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AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 5
BREW NORTH STRONG CRAFT BEER FESTIVAL
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JOYCE MURRAY
CONTENTS
English Bay. Danna Casto photo.
r
9
PRIDE
To follow up our synopsis of LGBT progress in the fields of politics, religion, and health last week, we bring you a look at the significant work that has been done in the realms of education and law. > BY CR AIG TAKEUCHI AND CHARLIE SMITH
10
RENTERS OF VANCOUVER
Think your apartment is bad? How about a mould problem, uncontrollable blasting heat, and an illegally snooping landlord?
> BY K ATE WILSON
12
THE BOTTLE
In which our globe-girdling oenophile sips his way through Italy’s Piedmont region and makes some unexpected discoveries . > BY KURTIS KOLT
14
FOOD
Dining spots come and go in the West End, so if you are planning to visit for Pride or the fireworks, study this eatery update first. > BY CR AIG TAKEUCHI
START HERE 28 16 24 31 11 21
Confessions I Saw You Movie Reviews Savage Love Straight Stars Theatre
TIME OUT 22 Arts 29 Music
SERVICES 29 Careers 10 Real Estate GeorgiaStraight
15
@GeorgiaStraight
COVER
We introduce you to a range of people— from a Haida graffiti artist to a British painter—brightening the East Side’s walls at the Vancouver Mural Festival,
23
@GeorgiaStraight
MOVIES
Extreme climate-related weather events are just one of the reasons Al Gore wanted to help make An Inconvenient Sequel. > BY KEN EISNER
27
MUSIC
Rodriguez is keeping coy about the future; Royal Blood embraces the unconventional; Ku-J has zero interest playing a bad guy; Stu Larsen is perfectly happy homeless.
29
COVER PHOTO
CLASSIFIEDS
Automotive | Education | Services | Travel Marketplace | Employment | Real Estate Property Rentals | Music | Announcements Callboard | And more... AMANDA SIEBERT
AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 7
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8 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017
E EINGK F RRKBAC PA IN
PRIDE
Pride in local LGBT progress
L
ast week, we took a look at how advances have been and are being made for LGBT people in three fields—politics, health, and religion. This week, we’re turning our attention to education and law as we gear up for the Vancouver Pride parade on Sunday (August 6). For more Pride coverage, visit Straight.com.
EDUCATION
Knowledge and facts are what dispel discrimination and prejudice. But it’s within the field of educating people that some of the fiercest and most contentious local debates about LGBT issues have taken place. Numerous controversies have arisen over attempts by school boards to implement policies addressing sexual orientation and gender identities. Several debates about LGBT issues have taken place in Surrey. Among them, in 1997, the Surrey school board voted to ban books portraying same-sex couples. (In 2002, though, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled against the board.) However, things have changed: in 2013, the Surrey school board adopted a strict antihomophobia policy. Over on the North Shore, Azmi Jubran won a landmark B.C. Human Rights Tribunal case against the North Vancouver School District in early 2003. He had complained that the district did nothing about five years of homophobic bullying he experienced at Handsworth secondary (even though he is not gay). The school board appealed to the B.C. Supreme Court, which overturned the tribunal’s decision. Jubran then went to the B.C. Court of Appeal, which upheld the original decision. Finally, in 2005, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected another appeal by the school district. Before the Burnaby school board unanimously approved an antihomophobia policy in 2011, opposition arose. An ad-hoc group called Parents Voice circulated a petition that gathered 5,000 signatures against the policy. Tensions escalated to the point that a trustee received a death threat. The policy, however, passed. Similarly, when the Vancouver school board sought to update its 2004 sexual-identity and gender-identities policy in 2014, an uproar ensued. At a series of heated and packed public
2
Brandon Yan of Out in Schools gives talks on LGBT issues to B.C. students.
