely snapping jaws force Haley and Dad to finally deal with it. With a Category 5 hurricane fast approaching, Haley grabs her dog and drives into the blatantly CGI storm in search of her missing constructionworker pop. She finds him unconscious in the grimy crawlspace of their old home, suffering from alligator bites, and that’s when the movie becomes a nonstop thrill ride as the two desperately try to avoid being eaten or drowning in the ensuing flood. As he did with his remake of The Hills Have Eyes, director Alexandre Aja cranks the tension up to 10, and the two stars gamely embrace the pain and suffering of their do-or-die roles. All in all, Crawl is a hoot for horror fans, although I doubt it’ll impress the Everglades Tourism Board much. by Steve Newton
MOVIES
Mike Leigh takes the battle to Peterloo by Adrian Mack
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Armed troops cut down a peaceful pro-democracy demonstration in Mike Leigh’s vividly angry historical epic Peterloo.
f there are two things that can be ter of a painter, appearing in one Uh-oh—wrong question. reliably said about Mike Leigh, memorable scene, is a fanciful sur“No,” Leigh tuts, testily. “That’s they’re that he’s a great filmmaker rogate for the filmmaker himself? rubbish.” g and a bit of a curmudgeon. Both men are present when the Georgia Straight reaches Leigh in New York to discuss his latest feature, Peterloo, opening at the Vancity Theatre on Saturday (July 20). His grouchy side emerges over an inquiry into the use of CGI. “The whole film is crawling with CGI,” Leigh snorts, before a poorly worded question about his working methods prompts an impatient reference to “esoteric procedures which I’m not up to discussing with anybody, including you”. And, as a loyal Guardian reader, he’s in no mood to address the paper’s questionable treatment of U.K. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. “I think that’s a simplification,” he grumbles. “I don’t really accept it, basically, and that’s really all I have to say about that.” Two things should be added here. First, even at his crankiest, the 76-year-old conveys a reassuring note of good humour. And, second, mention of the Guardian in the context of Peterloo is certainly allowed, since the newspaper was launched as the Manchester Guardian in direct response to the events depicted in the film. Indeed, Peterloo—a masterpiece, to my eyes—is Leigh’s most overtly political movie, re-creating the bloody crackdown known as the Peterloo Massacre, which left 18 people dead and hundreds injured during a rally calling for government reform in Manchester in 1819. The film has also incited a small rebellion among some critics who prefer their period pieces a little more polite or their Mike Leigh a bit funnier. He suggests that they’ve “missed the point”. “I think it reveals a rather naive and romantic idea of the world, an infantile view of the world,” he says, referring to complaints about the film’s deliciously grotesque rendering of the magistrates, church leaders, and royals who brought violent suppression to the protest. They’re depicted as a sadistic bunch because, as Leigh insists, “Some people are like that.” “I reject the accusation of caricature or whatever you call it in the context of the delineation of these characters in Peterloo,” he says. “That kind of fascism is driven by a high sense of moral superiority. At one point, one of the magistrates, I actually have him say ‘We are their moral superiors,’ which is a sort of Christian conviction that people that transgress need to be punished in the most fundamental and biblical way. And it’s very worrying, because such behaviour, in one form or another, has not gone away.” One might guess that it’s the stridency of Peterloo that has ruff led the middlebrow. This typically incisive vision of class war is shorter on the drollery that defined much of Leigh’s earlier work. It’s an urgent, impassioned act of radical filmmaking about an event that occurred not far from the lifelong leftist’s family home. One wonders if the charac-
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> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < BEAUTIFUL DIRTY BLONDE CANADA DAY KITS BEACH BABE!
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TALL BRUNETTE + TALL BRUNETTE @ BIRD + BEETS
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 11, 2019 WHERE: Birds + Beets / Di Beppe
You're a beautiful, voluptuous, tanned babe with thick, dirty blonde hair. You had a leopard print tube top bikini on, big hoop earrings. I'm the wellmuscled man you made fun of for having such a small towel. Say hello if you see this!
