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Photos are for illustrative purposes. Pricing in effect Friday July 27 to Thursday August 2, 2018. Overwaitea Food Group LP, a Jim Pattison business. Proudly BC Owned and Operated.
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4 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
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JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 5
6 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
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JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 7
Cherry-picked Goodness. $ 5.99 /lb
Jealous Fruits Premium Okanagan Cherries
Direct from their Lake Country orchard, these premium, large, juicy cherries are world-renowned for their quality and taste. Freshly picked for Urban Fare.
Driscoll’s Premium Strawberries
Fresh Wagyu Beef Top Sirloin Steak
Fresh Fraser Valley Blueberries
Marinated Non-Gmo Chicken Kabobs
Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream
Fresh, 1lb box.
Fresh, Tajima-Kobe, or roast.
Fresh, 510g box
Assorted flavours, Prepared fresh in-store.
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3.99 ea $15.99 /lb
$
USA, Reg. price $4.99 ea
Australia, Reg. price $19.99/lb
3.99 ea
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BC, Reg. price $7.99 ea
7.99 /lb
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Reg. price $12.99/lb
4.99 ea
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Reg. price $6.99 ea
Check out this week’s Feature Fare on the front cover.
Photos are for illustrative purposes only. Prices in effect Friday July 27 to Thursday August 2, 2018. Overwaitea Food Group LP, a Jim Pattison business. Proudly BC Owned and Operated.
8 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
CONTENTS
Jericho Beach. Asher Isbrucker photo.
11
NEWS
Georgia Straight publisher and cofounder Dan McLeod has been inducted into the British Columbia Entertainment Hall of Fame, joining such luminaries as Sarah McLachlan, Leon Bibb, and Michael J. Fox. > BY CHARLIE SMITH
19
COVER
Celebrating a spectrum of diversity, we take a look at how multiple identities of some LGBT community members overlap, interact, or connect in their multifaceted lives
31
ARTS
Singers such as tenor Thomas Hobbs and countertenor Reginald Mobley bring polish and passion to the Vancouver Bach Festival.
START HERE 29 38 37 29 39 40 15 43 17 33 34 13
The Bottle Check This Out Confessions I Saw You Local Motion Pop Eye Real Estate Savage Love Straight Stars Theatre Visual Arts YVR Life
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MOVIES
Angels Wear White strikes the poetic notes; class issues inform hilarious Blindspotting; there’s no Coda yet for Ryuichi Sakamoto; Hirokazu Kore-Eda courts a Third Murder.
38
34 Arts 40 Music
SERVICES 41 Careers 15 Real Estate
MUSIC
On the 25th anniversary of the feted Enter the Wu-Tang album, Masta Killa gives a rare interview on the Clan’s lasting success. > BY K ATE WILSON
GeorgiaStraight
41
@ GeorgiaStraight
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Linda Lane Devlin Interventions - Lived Experience
Dr. Kenneth Tupper Psychedelic Medicine
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10 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
NEWS
McLeod makes Hall of Fame > B Y C HA RL IE SM I TH
T
he publisher and founding editor of the Georgia Straight is among nine new inductees into the B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame. Dan McLeod is joined in the StarWalk category by renowned tenor Ben Heppner, Grammy and Juno winner Pranam (Chin) Injeti, musicians David Sinclair and Todd Kerns, and opera director Nancy Hermiston. They will be recognized with a star on the Walk of Fame on Granville Street. In addition, their contributions to the province’s entertainment scene will be commemorated in the Starwall Gallery in the upper lobby of the Orpheum Theatre. Three others—musician Lloyd Arntzen, choreographer Susan Lehmann, and actor-vaudevillian Doug Cameron have been inducted as Pioneers. They will be recognized on the Honour Plaque in the main lobby of the Orpheum. “The BCEHoF is proud and excited to present a very diverse and impressive group of Pioneer and StarWalk inductees who represent artistic excellence in British Columbia,” BCEHoF president Rob Haynes said in a news release. “We look forward to scheduling and celebrating their individual inductions at various high profile events over the coming months to honour their contribution.” The B.C. Entertainment Hall of Fame was created in 1992 and includes more than 300 inductees. They include performers such as Leon Bibb, Michael Bublé, Joy Coghill, Lovie Eli, Michael J. Fox, Bruno Gerussi, Sarah McLachlan, and Denis Simpson. McLeod cofounded the Georgia Straight in 1967. The name was created in the bar of the old Cecil Hotel with two well-known artists: Michael Morris and Glenn Lewis. In last year’s book, Georgia Straight: A 50th Anniversary Celebration, McLeod revealed that he saw the name as “a great marketing tool because every local radio, television,
Straight publisher and cofounder Dan McLeod (above right, with Bob Geldof, and below) has been recognized for his contributions to B.C. entertainment.
and daily newspaper weather forecast in those days talked at length” about the weather over the body of water separating Vancouver Island from the south coast of B.C. “So the name of our newspaper was guaranteed to be mentioned— free of charge—several times a day,” McLeod wrote. He and his friends had a clear vision: to oppose the Vietnam War, generate awareness about environmental issues, provide a platform for artists, and nurture an artistic community in Vancouver. McLeod has noted on numerous occasions that artists of the era were operating in silos. Up-and-coming young artists, in particular, were almost never featured in the media. The old Leisure magazine, published by the VanSun was really couver Sun, the only local entertainment source before the Straight started rolling off the presses. McLeod was also concerned by how widely the community was dispersed. Musician and poet Al Neil was down on the Dollarton mudflats, others were hanging around in Gastown or on West 4th Avenue. As publisher and editor of the Straight, McLeod wanted to create a paper that helped these artists and many others talk to one another, learn from one another, and feel that they were part of a genuine community.
Visual arts were also highlighted in the early days through the work of such renowned illustrators as Rand Holmes, Bob Masse, and David Boswell. One of Vancouver’s greatest visual artists, Ian Wallace, used to write reviews for the paper. Another outstanding visual artist, Dana Claxton, used to sell advertising. Other visual artists who worked at the Straight over the years included Academy Award nominee Brent Boates. But the most famous alumnus is Sir Bob Geldof. The frontman for the Boomtown Rats learned how the music industry worked while travelling with McLeod to San Francisco and Los Angeles when he was an editor of the Straight in the mid 1970s. In his autobiography, Geldof reminisced about the time he was hired by McLeod to work in the Straight’s bookstore before moving into the editorial department and covering local bands. “I loved the paper,” Geldof wrote. “It was the first work I liked: I would stay late and be in early.” The Straight’s focus on nurturing young artists was reflected in its early and repeated coverage of such entertainment giants as k.d. lang, Bryan Adams, Crystal Pite, Veda Hille, and many others. McLeod also ensured that the film industry received its due by featuring Vancouver directors like Mina Shum, Julia Kwan, Kevan Funk, and others. To celebrate its 50th anniversary last year, the Straight invited several local bands to perform for their fans in the lobby of its building. Among those who played were Mother Mother and Dan Mangan. -
Find Your Playfulness on the Island!
Two Spectacular Dining Venues
The Georgia Straight | Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly | Volume 52 Number 2637 1635 West Broadway, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 1W9 www.straight.com Phone: 604-730-7000 / Fax: 604-730-7010 / e-mail: gs.info@straight.com Display Advertising: 604-730-7020 / Fax: 604-730-7012 / e-mail: sales@straight.com Classifieds: 604-730-7060 / e-mail: classads@straight.com Subscriptions: 604-730-7000 Distribution: 604-730-7087 EDITOR + PUBLISHER Dan McLeod ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Yolanda Stepien GENERAL MANAGER Matt McLeod EDITOR Charlie Smith PRODUCT DIRECTOR
Chet Woodside SECTION EDITORS
Janet Smith (Arts/Fashion) Mike Usinger (Music) Steve Newton (Time Out) Adrian Mack (Movies) Brian Lynch (Books) EDITORIAL ADMINISTRATOR Doug Sarti ASSOCIATE EDITORS
Gail Johnson, John Lucas, Alexander Varty STAFF WRITERS
Piper Courtenay, Tammy Kwan, Lucy Lau, Travis Lupick, Carlito Pablo, Craig Takeuchi, Kate Wilson SENIOR EDITOR Martin Dunphy PROOFREADER Pat Ryffranck CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Gregory Adams, Nathan Caddell, David Chau, Jack Christie, Jennifer Croll, Ken Eisner (Movies), George Fetherling, Tara Henley, Michael Hingston, Ng Weng Hoong,
Alex Hudson, Kurtis Kolt, Robin Laurence (Visual Arts), Mark Leiren-Young, John Lekich, Amy Lu, Bob Mackin, Michael Mann, Rose Marcus, Beth McArthur, Verne McDonald, Allan MacInnis, Guy MacPherson, Tony Montague, Kathleen Oliver, Ben Parfitt, Vivian Pencz, Bill Richardson, Gurpreet Singh, Jacqueline Turner, Andrea Warner, Jessica Werb, Stephen Wong, Alan Woo CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Alfonso Arnold, Rebecca Blissett, Trevor Brady, Louise Christie, Emily Cooper, Randall Cosco, Krystian Guevara, Evaan Kheraj, Kris Krug, Tracey Kusiewicz, Kevin Langdale, Shayne Letain, Matt Mignanelli, Mark “Atomos” Pilon, Carlo Ricci, William Ting, Alex Waterhouse-Hayward LEAD WEB DEVELOPER Jeffrey Li WEB ADMINISTRATOR Miles Keir
PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR Mike Correia PRODUCTION
K.T. Dean, Sandra Oswald
AD SERVICES ASSOCIATE
Jon Cranny
DIRECTOR OF ARTS AND SPONSORSHIP
Laura Moore
SALES DIRECTOR
Tara Lalanne
ADVERTISING REPRESENTATIVES
Glenn Cohen, Robyn Marsh, Manon Paradis, David Pearlman, Catherine Tickle Tori Macnab
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Giles Roy, Dexter Vosper
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Janet McDonald
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The Georgia Straight is published every Thursday by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing SUBMISSIONS The Straight accepts no responsibility for, and will not Corp. Copies are distributed free every week throughout Vancouver, Burnaby, North necessarily respond to, any submitted materials. All submissions should be and West Vancouver, New Westminster, and Richmond. International Standard Serial addressed to contact@straight.com. 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 © 2018 Vancouver Free Press, Best Of Vancouver, BOV And Golden Plates Are Trade-Marks Of Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp.
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JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 11
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12 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
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Arc’teryx is one of several hip clothing stores that can be found in the vicinity of the intersection at Robson and Burrard.
FOR THE STYLE STALKER Arguably Vancouver’s busiest—and most transit-accessible—retail strip, Robson Street is packed with the kind of big-brand stores you’d expect from a metropolitan (read: touristfriendly) shopping district. But amid the Zaras, Club Monacos, and J. Crews are plenty of opportunities to support locally grown names. Adventurers and wannabe outdoorsy types are spoiled for choice with lululemon (970 Robson Street), RYU (805 Thurlow Street), and Arc’teryx (813 Burrard Street); trendy womenswear abounds at Plenty (1107 Robson Street), Couturist (1085 Robson Street), and the mammoth Aritzia (1100 Robson Street); and then there’s Reigning Champ (1148 Robson Street), one of only three brick-and-mortar outposts for the premium athletic wear label known for its comfy and effortlessly cool crewnecks, Ts, and joggers. Blue Ruby (1089 Robson Street), meanwhile, offers one of the best jewellery selections in the city. -
DISTRICT SNAPSHOT Beat the heat with a drink on the patio of Joe Fortes Seafood & Chop House.
FOR THE FOODIE CAFFEINE STOP: Open 24/7, Breka Bakery and Café (818 Bute Street) makes its own coffee, cake, and pastries. LANDMARK: Robson Street Plaza offers space to sit and relax amid the buzz of downtown. WATERING HOLE: Guu Original (838 Thurlow Street) and Guu Garlic (1698 Robson Street) are stocked with beer, sake, and boozy cocktails. GO-TO GREENSPACE: The pedestrian plaza at Robson and Bute streets boasts a community piano and plenty of seating.
The allure of Robson Street as the city’s favourite outdoor shopping scene shouldn’t be overshadowed by its food offerings—but this district is home to some damn good eats that can rival any seasonal sales. Starting from the south end of Robson, you’ll find the vibrant seafood house Joe Fortes (777 Thurlow Street) and upscale Italian eatery CinCin Ristorante + Bar (1154 Robson Street). A variety of French sweets and pastries can be found at Café Crêpe (1032 Robson Street) and the relatively new Ladurée (1141 Robson Street). As you make your way north, multicultural cuisines start to come into sight, including at Stepho’s Souvlaki Greek Taverna (1359 Robson Street), Sura Korean Royal Cuisine (1518 Robson Street), and Dinesty Dumpling House (1719 Robson Street). Since you’ll be in ramen central, check out Hokkaido Ramen Santouka (1690 Robson Street) and Marutama Ra-men (780 Bidwell Street). You can’t leave Robson without trying some Asian specialty desserts, so stop by Meet Fresh (1232 Robson Street) for traditional Taiwanese treats and Snowy Village Dessert Cafe (1696 Robson Street) for Korean shaved ice. -
JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 13
14 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
HOUSING
Social housing for the rich
F
amilies earning up to $104,440 are still deemed eligible to live in the “social housing” component of a proposed Vancouver West End development. Singles with a maximum income of $71,200 can also qualify for these homes, according to a city staff report. The so-called social-housing units are a component of a 32-storey condo tower planned at 1055 Harwood Street. An annual income of $104,440 is not what poor families typically earn. In fact, that income is even way above the earnings of what the City of Vancouver considers moderate-income households. Based on the city’s measure, a family is earning a moderate income if it gets between $30,000 and $80,000 a year. High-earning families can now qualify for social housing because social housing is no longer what many people think it is. It used to be that low-income people often Family incomes over $100,000 qualify lived in social housing, but not for social housing on Harwood Street. anymore in Vancouver. Under the leadership of the ruling Vision 44 social-housing units, on levels Vancouver party, the city has re- one to eight of the 32-storey builddefined social housing. ing. The upper levels will have 82 “Social housing” now means condo units. developments wherein 30 percent The city staff report on the proof the units are posed project noted earmarked for that 30 percent renters who canof the 44 socialnot pay average housing units will Carlito Pablo market rents. Albe for households though the rest of the units are rent- earning “at or below” B.C. Housing’s ed out at market rates, the entire as- Housing Income Limits, or HILs. sembly is considered social housing. Based on B.C. Housing’s definition, It’s a bit different in the Down- HILs represent the income required town Eastside. In this neighbour- to pay for the average rent of an aphood, “social housing” means propriately sized unit in the private projects wherein 33 percent of the rental market. units are dedicated to tenants who For 2018, B.C. Housing’s HILs can only pay the equivalent of wel- for Vancouver are the following: fare shelter rates. an annual income of $41,500 to In the case of the 1055 Har- afford rent for a studio unit; $48,000 wood development, there will be for a one-bedroom; $58,000 for
Real Estate
two bedrooms; $68,000 for three bedrooms; and $83,500 for fourbedroom units. According to the city staff report on 1055 Harwood, 30 percent of the 44 social-housing units to be rented at or below HILs are meant for singles and families earning between $15,000 and $67,000. The rest of the social-housing units will be offered at “Low End of Market” rents. These would “target singles with annual incomes of up to a maximum of $71,200 and families with annual incomes of up to a maximum of $104,440”. “Staff intend to work with senior levels of government and non-profit partners to deepen affordability,” according to the report. The value of the social-housing units is estimated at $21.3 million. The homes will be turned over to the City of Vancouver by the developers. As owner, the city will later select a nonprofit to operate the social-housing component of the development. The 32-storey project is a joint undertaking between Strand Development and Intracorp Projects Ltd. on behalf of the registered owner, Harwood Street Project Nominee Inc. The proponents have applied tothe city to rezone 1055 Harwood for a tower. The location currently has a three-storey residential building. Future residents will enter the building through two separate doors: one for condo dwellers and another one for social-housing residents. A design rationale forming part of the rezoning application states that the development was “designed to function and appear as two separate but interconnected buildings”. City staff have recommended approval of the rezoning application, subject to a public hearing scheduled to be held on July 31 this year. -
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JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 15
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16 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
straight stars dust in some striking and cut-to-thechase way. What happens next could be described as special, exceptional, f it hasn’t already sparked some- shocking, or life-altering, especially thing for you, stay alert. Thanks so if your birthday happens on the to Mars on high heat, Friday’s eclipse or close to it. lunar eclipse stays hot-wired VIRGO through next Wednesday. August 22–September 22 The total lunar eclipse is called a To the brink and back; one blood moon due to the sun’s indirect way or another, the eclipse sets you light reflecting off the moon to our up to make much faster progress. Earth. And although the Earth, Mars, and the sun are in closer prox- Now through next Wednesday can produce a cutoff or breaking point, imity, the moon is farther from the Earth, thereby producing a lengthier added volatility, a disruption, eruption, or sudden snap. Shattering and a darker than usual eclipse. It is the second total lunar eclipse through the sound barrier (yours or of the year, but it is singular for sev- theirs), Venus in Virgo helps you to eral reasons. It is the longest eclipse walk your talk, to release, relinquish, and move beyond it. of the century, clocking in at just under four hours. Mars retrograde LIBRA in Aquarius adds extra fuel with the September 22–October 23 following activations: opposes the Never say never; anything sun late Thursday (10:14 p.m. PDT); is possible. The eclipse could produce exact conjunction to the eclipse an exceptional opportunity, perhaps moon one-and-a-half hours before totality (1:20 p.m.) on Friday; closest even a windfall. You could reconnect with someone you absolutely did proximity to Earth on Tuesday; not expect would appear in your life square Uranus next Wednesday. again. You could make a discovery Mars has not travelled this close or surprise breakthrough, for yourto the Earth since 2003. Prior to self or regarding a creative project, that, it had been 60,000 years! Having surpassed the solstice lati- socially, or with a special someone. Venus/Pluto sets the backdrop for tude of the Tropic of Cancer, Mars deep healing, cleansing, or clearing. is also travelling out-of-bounds (a renegade influence). It can provoke SCORPIO even more rampant anger, violence, October 23–November 21 wars, and volatility (at all levels). To The shit could hit the fan. the plus, it rouses the inner warrior You could hit an unexpected fast to wager more actively on behalf of self. Uranus, ruler of Aquarius, and track, a cutoff or point of no return. You could meet up with something Mercury retrograde also stir it up. or someone life-altering. Courage What does all this mean? Friday’s serves you well. Don’t tempt fate; eclipse is a hot-button trigger for all keep safety and security to the forethat has been teeming with life but front. Taking you by force, necesthat has not yet seen the full light of day. An eclipse is an acceleration cata- sity, or opportunity, Friday through lyst, often producing the unexpected, next Wednesday is hot-wired for action. jolting, and non-negotiable. This one will prove life-altering for many. SAGITTARIUS ARIES November 21–December 21 March 20–April 19 The eclipse could spark Don’t expect that hot- a sudden genius moment, an unwired feel to subside. The lunar eclipse expected advantage or opportunity, is Friday, but thanks to Mars, the flash a special event, a reconnection, or moment can strike anytime between an auspicious meeting. Strike while now and next Wednesday. Something the iron’s hot. Watch for an opporcan burst onto the scene, jump out at tunity to make an important correcyou, bust wide-open, or erupt. You tion or turnaround, to set the record can be provoked, excited, stimulated, straight, and/or to get it moving in or fast-tracked in some out-of-the- an altogether new direction. Surprisordinary, perhaps exceptional way. ing headway can be made. Loss can lead to gain. TAURUS April 20–May 20 CAPRICORN It’s tipping-point time, esDecember 21–January 19 Don’t expect more of the pecially so if you are born on or close to April 22 to 26. (If you were born same or business as usual. Stay alert mid-May or in the run-up to it, you’ll and pay close attention to intuition, feel the impact of Mercury retrograde a first impression, a loved one, and mixed in with the eclipse.) While life your money. Even so, Friday’s total is yours to design and do, the stars lunar eclipse can take you by surcan override your ability to choose. prise. Don’t take an unnecessary risk but do stay ready to quickly jump The unexpected could hit hard. into action. The moment could make GEMINI all the difference. > B Y ROSE MA RC U S
I
July 26 to August 1, 2018
May 21–June 21
Mars retrograde has already signed you up for a regroup, revisit, and rethink. Mercury retrograde helps you to key in more specifically. Head and heart may be on opposite sides of the coin, but Friday’s cut-to-the-chase eclipse aims to get them both on the same side. It’s a strike-it-hot time for a vacation, break, discovery, or reinvention.