hearings, some parents and members of Christian groups expressed their concerns. A focal point of contention was about students’ right to confidentiality about their gender identity or expression. Although Richmond has been fairly quiet on the LGBT front in education, a gay-straight alliance launched a petition to ask for an LGBT–specific policy to address homophobia and transphobia. Richmond was one of the last school districts in the Lower Mainland without one. Even though the student group received hate mail and parents expressed concerns, the Richmond school board voted unanimously in November to look into developing a policy. In spite of all this, one program that has been addressing LGBT issues— including homophobia, transphobia, bullying, and discrimination—in schools is Out in Schools. Run by Out on Screen, the organization that presents the annual Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Out in Schools has been taking presentations to schools across B.C. since 2004. Although many of these battles have been hard-won, they will, hopefully, pave the way for well-informed generations in the future. > CRAIG TAKEUCHI
LEGAL AFFAIRS
Let’s be honest. While polit-
2 icians are fond of marching in
Pride parades, it’s often the courts that have delivered the greatest breakthroughs, thanks in part to Vancouver lawyer Joe Arvay. He represented James Egan and John Norris Nesbit’s landmark claim
in the Supreme Court of Canada for same-sex spousal benefits. The court concluded in 1995 that sexual orientation is a ground for a discrimination claim under Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This set an important precedent for many future cases regarding equality for the LGBT community. In addition, Arvay represented Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium when the Vancouver store won an obscenity case in Canada’s highest court in 2000 against the federal government. Two years later, Arvay acted for teacher James Chamberlain in the Supreme Court of Canada when it struck down a Surrey school board ban on the use of books featuring same-sex parents in a kindergarten and Grade 1 class. Then in 2003, Arvay convinced the B.C. Court of Appeal to overturn an earlier B.C. Supreme Court decision upholding the federal ban on samesex marriage. Another Vancouver legal trailblazer for the LGBT community has been barbara findlay. Not only has she argued important same-sex marriage cases, but she also helped establish two lesbians mothers’ legal right to have both their names on the birth certificate of their child. In addition, findlay played a leadership role in a battle against allowing Trinity Western University law-school graduates to be licensed by the B.C. Law Society. Arvay and findlay both represented transsexual Kimberly Nixon in her long-standing legal battle with Vancouver Rape Relief, but Nixon’s claim was dismissed in the B.C. Court of Appeal. Lower Mainland politicians have also done their part. As justice minister, Vancouver’s Kim Campbell lifted the ban on gays and lesbians in the Canadian Armed Forces. Former Burnaby-Douglas NDP MP Svend Robinson introduced a private member’s bill in 2003 to legalize same-sex marriage. And Robinson’s successor, Bill Siksay, introduced a bill in Parliament in 2005 to prohibit discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. Although Siksay didn’t initially succeed in having this become law, a similar bill was later introduced by Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, the MP for Vancouver-Granville, and passed in Parliament last year.
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The Georgia Straight | Vancouver’s News and Entertainment Weekly | Volume 51 Number 2587
EDITOR + PUBLISHER Dan McLeod
Vancouver 24/7
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AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 9
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Renters of Vancouver takes an intimate look at how the city’s residents are dealing with the housing crisis. Tenants choose to remain nameless when sharing their stories.
“M
y troubles with my landlord began the day I returned home after my mother’s funeral in Ontario. “I lived in a one-bedroom groundlevel suite of a large house in South Granville. The place was a bit of a dump, and I don’t know if my room was legal. The rent was only $950, though, so I stayed. “When I came back from being with my family, I opened the door and the heat was overwhelming. I basically lived in the utility closet of the house, and the furnace for the whole building was inside my wardrobe. The heat for the entire place was being blown like a strong wind from the four vents inside my 400-square-foot suite. As the days went on, it just got hotter and hotter. The pipes were so scalding you could fry an egg on them. I used a thermometer to measure the temperature, and it was routinely around 37 degrees Celsius, with no respite. I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t spend long periods of time in my home. It went on for three whole months. “I emailed the landlord and his daughter as soon as I first realized that it was going to be a problem, asking, pleading, and then begging them to fix it. Despite me making contact with them countless times, they would ignore me and would say that there was no issue. I was already very distraught over the death of my mother, and his comments made me feel absolutely worthless. “During that time, I called both the Vancouver Fire Department and the City of Vancouver to see if there
A local artist discovered that there was a price to pay for affordable rent.
was anything they could do to help. The fire department said I should make sure all the windows were always open. Eventually, a city inspector came, and he recommended that my suite’s closet be drywalled over to protect against the furnace and that the vents be permanently covered. The landlord complied, and I was finally able to breathe again. “I applied for a hearing at the Residential Tenancy Branch, but I lost my nerve at the last minute because I was worried about losing my home and not being able to find another. “Then the owner started entering my suite illegally. As I slept in my bed, he let himself in and started walking around my apartment. He didn’t even have the courtesy to knock on the door and instead strolled up to the electrical board that was part of my apartment. He was being aggressive, and when I protested to him that he hadn’t given me any notice, he just said, ‘I own this building.’ He did the same thing again a few months later. I don’t know how many times he’d let himself in without me being there before that, especially because sometimes when I returned home I’d find that some of my stuff had been moved around.