I see you at Bird and the Beets and at Di Beppe eating lunch alone. I want to say hi but I am shy and you are not an object. Instead, I keep walking and look at the ground.
CUTE GIRL WITH BLONDE HAIR AND FANCY PURSE WITH HER FRIEND
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 29, 2019 WHERE: Surrey Pride
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 11, 2019 WHERE: Fancy Bar Near Vancouver Central Library I saw you drinking with your friend in front of the bar. You have blonde hair and your friend was brown I believe? You checked me out. I checked you out. I never got a chance to talk to you. You looked so petite and fine. You had a Gucci purse or something. Hit me!
BELLINGHAM
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 10, 2019 WHERE: Bellingham
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I was by Trader Joe’s you were in a black Porsche wearing glasses and blue eyes and you stopped to get my attention to let me know that my coat was hanging outside my car door. Leila
SMILE AND KNOWING NOD.
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KEN AT SURREY PRIDE
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My husband and I were at Surrey Pride with our dog. You stopped and chatted with us for a bit. We would love to continue the conversation. If you would too, reply and tell us what you were doing there.
STILL ON MY MIND
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JUNE 25, 2016 WHERE: Penthouse Apartment on English Bay We met at a party five years ago through Forbidden City. I fell for you hard. I’ve regretted ever since, leaving without asking for your number. I’m obviously not good at finding people and our mutual friend is taking a long time to reintroduce us. Your name is Iman. Perchance you remember me... I would really love to meet you again. After five years I still think of you and feel the same. I was the guy with the goatee and the funny little green hat.
LONELY MAN
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 12, 2019 WHERE: 152 and 176th.
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Waiting at the light I first noticed the nice car then I caught you checking yourself in the mirror. Eventually you looked my way and smiled. When you left the light turning left another smile and a nod. Made my trip... Oddly I was going to go the same way but changed my mind. Drinks and some car talk?
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 7, 2019 WHERE: The Railway Greenway Trail
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 1, 2019 WHERE: Kits Beach, Canada Day
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YOU JOGGED ALONG SIDE ME ON SUNDAY
You were wearing lime-yellow shorts and jogging. I was cruising along on my bicycle. You lapped me. I lapped you. You lapped me. And then we travelled together alongside each other for a little while. You admired my bicycle. I admire your, well everything. We travel at about the same speed. How about next Saturday or Sunday followed by a big breakfast in Steveston?
HEY OCEAN CONCERT KHATSAHLANO STREET PARTY
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 6, 2019 WHERE: Kits
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You: tall, wearing a blue and white hat and bright runners, standing near the edge of the Hey Ocean concert on the Burrard Stage. Me: dancing beside you in a yellow jumpsuit, trying not to be overly obvious that I was glancing at you. I was too shy to say hello. If you felt the same drop me a line. :)
BUS 49 - BLONDE IN RED
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 4, 2019 WHERE: 49 in Vancouver We both sat near the back of the 49. We made eye contact more times than I can remember. What I can’t forget: your beautiful round eyes and symmetry. You had a red top and deep purple lipstick. Would you be interested in coffee?
BABY BLUE NAILS RACHELE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 10, 2019 WHERE: Balaclava Park
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We have crossed paths many a times, both being too shy to approach one another. How I wish we would, as I’ve been waiting for that special moment. I hope you see this and take a chance and write me back. Let’s go from there take it step by step.
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 4, 2019 WHERE: Oak St.
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Was sitting on a curb on Oak street having a slurpy u walked up and stopped then came back and sat down to explain your day. Loved every minute of our convo. Would like to listen to a lot more of what you have to say.