CANCER
June 21–July 22
Friday’s tipping-point eclipse can hit you where it hurts the most, i.e., your heart, wallet, health, or physical safety. Something could suddenly go snap. It could be you, it, or them. If it is already on its last leg, it isn’t likely to survive. Built for speed, not for ease. To the plus, the eclipse can set you up for a significant fast-track breakthrough.
LEO
July 22–August 22
What is destined for you will show itself in high definition and full colour. What’s not meant to be or what can’t cut it will bite the
9:30PM - 1:30AM
TOY ZEBRA JULY 27 AUGUST 17
HAVYN JULY 28 AUGUST 24 & 31
DOUBLE DOWN KEYS AUGUST 3, 4, 11, 18 & 25
ALEX MAHER
AUGUST 10
AQUARIUS
January 20–February 18
Get ready for a wild ride! You will feel the fullest impact of Mars in Aquarius and Friday’s total lunar eclipse if your birthday is on or close to January 24 or 25. Watch for something completely out of the blue to fire you up and/or trigger something major, perhaps even life-altering. Next Wednesday is also hot-wired.
3RD FLOOR
PISCES
February 18–March 20
Whether subtle or strong in influence, Friday’s total lunar eclipse holds significant impact regarding prospects for the future. In more immediate terms, it could spark a creative solution, a better job, or the start of a health or wealth improvement. Mercury retrograde suggests there is an advantage to a revisit, review, or revamp. -
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PRIDE
UBC geography student Kimberley Wong (Craig Takeuchi photo), counsellor Robert Hong, and human-rights lawyer Adrienne Smith (below left) all embrace intersectionality as a concept whose time has come.
Illuminating the Pride spectrum
However, her trip to China was part of her ongoing “cultural reclamation”, an effort that overlaps with her other identities. As she had previously seen only white gay men represent LGBT communities, Wong says that Being an LGBT community member is only one part of the lives seeing an Out in Schools of these Vancouverites who span diverse elements of identity presentation about Love Intersections’ Jen Sung If you think of Pride as only benefiting LGBT and David Ng shattered her misconception that people, you might want to think again. The ac- only white people could be queer, allowing her to ceptance of diversity and liberation from gender come out “peacefully” as a femme queer at age 19. restrictions, sexual pigeonholing, and discriminaPropelling her further was a life-changing tion extends to everyone. From the straight male friendship with a local drag queen. She recalls who feels he has to hide his emotional sensitivities “heaving crying” when she first saw Maiden in fear of being mocked to the cisgender woman China perform in a celebration of beauty, elewho relinquishes her assertiveness to avoid being gance, queerness, gender-bending, Chinese culperceived as a problem, what parts of yourself do ture, and sparkles. you hide in order to feel accepted by others? “It was this magical world of possibilities that The freedom to be yourself is reflected in this year’s opened up,” she says. theme for the Vancouver Pride parade: “Be you: bring As this year’s Georgia Straight Pride cover model, all of you.” It’s also an inherent part of the subject of Wong says she developed the persona Cantonese intersectionality—or how social categories such as Rebel Girl for a photo shoot with her chosenethnicity and culture, gender, sexuality, economic family sister, photographer Jenny Xu, because she status, and more are interconnected—which has in- regards Cantonese opera as a means to reclaim creasingly come to the fore in recent years. her Chinese queer identity. (“Cantonese opera is In the lead-up to the Vancouver Pride parade like the original drag,” she says.) (which takes place on August 5), the following She has also overcome another childhood discollection of profi les of LGBT community mem- comfort. Although she previously loathed trips bers offers just a brief view of the many stories into the wilderness with her field-geologist father, out there that illustrate how multiple identities she has since become a UBC geography student in overlap, interplay, and interact to make up each environment and sustainability who relishes rockindividual’s totality. climbing, cycling, camping, gardening, and other After all, as Pride reminds us, when all of the outdoor activities. As if that’s not enough, Wong colours of the rainbow are able to shine, it’s high also cofounded the nonprofit City Hub Initiative time to celebrate. to support youth engagement, has been a codirector of Kids for Climate Action and an organizer KIMBERLEY WONG for the Vancouver School Board Sustainability Conference, and won the 2016 City of Vancouver Environment and climate, queer communities, Greenest City Leadership Award of Excellence. Chinese Canadians, youth initiatives, outdoor Underachiever is clearly not on her CV. recreation In 2016, she and Steph Glanzmann launched What does it take for a visible minority to be the Climate Feels workshops to address experiregarded as Canadian? ences of people of colour within climate and enThat’s a question Vancouver-born Kimberley vironmental movements. For instance, the local Wong has wrestled with. Stand Up to China campaign against shark-fin On her first trip to Asia, in 2017, when she went to soup made Chinese-Canadian activists feel constudy village life and 19th-century migration from flicted because of its Sinophobic elements. In rethe county of Kaiping in China as part of UBC’s sponse, the Shark Truth program arose within Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies, she the Chinese-Canadian community in 2009, later found the experience “very unsettling”. becoming the Hua Foundation. Wong was one of With only “dim-sum level” fluency in the the foundation’s community-development direcTaishanese dialect, she found her linguis- tors and is currently involved with the foundatic ability was questioned and she became tion’s Chinatown Today project. acutely aware of her differences. “The more and more I learn about Chinese “I was taller and darker-skinned, and culture, the more and more beautiful I see it bespoke more obnoxiously, and I felt real- ing,” she says. ly, really protective over my EnglishThat statement appears to ring true for all the language speaking ability and I didn’t facets of her life that she formerly overlooked but want to blend in because I wanted to now embraces—and takes pride in. > CRAIG TAKEUCHI assert ‘I am Canadian,’ ” she confesses in a chat at the Straight offices. Wong, you see, grew up socializ- ROBERT HONG ing with white peers in her Arbutus First Nations, two-spirit and LGBT communities, neighbourhood and didn’t want to health, arts and culture be Chinese, due to the prevalence of Sometimes people will say racist things about anti-Asian ridicule at school for being Chinese people in front of Robert Hong. too Chinese or too Asian or “one of those Asians” That’s because they perceive him as First Nations (i.e., “fresh off the boat”). Her predecessors also contended with perse- (correct) or Latino (incorrect). He calls them out, vering in white-dominant societies. Her moth- not just because of racism but also because he’s part er and grandmother grew up in Kamloops, Chinese—in addition to being of Métis, Blackfoot, running a Chinese restaurant and often serving Assiniboine, and French-Canadian descent. Hong, who views his mixed heritage as a customers who called them racial slurs. And her lineage includes Canadian Pacific Railway “bonus”, tells the Straight by phone that he grew workers who endured the hardships of the Chi- up in Victoria with a Chinese-Canadian father, eating Chinese food and celebrating Chinese New nese head tax.
2
2
Year. However, due to internalized racism, his mother kept his Indigenous heritage a secret until he was around 11 years old. In the 1980s, as he sought out health resources to recover from childhood abuse issues, he began to learn about and turn to traditional Indigenous practices. Now a counsellor at the Native Courtworker and Counselling Association of B.C. who runs a trauma and addictions day program, he says his experiences working in health fields have taught him how culture and identity play vital roles in healing and breaking free from self-damaging cycles. In dealing with issues such as posttraumatic stress disorder, Hong says he teaches people to view trauma in different ways and see how it has influenced their lives as well as their nervous systems. But in consideration of factors such as residential-school experiences, assimilation, intergenerational trauma, and ongoing oppression, Hong espouses the importance of teaching Indigenous clients about rights, culture, and identity to mend the psychological and spiritual damage that colonization wrought upon First Nations people. “Aboriginal people need the opportunity to learn about their culture and to practise it as part of the repair,” he says. “Because on some level, we have been brainwashed to see that our culture and who we were before colonization was inferior and that somehow we’re inferior.” But he also extends his healing practices to non-Indigenous people, such as through his Gay Warriors talking circle, which incorporates First Nations traditions but is open to all two-spirit and queer men of all ethnic backgrounds. Healing, he points out, does not discriminate. “When you’re working with spirit, there is no race,” he says. As someone who has taken 12-step programs and gone through recovery, his message to anyone facing struggles is simple and strong: “You can make it.” He says ongoing efforts are needed to undo the homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia that European colonists imposed upon First Nations societies, which had previously accepted and integrated gender and sexual diversity. “Even though we’ve gotten back some of our culture, it’s still a fight to get the Christian point of view about homosexuality and transgenderism out of our culture,” he says. Although he may currently be working in health fields, he says he still draws upon his fine-arts training as a graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design in everything from critical thinking and database creation to making posters. In fact, Hong is also the founder of Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival, which celebrated its 20th edition and opened the Sum Gallery in Chinatown this year. Despite not being with the organization any longer, he’s “really happy” seeing how the festival has flourished. “When you put something in a show amongst other people for other people to see and if you’re of a different ethnic group or whatnot, then our perspectives and our issues get a voice,” he says. > CRAIG TAKEUCHI
ADRIENNE SMITH Law, poetry, transgender community, human rights
Adrienne Smith competed in poetry slams
2 while attending law school. Nowadays, the
Vancouver poet only gets to write verses occasionally, more as therapy to soothe the strains of lawyering. As a human-rights lawyer, Smith represents some of the most marginalized beings in society, including transgender people, sex workers, drug users, and prisoners. “These are folks who have experienced law as a sword and they don’t have the benefit of see page 21
JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 19
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Pride spectrum
from page 19
the shield, and I want to give them that,” Smith said. Smith spoke with the Georgia Straight in the Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood that many vulnerable people, as well as the Vancouver-born solicitor, call home. “I went to law to smuggle legal education over to our side of the barricade,” Smith related. “I didn’t go to law school like a lot of my classmates did, for the purpose of getting jobs in big law firms. I was always going to do a different kind of law: as socialjustice law, outsider law.” According to the 41-year-old, appearing at a poetry slam and in court are rather similar. “If you can’t think on your feet and you can’t make the audience go with what you’re saying, you’re not going to be good at either,” Smith said, “and I saw that parallel right away and it made me comfortable.” Smith was called to the bar in 2014 and started work in that same year as health-and-drug-policy staff lawyer with Pivot Legal Society. After two years with Pivot, Smith opened a human-rights law office, providing services for free. In January this year, Smith began to serve as a Pacific regional representative with the Canadian Labour Congress. “Some of the most important work that I’m proud of doing at the congress is working on how unions can include transgender people in our workplaces and also in our unions, because it’s a very binary space,” Smith said. Since 2014, Smith has been providing legal advice as a volunteer to clients of the Catherine White Holman Wellness Centre, a local organization that serves transgender people. As a nonbinary transgender person, Smith does not identify as either masculine or feminine. For self-reference, the lawyer uses the gender-neutral pronouns they, them, and their. “I was assigned female at birth,” Smith said. “My body is unremarkable in that way; everything is where it
Cicely Blain cofounded the Vancouver chapter of Black Lives Matter.
should be. But the gender identity that corresponds with that sex designation never fit. I was an odd little girl. I was very much a tomboy, much more masculine in my presentation and in my identity, but not a boy either. And I was maybe 20 before there was an Internet enough for me to find other people like me and figure out the words for what I am.” In court, the transgender lawyer at times is referred to by judges as “Miss Smith”, and that causes an “uncomfortable tension”. Smith usually puts up with that, knowing how judges have so much power and that the law remains a traditional field with conventional gender roles. “I can have a little Pride parade for myself every day in court or my client can get out of jail or have their bail varied or get a fair hearing,” Smith said.
> CARLITO PABLO
CICELY BLAIN Diversity and inclusion, Black Lives Matter, queer community, intersectionality
Vancouver doesn’t have a large
2 population of people of African
ancestry, but that didn’t discourage Cicely Blain from cofounding a local chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM) more than two years ago.
“We really recognized this need to make BLM a national issue and have people in Canada recognize that racism is not just an American thing,” Blain said during an interview in the Straight boardroom. “I think there’s definitely a lack of acknowledgment around racism in Canada in general.” Blain, who prefers the pronouns they and them, had been involved in campus activism at UBC and recognized that BLM could focus attention on issues that weren’t receiving the recognition they deserved. For people of African ancestry, racism is obviously a huge issue, but another concern is disconnection because people are so spread out across the Lower Mainland. “A lot of other cultural groups in Vancouver have a specific cultural centre, a place where they meet and gather,” Blain noted. “We’ve really tried to create those spaces where people can come, watch black performers, listen to black poetry, and stuff like that.” But Blain’s interests go well beyond this community. A major inspiration has been Kimberlé Crenshaw, a U.S. law professor who coined the term intersectionality to describe how overlapping identities are linked to racist and discriminatory systems and structures. This perspective has given Blain, who was raised in London, England, a keen appreciation for the challenges faced by others, whether they’re Indigenous, immigrants from the Global South, or people of colour. “We don’t just have one single identity or one single story,” Blain said. “We’re all made up of different facets of our identity. Within that, for some we experience privilege and for others we experience oppression.” To illustrate this point, Blain acknowledged having privilege as an educated middle-class person from a western country. But as a queer person of African ancestry, Blain can be disadvantaged. “We have all these many layers of our identity,” Blain continued. “I try to view it from the perspective of see next page
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curriculum, one that was LGBTQinclusive and dealt with matters like consent and online safety. Hansman said: “It made me sort of think back to what it was like for me in high school in Ontario in the late ’80s and the early ’90s, kind of going, ‘Hmm, that probably isn’t the kind of education that students should be getting.’ ”
Pride spectrum
from previous page
allyship. In the places where you have privilege, you have a responsibility to be an ally. Some people have a lot more privilege than others. They hit the lottery in terms of identity.” Since graduating from UBC with a major in modern European studies and a minor in Russian, Blain has become a diversity-and-inclusion consultant, helping organizations create more respectful workplaces. This can involve everything from changing codes of conduct to reexamining hiring practices. Blain revealed that people don’t always appreciate hearing that everything they’ve accomplished in life didn’t come solely as a result of their hard work. As a consultant, her goal is to encourage people to be more compassionate with one another and be a bit more vulnerable, which isn’t always easy for people in the workplace. “I’m definitely not any less of an activist, but I also recognize that some people feel quite scared or threatened—especially if you’re a white man.” Blain’s mother, Antoinette, is a teacher who “doesn’t take shit from anyone”, and Blain often accompanied a grandmother to protests to try to bring about positive change. In Vancouver, Blain has been impressed by veteran antiracism activist and educator Sadie Kuehn. “I find her incredible and really inspiring. She just has so much wisdom.”
> CHARLIE SMITH
GLEN HANSMAN Education, labour, queer community, Indigenous issues
Glen Hansman didn’t want students to experience what he went through. That’s why he became a teacher. “I had a really awful time at school myself as a queer youth in northern Ontario,” Hansman can now recall with a chuckle. “High school was not a really great place for me.”
2 other
> CARLITO PABLO
FATIMA JAFFER Diversity and inclusion, antiracism, intersectionality, queer community, Muslims, South Asians
Fatima Jaffer can often be found pictures at parties, film festivals, and protests in Vancouver’s LGBT community, her images becoming a visual documentation of the smiling faces that showed up and showed out. And although such work may not be as overtly political as her queer and antiracist activism, make no mistake: the places where the former photojournalist chooses to shoot—and the people that transform into subjects before her lens—are far from accidental. “My photographs follow my politics,” Jaffer tells the Straight by phone. “They’re about who doesn’t usually make it in.” For Jaffer, these are women, nonbinary folks, and people of colour: individuals like her who are very much part of the LGBT realm but are rarely the ones splashed across film screens, television sets, and print. As a result, the writer and organizer makes a concerted effort to turn her camera on these crowds in the hope that—by boosting the visibility of queer, nonwhite bodies—LGBT circles and events can be more welcoming for all. “I see it as an extension of politics and community-building,” she notes, “and getting to know people, and broadening the space.” As a queer Kenyan-born South Asian woman who identifies as Muslim, Jaffer underlines the importance of intersectionality in her activism.
2 snapping
Both B.C. Teachers’ Federation president Glen Hansman and writer-photographer Fatima Jaffer are dedicated to diversity.
Hansman, 45, is currently in his third term as president of the 43,000-strong B.C. Teachers’ Federation (BCTF). In an interview at BCTF headquarters in Vancouver, Hansman went on to relate that he was active in LGBTQ politics as a university student. “I landed on education because I wanted to make sure that school systems did better, not just for youth like me but for any student, Indigenous and others, [who found] that the school system was not a great place,” Hansman told the Georgia Straight. Armed with degrees in English literature from Carleton University and education from McGill University, he travelled west and secured a teaching job. The new educator got involved right away with the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers’ Association (VESTA) as a union representative. He eventually became VESTA’s president.
In addition to teaching, he was also hired as a consultant on antihomophobia and diversity issues by the Vancouver School Board (VSB). With Hansman as adviser and then school trustee Jane Bouey taking a leadership role, the VSB came up with a groundbreaking antihomophobia policy. “That policy that Vancouver adopted in 2002 became sort of the guiding document for what a lot of other school districts eventually adopted,” he said. It was also in that same year that the B.C. Liberal government stripped teachers of their bargaining rights to negotiate classroom conditions, triggering a lengthy court battle. Ultimately, in November 2016, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a landmark ruling that restored those rights. Hansman at that time was president of the BCTF. Hansman also recalled during the interview that his old high school had a sizable population of Anishinaabe
students who faced discrimination. This shaped his dedication to contributing to the cause of reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. “It was very clear to me as a teenager that they were marginalized, and there was a lot of racist bullshit that went on at our school at the time, from administration on down,” he said. “And so my commitment to ‘Indigenizing’ schools has sort of been intertwined with LGBTQ work.” According to Hansman, he and the BCTF are keen on working with the B.C. government on one of the recommendations by the federal Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which pertains to antiracism training for public servants and the rights of Indigenous peoples. Hansman said he doesn’t know how much has changed in his old school. But it struck a personal chord when he heard that the government of new Ontario premier Doug Ford had scrapped the province’s sex-education
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Librarian Tara Robertson, who experienced racism growing up, devotes herself to ensuring inclusion, diversity, and accessibility in technology and other fields.