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“After that, I started noticing mould in my suite, especially under my sink. I took photos as evidence. “Enough was enough, so I filed another case at the Residential Tenancy Branch. I asked for compensation so that I could move out of the building. But when I received the Tenancy Branch’s decision, it said that I was not to be compensated for anything. At the hearing, the landlord’s daughter said that she had inspected the suite and that there was no mould and that he had never entered my home unannounced. She said that I had not proved anything with my evidence, and the Tenancy Branch seemed to agree. I don’t think they ever even looked at my photos. “In the end, I refused to pay the last month’s rent before I moved out. The landlord was very aggressive towards me and said that he would physically remove me from the property. I am a single woman and I live alone, and his threats scared me. I went to my MLA representative, and he just got his assistant to talk to me. Then I called the police, and they confirmed that he couldn’t bodily remove me from my home. They visited his office to tell him, and then he let me move out in peace. “After all that, I got very lucky. The Vancouver Resource Society is a nonprofit organization in support of handicapped people in Vancouver. It owns 14 units in a building in East Vancouver, and instead of placing handicapped people this time, they chose to subsidize the rent for artists. I managed to move into a brand-new and affordable bachelor suite, with a gallery space downstairs so I can exhibit my work. I feel like my mother must be watching over me. “The province needs to step up to prevent all those owners like my last landlord from taking advantage of people in this crazy rental market in Vancouver. It has to get better.” -
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straight stars > B Y ROSE MA RC U S
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August 3 to 9, 2017
hristy Clark has chosen Friday (August 11) as her last day on the job, which is befitting for Jupiter’s last corner turn with Pluto, a threshold crossing that has been in the works since late November. Jupiter/Pluto can bring you to the conclusion that there is no more to gain from continuing along the same line, that you’ve witnessed enough, have taken it as far as you can, that it’s now time to redirect attention and efforts. Conversely, perhaps you’ve reached a constructive turning point or goal post; now that platform is well laid, it is time for the move-in or move-on-it phase. Either way, Jupiter/Pluto greatly amps up motivation, ambition, necessity, obsession, and control-it and empowerment agendas. On the heels of Jupiter/Pluto, Monday delivers a lunar eclipse in Aquarius. Both keep the buzz going strong for Vancouver’s Pride Parade and local festivities. They also keep the political and social action well sparked. Uranus in Aries, ruler of Aquarius and ruler of the lunar eclipse, has recently turned retrograde. It is an inversion, implosion, or refortify from within archetype. When optimized it can prompt a more consciously directed, cut-to-the-chase sharpshoot. Mars closely aligned with the eclipse also keeps the fuse well lit. Bringing the crowds out in big numbers, Jupiter in Libra keeps the excitement going strong, increases spending, mobility, opportunity, and profits. Eclipses produce sweeping, fast, and lasting change. They can hold shock value or they can deliver exceptional opportunity. The days that follow dish up mostly smooth-running stars, but know that Mercury retrograde starts next Saturday and that there is another, more dynamic eclipse on the way.
ARIES
TAURUS
March 20–April 20
A major lifestyle change has been under way for some time now. A new consciousness is also on the rise. Monday’s lunar eclipse and the days preceding it can hit that reality home. Watch for a fresh spark or fuse to produce an instant hit. Jupiter’s contribution to the lunar eclipse suggests that you can bring yourself and/or it back to life with ease. April 20–May 21
Welcome to the official end of life as you knew it and the official springboard of your new reality. Even if you feel that’s an overstatement, it is likely to ring true at some level. The eclipse effect can be especially life-altering if your birthday falls on or near April 30 but, of course, it is a catalyst for all.
GEMINI
May 21–June 21
Beyond being an excellent time for a vacation or for celebrating with loved ones, Monday’s lunar eclipse can springboard you in some exceptional and synchronistic way. It could spark life-altering news or opportunity, a windfall, a communication breakthrough, or a stroke-of-genius moment. Someone or something special could make your day. What launches now holds great potential. Go for it with all your heart.
CANCER
June 21–July 22
Its been gearing up and creating impact for weeks now. Have you felt it? Likely you have. Bringing matters to a peak, Monday’s eclipse can pull the plug or strike flint, in an undercurrent or dramatic way. Jupiter supports your reinvention, making it easier not only to open up and entertain, but, more importantly, to forge a new way of being, creating, and living.
LEO
July 22–August 23
If your birthday falls on or near Monday’s lunar eclipse or the solar eclipse on August 21, then you have a front-row ticket to the show marked “Your Future�. The exceptional or the radical can come to pass. Whether you face a breakdown to breakthrough or you hit a ready-set-go trigger, your stars are programmed to golden opportunity.