Visit straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _
Do Chay’s veggie Viet fare stands out
T
by Tammy Kwan
here’s been a lot of excitement around a new Vietnamese restaurant tucked away in the Kingsway corridor, and for good reason. Do Chay Saigon Vegetarian (1392 Kingsway) is not your regular neighbourhood pho joint: customers aren’t going to find 100-plus items listed on laminated menus here, and they certainly won’t be choosing between beef-brisket noodle soups and grilled-lemongrass-chicken rice plates. Chef and co-owner Patrick Do opened Do Chay with his partner, Amanda Clark, and they’ve made it a point to stand out from the rest of the crowd by introducing something that hasn’t really been done in the city. Hungry patrons will come face to face with unique plantbased options whose flavour profiles will ring bells. Some of its most popular picks are vegan XO potstickers (hand-wrapped with mushroom XO sauce, cabbage, and carrot), vegetarian pan-fried daikon cakes (crispy rice flour, salted radish, and papaya slaw), and vegan coconut rice cakes (cast-iron–seared with cabbage and green onion). “Our main goal was to make food that tasted good, regardless if it was vegetarian or vegan,” Do explained to the Georgia Straight during an interview at his new restaurant. “It just so happened that most of our dishes were vegan.” He recognizes that many people in the city are accustomed to the consistent food items they can find at traditional Vietnamese restaurants, but he wants to stray from that comfort zone to create something different. “The menu is something that is very much influenced by my personal upbringing, [with] recipes and dishes that I learned from my parents growing up in the kitchen, [and] my own experiences growing up in Canada,” Do said. Keeping the menu small and seasonal was important for the young chef, and guests will get to taste dishes that are expertly made. “We do our own potstickers and dumplings, and we handmake all the dough and wrap it from page 17
OUR CREATION STORY Outdoor night of storytelling, song, dance, masks, and puppetry by the Coastal Wolf Pack and Mortal Coil. Jul 18, 7-8 pm, Museum of Anthropology at UBC. Free with museum admission.
RETOURNELLES DES ESPAGNOLS Program of Spanish music from the Renaissance to contemporary favourites. Jul 18, 7-8 pm, Hycroft Manor. $20. FIN DE FIESTA FLAMENCO Flamenco troupe from Spain presents Sempiterno. Jul 18, 18, 8 pm, Firehall Arts Centre. $30/35. MILLENNIAL LINE: WE ARE ONE! Monthly comedy and poetry show features Kimmortal and cohosts Savannah Erasmus and Tin Lorica. Jul 18, 8 pm, Red Gate Arts Society. $7-10. JOKES PLEASE! Standup comedy show hosted by Ross Dauk. Jul 18, 9-10:40 pm, Little Mountain Gallery. $10. OK TINDER Vancouver TheatreSports improv show pokes fun at Vancouver’s dating scene. Jul 18–Aug 29, 9:15-10:15 pm, The Improv Centre. From $10.75.
FRIDAY, JULY 19 BEN REEVES ARTIST TALK Vancouverbased painter gives an informal talk about his work. Jul 19, 6:30-8 pm, Mobil Art School. Free, registration requested. BIANCA DEL RIO: “IT’S JESTER JOKE” RuPaul’s Drag Race champion performs her new standup show. Jul 19, 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre. TOMMY CAMPBELL Comedian performs two nights of standup emceed by Ryan Paterson. Jul 19, 20, 8 pm, Yuk Yuk’s Comedy Club. $20.
SATURDAY, JULY 20 CROSSING MOUNTAINS & SEAS Vancouver Orchid Ensemble presents multimedia music, dance, and video performance. Jul 20, Vancouver Playhouse. $25/19.99.
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A new menu item is the Bird’s Nest, made with egg tofu, enoki mushrooms, and quail eggs. Photo by Tammy Kwan
individually,” Do added. “It’s very time-consuming, but I think that in the end you get something that you can’t get anywhere else.” For Do and Clark, the biggest compliment they can get from customers visiting their new plant-based restaurant is having meat lovers fall for their vegetarian and vegan Vietnamese fare. “That’s the kind of feedback where we know we’re on the right track and doing something cool, and we’re making food that is going to stand up on its own,” Do said. “That’s our hope, anyways.” g
Arts
HOT TICKET
OUR CREATION STORY
(July 18 at the Museum of Anthropology) Coastal Wolf Pack and Mortal Coil Performance adapt a Coast Salish story with song, dance, and a giant 12-foot puppet named Meh. The special storytelling performance takes place outdoors at the scenic spot; bring your picnic and blanket for the 7 p.m. start. Entry is free with admission to the museum, where you can check out Meh as part of the fascinating Shadows, Strings and Other Things exhibit on now.