Falling anywhere on the LGBT spectrum has long been portrayed as â&#x20AC;&#x153;a white thingâ&#x20AC;? in popular media, she says, making it difficultâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and intimidatingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for queer folks of colour to come out in their own communities. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s just one reason why the PhD candidateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;who, not coincidentally, examines the relationship between media, queerness, and social movements in her researchâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;founded and cofacilitates Trikone Vancouver, the local offshoot of a San Franciscoâ&#x20AC;&#x201C; established support group for queer South Asian individuals. Launched in 2005, the collective provides a safe space for South Asians in Metro Vancouver who identify as LGBT while also tackling racism in the queer sphere. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s so important to keep those intersections at the forefront,â&#x20AC;? Jaffer says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;and not to let go of how race and homophobia are connected.â&#x20AC;? The understandingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and concerning realityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;that many queer people of colour may feel equally ostracized among their own communities and within LGBT realms is what drives Trikoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work, as well as its alliance with black and Indigenous organizations in the city. In 2016, for example, Trikone announced that it would not march in that yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Vancouver Pride parade in solidarity with Black Lives Matter Vancouver when the latter groupâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s request for the Vancouver Police Department to withdraw from the fete was rejected by organizers. Trikone also takes care to involve queer Indigenous folks in its events as much as possible. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be organizing in Vancouverâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;on Coast Salish territoryâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;without doing that work,â&#x20AC;? Jaffer emphasizes. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It legitimizes us in terms of doing political work in the city.â&#x20AC;? Wearing so many hats has helped the 56-year-old explore her own multifaceted identity, too. For her, successful activism changes society so that it can accommodate people and their whole selves rather than reducing them to a single signifier. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I came into this work because of my identity, because of identity clashes in the world,â&#x20AC;? Jaffer explains. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re constantly being told youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re one thing and not the other.â&#x20AC;Ś Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no room for you to be the fully intersectional person you are. But I think what it [my work] has helped me understand is that you have to bring those things together: I think like a woman; I think like a queer; I think like a Muslim; I think like a person of colour.â&#x20AC;? > LUCY LAU
TARA ROBERTSON Technology, libraries, queer community, diversity and inclusion
Growing up in Prince George,
2 life wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always easy for Tara
Robertson. A queer-identifying woman with a Japanese-Canadian mother and Scottish-Irish father, she found herself often treated differently than the other kids in the predominantly white city. Days on the playground could be tough, filled with whispers and stares from the other children and comments from the adults.
Even as a child, though, she was able to draw the positives from the situation. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was interesting being mixedrace,â&#x20AC;? she tells the Straight on the line from her office in Vancouver. â&#x20AC;&#x153;A lot of the racism I experienced there was because people thought I was First Nations. That kind of highlights the illogical nature of hatred: they were pegging me as the wrong race but still treating me rather badly. But I think growing up not part of the dominant group in terms of race and gender and sexuality, the gift and the silver lining of that is that you see a lot of things in a different way. You see power differently, and the complexity of how people interact, and you also get the opportunity to think about who you are. And I really value that.â&#x20AC;? Robertson has since dedicated her personal and professional life to advocating for diversity and inclusion. Spending her days working as a librarian, she developed a scheme for 20 colleges and universities to help those who found it difficult to read print materials. In her free time, she volunteered for the Queer History Project in Vancouverâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an initiative that aimed to collect and catalogue stories from LGBT individuals in the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and offered her services to the International Gay and Lesbian Aquatics Association, an organization that promotes visibility in sports such as swimming, diving, and water polo. Most recently, Robertson has begun to tackle the issue of representation in one of the most notorious straight, white, and male industries: technology. Joining a tight-knit team of three, she took charge of improving diversity and inclusion at Mozilla, the software community behind freefor-use product, including the widely downloaded Firefox Internet browser. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We have about 1,000 people worldwide,â&#x20AC;? she says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;What really excited me was that the leadership here truly believes that diversity is important. They see a connection between inclusion and the open-source products we build and our fight to keep the Internet open for everyone. I do a lot of data work, because itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s important to measure change in the areas we care about, and I help with policy and programs to help shift the needle on representation and to make the culture more inclusive. I want this to become a place where people can bring their difference, and have that difference be valued.â&#x20AC;? One of the initiatives Robertson is most proud of is improving access for trans people. Believing that the letter T is often forgotten in the LGBT acronym, she created a program to help people transition their gender at Mozilla, including writing a checklist to let someone know where they would need to update all of their usernames and official documents and who to talk to during the process. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I know what itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s like to feel that things werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t designed to include me,â&#x20AC;? she says of her motivation to help others in the community. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a really crappy feeling. If Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m able to change how people are doing things so [marginalized] folks can get in the building, can get to
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JULY 26 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 23
Pride spectrum
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the meeting rooms, can have their voices heard—that’s the stuff I’m really excited about.”
> KATE WILSON
BELLA SIE Cannabis, Indonesian Canadians, queer community, music
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Bella Sie has come out of the to her family twice: the first was to embrace her LGBT identity, and the second was to explain her cannabis use. Both, she says, were “exceptionally uncomfortable” conversations. Both were equally shrouded in stigma and misinformation. Sie—Vancouver manager of events and partnerships at Aurora Cannabis Inc., a federally licensed cannabis producer—says that coming out, in both aspects, has empowered her to create positive spaces for others struggling with intersectional identities. Set to turn 30 on August 5, the same day as Vancouver’s 40th Pride Parade, she sits on the rooftop patio of her Seymour Street office and recalls opening up to her mother about being in love with a woman. “I didn’t really come out intentionally. I kind of fell out,” she says, laughing. “My mom caught me getting a little too emotional [over a
2 closet
Aurora Cannabis events and partnerships manager Bella Sie is starting up an LGBT club in her company to help promote inclusion in the cannabis industry.
woman] one day. She just straight-up asked me: ‘What’s going on here?’ ” Sie, who was the first of her Indonesian family to be born in Canada, says the question “made time stand still”. She says that after a long pause, she responded: “Mom, what do you think?” Sie and her mother didn’t speak for a long time afterward. In 2012, Sie would discover another layer of her advocacy after be-
ing struck by a car while cycling. “My doctor wanted to hook me up with a bunch of painkillers, which really didn’t jibe with me,” she says. A proponent of plant medicines, she turned to cannabis for pain management. “I’ve had to mask my consumption from my folks, a lot,” she says. “Their views on cannabis aren’t very accepting. They’re definitely very see next page
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caught up in that hazy stigma that I try to work really hard against.” Sie avoided the conversation for years, but when in 2017 she landed her first position with Aurora, a company that loudly voices support for LGBT communities, she decided to approach coming out of the “cannabis closet” differently. She framed the new gig to her parents as a pharmaceuticals company. Coupling a background in grassroots marketing with events experience gained from years of DJing Vancouver’s nightlife scene, Sie quickly moved her way up the ladder from client-care specialist to eventmarketing coordinator. Empowered by her success, she then felt more comfortable explaining her cannabis ties to her family. “I think that softening the blow and letting them first know I was working towards a stable future, I was moving up in the company, then revealing what it was all about, was much easier for them to digest,” she says. Sie notes that she has learned from these conversations and is in the midst of starting an organizationwide LGBT club to promote inclusivity across the corporate weed space on the eve of legalization. “The reason I think both of those things have gotten better with my folks, in both of those regards, is because after I did fall out of the closet, I refused to ever go back in. I am unashamed of who I am with my medical prescription for cannabis and who I am as a queer person of colour,” she says. “I have amounted myself into what I would like to say is a shining beacon of all of those things coexisting harmoniously.…I want to take the lead on helping shape the cannabis industry into something reflective of that.” > PIPER COURTENAY
YOGI OMAR Film and television, diversity and inclusion, queer community, intersectionality
There came a moment in Yogi Omar’s English-speaking journey when he realized he had grasped the language. The queer activist— who had moved to Canada from his home of Indonesia to attend postsecondary school at the age of 18—was watching an episode of Gilmore Girls, one of several TV series he had picked up in an effort to improve his English, when he started laughing. Without his having to use Google as a reference, one of the jokes from the beloved teen dramedy had clicked with him. “I started crying because I was like, ‘I got it,’ ” Omar recalls for the Straight by phone. “I got a joke.” That was almost two decades ago, and the psychology grad hasn’t “shut up” since. And he’s using his voice for good. Now the co-owner of the local InspirationALL Talent Agency, Omar manages a group of primarily commercial and background actors, finding spots for them on film and television sets. It’s a sweet irony that’s not lost on the young entrepreneur— and one he doesn’t take for granted. “I learned how to speak English from watching all these TV [shows] and films,” he says, “and then now, my job is to put people there. That’s always my grounding moment of ‘I love it.’ ” As a gay Chinese man who is well aware of Hollywood’s systemic discrimination, Omar takes care to accept as many qualified LGBT folks and people of colour onto his roster as possible. On-screen representation, he stresses, is important, especially given the recent movement of casting directors seeking more diverse characters. “You learn from what you see; you learn from what you hear,” Omar explains. “And you definitely don’t get a lot of representation in role models in the media—especially the American media—that we all consume. So the more representation there is, the better.” That representation is also the key driver behind Omar’s activist work. Since moving to Vancouver in 2001, the 35-year-old has volunteered his time with many LGBT
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organizations, including Qmunity, Out on Screen, and the Vancouver Queer Film Festival. In addition, he has sung with the Vancouver Men’s Choir for a decade, and in 2013 he organized two “kiss-in” demonstrations at Vancouver’s Russian consulate to protest Russia’s antigay law. At the moment, Omar is serving his second term on the City of Vancouver’s LGBTQ2+ advisory committee, where he helped the region become the country’s first municipality to ban anti LGBT-conversion therapy. When Omar arrived in Vancouver, he saw very few people of colour in the city’s LGBT spaces and wanted his involvement in the community to pave the way for other nonwhite bodies. Since then, he says, there’s been improvement, though he’d still like to see more queer folks of colour at board meetings and in bureaucracy. “It’s a priority that I really, really want to emphasize to people who may look like me,” Omar says. “I want to, hopefully, be an example of, like, ‘Okay, if he’s doing this, maybe I can too.’ ” Omar, an occasional film producer, also spotlights LGBT stories on the big screen. Most recently, he helped bring to life a short flick that deals with bisexuality, or what he calls the “least represented” letter in the LGBT umbrella. Like his activism and various roles in the LGBT realm, his films communicate a vital truth: that there’s more than one way to be queer. “A lot of the time, people will be like, ‘Oh, that’s not me because I’m not femme. That’s not me because I’m not a drag queen,’ ” he says. “Of course: but there are all these layers of being queer and all these things that you can do.”
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AHMAD DANNY RAMADAN Refugees, Syrian culture, queer community, literary community
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Ahmad Danny Ramadan says
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> LUCY LAU
day he arrived in Canada four years ago. But the Vancouver journalist and author of The Clothesline Swing hasn’t lost touch with his Syrian roots. And he remains keenly interested in helping queer people like him who are fleeing a horrific civil war in his home country. To that end, he’s hosting An Evening in Damascus at the Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre to raise funds to enable two lesbians to come to Canada. They’re being sponsored by a group that’s affiliated with Rainbow Refugee. “I wanted to introduce the Syrian culture to Vancouverites and to Canadians in general,” Ramadan said in a recent interview at the Georgia Straight offices. An Evening in Damascus takes place at 7 p.m. on Tuesday (July 31), with tickets priced at $50 in advance and $60 at the door. All the money will go directly to the two women to help them cover their living expenses during their first year in Canada. “I want to represent both my Syrian identity as well as the queer identity that I carry,” Ramadan stated.
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Author, journalist, and activist Ahmad Danny Ramadan seeks to boost awareness about Syrian culture as he helps LGBT refugees come to Canada.
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“That’s why I’m bringing drag queens to join us in the event.” It’s the fourth year in a row that Ramadan has hosted this event in Vancouver. In addition to the drag queens, Karamella Barr and Madam Lola, there will also be a Middle Eastern belly dancer, Khadiejah, who will move around the room, shimmying and moving her torso to the beats and melodies of Arabic music. Ramadan also promised “amazing” dining courtesy of Tayybeh: A Celebration of Syrian Cuisine. This group of resourceful women came to Canada as refugees and have been impressing Vancouverites with their Syrian pop-up dinners. In addition, Ramadan will engage in storytelling, which he said is a cornerstone of Syrian culture. “We like to talk,” he added with a smile. “We like to share stories.” One of his goals is to clear up misconceptions that Canadians might have about Syria, describing it as “the dawn of civilization”. He said that Damascus is the oldest capital in the world, with 11,000 years of history. He described Aleppo as a beautiful city with a lovely castle on top of a mountain. And he emphasized that Syrians were happy living there until a civil war started wreaking havoc. “We are cosmopolitan. We are very urban. We have big cities.”
At the same time, he pointed out that there has been growing homophobia in Syria. Back in the 1800s there was more acceptance and even gay marriages, Ramadan said, before adding that colonization had a pernicious effect on public attitudes. Democracy gave way to the Assad family dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s when the minority Alawites, a sect of Shia Islam, seized control over the country. The Syrian economy slowed and a significant number of his countrymen, including many Sunni Muslims, went to work in Saudi Arabia for extended periods of time. According to Ramadan, when they retired and returned home, some brought back a more conservative, Wahhabi Islam–inspired mindset that’s extremely hostile to LGBT people. That brought him to another goal with An Evening in Damascus: to support the queer community. He believes it’s the most public LGBT Syrian event in the world. “It is statistically proven that queer refugees are the easiest to integrate into the Canadian community because those are folks who come from the other side of the world, where homophobia is very rampant, and they face a lot of challenges over there,” he said. “So they come here and they start to appreciate the openness and the welcoming feeling that they get here in Canada.” > CHARLIE SMITH
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PRIDE
Pride welcomes sober fun
G
iuseppe Ganci can remember when Pride wasn’t much fun for people in recovery. After spending his younger years partying with alcohol and drugs, he managed to go clean more than a decade ago with the help of the New Westminster–based Last Door Recovery Society. Fresh out of rehab 11 years ago, he and eight other Last Door alumni headed off to Pride in Vancouver, hoping to celebrate with their community. “It was really my first Pride without substances,” Ganci, Last Door’s director of community development, told the Georgia Straight by phone. But after watching the annual parade through the West End, they felt out of place. That’s because all their friends were getting drunk and all the parties were in nightclubs. “Because we didn’t drink and do drugs, there was this feeling like it wasn’t our Pride anymore,” Ganci recalled. “We didn’t stay downtown.” Understandably, they didn’t want to be triggered into relapsing into drugs and alcohol. But rather than feeling sorry for themselves, they regrouped and decided to do something positive about it. Their discussions led to the birth of Clean Sober and Proud, which was the Last Door alumni’s way of reclaiming a festival that had meant so much to them before they went into treatment. Years ago, it was difficult to enjoy Pride without being surrounded by drugs and It started with the group borrowing alcohol, but the creation of the Untoxicated Street Festival has made it possible. a truck, filling it full of balloons, and joining the next year’s Pride parade. entertainers at the corner of Bute He added that Untoxicated attracts “We danced and we had the time and Davie streets. people who never had any problem of our lives,” Ganci recalled. It also offers an opportunity for with addiction but who don’t want to In the early years of Clean Sober people at Pride to ask questions about get obliterated during Pride. and Proud, some were reluctant recovery, whether it’s for themselves Clean Sober and Proud is one of to join the festivities because they or for family members or friends. many events organized by Last Door, didn’t want to be outed as an alco“Our committee of nine people which offers residential rehab-treatholic or addict. According to Ganci, really started a conversation where ment programs for male adults and 20 people participated in the second it’s okay to be clean and sober,” male youths. There are also adjunct year and 30 people in the third year, Ganci said. rehab-treatment programs for families dancing wildly to pulsing music In this regard, he suggested that and partners of all ages and genders. blaring out of loudspeakers. the growing popularity of Clean The cofounder and director of “Fast-forward 10 years later: it’s Sober and Proud and Untoxicated development, Louise Cooksey, told now hundreds of mirrors the evolu- the Straight by phone that when people involved tion of the LGBT people complete treatment, it’s imin the Pride community. In the portant for them to feel like they’re float,” he said. 1980s and 1990s, part of a viable community. She Charlie Smith “The ripple effect Ganci said, some emphasized that Last Door aims to has been felt in other cities across the avoided attending Pride because reduce the stigma for people in recountry and in the States. They’ve they didn’t want to reveal their sex- covery. It also helps them avoid the seen what we do and they’re entering ual orientation in public. Then about feeling that they’re invisible, which recovery floats in parades.” a decade ago, people battling addic- is another way of being stigmatized, Seven years ago, the Last Door tion weren’t keen to have this publi- according to Cooksey. alumni launched the Untoxicated cized by jumping on the Clean Sober The society’s staff rely on a large Street Festival at Pride for those and Proud float. number of volunteers to help the not interested in boozing in the “There was the exact same con- programs succeed. clubs. At first, it didn’t attract very versation: ‘How about if people see “I think one of the biggest overmany people. “We couldn’t even me?’ ” he noted. looked resources we have in our fight give away tickets,” Ganci said. “NoBut eventually, Ganci said, it be- against these overdoses and addiction body wanted to go. They wanted to came cool to be clean and sober. is people with lived experience who go to the bars.” “It’s happened dozens of times are successfully clean,” Cooksey said. This year marks the 10th anni- where I’ll go to a meeting or I’ll be “You don’t hear from them very often. versary of Clean Sober and Proud. somewhere and I’ll have this person I think we need to hear from them.” And the Untoxicated Street Festi- say, ‘Hey, I was at Pride a couple of val has become a roaring success. years ago—fucked up—and saw The Untoxicated Street Festival is a On the evening of August 5, it will your float. And something happened free Pride event taking place from feature two of RuPaul’s Drag Race and I decided to go into rehab, and 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the corner of contestants, Trixie Mattel and Sa- I’m like a year clean now,’ ” Ganci Bute and Davie streets next Sunday (August 5). sha Velour, along with many other said. “It’s a pretty cool feeling.”