VIRGO
August 23–September 23
The lunar eclipse sets a new day-to-day reality into major play. You can get onto a next step or track quickly and more easily than is the norm. Beyond prompting a vacation or well-deserved time off, Monday’s lunar eclipse can reveal, expose, hit you with something, or provide a breakthrough of significance, especially regarding work or health.
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LIBRA
September 23–October 23
Something special to celebrate, something major on the buildup, or simply making the most it: the lunar eclipse hits your go-live button in some full-swing—perhaps exceptional and/or glorious—way. Overall, it’s life, luck, success, and your beating heart on the upswing. Yeah! It’s an excellent time to try your luck, reinvent yourself, better your best, and/or rev it up.
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Whether you have recently made a big change or are doing it now, the lunar eclipse can be a hithome moment of realization. If you have not yet fully embraced the need for reinvention, the eclipse could act as a wake-up call. No matter if the prompt is jarring or liberating, see it for the exceptional opportunity it is. November 22–December 21
Put on the show; sit in the front row; or shake it up anyway you like. Jupiter/Pluto and the live-action lunar eclipse make for never a dull moment through Monday. A sudden inspiration, a singular moment, or something completely out of the blue could overtake you. The eclipse can springboard you/it in some great way or put you in the know, perhaps surprisingly so. December 21–January 20
Something unexpected could call for more time or investment. It is to your advantage to keep it going, to bring it back to life, or to renew it. A fresh infusion or update could make it seem like brand-new. On the other hand, if your heart isn’t into it, there’s someplace better to be.
AQUARIUS
PISCES
January 20–February 18
Monday’s lunar eclipse will be of especially high impact if your birthday falls on or near February 3, but, of course, it can be a dynamic catalyst for all. Jupiter’s influence softens what might otherwise be a sharp-edged transit. To the plus, it can prompt something exciting, opportune, new, and liberating. It’s an exceptionally opportune springboard time. February 18–March 20
Beyond an ideal time to enjoy a vacation, the local happenings, or a get-away-from-it-all weekend, something fresh and new is on percolate. Watch for the lunar eclipse to bring it to life, to prompt a stroke of genius, a saving grace, a breakthrough, or to crack it wide open. Monday through Wednesday, it’s all systems go. How will the eclipses affect you personally? Book a reading or sign up for Rose’s free monthly newsletter at www.rosemarcus.com/.
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warnetthallen.com AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 11
FOOD
Italy serves up elegance Wines from the Piedmont region can offer hefty alcohol content and lofty acidity
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Thank You!
Together we raised $1.2 million at the 16th Annual Rockin’ for Research Gala! The Georgia Straight and JDRF gratefully acknowledge the following participating restaurants for making the 17th Annual Rockin’ for Research Gala such a success.
Aphrodite’s Organic CafÊ & Pie Shop | Arm’s Reach Bistro Boston Pizza | Boulevard Kitchen & Oyster Bar Brown’s Socialhouse Coquitlam | Brown’s Socialhouse Point Grey Burgoo Bistro | Cannibal CafÊ | Caprito – Tapas Bebidas Cartems Donuterie | Chop Steakhouse & Bar | Commodore Cupcakes on Denman | Gyoza Bar | Hawksworth Restaurant Jamjar Folk Lebanese Food | Kaya Malay Bistro | Lift Bar and Grill Longhorn Saloon and Grill | Moxie’s | Rocky Mountain Flatbread Salmon n’ Bannock Bistro | Sammy J’s Grill & Bar Sequoia Company of Restaurants | Shark Club Sports Bar & Grill Subway | Temaki Sushi | The Belmont Bar | Th ierry | Via Tevere Pizzeria | West | White Spot | Wild Rice | Zen Japanese Restaurant See you at our 18th Annual Rockin’ for Research celebration on Saturday, October 21!
jdrf.ca | rockinforresearch.com | @RockinFR
12 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017
O
ne of my very favourite things about having a career revolving around wine is that I never stop learning. Every tasting I attend, every meeting I have with a winemaker, and every trip in which I participate offers an opportunity to discover something new. During the past couple of weeks, I’ve travelled through the Piedmont region in northern Italy, and the learning curve has had quite the arc. When I travel to a wine region for the first time, I always have a certain set of expectations, and I feel quite confident about them. Without fail, I return from my trip having gleaned something unexpected and inspired by experiences I’ve enjoyed. This week, a couple take-aways from Italy I didn’t see coming.
I LOVE RuchĂŠ!