TOWER OF BABEL 2019 Outdoor poetry reading to celebrate the cultural diversity of Vancouver. Jul 20, 1-3:30 pm, Vancouver Art Gallery. THE COMIC STRIP Standup comedy by Brett Martin, Gavin Clarkson, and headliner Yumi Nagashima. Jul 20, 9 pm, Tyrant Studios. $18.
SUNDAY, JULY 21 THE SCRAWNY SHOW Cory Lupovici and Jo-el Oxales host a standup comedy show headlined by Ross Dauk. Jul 21, 7:30 pm, ANZA Club. $8/10.
MONDAY, JULY 22 A NIGHT WITH THE SCULPTURE SOCIETY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA Sculptor David C. Walker talks about his influences, materials, techniques, and background as an artist. Jul 22, 6:30-9 pm, Federation Gallery. By donation.
TUESDAY, JULY 23 THE WINDSINGER Family-friendly adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, starring Place des Arts’ Summer Teen Theatre Troupe. Jul 23-28, TD Community Plaza, Town Centre Park. Free.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 24 ALI WONG San Francisco comic performs four standup comedy shows. Jul 24-26, 7 pm; Jul 26, 10 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. $49.75/69.75/99.75.
THURSDAY, JULY 25 SILENCE! THE MUSICAL Down Stage Right Productions presents a satire on the film The Silence of the Lambs. Jul 25–Aug 3, Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre. $35-42.
FRIDAY, JULY 26 ALEC SOTH: ARTIST TALK AND BOOK SIGNING Alec Soth discusses his development as a photographer and signs his new book, I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating. Jul 26, 7-9 pm, The Polygon. By donation, RSVP recommended.
SATURDAY, JULY 27 BARD-B-Q & FIREWORKS Event includes Shakespeare, salmon barbecue, and a view of the fireworks. Jul 27, Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. From $26. THE COMIC STRIP Standup comedy by Rachel Shaefer, Randee Neumeyer, and headliner Ryan Gunther. Jul 27, 9 pm, Tyrant Studios. $18. ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge. Submit events 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.
DRINK AFGHAN HORSEMEN
Sipping summer by the glass
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Six lively and cheerful wines that should keep you going through the fall by Kurtis Kolt
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22 NDAnnual
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Good summer wines—like these, hailing from Spain, Australia, Italy, and B.C.—aren’t too heavy to consider an extra glass.
t might be a cliché, but when it’s said that a certain wine is the epitome of “summer in a glass”, I still find it a turn of phrase that resonates. To me, it suggests a liveliness and cheery nature, and it fits well with wines that aren’t too heavy or exhausting to consider having that extra glass or two. This week, a handful of wines that can be considered summer in a glass that should keep you going through the fall.
PARÉS BALTÀ PINK CAVA BRUT N.V.
acidity, and a tart little finish. Their website suggests pairing with seared scallops, salt-and-pepper squid, or a Thai noodle salad, and I’m having trouble topping those excellent ideas. MAETIERRA ATLANTIS ALBARIÑO 2016
(Rías Baixas, Spain; $22 to $26, private wine stores) From sand-and-granite soils near the banks of the river Miño comes this lovely ode to all things tropical. Salty sea air mingles with fresh-cut pineapple as the wine swirls in the glass, then the incredibly juicy palate is awash with guava, nectarines, mangoes, and even a hint of litchi on the finish. This is an easy drinker; the biggest difficulty you’ll have is choosing between clams, mussels, scallops, and oysters. Scratch that. Start with fresh oysters, then do a few scallops in brown butter, then steamed mussels in white wine, butter, and leeks, finishing off with linguine and clams. Now you’re all set, and you may want to have a second bottle on hand. Recently spotted at Kitsilano Wine Cellar.