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elson Lamarche remembers the first Pride festival he ever attended. It was 2001, and he travelled to Vancouver from Kamloops, which didn’t have such an event until two years ago. It was an exhilarating experience in itself, but the weekend also led to another unforgettable first: his inaugural visit to the Elbow Room Café. “My partner took me and I thought, ‘Wow. I want to work here when I live here,’ ” Lamarche recalls by phone. “It was the gayest place on Earth. It was welcoming and friendly. When I moved to Vancouver in 2004, I handed out one résumé.” Lamarche started out working as a line cook and he’s been there ever since. He still works in the kitchen while also holding down the role of the well-known West End restaurant’s general manager. As a multitude of other restaurants have come and gone in Vancouver, the Elbow Room has remained—having gone on to become much more than a popular breakfast and lunch spot. It Vancouver’s beloved Elbow Room Cafe, founded 35 years ago, inspired playright is as beloved for its home-style “big Dave Deveau to write Elbow Room Cafe: The Musical. Emily Cooper photo. ass” menu items (featuring the biggest pancakes in town) as it is for For now, though, it’s still going with the obnoxious service. If you its flying insults. Diners (or at least strong. And regardless of what hap- pissed that guy [Savoie] off, he’d most of them) have come to expect pens down the road, the legacy the throw you out so fast you wouldn’t and adore the caustic wisecracks Elbow Room has already created is know what hit you: ‘Just cuz from staff, most notably from larger unshakable. It’s one that local play- you didn’t get laid last night, honthan life cofounder and frontman wright Dave Deveau explored in ey, doesn’t mean the rest of us have Patrice (Patrick) Savoie. Elbow Room Café: The Musical. Dir- to suffer!’ ” Entrenched not just in the LGBTQ ector Cameron Mackenzie told the Ferrie remembers how Searle and community but in Vancouver’s very Straight before the production’s 2017 Savoie supported people living with heart, it’s a spot where customers find debut that the café has acted as a link HIV/AIDS at a time when much of comfort in more than just the food. between generations in a commun- society, workplaces in particular, “The Elbow Room is welcoming ity ravaged by AIDS. “Young gay shunned them. He also recalls A to all,” Lamarche says. “You can be people don’t have the opportunity Loving Spoonful founder Easter who you are. Our employees and our to learn about their history and the Armas holding initial meetings at customers know battles that came the Elbow Room to organize Sunday when they walk before them, be- dinners for friends who were ill with through our doors cause it’s hard to HIV/AIDS. Those informal gatherthat they’re safe to meet older queer ings led to Easter’s Sundays, monthGail Johnson be who they are. people,” he said. ly meals prepared by volunteers That’s what the Elbow Room does: we “So, for me, this is the interesting at McLaren House, a group home make sure that people are safe. thing. For me, the café is the physical for people living with HIV/AIDS “We have a huge transgender tie between generations—and that (PWHAs). That effort turned into community that comes here be- sort of represents the marginalized. Vancouver Meals Society, which cause they know they’re respected It’s a story that we don’t often hear.” evolved into A Loving Spoonful, and they’re safe,” he adds. “What we Vancouver artist John Ferrie first which provides free healthy meals provide is a home away from home. went to the Elbow Room the year it to PWHAs. The Elbow Room mainThey also know that if I’m busy, you opened, shortly after moving here tains its long-held tradition that can go and get your own coffee.” (Or, from Calgary. (Tom Selleck was sit- patrons donate to the organizaas has been noted on the blackboard ting at the next table. The restaurant tion if they don’t finish the food on at times: you can “get off your ass” still has the Tom Selleck burger on their plate. It has raised more than and get that coffee yourself.) the menu.) For Ferrie, a 2016 recipi- $100,000 for the nonprofit. (In Savoie started the Elbow Room in ent of the TD Pride Legacy award, the restaurant’s early days, those 1983 with his beloved late partner in the café was a revelation and a haven. “forced” donations went to Oxfam.) business and marriage, Bryan Searle, “It was something else to be em“This was the kitchen table of this who died in 2017 at age 87. (Savoie braced by a city and to be in a place remarkable AIDS activist [Armas], wasn’t available for an interview.) where you were fine being gay,” Fer- keeping her friends alive,” Ferrie The restaurant was initially located rie says by phone. “There weren’t a says. “During the AIDS crisis, this on Jervis Street just north of Rob- lot of places you could go and sit and was the venue you could go to to have son Street, then moved to its current hold hands with your boyfriend and meetings with your friends or your home at 560 Davie Street in 1996. not be harassed. sports teams; that was where you The café’s lease there expires on Oc“They called it the Elbow Room gathered. Talk about magnificent. tober 31, the site being one of several because it was so packed in there, “How many restaurants are there that the City of Vancouver intends you’d be bumping elbows against the in Vancouver that have been around to redevelop for housing. Although person next to you,” he adds. “You for 40 years?” he adds. “It hasn’t realLamarche is hopeful that the restau- always went back because you were ly changed much, and that’s endearrant will continue there or elsewhere loyal, and you waited an hour for a ing. We need to celebrate places like afterward, its future is uncertain. table because you were loyal, even this. The more power to them." -
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28 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
FOOD
Sometimes “fresh” is best Try some local releases that have a few years behind them and a few to go
L
ocal stores and restaurants local terroir. This wine comes from are bursting with fresh 2017 the harvest of 25-year-old Pinot releases from right here in Blanc vines in vintage 2011. 2011! British Columbia. Like many, We’re talking the Charlie Sheen/ I hardly hesitate in pulling a cork or Tiger Blood/#Winning era, and the twisting a cap to enjoy the most recent year that The Oprah Winfrey Show fruits of local labour. Sure, it’s quite and the Harry Potter books wrapped enjoyable, sipping from this most up their extensive runs. After secrecent vintage that started a little ondary fermentation, the wine spent cool and rainy, then caught up with three years on lees in the bottle, some lengthy summer sun. At the which results in brioche aromatics same time, our and flavours, along constant attenwith a creamy tion to B.C.’s mouthfeel. Add latest releases in a dollop of Kurtis Kolt often means we’re marmalade, grilled either missing the opportunity to pink grapefruit, and a squeeze of see how our wines age, or perhaps mandarin orange and it all inteopening our bottles before they hit grates together wonderfully. their peak of quality. FITZPATRICK FAMILY VINEYARDS Yeah, I’m pretty much assuming that many people are the same as me FITZ BLANC DE BLANCS 2014 and don’t have willpower in spades, ($42.50, www.fitzwine.com/) This at least not enough to build and hold traditional-method sparkling wine made from 100 percent Chardonany semblance of a quality cellar. nay also spent a good three years In saying this, it’s appreciated on the lees, so there’s some lovely when local wineries do the work Champagne-style elegance at a lessfor us, doing some of the aging inthan-Champagne prices! Elements house before a big vintage release. Doing so is generally with the intent of citrus bound out of the glass, of releasing a wine when it’s in opti- with lemon blossom and lime leaf mal condition, but a winery’s profit- leading the way. On the palate, yeland-loss reports can often speed up low grapefruit joins Granny Smith apple and fresh sage, with maybe the the date a wine heads to market. smallest splash of Sprite on the finish. This week, we’re looking at fresh Anything that swims would make an local releases—but those from vintages just a little way back. Not only enjoyable food pairing. are they all coming into their own BARTIER BROS. SÉMILLON 2016 this year, but they still have a good bit of life left in them, for those who ($17.99, www.bartierbros.com/) Why aren’t more Okanagan wineries makcan safely tuck away a few bottles ing Sémillon? Sure, the grape is fairly for the future. unsung and it’s never going to allow SPERLING VINEYARDS SPAR- any winemaker an early retirement, KLING BRUT 2011 ($42, www. but it consistently harnesses local sperlingvineyards.com/) Winemaker terroir damn well, particularly in Ann Sperling’s family has been the hands of Ross Hackworth and farming in Kelowna for generations, Matthew Sherlock of Lock & Worth which makes her well steeped in Winery, Garron Elmes at Lake Breeze
The Bottle
Winery, and Michael Bartier at Bartier Bros. in Oliver. I’ve had a sneak peek at the 2017 edition, which won’t be released until this fall. Its style is typical of a young Sémillon, bright with juicy acidity and crisp mineral character, teeming with muddled lemon and crisp apple, still fairly austere and linear. I also recently tried the 2015 vintage, which is definitely taking on the character we associate with the variety when it starts to age, a style made famous in Australia’s Hunter Valley. Think the above characteristics seeing the emergence of marzipan, honey-roasted almonds, and ripe pineapple and a formerly crisp profile moving in a waxy direction. In the middle of these two versions, in true Goldilocks style, we have the 2016 edition, and it’s juuust right. Those citrus flavours are starting to see a twang each of passion fruit and mango, the crisp, citrusy edges now rounding out with a little nutty character. This is a wine worth drinking and cellaring; at 18 bucks a pop, you can afford to do both! ROAD 13 VINEYARDS SYRAH MALBEC 2016 ($32.17, www.road
13vineyards.com/) This Syrah Malbec also carries a splash each of Petit Verdot and Viognier, and even though its 2016 may seem a little on the young side for a red release, the wine is absolutely ready for the spotlight. A cavalcade of blackberries, blueberries, bacon fat, dark chocolate, and a crack of black pepper parades across the palate with confidence and cheer. If anyone needs me when this wine’s open, I’ll be firing up the barbecue. All of these wines are available winery-direct at prices listed or are found around town in private liquor stores for a few bucks more. -
> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < STAY BEAUTIFUL
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 24, 2018 WHERE: Bus
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I actually see you like clockwork and every time I have to catch my breath. I don't know you, I'd like too but I think a compliment might be better. You remind me of someone I once knew; the most beautiful woman I've ever had the pleasure of meeting inside and out. There can't be very many of you so may I say; stay beautiful. This is a message for the 8:30am Canada Line Redhead. Stay happy.
TALL HANDSOME GUY WITH SICK TATS
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PULLED YOU OFF A CORNER IN YALETOWN AND INTO SOME ADVENTURES WITH ME
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 15, 2018 WHERE: Yaletown
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Sunday night in Yaletown, I ran into you on a corner as you were innocently crossing the street. You were wearing gym attire and carrying a gym bag. But I had other plans for you Mr. blue shirt, and you didn’t seem to put up much of a fight. I pulled you into some adventures and bad decision making with me. We had a few drinks at a cinema public house....
STEVE AT BUY-LOW CASH OUT
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 23, 2018 WHERE: Granville Skytrain Stn. Eastbound platform
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 23, 2018 WHERE: Buy-low at Kingsway Broadway
I was on my way home late, waiting for the train, when I saw you just walk past by me going to the end of the platform. It was one of those moments I couldn't take my eyes off of someone. Someone that you were hoping to encounter, someone fatally attractive, but also feels familiar. You were about 6'3" tall, with brown eyes and hair, wearing a white t-shirt, with awesome tattoos on your arms and a Herschel backpack on your back, just casually listening to your earphones. I thought we locked our eyes for a couple of times briefly on the train. But it could be my mistake. Heck, I am feeling too much into this. Anyway, at least I hope you realise how beautiful you are.
I was your last ring through at buy-low Friday night. Wished I’d have asked you to grab a park beer and soak up the rest of that late afternoon sun, instead of just thinking about it. Either way, thanks for the ‘stay beautiful’ comment, it gave me a smile walking back down Main. :)
VIETNAMESE RESTAURANT GUY
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 21, 2018 WHERE: Richmond banh mi tres bon I was walking out of starbucks when I saw you are your friend eating outside banh mi tres bon. That Vietnamese restaurant. You had the cutest freckles and the nicest smile. Pho sometime?
KENYA
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 22, 2018 WHERE: Commercial Drive Kenya, it’s Jonathan. You were the princess who came into my life last night on Commercial Drive like a warm and delightful summer breeze. ( I’m glad that I look “cute for my hair”.) I wish I could have come back with you to your place like you’d suggested, but I had to meet a friend. I’d suggested coffee, you’d said we’d see each other around the Drive. I was charmed, your compliment made my night! I probably seemed a bit geeky after, I was just giddy/charmed, plus I have a bad case of osgood-schlatters in my left knee that affects the way I walk. Try to overlook that. I’d like to see you again. Reply, if you like, through this section and we’ll see each other again. Jonathan
YOU WERE BEAUTIFUL IN THE DRESS I COMPLIMENTED YOU ON
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 23, 2018 WHERE: Gastown on alexander street Heading towards main late summer nite You and your friend were walking up alexander street ...i thought you were a friend and complimented you on dress just to step back when I noticed you weren’t her but you were absolutely beautiful i tend to screw up when nervous so I practically ran outta there asap maybe we could do a coffee tea whatever floats your boat cant get your beautiful smile off my mind or dress for that matter I was in light coloured camo shorts and white t shirt you were in a eggshell white dress with blue and black on tummy I believe wow im smitten for you now
RYAN - HOT YOGA REGULAR
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 22, 2018 WHERE: City Square Yoga We were often in class together but I left the studio earlier this year and now I miss practicing with you. I miss your beautiful muscles and focussed, intelligent practice was always happy when you were in class with me. I’m tall, slim, muscular, dark hair, usually in the front row on the right side. I’d love to take a class together again.
HELLO BIG GUY
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 20, 2018 WHERE: corner of jervis and comox I was walking down comox and I just crossed jervis st. you were walking down jervis almost reaching comox. me: yellow shirt short hair black shorts carrying a book You: big guy in a black shirt drinking a slurpee. we look at each other but I was in a hurry (I shoulda went back), would like to meet you and maybe share a slurpee with me
Visit straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _
M O X I E ’ S D AV I E | 116 0 D AV I E S T | ( 6 0 4 ) 6 7 8 - 8 0 4 3 JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 29
THE OPEN
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30 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
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ARTS
In prepping for at least one of his upB Y ALEX ANDER VAR T Y
coming Vancouver Bach Festival concerts, Thomas Hobbs faced an unusual challenge for a specialist in early music: how to differentiate his performance from the original recordings of the works in question. Obviously, that won’t be a problem when he appears with Switzerland’s all-star vocal ensemble Gli Angeli Genève in Bach Cantatas: Actus Tragicus; the Johann Sebastian Bach and Georg Philipp Telemann cantatas on the program were written during the first decade of the 18th century. Nor will it be an issue when Gli Angeli returns, with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, to close the festival with Bach’s magnificent Trauer Ode; it was penned between 1726 and 1728. But you don’t need a time machine to hear what the works featured in Britten: Abraham and Isaac sounded like when they were first unveiled: recordings of them as performed by composer-pianist Benjamin Britten and his life companion, tenor Peter Pears, are readily available online and elsewhere. It’s repertoire that Hobbs clearly loves—especially Britten’s settings of works by the great Elizabethan composer Henry Purcell. “I personally feel that Britten felt very close to Purcell,” the U.K.– based singer explains, reached after a Gli Angeli rehearsal in Geneva. “Purcell had a way of understanding the nuance of the words, and an ability to craft his music around any text, basically. And Britten had exactly the same talent.”
Bridging Britten and Bach
Rather than listening to how other musicians have interpreted the classics, Thomas Hobbs prefers to interpret what he sees written on the page.
“I’m not really re- incredible,” Hobbs says, noting that Trauer Ode, in ligious, myself,” he particular, is an especially rich mixture of sadness Tenor Thomas Hobbs employs intellect and intuition, whether says. “I wouldn’t say I’m and joy. “It’s absolutely magic, really, and one of areligious, but I don’t the most enjoyable things to perform.” he’s embodying an ancient Lutheran or modernist legend have a strong faith, no. Britten and Pears might also have been drawn However, if it is sacred music, I do think that one Gli Angeli Genève will perform Bach Cantatas: to reimagining Purcell—and a variety of Eng- has to be convincing in delivery. It’s important Actus Tragicus at Christ Church Cathedral next lish folksongs—because they were frequently in to—in the moment, at least—believe what you’re Friday (August 3), and will join the Pacific Barneed of new material for their duo concerts and saying. So I do try, particularly in Bach, to put oque Orchestra for Trauer Ode at the Chan recording sessions. So how does a 21st-century myself in the mindset of a Lutheran at the time, Centre for the Performing Arts on August 10. singer find his own way through tunes that and think about what effect this particular text Thomas Hobbs, countertenor Alex Potter, and have been so comprehensively documented by might have on somebody who did have that kind pianist Alexander Weimann will present Britten: Abraham and Isaac at Christ Church Cathedral the 20th-century artists who created them? of strong belief.” “Inevitably, it does impact my approach,” And with Bach, the music always helps. “Bach is on August 8. Hobbs allows. “It probably shouldn’t, if I’m being totally honest with myself. It’s so easy now Alard’s elegant Goldberg Variations are a Bach-fest highlight that we have such a wealth of recordings—such a wealth of interpretations—available to us with If you’re a serious student of baroque music, you’ve already booked your Vancouver most repertoire. It’s very tempting, when studyBach Festival tickets—and, even so, there’s one more show artistic director Matthew ing a new piece or preparing for a recital, to White wants you to know about. Not only is he bringing Benjamin Alard into town to play immerse yourself in listening to other Johann Sebastian Bach’s indelible Goldberg Variations on the harpsichord at Christ Church people’s interpretations. But I still realCathedral on opening night (Monday [July 30]), he’s got the great French virtuoso playing ly believe that, as a fi rst port of call, the the same music on the organ, in Victoria on Friday (July 27). best approach is to try and make your “There’s nothing quite like that Hellmuth Wolff organ that they have at Christ Church Cathedral in interpretation from what’s written on Victoria,” says White, on the line from the Early Music Vancouver office. the page—and not go directly to someNo matter which instrument he’s performing on, Alard is a must-see—and White notes that the body else’s.” 33-year-old musician’s recent focus on organ recitals has had a positive impact on his harpsichord playHobbs takes a similarly thoughtful ing, too. “It’s slowed down a lot of the tempos and created a kind of ‘increased clarity’, as he describes it,” approach to works that long predate White says. “So I think our Vancouver audience can expect to hear something that’s perhaps less brazenly the invention of recording. Although virtuosic, and something that’s more about clarity and precision and elegance.” he can’t hear how, say, Bach would In Early Music Vancouver’s increasingly star-studded festival—which this year features such capable have sounded in Leipzig, circa 1727, performers as Stephen Stubbs, Colin Balzer, and Monica Huggett—White is especially pleased to present a he does try to understand how the concert focusing on stars of the future. An afternoon Emerging Artists Recital, at Christ Church Cathedral on great German’s music would have August 9, will feature participants in the society’s Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Programme—and White says been received by his contemporwe can expect to see more of these young musicians on-stage in the very near future. aries. There’s a certain amount of “There are a number of these young players who we’ll be starting to employ professionally in the comrole-playing involved, he explains, ing season,” he notes. “So that’s the definition of success, as far as I’m concerned.” especially when he’s singing works—such as > ALEXANDER VARTY Trauer Ode—that were intended to be performed in church.
2
THINGS TO DO
ARTS High five
Editor’s choice FAIRIES TALE With weather this magical, it’s worth heading down to Granville Island for A Midsummer Night’s Dream—Carousel Theatre for Young People’s summer teen-Shakespeare offering. Not only is the stage outdoors, but the all-ages production features a festival village, concession, and kid-friendly activities both before the show and during intermission. Mike Stack directs a cast of 18 young actors, aged 13 to 18, in the classic tale of fairies, mischievous servants, and a man with a donkey’s head. Did we mention admission is free? Remember that premium seating is available for $6 in advance. Carousel Theatre for Young People presents A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the outdoor stage by Performance Works from Friday (July 27) to August 11.
Five events you just can’t miss this week
1
GENDER ROLES PLAYING ON STAGE (August 1 at Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden) Paul Wong Projects takes traditional Beijing opera in gender-bending new directions.
2
LYSISTRATA (To September 13 at Bard on the Beach) Aristophanes relocates to Vancouver, with bawdy, boisterous results.
3
42ND STREET (To August 17 at Malkin Bowl) Another reason to get outside: triple-threat retromusical tap-dance fun in Stanley Park.
4
CABIN FEVER (To September 30 at the Vancouver Art Gallery) A celebration of the iconic Canadian getaway in all its fascinating forms.
5
DARK ROAD (To August 16 at the Jericho Arts Centre) A good crime thriller for a summer night, right down by Jericho Beach.