(Penedès, Spain; $30 to $34, private wine stores) This Spanish sparkler is a blend of Garnacha, Parellada, and Macabeo, made in the traditional method with a secondary ferment occurring in the bottle, just like its Champagne brethren. Eighteen months after that latter fermentation occurs, it’s disgorged and bottled without any additional dosage, ensuring a dry wine with a snappy finish. Cream soda, strawberries, and Turkish delight are all featured in the aromatics, leading to a lightly peppery palate full of raspberries, red currants, and cranberries. Recently spotted at Marquis GINI SOAVE CLASSICO 2017 (Veneto, Italy; $29.99, Wine Cellars. B.C. Liquor Stores) PEWSEY VALE EDEN VALLEY This white made from the Garganega RIESLING 2018 grape is new to our market, and (Eden Valley, Australia; $20.99, I’m welcoming it with open arms. $19.99 through July 27, B.C. Liquor Grown in volcanic and limestone Stores) soils, between 100 and 200 metres Akin to biting into a Granny Smith above sea level, the grapes are handapple followed by a chaser of fresh- picked at harvest time, then vinified squeezed lemon and lime, this per- with wild yeast. Six months spent on ennial Aussie favourite also features the lees (that spent yeast at the botamiable notes of powdered candy tom of the stainless-steel vats) brings (think Rockets or Fun Dip), searing a touch of creamy, nutty character
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that provides a suitable bolster for fresh jasmine, nectarines, and a nice lemony finish. CEDARCREEK ESTATE WINERY PLATINUM “BLOCK 1” PINOT NOIR ROSÉ 2018
(Okanagan Valley, B.C.; $29, cedarcreek.bc.ca/) 100 percent of the Pinot Noir grown in this vineyard block was designated for this wine; I love how it’s not only a tasty pink wine but exudes charming Pinot Noir character from start to finish. It is the result of two 2018 harvests: a slightly earlier one for good acidity and citrus character, and a later one for riper red fruit to be added to the mix. While 84 percent was done in stainless steel, that remaining 16 percent saw neutral oak, which frames the fruit well without getting in its way. Red plums and cherries are generous, with strawberries, raspberries, and mulberries all making appearances. At almost seven percent residual sugar, it’s not the driest rosé out there, but it’s very well balanced, and that kiss of sweetness on the finish will envelop the heat of curries, Buffalo wings, or any other spicy fare.
22NDAnnual
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(Similkameen Valley, B.C.; $23, rustwine.com/) Put a bit of a chill on this lighter red and revel in its abundance of charisma. Bing cherries, nutmeg, and fresh-carved roast beef are initially on offer on both the nose and the palate, while further sips see it veer into an umami direction, with elements of sun-dried tomato and even a little hoisin sauce. At 23 bucks, it’s an incredible bargain. g
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ways rabbit holes,” said David Ley, a clinical psychologist, author, and sex researcher. “We create rich, satisfying stories that are really just a form of mental masturbation—no bust on masturbation—when the truth is, at
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something you need, CHURN, but it’s something you’re asking the wife to do. And the doing presents more risks for her—the risks of STIs and pregnancy fall entirely on her, as she pointed out. And if people were to find out (or suspect) she was sleeping around, the “shame” and potential social ostracism would fall entirely on her too. Even if you were to tell anyone who found out that it was consensual and/or that you were a cuckold, it’s not like she wouldn’t still
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be shamed or ostracized. Judgmental family and friends would just heap equal portions of shame on you, too. To your credit, CHURN, you acknowledged the legitimacy of your wife’s concerns. And I’m going to acknowledge the legitimacy of your frustrations: you told her before you eloped that you needed this to be happy, and she didn’t just agree to it, she was (or seemed) enthused about it. I might be inclined to see this as a bait and switch myself if you didn’t have children. Even the most adventurous people—sexual or otherwise—tend to become risk-averse when their children are young, and I imagine your wife is currently some combo of highly risk-averse and completely overwhelmed. (Hey, are you doing your fair share of the housework and childcare?) Instead of threatening to divorce her (which would amount to pressuring her), I would encourage you to find a sex-positive counsellor who can help you two talk about what your sex life can look like once your children are a little older. If she can express it without being expected to act on it tomorrow, my hunch is your wife can see cuckolding you again once your kids are older. Since finding women who are into this isn’t easy, as you already know, it would be in your own selfinterest to take the long view and be patient. In the meantime, CHURN, content yourself with hot memories of all the times the wife cuckolded you in the past and hot dirty talk about all the times she’s going to cuckold you in the future. g
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for me. I remember very clearly on the day of our elopement discussing that this was more than a kink for me— it was central to my sexuality and I needed her buy-in before committing for life. We played a time or two after we got married, but my wife’s interest in the lifestyle greatly decreased. After we had children (first child four years ago), her interest in cuckolding evaporated. It’s entirely gone. I accepted this for some time due to having young children. When I broached the subject recently, she expressed legitimate concerns around STIs, pregnancy, and being “found out” by friends/family. But this is something I need, as I made clear before we married. It’s not just a “kink” for me. I love my wife and I don’t want to pressure her into having sex with others, but I’m hurt and frustrated. I can’t help but feel like I had a bait and switch pulled on me. What do I do? Be thankful for the things I do have? Ask to go to a sex-positive therapist? Ask for a divorce? I’m lost, hurt, confused, and angry.
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said Ley. “Given that FREED is a bi male in a heterosexual relationship, these cuckold fantasies might be a way for him to express his bisexuality while including his wife. Additionally, vicarious erotic fulfillment is often a central component in many cuckold fantasies. Many cuckolds celebrate their partners being sexually unrestrained. FREED might just be turned on by the idea of his wife cutting loose and sharing that supercharged erotic energy with other partners—past, present, and future.” Finally, FREED, I wanted to add a “ding, ding, ding” to something you mentioned at the end of your letter. The erotic power of doing something that seems antithetical to the heteronormative and/or vanilla-normative expectations heaped on us by culture, religion, family, et cetera should never be underestimated. So long as our normative-busting transgressive turn-ons can be realized with other consenting adults, we should worry less about the “why” and more about the “when”, “where”, and “how”. (Now, in private, and safely!) Follow Ley on Twitter @DrDavidLey.
least at this point, we really have no clear idea why people have any of the unique sexual fantasies they do.” (Ley literally wrote the book on cuckolding: Insatiable Wives: Women Who Stray and the Men Who Love Them.) One popular explanation for why being cuckolded might turn a man on—why knowing his wife or girlfriend had fucked someone else (or was fucking someone else in front of him) might turn a guy on—was the “sperm competition” theory. To quickly summarize: a man who suspects his female partner recently had sex with another male—and whose reptile brain believes the other man’s semen might be “present” inside her—will have a more powerful and voluminous orgasm when he next mates with his female partner in an effort to “flood out” his competitor’s semen. For a time, many sex researchers theorized that male swingers and cuckolds were subconsciously inducing “sperm competition” reactions—i.e., they were in it for the more powerful orgasms. “Unfortunately, much of the research into sperm competition is now suspect, due to a failure to replicate many of these fi ndings,” Ley said. “So to a degree we’re now saying: ‘You know, it’s complicated, everyone is different, and there are no simple answers.’ ” Ley, who has worked with many cuckold couples, has noticed patterns and he’s willing to put out some alternative theories of his own. “Many cuckolds have a desire to engage bisexually with other men, using their wife’s body as a sort of proxy,”
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