In the news GOING GREEN NPA councillor Elizabeth Ball will bring forward a motion to the City of Vancouver this week to create a new arts-centred program modelled on New York City’s Materials for the Arts (MFTA) initiative. Ball’s motion refers to the successful MFTA program and its creative reuse by the arts and culture and educational communities of materials that might otherwise make their way into the landfill. She says a program based on MFTA would support local artists, as well as educational institutions like the Vancouver School Board. It would also contribute to the city’s goal to reduce solid waste by 50 percent from 2008 levels. According to Ball’s motion, the reuse program would help the city reach its goal of zero waste by 2040. MFTA’s website states that New York City saves more than one million pounds of materials from landfills each year by gathering reusable materials from people and businesses. The materials are then made available, free of charge, to numerous arts, culture, nonprofit, and educational organizations. -
JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 31
ARTS
Stars align as Mobley bridges baroque titans Boston countertenor will explore worldly pleasure and dramatic rage in Bach Festival performances > BY A LEX A NDER VA R TY
I
t’s not unusual for interviews to be interrupted, but this is a first: outside countertenor Reginald Mobley’s Boston home, a Google Street View car is driving by, and the singer has put down his phone to wave. “That’s cool,” he comments, once the vehicle has passed. “It’s like seeing a shooting star.” But did he make a wish? “I have now,” he says, with an uproarious laugh. We know enough about wishing to press no further, but those who enjoy hearing a glorious voice sing works by the greatest composers of the baroque era are about to have their dreams come true. Mobley, who’s already won many local admirers with previous Vancouver Bach Festival appearances, returns this year to sing Antonio Vivaldi’s Cessate, omai cessate and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Ich habe genug, accompanied by virtuoso lutenist Stephen Stubbs and his Pacific MusicWorks ensemble. The stars have surely aligned to make this a festival highlight—and Mobley’s taking steps to ensure that it’s a dramatic success, too. Not content to simply sing the material, he’s constructed a narrative link between the two cantatas that will allow him to move seamlessly between Vivaldi’s forsaken lover and Bach’s world-weary soul. Cessate, omai cessate’s protagonist, he explains, “spends his time lamenting that his love is more or less spurning him, and probably intentionally. Like, ‘I am basically being tortured by Dorilla, by the person
that I love. And I know that she’s torturing me on purpose, but I can’t help myself because I am so madly in love.’ “The way Vivaldi sets the text,” he continues, “it definitely goes back and forth from this plaintive, lamenting aria to this dramatic rage where I’m just kind of losing myself in rage over what’s going on.…And my rage is against the fact that my shackles are my love for her.” In contrast, Ich habe genug is a renunciation of worldly pleasure, and worldly pain. “It’s, you know, ‘I’ve had enough. I’m done with the world, and I’m ready to be released from another set of shackles, which is mortal life,’ ” Mobley notes. “And for me, there is kind of a line that I’ve built—my own personal narrative—from the Vivaldi to the Bach. In the Vivaldi, I basically deal with being spurned and being tortured and saying that I can never find this happiness that I’m seeking, and all there is is pain, even in the things that I should enjoy. And then [with Bach] it takes a religious turn, saying that there really is no ultimate or perfect joy to be found on Earth, but that I can find peace in accepting the life hereafter, accepting eternal rest. “And there’s something that can be missed in the Bach cantata, which is that it’s not sad,” he adds. “There’s nothing sad about this cantata: it’s more or less about the peace you can find in resignation, and the excitement of seeing that there is a hereafter, and finding something new.” The Vancouver Bach Festival presents Reginald Mobley and Pacific MusicWorks in Musica Transalpina: From Vivaldi to Bach at Christ Church Cathedral next Thursday (August 2)
“A
Martin and Short in sync Comedy legends have no problem clicking, whether on the stage or off > B Y G U Y M AC P HER S O N
D
espite their on-stage insults, comedy legends Steve Martin and Martin Short are friendly off-stage. They’re more like best buddies Don Rickles and Bob Newhart than the feuding, albeit fictional, Sunshine Boys. The opening minutes of their Netflix special, An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life, are like a roast battle, with the two performers hitting each other with hilarious jabs. Now, doing interviews by conference call at their respective homes for their live tour of the show, they banter and poke like the seasoned professionals they are. The kidding around begins immediately. “I’m in Los Angeles, California, but we’re not in the same house,” says Martin, the elder of the two, who, at 72, has five years on Short. “We decided to not live together anymore.” “Yeah, Steve wouldn’t meet my demands,” says Short. “It just got down to that.” “And I was tired of picking up after him,” Martin volleys back. “Meanwhile, I’m spending three hours making linguine and he shows up two hours late,” finishes Short. On a platform with way too many comedy specials that aren’t all that special, Martin and Short’s stands out. It’s not standup, it’s not sketch or improv. But there are elements of all of those, plus vaudeville. And, naturally, banjo music. Usually, a Netflix special will follow a tour, but this one preceded it. Not to worry, says Short. You can—and probably should—enjoy both. “First of all, there’s a lot of new material. I would say there’s 35 minutes different from the Netflix show. And secondly, the Netflix show is 70 minutes but our actual show is two hours. And thirdly, like I always said when I was a kid and I would listen to whether it was Steve or Lily Tomlin, you were hoping and praying that they did that bit that they’d done on the album.” Martin adds quickly and humbly, “That probably doesn’t apply to us.” After starting out in standup opening for the likes of Linda Ronstadt, the Carpenters, Sonny & Cher, Ann-Margret, and Utah Phillips, Martin famously walked away from the art form at the top of his game to focus on a film career. Short, who came to prominence on SCTV and later Saturday Night Live before embarking on movies, never did standup, although it’s clear he easily could have.
major show wadded full with ideas, installations, images, objects and cultural associations” — THE T YEE
“Cabin
Fever is an ideal exhibit to visit before fleeing the city this summer ” — NUVO MAGAZINE
JUNE 9 – SEPTEMBER 30 OPEN LATE EVERY FRIDAY UNTIL 9 PM Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Jennifer M. Volland, Guest Curator, Bruce Grenville, Senior Curator and Stephanie Rebick, Associate Curator MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Limited, Cliff House, Tomlee Head, NS, 2010, Photo: Greg Richardson, Courtesy MacKay-Lyons Sweetapple Architects Limited
32 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
Steve Martin (left) and Martin Short roll out new material while taking their current Netflix special on the road.
“What I wasn’t drawn toward was the early days of the standup’s life, which is going to Yuk Yuk’s and all the clubs and having 10 minutes to win over a drunken audience,” he says. “I never did that and I’m glad I didn’t. It doesn’t sound appealing.” Martin agrees: “Yeah, it’s not one of my favourite recollections of my life. But you had to do it in order to do what you end up doing.” The extracurriculars ruined it for Martin, but he always enjoyed the actual performance aspects of standup. “When you walk off, you’re feeling a little bit high,” he says, “which is exactly what Marty and I feel like when we end our show. We feel good. Doing the show with Marty is the first time I’ve ever felt good before I went out.” The show also features the duo’s other talents: Short’s singing and Martin’s banjo abilities. But their respective approaches to these gifts are diametrically opposed. Martin jokes right up to the moment he starts plucking his instrument and then plays seriously, while Short jokes all the way through his songs, always ironically belting out a tune. “I think that when you make an agreement with the audience, you are making an agreement to be funny,” Short says. “If you’re giving them something they’re not expecting to get, then they kind of sit there and say, ‘Well, I guess he’s got to go through these growth moments as a singer and then, hopefully, a sandbag will drop on his head soon.’ ” Steve Martin & Martin Short: An Evening You Will Forget for the Rest of Your Life is at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre next Wednesday and Thursday (August 1 and 2).
ARTS
Dark Queen mesmerizes TH E AT RE THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE
SELFIE
Written by Martin McDonagh. Directed by Kathleen Duborg. An Ensemble Theatre Company production. At the Jericho Arts Centre on Wednesday July 18. Continues in repertory to August 15
BY CHRISTINE QUINTANA DIRECTED BY PEDRO CHAMALE
“You’re the exact feckin’ image
2 of your Mam!”
For 40-year-old Maureen (Kirsten Slenning), in Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, there is no sentence in the world more hurtful. Maureen has sacrificed her youth and her prospects in order to take care of her ailing mother, Mag (Tanja DixonWarren), for the last two decades in a rundown house in the small town of Leenane, in Galway, Ireland. When Maureen attends a party against Mag’s wishes, she brings home Pato (Ashley O’Connell), and the morning after, a huge fight breaks out between the two women. Mag does everything she can to sabotage the fledgling romance, and when Maureen pieces together the extent of her mother’s interference, the tensions between the two women explode. In the play, McDonagh offers a darkly compelling, if bleak, Irish twist on the familiar subversion of the “good mother” and the gendered notion that all women are natural caregivers. Mag is demanding and ungrateful, and thinks nothing of gaslighting and ridiculing her daughter. Maureen is bitter and obviously suffering the effects of longterm emotional and verbal abuse. She takes pleasure in antagonizing Mag however she can to shift the power dynamic in her favour, openly fantasizing about Mag’s murder or suffering acts of violence. But the relationship is even messier than it sounds, and as the complicated truth unfolds in the play’s powerful second act, it’s hard to know which damaged woman deserves our sympathy. Probably both, maybe neither, though it’s impossible not to feel compassion at the tragedy of their lives. It’s easy to imagine McDonagh having written this play after watching the great documentary Grey Gardens and the eccentric, if mildly toxic, codependency between Big Edie and Little Edie. Mag and Maureen’s relationship is much more twisted and malicious, and Dixon-Warren and Slenning handle the material well, but they both feel like they’re holding back. There’s an energy to McDonagh’s words as well as an emotional depth, and this production sometimes prioritizes one over the other. The show also got off to a rough start. Between the affectations of Irish accents and the loudness of the building’s fan throughout the first scene, it was almost impossible to hear the actors; several audience members had to move closer to the stage. Thankfully, by the second scene, the loudest fans shut off and the rest of the production was audible. O’Connell’s performance as the genial, supportive Pato is delightfully, effortlessly charming and he almost steals the show, but DixonWarren and Slenning hit their stride in Act 2. They are electrifying in Mag and Maureen’s climactic confrontation, a visceral and horrifying moment that makes The Beauty Queen of Leenane impossible to forget. > ANDREA WARNER
A FEW GOOD MEN By Aaron Sorkin. Directed by Alan Brodie and Tariq Leslie. An Ensemble Theatre Company production. At the Jericho Arts Centre on Tuesday, July 17. Continues to August 17
Aaron Sorkin’s famous play
2 takes its name from an old recruiting slogan for the U.S. Marines: “We’re looking for a few good men.” As the curtain rises, we meet two
TINY REPLICAS BY DAVE DEVEAU
DIRECTED BY SHELBY BUSHELL
Maureen (Kirsten Slenning, left) is in a complicated relationship with her ailing mother (Tanja Dixon-Warren) in The Beauty Queen of Leenane. Derek Fu photo.
marines who just need a good lawyer. Lance Corporal Dawson (Michael Kiapway) and Private First Class Downey (Marc LeBlanc) stand accused of murdering one of their fellow marines. They’re defended by a dispiriting trio of navy lawyers. One, Lieutenant Junior Grade Kaffe (Zac Scott), lazily reverts to plea bargains for his clients. The second, Lieutenant Commander Galloway (Alexis Kellum-Creer), is a keener but has a terrible record in the courtroom. And the third, Lieutenant Junior Grade Weinberg (Sean Anthony), just doesn’t care very much. The defendants need all the help they can get, though, as they find themselves at the centre of a conspiracy far above their pay grade. Sorkin is, of course, the writer behind beloved TV shows Sports Night and The West Wing and less beloved movies like Moneyball and The Social Network. His work has a style that’s so distinctive that it’s earned its own adjective: Sorkinesque. His dialogue is full of wry, fast-paced banter and pithy couplets. It’s a particular and precise way of speaking that can be a challenge for actors, but also a precious gift once they master it. Among the performers, KellumCreer had the best ear for the text’s musicality. She had plenty of lawyerly bass notes, but also mined humour from all the clever arpeggio runs that Sorkin builds into his scripts. When Kaffe invites her to join his softball team, she deadpans “No, thank you. I can’t throw or catch things.” Though his character didn’t have much to say, I also admired Kiapway’s brooding intensity. Speaking of musicality, the show featured little bursts of interstitial music between scenes. I found it difficult to hear the dialogue that began those scenes and couldn’t deduce why some scene changes featured music while others didn’t. I also wasn’t sure if the score, which had a throbbing Bladerunner feel to it, was the right choice. Except for Galloway, A Few Good Men is usually produced with an all-male cast. She is set among powerful, bloviating men and has to navigate a testosterone-soaked military courtroom. Directors Alan Brodie and Tariq Leslie opted to cast women in a number of roles. This was surely a practical matter—the show features 14 actors and the company is performing three plays in repertory over the summer—but I wondered if it lowered the stakes for Galloway. The line we all know from this play—“You can’t handle the truth!”—is widely considered to be one of the greatest movie quotes of all time. We don’t remember the great monologue that follows the line—it’s full of spite and vituperation. That speech alone is perhaps worth the price of admission, for it encompasses all the play’s themes: the price of honour, the sanctity of duty, and the burden of fathers and father figures. > DARREN BAREFOOT
THEORY
BY NORMAN YEUNG
DIRECTED BY MILY MUMFORD
THIS, HERE By James Gordon King. Directed by Marie Farsi. A Babelle Theatre production. At the Vancity Culture Lab on Wednesday, July 18. Continues to July 28
This, Here is an ambitious exof the concept of identity, but it’s not always clear what’s behind the mask. The play is set on B.C.’s Sunshine Coast, where Alison has come with her partner, Maddie, to visit her newly relocated father. Brian is a playwright who’s been neglecting the more mundane aspects of life— like unpacking his possessions, which are still in boxes stacked around the house—while trying to finish the play he’s been working on for the past six years. Alison has just turned 30 and is reconsidering her acting career (while Maddie is contemplating giving up her successful catering business), and can’t stand her father’s irresponsibility and pompous self-absorption. The setup seems perfect for a contemporary comedy of manners based on a conflict between city and country life, or between generations. But the usual roles are reversed: Alison is the advocate of practicality, while her father champions the role of the dreamer. And, while there are comedic moments, a mysterious emotional undertow permeates all the interactions between Alison and Brian. After the characters act out part of Brian’s work in progress, a Greek tragedy pregnant with symbolism (masks, gods, dead parents), the tone shifts abruptly, and the story becomes one of heartbreak and loss. Under Marie Farsi’s direction, Olivia Hutt gets an emotional workout as Alison; her containment in the early scenes is matched by her later disintegration. David Bloom’s Brian puts a cheerful face on his loneliness, but he can be vulnerable, especially in a touching scene when he tries to offer reassurance. Sarah Vickruck brings the exuberant energy of a puppy to her portrayal of Maddie, Alison’s sweet, solid anchor. Whether she’s stoned and desperately trying to figure out where to focus her gaze, doing yoga in the garden, or playing a song on the thumb harp, Vickruck is right there, a study in presence. Sound designer James Coomber uses sustained musical interludes to create narrative and emotional transitions. Some of these are very effective—like Cat Power’s gorgeous “Where Is My Love”—but the feelings they evoke can’t fill the narrative gaps in James Gordon King’s script. Why have Alison and Maddie come to visit? What would Alison do if she weren’t an actor? Was her late mother still with Brian when she died? Is Brian mentally ill or just annoying? How did things turn so dark so quickly? This, Here asks interesting questions about how artists commodify their personal experience. I appreciate its audacious mix of forms, but I’d love to see them cohere more seamlessly.
2 ploration
FESTIVAL OF EMERGING TALENT ITALIAN CULTURAL CENTRE | AUGUST 16–25 Pay-What-You-Decide at rumble.org
> KATHLEEN OLIVER
JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 33
ARTS
“A STRIKING PORTRAIT OF WOMEN IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA” — HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
“SEARING”
— NEW YORK TIMES
“POWERFUL”
— GLOBE + MAIL
ANGELS WEAR WHITE VIVIAN QU
STARTS FRIDAY! VANCITY THEATRE
A FILM BY
DIRECTED BY JOHN CARROLL LYNCH
1181 SEYMOUR ST • VANCOUVER
9 , ) ) 2 5 * ¿OPVweOLNH ¾OPVZHOLNH FRP TICKETS
SHOWTIMES
See the Trailer •
Fleeting images fascinate V IS U AL AR T S JENEEN FREI NJOOTLI At the Contemporary Art Gallery until September 16
On the opening night of Jeneen
2 Frei Njootli’s exhibition at the
Contemporary Art Gallery, the air was redolent of smoke and musk. The scent, an olfactory allusion to a beaded jacket of tanned caribou skin we never saw, had vanished by the next day. The absence of jacket and then scent spoke eloquently of the fugitive nature of this young artist’s interdisciplinary practice. By her request, there was no recording of her sound performance later that evening. And the major sculptural works in the show, four large steel sheets that lean against the walls of the gallery or lie flat on its concrete floor, are marked with forms and designs that shift in size, shape, and density, like clouds on a distant horizon. Like smoke. Frei Njootli’s art is powerfully connected to the land, history, and culture of her Vuntut Gwitch’in First Nation, located in northern Yukon. At the same time, her creative interests are aligned with the feminist Indigenous media collective ReMatriate, of which she is a founding member. She is a rising star in the art world: even before graduating with an MFA from UBC in 2017, Frei Njootli had won considerable critical and curatorial attention and acclaim.
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THEATRE 2ONGOING BARD ON THE BEACH Annual Shakespeare theatre festival features repertory performances of As You Like It, Macbeth, Timon of Athens, and Lysistrata. To Sep 22, Vanier Park (1000 Chestnut). Tix from $24, info www.bardonthebeach.org/. MAMMA MIA! The Arts Club Theatre Company presents a feel-good musical featuring the music of ABBA. To Aug 12, Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage (2750 Granville). Tix from $29, info www.artsclub. com/shows/2017-2018/mamma-mia/. ONCE The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Enda Walsh’s musical about a struggling Dublin street musician who chances upon a girl who challenges him to go for his dream. To Aug 5, Granville Island Stage (1585 Johnston). Tix from $29, info www. artsclub.com/shows/2017-2018/once/. THEATRE UNDER THE STARS Performances on alternating evenings of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella and 42nd Street. To Aug 18, 8-10:30 pm, Malkin Bowl (610 Pipeline Road, Stanley Park). Tix $50-$70, info www.tuts.ca/.
34 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
Her CAG show, my auntie bought all her skidoos with bead money, alludes to conditions surrounding the beadwork for which the women of her nation are celebrated. One of Frei Njootli’s strategies is to wrap her hands, limbs, or bare back in beadwork and impress the patterns into her skin. With her body as a printing plate and the steel sheets as her ground, she uses grease to impart the beadwork patterns onto the surface of the steel. The printed image may initially reveal the fine particulars of the beadwork, but then will become more generalized dark smudges from which the evidence of the beads has disappeared. Processes of oxidation
> ROBIN LAURENCE
DANCE
2THIS WEEK
2THIS WEEK
AN EVENING YOU WILL FORGET FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE Comedians and actors Steve Martin and Martin Short present an evening of standup comedy, film clips, musical numbers, and conversations about their lives in show business. Aug 1-2, 7:30 pm, Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Tix at www.ticketmaster.ca/.
LINE, RHYTHM, COLOUR Join Ballet BC artist-in-residence Andrew Bartee for an afternoon of dance and performance inspired by the pattern and rhythm in the work of Channa Horwitz. Jul 28, 12 pm, Contemporary Art Gallery (555 Nelson). Free, info www.facebook.com/ events/177996602870752/.
ar ts/ timeout THEATRE DANCE MUSIC COMEDY ET CETERA GALLERIES MUSEUMS
Jeneen Frei Njootli’s installation, I am she, at the CAG. Michael Love photo.
and rust on the panels also occur during the run of the show, further thwarting our search for the original beaded patterns. In willing, a new video commissioned by the CAG, a single take of the impressions of beadwork on the artist’s back—red dots against the pale landscape of her skin—is played backward and forward in an endless loop. Projected greatly enlarged onto another steel plate, the bead pattern gradually forms and equally gradually disappears. As with the grease prints on steel, the predominant strategy here seems to be one of refusal. Still, curator Kimberly Phillips suggested, while touring the Straight through the show, that Frei Njootli is honouring the art of Gwich’in women, especially the women of her family, and at the same time protecting it—and them—from consumption by a system that is capitalist and patriarchal. It’s a system that has long enacted itself in the form of violence upon the bodies of Indigenous women. During Frei Njootli’s sound performance, her vocalizations intertwined with subtle percussive effects played on one of her steel panels and electronically modified. For a few haunting moments, sounds reverberated in the air and in our bodies, thrumming in our diaphragms. Then they disappeared forever.
ET CETERA
MUSIC
2THIS WEEK
2THIS WEEK
TITANIC: THE ARTIFACT EXHIBITION Exhibition focuses on the legendary RMS Titanic’s compelling human stories through more than 120 authentic artifacts and extensive room re-creations. To Jan 11, 2019, Lipont Place (4211 No. 3 Road). Info www.titanicvancouver.com/.
VMO LIVE SYMPHONY PERFORMANCE Free concert by the Vancouver Metropolitan Orchestra, led by Maestro Kenneth Hsieh. Jul 26, 7-9 pm, Jack Poole Plaza (1055 Canada Place). Free, info www.pci-group.com/community/. VANCOUVER BACH FESTIVAL Early Music Vancouver presents its third annual Vancouver Bach Festival, featuring 15 concerts with guest artists from around the world. Jul 30–Aug 10, Christ Church Cathedral (690 Burrard). Info www.earlymusic.bc.ca/tickets/summer-festival/.
COMEDY 2JUST ANNOUNCED BRENDAN SCHAUB American comedian and web series host. Sep 13, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix on sale Jul 27, 10 am, $30 (plus service charges and fees) at www. livenation.com/.
2ONGOING THE COMEDY MIX 1015 Burrard, Century Plaza Hotel & Spa, 604-684-5050, www. thecomedymix.com/. Comedy club with pro-am night Tue at 8:30 pm, showcase Wed at 8:30 pm, and headliners Thu at 8:30 pm and Fri-Sat at 8 and 10:30 pm. 2DAVE NYSTROM Jul 26-28 2KEVIN FOXX Aug 2-4. AVOCADO TOAST – VANCOUVER GROWN, ORGANIC FREE-RANGE COMEDY Vancouver TheatreSports presents a comedy show that pokes fun at Vancouver and its stereotypes. To Sep 1, Thu-Sat. at 7:30 pm, The Improv Centre (1502 Duranleau, Granville Island). From $10.75, info www.vtsl.com/show/avocado-toast/.
GALLERIES VANCOUVER ART GALLERY 750 Hornby, 604-662-4719, www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/. 2CABIN FEVER (exhibition traces the cabin’s evolution through renderings, artworks and commercial products as well as architectural models, plans, and full-scale installations) to Sep 30 2DAVID MILNE: MODERN PAINTING (first major exhibition of Milne shown in the country in 30 years features close to 90 works in oil and watercolour, never-beforepresented photographs, drawings, and memorabilia) to Sep 9
MUSEUMS THE MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UBC 6393 NW Marine Drive, 604-8225087, www.moa.ubc.ca/. 2ARTS OF RESISTANCE: POLITICS AND THE PAST IN LATIN AMERICA (exhibition illustrates how Latin-American communities use traditional or historic art forms to express contemporary political realities) to Oct 8
TIME OUT ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. We can’t guarantee inclusion, and we give priority to events taking place within one week of publication. Submit listings online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.
MOVIES
Girls earn their wings in subversive Angels RE VIEW S
stated imperialist ambitions of the neocons continue without pause, no matter who’s in charge, and no matter who among them gets called out in Shock and Awe. Namely, in this case, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, William Kristol, and the Project for the New American Century. That part’s actually quite thrilling, if easy game at this point. In any case, it’s not enough to see “liberal” Hollywood congratulate itself on recognizing one historic PR blitz for war. Where does it stand on all the subsequent ones? The answer, sadly, comes as no shock at all.
ANGELS WEAR WHITE Starring Vicky Chen. In Mandarin, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable
At the start of Angels Wear White, a fret-
2 ful teenager sits at the high-heeled feet of
a massive statue. It’s a colossal representation of Marilyn Monroe, but the tale is nearly over before the camera pulls back far enough for us to see that. It’s an apt summation of a stunningly assured movie that metes out its narrative information incrementally, eventually revealing a complex portrait of modern women as sexualized prizes, rights-free workhorses, and subversive warriors. The girl, called Mia, looks about 15. She’s played by potent young Taiwan-born TV veteran Wen Qi, now known as Vicky Chen—14 when this was shot. Mia has recently arrived on Hainan Island, China’s southernmost point, slightly closer to Hanoi than it is to Hong Kong. She’s lucky to have found a Joe job at a seedy motel right on the beach where that Marilyn statue really loomed until recently. Mia’s supposed to do the night cleaning, but the regular receptionist (Peng Jing), trading on her beauty at the expense of everything else, keeps flitting off with little notice. One evening, a drunken lout shows up with two severely underage girls, still in their white school uniforms. Mia pulls out her cellphone and shoots some securitycam footage of the guy forcing his way into the girls’ separate room. Too bad he’s the local police commissioner. The story then switches focus to that pair of 12-year-olds involved, more so on Wen, played by the arresting Zhou Meijun, whose eyes tell much of the story. Her abusive mother (Liu Weiwei) blames the girl, and she seeks respite with her divorced dad (excellent Geng Le), who runs tourist rides down on the beach. (The film’s Chinese title translates as Carnival.) He’s the only male figure who takes the girls’ vulnerable position seriously. In fact, Wen’s friend’s more middle-class parents are happy to take a payoff. And local police are stuck working for the perpetrator. Only a compassionate female attorney (Shi Ke) keeps pushing the case forward. The subject sounds heavy, but writer-director Vivian Qu, following her superb debut, Trap Street, is more poet than social activist. The music is spare, the pacing confident, and the location’s tropical beauty, lustrously captured by Belgian cinematographer Benoît Dervaux in this France-China coproduction, provides sun-dappled counterpoint to the noirish plot machinations. These keep ratcheting up as Mia tries to cash in on her cellphone evidence before the motel’s freaked-out manager (The Great Buddha+’s Bamboo Chen) can get rid of her. Like all the women and girls in White, she has nowhere to go and yet everything to be.
> ADRIAN MACK
RYUICHI SAKAMOTO: CODA A documentary by Stephen Schible. In English and Japanese, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable As Mia, Taiwanese star Vicky Chen finds that there’s nowhere to go when she witnesses an assault on two underage girls in writer-director Vivian Qu’s powerful Angels Wear White.
love letter to Oakland, with its skateboarders, graffiti, and B-boys busting moves on the street. Then its split screen starts to get subversive about gentrification: new townhouse construction contrasts with images of the homeless under a viaduct; a white beardie hipster on a fixie juxtaposes with an African-American kid popping wheelies. Different communities are rubbing up against each other in this ’hood, and not at all comfortably. The plot centres around two buddies here: gentle Colin (Hamilton star Daveed Diggs), who’s got three days left of probation, and Miles (Rafael Casal), his aggro best friend since childhood, a gold-grill-and-neck-tattoo-wearing tough guy. Both actors wrote the screenplay for Blindspotting, their cleverness outdone only by their real chemistry. In the film, their workingclass guys are just trying to get by at a moving company. And while Colin is set on following the rules to get off probation, all signs are that Miles is going to blow it for him. They’re lifelong friends, but their race comes into play in complex ways. Colin is a big black guy with dreads, and you can feel his fear when he sees a white cop on the street. Miles betrays the insecurities of a white guy who’s always had to act tough to survive in the black end of town. Throw an illegal gun into the mix, as well as the witnessing of a shooting of a black man by a white cop, and you know there’s going to be trouble. If all this sounds heavy, it’s not. Some of the biggest delights in this film come from hangin’ with Colin and Miles as they move furniture and drive around the ’hood, making up raps to pass the time. Miles hilariously hawks his moving jobs’ castoffs, including a Tupperware container full of straightening irons. A running joke is that $10 green kale juice has invaded their go-to Food Mart. It’s all so good-natured, you wonder how Colin could ever have ended up doing hard time. You’ll have to wait till late in the game for > KEN EISNER the bizarre answer, one that, like everything else here, involves racial misunderstanding. BLINDSPOTTING What takes such nards is the way Diggs, Casal, and director Carlos López Estrada so blithely Starring Daveed Diggs. Rated 14A switch gears, from jokes to bloody violence to Frenetic, funny, and fearless, Blindspotting complex racial themes. Part of an exciting new takes on some of the most explosive issues in wave of movies addressing America’s racial divAmerica right now—all while making you laugh ide (see: Sorry to Bother You), these guys take your ass off. huge risks. Their biggest comes at the end, with The hyperenergized opening montage sets the a finale that hinges on a huge coincidence and perfect mood: at first you think it’s a straight-up integrates spoken-word poetry.
2
Piano wizard Ryuichi Sakamoto could
2 be one of the most influential musicians
you’ve heard but never heard of. His early adoption of synthesizers and flair for sleek imagery came to the fore in the 1970s, mainly through his trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, which combined Eno-style ambience with dance moves, worldbeat rhythms, and techno-pop hooks that heavily coloured the flock of Anglo bands of the ’80s, as well as keyboard-centred hip-hop outfits. > JANET SMITH Sakamoto’s biggest breakthrough came in contributions to cinema, most fully in 1983, in SHOCK AND AWE Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. It featured not only his unforgettable Starring Woody Harrelson. Rated PG musical theme, but the composer himself, playAn opportunity is lost in this sincere, if ing a conflicted camp commandant opposite bungling, account of the run-up to the prisoner of war David Bowie. He subsequently U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. While the New supplied sweeping scores to Bernardo Bertolucci York Times and every other American media epics The Sheltering Sky and The Last Emperor, outlet trumpeted the Bush administration’s with the latter winning him an Academy Award, lies about weapons of mass destruction, the among other prizes. He also did soundtracks for Knight Ridder news service remained skeptic- Oliver Stone, Brian De Palma, and Pedro Almoal, and paid a small price for its intransigence. dóvar, and garnered major film-score nominaShock and Awe turns its focus on journal- tions as recently as 2015, for The Revenant. ists Jonathan Landay (Woody Harrelson) and Along the way, Sakamoto scored ballets and Warren Strobel (James Marsden), along with Olympic ceremonies, and collaborated with artcolumnist Joe Galloway (Tommy Lee Jones)— ists as varied as David Byrne, Madonna, Youssou a onetime Vietnam War correspondent—and N’Dour, and David Sylvian (of the band Japan, their editor, John Walcott (Rob Reiner), all of no less). But the teamwork he most misses, acwhom obstinately stuck to the facts while the cording to what he says in the deceptively titled rest of the media pack acted as stenographers Coda, is with Bowie. After hitting it off spectacufor Rumsfeld’s war party. Reiner also directs larly, they kept leaving each other phone messathe TV-sized exercise, in which Harrelson and ges over the decades but never quite reconnected. Marsden are sent on furtive meet-ups with ever This CV stuff is worth mentioning because more panicky Pentagon insiders and Beltway it’s only alluded to in Stephen Schible’s intimate, whistleblowers, while Milla Jovovich and Jessica emotional, and surprisingly small-scaled proBiel flap in the breeze as their significant others. file. The Tokyo-born director is best known for Flat-footed dramatics aside—and we haven’t coproducing Lost in Translation, and knowledge even mentioned the bludgeoning subplot about a of his country’s geographical and cultural landblack youth hit by shrapnel just hours into active scapes comes in handy as he follows Sakamoto duty—the real problem here is false conscious- at home and abroad, on various creative pursuits ness. Joey Hartstone’s didactic, sermonizing including solo-piano music, electronic experiscreenplay is hardly any less fantastical than the ments, classical compositions, and thorny new lies it seeks to condemn, with the myth of Amer- music with materials found in the post-Fukuican democracy and its robust Fourth Estate hav- shima wastelands. ing been exposed a long time before the Bush We learn little about his personal life, except gang came along. Shock and Awe is bad history that the musician, now 66, is also a long-time offered as comfort to the pseudoresistance—or antinuclear activist. His floppy dark hair is the #Resistance, if you like, given the film’s Clin- now an elegant white mop, and in this decade ton Democrat orientation. Those people voted for he’s been battling his own atomic breakdown, war too. And not because they read Judith Miller. in the form of smoking-related cancer. It’s now In fact, they’re still voting for wars. Between in remission, and that title happily has more to the trashing of Libya and Syria, and with all do with music than mortality. > KEN EISNER sides of the media seized by a deranged obsession with Russia, it seems that the clearly see page 37 But somehow it fits in a movie that is all about taking chances, whether it’s tackling race, masculinity, gentrification, police aggression, or the use of the N-word. Along the way, don’t be surprised to find yourself rooting for an ex-con, as he faces guns, prejudice, and—worst of all—kale juice.
2
S I MON P EGG HAPPI LY AC C E PTS HI S NE W MISSION Ask Simon Pegg to name his Mission: Impossible movie, and the easygoing British actor takes only a second to come up with his answer. The new Mission: Impossible—Fallout, opening Friday (July 27), finds him returning to the role of Benji Dunn for the fourth time in the series, the character having gradually morphed from a systems analyst to a capable field agent with a flair for adding comic levity to tense situations. “The thing about this one was that it was the longest one, but it’s definitely my favourite of all the films to watch,” Pegg tells the Georgia Straight, on the line from a Toronto publicity stop. “I’ve already seen it three times, which is sort of unprecedented. Usually I’ll watch something once, or twice at the most, and then let it go. But I saw Fallout in Paris for a press screening before starting the main body of doing
2 favourite
press. Then I watched it in London with my family, and watched it again in Washington because I wanted to see it with a U.S. crowd. It really does bear repeated viewings. I don’t think I’ve ever been as enthusiastic about watching a film I’ve been in.” This might have something to do with the sprawling nature of the film, which sees Tom Cruise return as Ethan Hunt, an American Impossible Missions Force (IMF) agent who will stop at nothing in the battle against global terrorism. Fallout has Hunt and his team— which includes Dunn—tearing across Europe and Asia in a race to recover a case of nuclear-weaponsgrade plutonium. Over the course of the film’s two-and-a-half hours, chase scenes take place at warp speed through the streets of Paris, characters do battle over ice fields in airborne helicopters, and towering buildings are there to be jumped from. Early reviews have
The Brit actor is back once again with Mission: Impossible—Fallout,
been calling Fallout not only the best of the series, but also one of the greatest action movies of all time. Pegg has another reason to love the film. When Dunn first appeared in the franchise in Mission: Impossible III he was tethered to the lab. Fallout has him ripping along the Seine behind the wheel of a speedboat, trading punches with rogue assassins in a cabin in Kashmir, and dodging bullets in Belfast.
> BY MIKE USINGER
“We have a really amazing stunt team, so the fight choreography and all that stuff isn’t just about learning moves like a dance,” he says. “You go in and you do fight training, boxing drills, and fitness drills. Then you start to apply those skills to the fights and other action sequences. It’s really great fun, and it’s part of what makes these films such a riot to do.” Pegg was brought into the series by J.J. Abrams, who directed Mission: Impossible III. Abrams had loved the actor, screenwriter, and comedian in the critically lauded zombie tribute Shaun of the Dead, which Pegg cowrote and starred in. At the time, the Englishman didn’t expect to become a major part of the franchise moving forward. “I thought J.J. was doing a bit of stunt casting because he’d seen Shaun of the Dead and thought I’d be a good gimmick,” Pegg says. “I didn’t really anticipate things
☞
going any further. Then a fourth Mission: Impossible was floated and I was back at it. Every time a new one has come up since then it’s been a pleasant surprise.” As a bonus, each new installment gives Pegg the chance to reunite with a team of fellow returning actors—Cruise, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, and Sean Harris—whom he now considers friends. Breaking with franchise tradition, Christopher McQuarrie, who helmed 2015’s Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation, returned as a director for Fallout. That marked the first time the same director has worked on two M:I films. “This one in particular was a bit like getting the band back together because we’d had such fun on Rogue Nation,” Pegg says. “Ordinarily, we start a new film and there’s a new director, so with Chris back as well it was very much a little reunion.” -
JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 35
MOVIES
Right-wing smearing no Shock to Rob Reiner > B Y A DRIA N M A C K
L
ike sharks to chum, a frenzy of bloodletting followed the mid-July arrival in U.S. theatres of the movie Shock and Awe. Breitbart and Fox News led the online charge, feasting on the film’s perceived box-office struggles and chowing down for good measure on director Rob Reiner, a bogeyman to America’s extreme right after attaching himself over the years to an impressive number of progressive causes. The truth—assuming we can handle the truth—is that Shock and Awe performed very respectably in its simultaneous multiplatform release, landing immediately in iTunes’ Top 20. Reiner’s hecklers would prefer to ignore that. “But that’s the alternative reality that you deal with,” the filmmaker remarks, adding, during a call to
the Georgia Straight from his home in L.A., that he’s fine with inflaming his ideological enemies. “Breitbart, I got a feeling would be vicious,” he deadpans. “I’m called a libtard all the time.” Reiner then launches into a refrain that’s becoming more and more familiar to anyone living outside of the United Snakes of America. “I just first wanna apologize for our president, because, you know, only 40 percent of the people in this country like him,” he says. “So the vast majority don’t like him. But the problem is that journalists now, in America, can’t penetrate Breitbart and Fox and Sinclair and Alex Jones and all that. So, that’s the thing that’s most frustrating—and I think it’s much more frustrating for journalists—is that you cannot get the truth to those people. They just won’t listen. They’re in a cult; they’re going to listen to whatever
James Marsden stars with director Rob Reiner in Shock and Awe.
Donald Trump says, and he just lies his ass off. Every minute of the day.” Shock and Awe, getting its Canadian theatrical release on Friday (July 27), is explicitly concerned with the legacy of one of the previous liars who occupied
presents
Three sizzling weeks of crime, cruelty, and despair!
August 3-23
courtyard wingding
Opening Night · Friday, August 3rd
6pm - Reception and Refreshments 7pm - Out of the Past 9pm - Criss Cross Tickets: $18 Includes admission to the courtyard wingding
and Out of the Past, a drink ticket, hors-d’oeuvres, live entertainment, and programmer’s remarks.
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36 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
the White House. When the Bush administration decided in 2003 to go forward with its long-desired invasion of Iraq, a compliant U.S. media dutifully transcribed every increasingly preposterous charge against Saddam Hussein, from trumped-up connections to 9/11 to nonexistent yellowcake uranium. Reiner’s film looks at the one domestic news agency, Knight Ridder, that went against the tide—even as its own newspapers refused to publish the reporting of skeptical journalists like Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay (played in the film by James Marsden and Woody Harrelson, respectively). For Reiner, media capitulation at the time was forced by “the headwinds of patriotism after 9/11”, while the cyclone of postreality that defines the Trump era feels more like an externalization of the most chaotic and dangerous mind yet to ascend to the Oval
Office. “Mental illness” is Reiner’s assessment of the American president. “Something is wrong with him,” he states. “Who lies the way this guy does, continually? He’s gotta have a deepseated emptiness inside of him that needs to be constantly filled up with money and adulation or whatever. “Listen,” he continues, “every president uses propaganda to sell a policy that they’re trying to push through Congress or a rationale to go to war, or whatever, but it’s never happened in the history of America where you’ve got a president essentially backed up by state-run media. That’s something that autocrats have, like Putin or Duterte or Erdogan. It’s not America. It’s not a democracy. So we’re in a weird place right now, where the press, which is one of the pillars of democracy, is being called an enemy of the people. I mean, that’s fascist talk.” -
Movie reviews
from page 35
THE THIRD MURDER Starring Masaharu Fukuyama. In Japanese, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable
The crime at hand in The Third initially seems to be routine. Middle-aged Misumi (Kôji Yakusho) has already confessed to the killing of his boss, a shady factory owner who had just fired him. Shigemori (Masaharu Fukuyama), sleek young lawyer and son of the famous judge who passed sentence on Misumi for a previous double murder, has been hired to protect the man from a possible death sentence. But is anything in the case really as it seems? This effectively stylized courtroom drama is a change of pace for prolific director Hirokazu Kore-eda, whose recent films have been light-handed character studies with gentle comic relief. Here, he takes on the Japanese legal system, rarely depicted in films
2 Murder
for export, although it’s really a treatise on the idea of justice itself. Because the film deals with the essential unknowability of absolute truth, and the shifting perspectives that add up to a simulation of truth (or “knowing the whole elephant”, as someone puts it here), it has been called the director’s Kurosawa movie. Indeed, it carries hints of such classics as High and Low, which also dealt with crime and punishment, and the emblematic Rashomon. (Amazingly, Shinobu Hashimoto, screenwriter for the latter title, The Seven Samurai, and many other Kurosawa classics, died a few days ago, at age 100.) Yakusho, whom we know from Shall We Dance? and countless Japanese titles, may be a modern Toshiro Mifune. But his character remains cryptic, and the everyman burden here falls on tall, handsome Fukuyama, a huge singing star at home and familiar from Kore-eda’s Like Father, Like Son. Fatherhood is crucial in this story too, as the lawyer does generational battle to figure
out his place in the moral universe. Both Shigemori and his client have somewhat estranged daughters, and the dead man had one too. Suzu Hirose, who had the title role in the director’s Our Little Sister, is this film’s empathetic conscience, and focal point for the lawyer’s conflicts. She even resembles his own teenaged offspring. Themes of transference and intuition dominate this unexpectedly poetic tale of law and order. “Psychiatry isn’t science,” says one colleague about a pretrial requirement. “It’s fiction.” He could be talking about the film itself, which keeps changing what it’s about. At slightly more than two hours, this Murder might be too much of a sustained reverie for some viewers. With its muted colours, spare music (from Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi), admittedly confusing subplots, and emphasis on shifting light and reflections, the movie is a cool-headed meditation on the limits of our ability to judge others, and ourselves. > KEN EISNER
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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.
Scan to confess Taking matters into my own hands I got sick of dating apps, with all the lame small talk that never goes anywhere. So I bought myself a new vibrator and it is a GAME CHANGER. Getting what I want on my own terms and ecstatic about it.
Was I Wrong? I ordered delievery. They showed up an hour and a half later without informing me. I didn’t tip. Delivery guy confronts me. I tell him its 45 mins late. The delivery guy curses and storms off. Is it customary to tip in all circumstances? Did I do wrong here?
Complex & Needy So long as I’ve slept well, I’ve eaten, have had recharging friendship interactions, a future, paid, have juice in the fridge, and I’m satisfied: I’m an OK human.
COARSE LANGUAGE
Take # 627 I feel like the least photogenic person on the planet. I can take 100 pictures and look weird in all of them. But when I look in the mirror, I think I look fine. I don’t get it.
It’s funny How Stephen Harper is trying to hang on to any shred of relevance by getting in the news visiting the Trump House when no one cares and he is already a piece of forgotten political history.
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MUSIC
The story of the Wu-Tang Clan is two parts
BY KATE WI LSON
legend, one part fact. Two-and-a-half decades of original releases, spin-off projects, and external collaborations have produced plenty of fodder for journalists—and more than a few differing accounts of the group’s history. Documentaries from members U-God and ODB offer alternative interpretations from, say, RZA’s WuTang Manual and The Tao of Wu books, while interviews with each of the 10 official Clansmen recall events through varying lenses. One perspective that is rarely heard, however, belongs to the second-to-last member inducted into the group. Typically opting to let his music talk, Masta Killa—also known as Jamel Irief—is the self-described “ninja” of the Wu-Tang Clan. Quiet and mysterious, the rapper’s voice seldom appears in the pages of newspapers. When it does, he offers a rich and colourful discussion. “I’ve always been the observant one,” he tells the Georgia Straight, on the line from New Jersey. “It’s not that I’m not into partying—hey, I’m here to party. But maybe I’ll be the one who’s driving everybody home tonight. I’m the Black Panther of the group. When you think about the comics, look at who you’ve got. You’ve got Iron Man, and Method Man, and all of these superheroes. Black Panther is just starting to get his props. He’s been in the Marvel comics the whole time, but hasn’t got the movies of X-Men, or Captain America. Now it’s his moment.” It’s been 25 years since Irief appeared on the hiphop collective’s debut album, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers). Like any anniversary—particularly
Master of the understated
With seven Wu-Tang Clan albums and numerous solo outings under his belt, Masta Killa has cemented his legacy as one of the true giants of hip-hop.
identity: RZA, the visionary producer; GZA, the respected patriarch; Ol’ Dirty Bastard, an unpredictable daredevil; Wu-Tang Clan’s self-described ninja Masta Killa reflects on living in the shadows and keeping clean Method Man, the magnetic performer; Raekthose that end in a five or a zero—the occasion won and Ghostface, two hood chroniclers; is a reflective one for the artist. In 1993, he was Inspectah Deck, a quick-fire rapper; U-God, a non-rapper attending night-school classes. tirelessly energetic; and Masta Killa, an enigWhen he heard the Clan’s underground hood matic wordsmith. anthem “Protect Ya Neck”, he decided to change “Oh, man,” Irief says. “Those were the best course. Mentored heavily by de facto group lead- times. The best memories of everything are at er RZA, the aspiring performer was competing the beginning, because it’s the making of it. with established rapper Killah Priest for the fi nal When you’re in it, you don’t really see it, beverse on the album’s standout song, “Da Mystery cause you’re doing it. But after you start lookof Chessboxin’ ”. While Killah Priest fell asleep, ing back in time, you can see the work. When Irief stayed up all night writing rhymes. When you’re in it, making it, it’s like the beginning Priest awoke the next morning, Masta Killa’s rap of any relationship. It’s still beautiful, but that was already on the track. making—there’s nothing like that.” “It’s funny—sometimes when I tell people Seven Wu-Tang albums, four solo records, and that verse was my fi rst actual rhyme, they can’t more than 60 features later, Irief has cemented believe it,” he says, with a chuckle. “For me, it’s his status as one of the gurus of hip-hop. Unlike the realest thing I could have wrote—the best megastars like Kanye or Jay Z, however, his ego thing I could have wrote. It still has me here, rel- takes a back seat to his talent. Attributing his sucevant, to this day. I was a student to all of that cess to his fans rather than his artistry, the rapper which you hear with the Wu-Tang Clan. Every- considers it a privilege to be headlining Centre body else had rhyme books. I had one rhyme. of Gravity festival in Kelowna with the Clan, 25 To make that roster, that’s what it took. Those years after his first bars were released. grandmasters had rhyme books on them. I was “I feel like we’re still blessed,” he says. “We’re still learning, I was still developing, and I was at doing it because the fans are still listening. That’s the best school—the school of Shaolin.” a special thing. I don’t want to lose sight of that. The Wu-Tang Clan’s first record was bullet- That’s where all the praise and shit goes, to the proof. Over the course of 12 songs, the then-nine fans who are still listening. We’re just blessed to members created a new rap universe outside of still be delivering the message. hip-hop conventions. Fresh, idiosyncratic slang “I don’t care if it’s 10 people, if it’s five people was juxtaposed with samples from kung-fu fi lms, listening to us,” he continues. “If there’s one overlooked soul samples, and a celebration of person listening to you, you have to be thankful. playing chess. Pinpoint rhymes and cutting de- So imagine—I see thousands of people listening livery introduced the narrative arc of every group to me, all these years later. That’s indescribable. member, each with their own superhero-esque I say, ‘Don’t reach, or think that you’re some-
CHECK THIS OUT
thing special.’ Stay humble, and be thankful for every breath.” The Wu-Tang Clan plays Centre of Gravity festival in Kelowna on Saturday (July 28).
in + out
Masta Killa sounds off on the things that enquiring minds want to know.
On Wu-Tang’s reach: “For me it’s very humbling—and it comes with responsibility. I think when you’re in that kind of light and that kind of position, you should stay on a positive path. That’s how I see it. You hear people say ‘I’m not a role model,’ and all this. No, but as an individual, as an upright individual, you do have a responsibility to keep yourself respectable. We all make errors, and nobody’s squeaky clean, but when we know better, we strive to do better. You have to be humble, and you have to be thankful.” On starting slow: “It took me a long time to get my first album out, because I was still learning. But it was a great position for me. It was beautiful to be developing while I went around the planet, at one of the highest degrees. If you think about coming in as an artist—what a great beginning. It was a blessing.” On the Wu’s future: “What I would like to see is a movie. I would like to see a documentary. I’d like to see another Wu-Tang Clan album. I’d like to see another Masta Killa album. I’d like to see a world tour. And then I’d like to see another movie, and another documentary. I’m pushing for Wu-Tang infinity.”
MUSIC Photo: Man Alive!
Let’s talk about
You gotta see THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS Last year, audiences watched Armie
Hammer and new critical darling Timothée Chalamet dance with awkward ’80s rhythm to “Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs in the film Call Me By Your Name. The soundtrack has become beloved by many, and introduced a younger generation to the English rock band that, quite frankly, still puts on a fantastic live show. Of course, John Hughes fanatics will recognize the Furs from Pretty in Pink. The Psychedelic Furs are all about wild fashion statements, sax interludes, and some truly nostalgia-inspired synth action. Check them out Saturday (July 28) at the Commodore Ballrooom. Your parents liked them, and you will too. -
38 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
KEEP DREAMIN’ Mel B continues to tell the world that the original Spice Girls are re-forming, despite former bandmate Victoria Beckham insisting that’s not happening. In vaguely related news, JC Chasez is insisting nothing will stop an *NSYNC reunion with Justin Timberlake. HELLO, GOODBYE Paul McCartney stunned onlookers in London by walking across Abbey Road, just like he did on that Beatles LP cover. If you think crossing the street isn’t that impressive a feat, consider that McCartney has been dead since 1966. ALL ALONE As Damon Albarn tours stadiums with his side
project Gorillaz, his Blur bandmate, guitarist Graham Coxon, has announced that he will do one U.K. show and one show only in 2018, playing a godforsaken hellhole called Staffordshire. Tickets will likely, and sadly if you think about it, be available at the door. BAD MAN On July 23, R. Kelly released an epic 19-minute song in which he denies all the various sexual-misconduct allegations against him, because that’s exactly the sort of thing an innocent and totally sane man would do.
Fresh and local EMMA CITRINE SHADOWLESS With a few exceptions (Lana Del Rey’s “Summertime Sadness” foremost among them), we tend to prefer listening to sad songs when leaves are falling off the trees during autumn. We’ll forgive Emma Citrine for releasing the six-song Shadowless at the height of summer, however, because it’s just about the prettiest damn thing we’ve heard so far this year. The songs drift by in a haze of dreamy melancholia, all reverb-saturated guitar arpeggios and layered, ethereal vocals. If you’d rather be at the beach, Citrine’s music might seem a little too gloomy, but by the time October rolls around, it will all make perfect sense. -
MUSIC
Parlour Panther out to empower and inspire On a mission to queer up small-town British Columbia, trio turns negatives into a positive with its debut Hot Magic
A
s forest fires ripped through northern B.C. last summer, a small “soccer mom van” carrying three-piece band Parlour Panther weaved through the smoke, stopping at campsites and music festivals all along the way. “You’re driving and see the red sun and are like. ‘Is this the end?’” guitarist and vocalist Steph Hodgins recalls, interviewed alongside keyboardist Lee Newman and drummer Charles Wesley at an East Van coffee shop. “It was pretty crazy.” But the band carried on, bringing its unique brand of East Vancouver queer rock to venues from 100 Mile House to Prince Rupert. Fresh off the release of their first full-length album, Hot Magic, Hodgins, Newman, and Wesley are hoping for a touch less smoke as they prepare to hit the road once more and “queer up” small-town B.C. “That’s part of our mission, to, you know, make these spaces queer even if it’s just for one night,” Newman says. “To make this queer space for people to come and celebrate being Parlour Panther’s Hot Magic has the band moving away from a folk-driven approach in favour of a synth-heavy groove. queer and being themselves” “We weren’t even going to use a full recordings, alongside handling all In conversation, it’s obvious the and increase this more positive celemembers of the group are comfort- bratory attitude about it,” she explains. drum kit,” Wesley notes. “And then of the technical components of the able not only with each other, but The pair quickly brought in Wes- I was like, ‘Oh, a full drum kit would group. Newman is the de facto band with their own individual senses ley, who had worked with Hodgins in be fun.’ And within a few months it manager, booking dates and organizof identity. There’s an easy rapport other bands. Parlour Panther also ori- turned into a rock band pretty quickly.” ing logistics. On its website, Hodgins The group released Hot Magic a is simply credited as “wizard”, Newbetween Hodgins ginally included a and Newman, bassist, but he end- couple of months ago on Bandcamp, man as “mastermind”, and Wesley as who are engaged ed up dropping the album being an amalgamation of “prolific song contributor”. Laughing, Newman says having a to be married, and out due to sched- a lot of different themes. Melanie Woods “There are two different streams romantic relationship with Hodgins long-time friend uling conflicts. Wesley. Parlour Panther was born in “He just eventually got too busy,” that we went on. One of them is more plays into the group’s songwriting: the early stages of Hodgins and New- Hodgins says. “But he actually love songs, so just love and being in “The song ‘SEXXXXX’ is literally just man’s relationship, five years ago. helped develop a lot of the songs on a queer relationship, and then the about having sex with each other.” Balancing their romantic relationNewman says the inspiration for the the album, a lot of the cool bass parts other stream is more of a narrative approach,” Hodgins says. ship with their musical one is an onband came from negative reactions and grooves and stuff.” The group writes collaboratively, going process. “We both love music, the couple received from friends and The band’s sound evolved a lot in family when they first started dating. those early years, from a more folk- with all three members contributing so I think it brings a good spark to our “We got inspired to write about our driven approach to the synth-heavy lyrics, riffs, and beats. Hodgins mixes relationship to be rock stars and have queer love and to empower ourselves groove that permeates its tracks now. and produces all of Parlour Panther’s that experience together,” Newman
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says. “But, yeah, we had to figure out how to work together as artists, so just doing a lot of communicating is really the key.” With their engagement, Hodgins and Newman say they aren’t going anywhere anytime long-term. But Parlour Panther, the band, has dreams for the future. Newman muses about a potential songwriting retreat in Europe, and all three members agree that putting in the effort to stay together is important, as it’s easy for bands to fall apart. “The biggest obstacle in any band relationship is staying together,” Wesley says. “Steph and I have been in two bands that have broken up now. That’s always the biggest obstacle—continuing to be creative together and be on the same path.” In the immediate future the group will tour across B.C. again this summer, with planned stops at the ArtsWells Festival, Hootstock in Prince George, and the Hazelton Hops Hootenanny, as well as various individual shows. Hodgins says they’re particularly excited to return to Prince Rupert to perform. “Last time we were there, we met a tugboat captain in real life!” Hodgins says, laughing. “And he was a big fan, so hopefully we’ll see him again,” Wesley adds. “It was amazing, actually. We had never played there before and we had the place packed.” Ultimately, Newman says the group is just excited to keep making queer music: “We talk a lot about being true to yourself and listening to your instinct and your heart, which I think is big in the queer community. Being the truest version of yourself and how you sometimes have to work really hard even to do that.” -
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JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 39
MUSIC
Hedley’s Hoggard has done something good
W
ho would have thought Or to go weeks not bathing while that a second-tier boning everything in sight in a conCanCon rock band test only the members of Mötley would be the group Crüe could think up. (For the recthat finally ruined the decades-and- ord, said experiment concocted by decades-long rock ’n’ roll party for, bassist Nikki Sixx and drummer well, everyone? Tommy Lee ended when a young Step forward and take a deep bow, fan reportedly went down on Sixx’s Hedley, because you’ve finally be- epically unwashed-forever crotch come famous for and then promptly something other launched her last than being the meal, pasta, into kind of generic his pubes. In the Mike Usinger rock-radio-ready hair-metal wings unit that everyone with a modicum of L.A. rest homes it’s now known of good taste loves to hate. as the Spaghetti Incident.) Easy as it would be to go on and on Yesterday, news broke that Hedley lead singer Jacob Hoggard had been and on, throwing everyone from Kid arrested and charged with two counts Rock to Neil Diamond to the Rollof sexual assault causing bodily harm ing Stones into the world’s grossest and one count of sexual interference. punch bowl, you can do that yourself. The charges relate to incidents that Let’s just say the fact R. Kelly is not allegedly occurred on three dates in only still walking around as a free 2016 with two women. The allega- man, but also finding the time to record 19-minute songs about his troutions have not been proven in court. What stands out about the news bles, speaks volumes about everyis the way that it’s terrifying for any- thing that’s wrong with this world. Which brings us back to Hedley, one who’s ever seen rock ’n’ roll as the golden path to a life where it’s who for years was primarily guilty okay to hum “Whole Lotta Love” of making music that made one wish while violating groupies with aqua- someone, anyone—the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, or Travis Bickle—would tic creatures in Seattle hotel rooms.
Pop Eye
Hedley’s Jacob Hoggard (second from right) is helping end the party.
rise out of nowhere to clean house where rock ’n’ roll’s concerned. What the Hoggard case has done now is serve the rockers of the world notice that the shit that made Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt so titillating no longer flies. (Clarifying things for a second, whatever happened with Hoggard and his accusers—and again, you can find no shortage of gross stories from a multitude of women online at legitimate sources like the CBC—no allegations have been proven in court. Also, while we’ll concede that it’s unfair to say Hedley ruined everything for everyone, Hoggard technically isn’t Hedley, but he might as well be, considering he founded the band and no one knows the names of anyone else who plays in Hedley.)
In the wake of the #MeToo tidal wave, behaviour that was, appallingly, once considered okay in certain circles is now anything but. And that includes rock ’n’ roll, where sex, no matter how depraved, has traditionally been something to be celebrated. How far out of line is the rock world with the rest of society? Let’s illustrate things with this excerpt from the Rick James autobiography Glow. (As a side note, don’t go arguing that James was a funk musician instead of a rock artist; clearly clinically nuts, the dude was way more rock ’n’ roll than anyone who’s ever played Coachella, Lollapalooza, or Burning Man.) After noting that at one point he was running a “stable” of three or four women, James recalled in Glow that he wasn’t overly skilled at being a pimp. “I lacked the hard-edged discipline and cold-blooded attitude a good pimp requires,” he wrote. “If my bitch said she was too tired to work, I said go home. If she said some john had beat her, I’d find the john and beat his ass. Pimping was too inhuman for me. I let the girls go and went back to my music.”
That’s right—the man decided that he was better at making music than at trying to re-create the business models of Huggy Bear, Willie Dynamite, or Guido in Risky Business. And for this, he is applauded today as a genius. Earlier this year, after allegations began to surface on the Internet, but before formal charges were laid, Hoggard and Hedley issued a Facebook statement. It read in part: “We realize the life of a touring band is an unconventional one. While we are all now either married or have entered into committed, long-term relationships, there was a time, in the past, when we engaged in a lifestyle that incorporated certain rock and roll clichés. However, there was always a line that we would never cross.” Hoggard is hardly the first music celebrity to be rocked by allegations in 2018. He has an ever-growing list of company that ranges from the high-profile likes of Maynard James Keenan to sad also-rans like Crystal Castle’s Ethan Kath. What sets him apart is that he’s among the first to have a court date in his future. The rest of the rock ’n’ roll world can take notice. The party’s over. And it’s about fucking time. THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS English rock band led by singer Richard Butler. Jul 28, 9:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix $45 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
music/ timeout CONCERTS < OUT OF TOWN <
ERASURE English synthpop duo performs on its World Be Gone Tour, with guests Reed & Caroline. Aug 1, 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 Smithe). Tix $79.50/9.50/49.50/39.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
2UPCOMING HIGHLIGHTS
2JUST ANNOUNCED
BURNABY BLUES + ROOTS FESTIVAL The 19th annual celebration of blues and roots music features Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats. Aug 11, 3 pm, Deer Lake Park. Tix $180/50/40 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketmaster.ca/.
TENNIS Indie-pop band from Denver, composed of husband-and-wife duo Alaina Moore and Patrick Riley, with guest Matt Costa. Oct 13, 8 pm, Biltmore Cabaret. Tix on sale Jul 27, 10 am, $25 (plus service charge) at www.ticketfly.com/.
THE PARK SHOW A Tribe Called Red and Charlotte Day Wilson are featured at the first Vancouver Mural Festival concert. Aug 11, 6 pm, Jonathan Rogers Park. Tix $30/4-packs $100 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
POND Psychedelic-rock quartet from Perth, Australia. Oct 17, 9 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. Tix on sale Jul 27, 10 am, $22 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
SAFE & SOUND MUSIC FEST 2018 Two-day festival features performances by Anderson .Paak and the Free Nationals, Vince Staples, Alina Baraz, Sabrina Claudio, Goldlink, SonReal, Rico Nasty, Anders, Tobi Loum, Lndn Drgs, Trill Sammy, Manila Grey, So Loki, Angst, Kandy K, Sophia Danai, Side, Goldstepz, and host Flipout. Aug 24-25, Westminister Pier Park. Tix from $59.99, info www.safeandsoundfest.com/.
CONCERTS
KORPIKLAANI Folk-metal band from Finland, with guests Arkona. Nov 12, 7 pm, Rickshaw Theatre. Tix on sale Jul 27, 10 am, $29.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. NOVO AMOR Welsh folk singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist performs tunes from debut album Birthplace. Nov 30, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, St. James Hall (3214 W. 10th). Tix on sale Jul 27, 10 am, $20 (plus service charge) at www.ticketweb.ca/. THE TENORS Vocal group consisting of Victor Micallef, Fraser Walters and Clifton Murray performs a Christmas show. Dec 3, 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre. Tix on sale Jul 27, 10 am, $125/90/66/36 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. HOW TO DRESS WELL Experimental musician, composer, and vocalist Tom Krell. Dec 23, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, WISE Hall (1882 Adanac). Tix on sale Jul 27, 10 am, $18 (plus service charge) at www.ticketweb.ca/. MAC MILLER Rapper, singer, and record producer from Pittsburgh, with guests Thundercat and J.I.D. Dec 10, doors 6 pm, show 7 pm, PNE Forum (2901 E. Hastings). Tix on sale Jul 27, 10 am, $52.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. FUCKED UP Hardcore punk band from Toronto performs tunes from latest album Dose Your Dreams. Dec 12, 9 pm, Fox Cabaret. Tix on sale Jul 27, noon, $15 (plus service charge) at www.ticketweb.ca/. THIEVERY CORPORATION American electronic music duo consisting of Rob Garza and Eric Hilton. Dec 27, 8:30 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix on sale Jul 27, 10 am, $59.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation. com/.
2THIS WEEK VACATIONER American electronic-pop band performs tunes from new album Mindset, with guests Sego. Jul 28, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Biltmore Cabaret (2755 Prince Edward). Tix $18 (plus service charge) at www.ticketfly.com/.
40 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JULY 26 – AUGUST 2 / 2018
TOTO American rock band performs on its 40 Trips Around the Sun Tour. Jul 30, 8 pm, The Centre in Vancouver for Performing Arts (777 Homer). Tix at www. livenation.com/.
SKOOKUM FESTIVAL Three-day music festival features performances by headliners the Killers, X Ambassadors, and Florence + the Machine, plus Metric, Arkells, the War on Drugs, St. Vincent, Father John Misty, Blue Rodeo, Mother Mother, Chromeo, Bahamas, Stereophonics, Cold War Kids, and Buffy Sainte-Marie. Sep 7-9, Stanley Park. Tix at www.skookumfestival.com/. WESTWARD MUSIC FESTIVAL Multiday arts and music showcase features Blood Orange, Kali Uchis, Rhye, Poppy, Angel Olsen, Honne, Kelela, Metz, Saba, Ravyn Lenae, Ella Mai, Mudhoney, Odds, We Are the City, Tei Shi, Ramriddlz, Pell, Duckwrth, Buddy, Roni Size, Hannah Epperson, Jordan Klassen, and Close Talker. Sep 13-16, various Vancouver venues. Tix at www.westwardfest.com/.
OUT OF TOWN 2THIS WEEK ELEMENT MUSIC FESTIVAL Featuring performances by Lotus, Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Spafford, Particle, Genetics, Yak Attack, McTuff, GD/BC, The Unfaithful Servants, and Baked Potato. Jul 26-29, Snug Lake Amphitheatre. Four-day passes $250, info ElementFestival.info/. ELECTRIC LOVE MUSIC FESTIVAL 2018 Four days of music, independent artisans, gourmet food, and transformational workshops, featuring over 200 local and international artists. Jul 26-29, Cheam Fishing Village (930 Appel Rd., Agassiz). Tix $50$250, info electriclovemusicfestival.com/.
TIME OUT MUSIC LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge. Submit listings online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.
CAREERS CONSTRUCTION COMPANY 0979942 BC LTD is looking for Carpenters. Greater Vancouver, BC. Permanent, Full time. Wage - $27.00 per/h EDUCATION: Secondary school SKILLS REQUIREMENTS: Experience 3-4 years, Good English. MAIN DUTIES: Read and interpret construction blueprints, drawings, specifications; Measure, cut, shape, assemble, and join lumber and wood materials; Prepare layouts, build different wood structures; Fit and install different trim items as required; Operate and maintain measuring, hand and power tools; Supervise helpers and apprentices. Company’s business address: 224-8511 Ackroyd Road, Richmond BC, V6X 3E7 Please apply by e-mail: detkovconstruction@gmail.com
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SUPPORT GROUPS AL-ANON FAMILY GROUPS Does someone else's drinking bother you? Al-Anon can help. We are a support group for those who have been affected by another's drinking problem. For more information please call: 604-688-1716
AMNESTY International www.amnesty.ca
Anorexics & Bulimics Anonymous 12 Step based peer support program which addresses the mental, emotional, & spiritual aspects of disordered eating Tuesdays @ 7 pm @ Avalon Women's Centre 5957 West Blvd - 604-263-7177 Anxiety? Depression? Free Mental Wellness Support Group held on Saturdays (10:30 am – 12:30) Promotes a holistic approach to healing (body, mind & spirit). Networking and interactive learning experience in a safe, non-judgmental environment. For more information call 604-630-6865 or visit www.mentalwellnessbc.ca ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION Looking to start a parent support group in Kitsilano. Please call Barbara 604 737 8337 Battered Women's Support Services provides free daytime & evening support groups (Drop-ins & 10 week groups) for women abused by their intimate partner. Groups provide emotional support, legal information & advocacy, safety planning, and referrals. For more information please call: 604-687-1867 BC Balance & Dizziness provides information & support for persons with balance, dizziness & vestibular disorders. Bi Monthly info meetings @ St. Paul's Hospital. Call for info. 604-878-8383 www.BalanceAndDizziness.org Distress Line & Suicide Prevention Services NEED SOME ONE TO TALK TO? Call us for immediate, free, confidential and non-judgemental support, 24 hours a day, everyday. The Crisis Centre in Vancouver can help you cope more effectively with stressful situations. 604-872-3311 Drug & Alcohol Problems? Free advanced information and help on how quit drinking & using drugs. For more information call Barry Bjornson @ 604-836-7568 or email me @livinghumility@live.com Equal Parenting Group - North Vancouver Support group for fathers going through the divorce process needing help. Call 604-692-5613 Email:nspg@mybox.com Fertility Support Group Discover new perspectives make positive changes and learn simple tools to take charge of your reproductive wellness while connecting with other women. The meetings provide a space for open discussion. 2nd Tuesday of each month 7:45 - 8:45pm (Sign up required) Reg & Info call: 604-266-6470 or www.familypassages.ca Genital Herpes Support Group for Women Are you living with Genital Herpes in Vancouver? We are a group of women that draws upon each others knowledge and strength to grapple with this sometimes trying condition. Through mutual support and honest conversation we aim to address the physical and emotional health implications of this virus and how it affects romantic relationships, sex, dating & life in general. Contact: ghsupportgroup@gmail.com Heart of Richmond - AIDS Society operates a confidential support group for persons with HIV/AIDS, or persons affected (family, friends or care givers) by the disease. For info - 604-277-5137 www.heartofrichmond.com IBD Support Group Suffer from Crohn's and ulcerative colitis? Living with IBD can often be overwhelming, but you're not alone! 3rd Wed of each month the GI Society holds a free IBD support group meeting for patients & their families to come together in an open, friendly environment. 7:00pm at RavenSong Community Health Centre (2450 Ontario St). or more information call 604-875-4875. Is your life affected by someone else's drug use? Nar-Anon Family Group Meeting Every Friday 7:30-9:00 pm at Barclay Manor, 1447 Barclay
Nar-Anon 604 878-8844 Join a FREE YWCA Single Mothers support group in your local community. Share information, experiences and resources. Child care is provided for a nominal fee. For information call 604-895-5789 or Email: smacdonald@ywcavan.org Support, Education & Action Group for Women that have experienced male violence. Call Vancouver Rape Relief 604-872-8212
Join Our Support, Education & Action Group July 11th 6:30–8:30pm (8 weeks) Women who experienced any form of male violence CALL Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter 604-872-8212
LIVING THROUGH LOSS COUNSELLING facilitated support group for people who are grieving the death of a significant person. Monthly drop-in- last Wed of every month YLTLC #201 – 1847 W. Broadway Van. 604-873-5013 www.ltlc.bc.ca
MOOD DISORDERS SUPPORT GROUPS We have peer-led support groups all over the Lower Mainland for people with depression, bipolar disorder and anxiety led by well-trained facilitators. Group sessions during days, evenings, or Saturdays. For location and times of groups:
www.mdabc.net 604-873-0103 Nar-Anon North Van 12-step program for families and friends of addicts, meets Tuesdays from 7:30 to 9 pm 176 2nd Street East in North Van.
Parkinson Society BC offers over 50 volunteer-led support groups throughout BC. These provide people with Parkinson's, their carepartners & families an opportunity to meet in a friendly, supportive setting with others who are experiencing similar difficulties. Some groups may offer exercise support. For information on locating a support group near you, please contact PSBC at 604 662 3240 or toll free 1 800 668 3330. RECOVERY International FEAR? DEPRESSION? PANIC ATTACKS? Feelings that keep you from really living your life? A way out is where we come in. Weekly meetings. Call for info: 9am - 5pm Kathy 778-554-1026 www.recoverycanada.org
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www.saavancouver.org Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) Do you have a problem with sex and love relationships. You are not alone. SLAA is a 12 Step 12 Tradition oriented fellowship for those who suffer from sex and love addiction. Leave a message on our phone line and somebody will call you back for meeting time and locations. 604 515-5423
The Compassionate Friends (TCF) Burnaby TCF is a grief support group for parents who have experienced the loss of a child, at any age. Meet the last Wednesday of the month at 7:00 p.m. For location call Grace: 778-222-0446 "We Need Not Walk Alone" compassionatecircle@hotmail.com Burnaby@TCFCanada.net www.tcfcanada.net Vancouver Society for Sexuality, Gender & Culture Educational group with monthly meetings are planned for: 1st Tuesday of each month, 6:30 PM 8:30 PM Vancouver Public Library - Firehall Branch 1455 W 10th Ave (by Granville St next to the Firehall) All are welcome, and we are looking for Board Members from the Health, Counseling, Education, and Business Professions Info: Michael or Darren: VSSGC@yahoogroups.ca
Healing Our Spirit B.C. First Nations AIDS Society has volunteer opportunities for hospital visitation, information booths, office assistance & preparation of pamphlets & condoms for distribution. We offer volunteer orientation, training & recognition & bus tickets. If interested, please call 983-8774 Ext. 13. We are dedicated to preventing and reducing the spread of HIV in the aboriginal communities of B.C. Healthy & loving relationships alluding you? CODA: Co-dependency Anonymous 12 step Recovery: 604- 515-5585 Infertility Awareness Assoc. of Canada (IAAC) provides educational material & support to individuals or couples experiencing infertility. Meetings: 7 pm the 2nd Wed of the month. Richmond Library & Cultural Centre, 7700 Minoru Gate. Info 523-0074 or www.iaac.ca
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Every 4 days in Canada, a woman is killed by her family. Professional Mothers & females are invited this year to attend a licensed fireworks yacht cruise fundraiser on Aug.1 for a Vancouver Women’s Sanctuary! The current small westside Sanctuary successfully provides daycare, short & long-term housing, employment, & workshops to females of all ages & backgrounds. This event is co-hosted by an organization that is licensed with The City of Vancouver since 2014 to find and redistribute information in the maternal (female) medical cannabis field of study, and a 15-yr old private women’s organization. “For the first time ever, all three participating countries will be required to incorporate the same theme into their fireworks & music display. As voted by the public, this year’s theme will be Love,” the organizers of the Vancouver Fireworks Festival Society said in a statemvent. $420/ticket, 100% of proceeds to Sanctuary deposit. 6/7 tickets left. Contact Ms. Lin at 604-423-4423 or 604.432.4422. motherhouse.bc@prontomail.com.
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12-step fellowship of men & women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other, that they may solve their common problem and help others recover from their sexual addiction. Membership is open to all who desire to stop addictive sexual behaviour. For a meeting list as well as email & phone contacts go to our website at
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savage love I’ve been faithfully reading your column in the Chicago Reader for years, and now I’m reaching out to you about my own problem. I’ve been dating this guy for almost a year. Everything is great, except one thing: he wants me to kick him in the nuts. It really bothers me, and I’m not sure what to do. He’s very serious about it, and he brings it up every single day. It makes me really uncomfortable that this is some sort of fetish of his and I need help taking steps forward.
before marriage equality came to the United States. Does the U.S. government recognize our Canadian marriage or do we need to remarry in the U.S.? Can you find out from one of your legal friends? > DOES OUR MARRIAGE APPLY?
“The U.S. government does recognize your marriage,” said Robbie Kaplan, one of my legal friends— and the attorney who represented Edith Windsor before the U.S. Supreme Court and won. In United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government was required to recognize legal same-sex marriages, thereby gutting the Defense of Marriage Act. “We did the same thing,” Kaplan added. “We were married in Toronto in 2006, and the U.S. recognizes our marriage. No need to get married again here.”
> TO KICK OR NOT TO KICK
P.S. I play soccer and I kick hard. It’s a kink called “ball-busting”, TKONTK, and as long as you don’t kick him full force—or even half force—you’re unlikely to do permanent damage. That said, childless guys who are into ball-busting are often advised to freeze their sperm just in case. And while it’s not a hugely popular kink, it’s common enough that ball-busting porn exists, and ball-busting Tumblrs, ball-busting blogs, et cetera. Take it slow at first, particularly if your guy has only fantasized about this and not experienced it. P.S. A guy who brings up his kink every single day deserves to be kicked in the nuts—unless he’s into ball-busting, in which case he doesn’t deserve to be kicked in the nuts.
Hi Dan, I am getting in touch because I thought you might be interested in the following article: “Getting to the Bottom of Pegging”. For open-minded people who are open to butt play, pegging is a great way to spice things up in the bedroom. But what, exactly, is pegging, and why is it a thing now? Sexand-relationships expert Tami Rose knows how important it is to try new things in the bedroom. She would be able to provide an article explainMy husband and I were mar- ing what pegging is and tips for your ried in Toronto, Canada, in 2005, more adventurous readers who want
> BY DAN SAVAGE to give it a go. I look forward to hear- grooming their partner for much worse treatment to come. If he wants ing your thoughts. > [REDACTED] PR AGENCY out of the relationship, the verbal and emotional abuse will escalate until Pegging? Never heard of it. Wait— you finally leave him. If he doesn’t what’s that, Wikipedia? “Pegging is want out, the verbal and emotional a sexual practice in which a woman abuse will escalate a bit more slowly, performs anal sex on a man by pene- so that, like the proverbial frog in the trating the man’s anus with a strap- pot of boiling water, you don’t realize on dildo… The neologism ‘pegging’ exactly how bad it’s getting and how was popularized when it became the much damage it’s doing to you—and winning entry in a contest in Dan your kids. Savage’s Savage Love sex-advice colI know it’s not what you wanted to umn [in 2001].” hear, SAP, but I’m going to say it anyway: DTMFA. I’m in a six-year relationship with a guy you will probably deem DTMFA- I’m a competent in-person worthy but I deem roundupable to The lover, but I’m the worst at Skype/ One. My kids already regarded him FaceTime/WhatsApp sex. I can’t get as their stepdad before we moved the angle right; I don’t know what in together about eight months ago. to wear; I feel shy; I don’t know That’s when I learned he’s an addict: what to say; I can’t get off ; I giggle he drinks, smokes weed, and jerks like a 15-year-old girl getting her off to porn for about two hours every fi rst French kiss under the bleachday. He has been this way for more ers. I’m going to be away from my than 20 years, and I have zero de- guy for most of the summer and I lusions he will change for me. Re- need to figure this out. Any advice cently he told me he has very little or tips? > STRUGGLE KEEPING YONDER sexual desire for me, that he knows PENIS ENTERTAINED my pussy in and out and it’s boring, but he loves my companionship. How do I deal with this so we A 15-year-old girl may giggle the can move forward together as an first time she gets French-kissed under the bleachers—or she may incompatible couple? > SEX ADDICT PARTNER not—but a girl who giggles the fi rst time probably isn’t going to be gigA romantic partner who says some- gling the 50th. So just keep at it; try thing as cruel and negating as what to relax and enjoy yourself, and ask this man has said to you, SAP, either your partner to take the lead, i.e., if wants out of the relationship or is you don’t know what to do, ask him
to tell you what he’d like you to do, SKYPE—but only follow the orders you’re comfortable following.
What’s the fairest way to determine who should get tied up?
> BONDAGE BOTTOM BOYFRIENDS
Whoever was tied up last time does the tying up this time and vice versa.
Do you ever wear panties, Dan? Would you post a picture of yourself in panties online? I think you would look good in panties. > PANTIES ARE NICE TO YOU
While I have no particular aversion to wearing panties, PANTY, and while I will not deny the allure of the models at xdress.com, I’ve never worn panties and have no plans to start. As a consequence, I won’t be able to post a picture of myself in panties online to delight you and horrify everyone else.
How much sex sex?
is too much
> NUMB OVER NUMBERS
“Enough is as good as a feast.”— Mary Poppins On the Lovecast, Dan and the lesbian panel: savagelovecast.com . Email: mail@savagelove.net. Follow Dan on Twitter @fakedansavage . Read the Savage Love Letter of the Day on Slog: thestranger.com/slog/.
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