RuchĂŠ is an indigenous redgrape variety with origins around the town of Asti in Piedmont. Gatto Pierfrancesco RuchĂŠ di Castagnole Monferrato (left) has lots of red fruit in There are some who theorize it its profile, while Ricossa Barbera d’Asti hits its stride with northern Italian cuisine. came from Burgundy, in France, a couple hundred years ago, but the Although there is plenty of Barbera When a few journalists were common refrain I’ve encountered in the region, it’s just never had the discussing why Barbera seems to clout carried by the others. is that it is indeed native to Italy. play second fiddle to Nebbiolo, a I spent a few days in Asti—the colleague mentioned that perhaps The grape makes elegant wines, generally with plenty of red fruit region where it is assumed the with the Asti region being more like cherries, raspberries, and variety originated—and had the famous for Moscato wines (“Mosstrawberries, often mingling with opportunity to delve into many cato d’Astiâ€? has always rolled off notes of nutmeg and ginger. There Barberas and to get a good handle the tongue rather easily), it’s posis a finesse with the variety; how- on them. sible that many view the region as a These are serious wines, full of red place focused on cheap and cheerever, it usually carries some hefty and black berry ful wine not worthy of too much alcohol, upwards fruit, with a hint consideration. of 14 or 15 perof a wild-mushcent. The fruit Whatever the reason, it would room note, low be unfair to shrug off the Barberas holds it in well; Kurtis Kolt tannins, and buoy- of the area. There appears to be a from the range I tasted, there were only a couple ant acidity. That acidity quenches renewed focus on elevating the that harboured a pinch of heat on a thirst and makes for a very food- profile of the variety, and it makes the finish. I can see where there’s a friendly wine. sense to do so in this place of the One thing I noted was that grape’s provenance. Nearby Alba possibility of Burgundian origins, as the grape definitely has some Pi- I couldn’t discern soil type from will always have Nebbiolo, but Asti not Noir–esque qualities, but I also the various vineyards where the should have no problem making see some Grenache-like character- grapes grow. Most Barbera vine- Barbera shine. yards are situated on either calistics in it. It is a wine that can stand on its Do check it out. There are a few careous clay or sandy soils, but the own, but it definitely hits its stride available around Vancouver, but variety doesn’t, seemingly, express with dishes hailing from the rethe easiest one to track down is much nuance between them. gion. Think things like pork agnolWith varieties like Riesling or otti or ravioli with brown butter Gatto Pierfrancesco RuchĂŠ di Castagnole Monferrato 2015 ($29.99 at Pinot Noir, there can be consider- and sage, charcuterie, or anything B.C. Liquor Stores), which will pair able differences in a wine’s profile involving white truff les. well with mushroom risotto or a dependent on the soil, but as far as Arguably the best thing about I can tell, Barbera doesn’t express the variety not getting the crednice, juicy steak. its terroir as loudly. No matter; the it it deserves is that we can still WE SHOULD GIVE Barbera more fruit is delicious. find some killer deals on the stuff credit. That lofty acidity tags along around town. When most wine enthusiasts well with good fruit concentration, Ricossa Barbera d’Asti 2014 is get a hankering for a quality red which also makes Barberas well $15.29 at B.C. Liquor Stores. This is from Piedmont, more often than suited for aging. Oak integrates all the more reason to get to know not they’ll head towards Barolos or well with the grape, too, and it can the grape and the region more inBarbarescos made from Nebbiolo. frame the fruit quite well. timately. -
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AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 13
FOOD
Lunchtime is the perfect chance to check out Bauhaus Restaurant. Daily lunch feature with beverage 22.00. Award-winning contemporary cuisine that delicately balances innovative techniques, fresh flavours, and exceptional service. LUNCH WEEKDAYS
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Love for West End hot spots
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h, our dearest West End, buns; Mexi-Can poutine ($9.95), with how do we love thee? Let green-salsa gravy and queso fresco; us count the ways. We love and even avocado cheesecake ($7.95). thee by summer sun—espe- Who said it’s not easy being green? cially in these rain-drenched parts— As sad as we were when the 12-yearwhen we gobble our way down your old Lolita’s South of the Border Cansidewalks, down to the beaches of tina closed its doors in April, we were English Bay, the trails of Stanley Park, uplifted by the opening of the similarly and the spectacles of the Celebration Mexican-inspired Lucha Verde (1326 of Light and the Pride parade. Davie Street) in its place. A vegetarAlas and alack, our hearts were ian restaurant that carnivores won’t broken over the recent loss of es- mind? Yes, please. We’re smitten with tablishments the the creative range Dover Arms Pub, of taco varieties, West Valley Marincluding achiote ket, Acacia Fillo cauliflower with Craig Takeuchi Bar, Village eattoasted-pumpkin ery, and more. We send our sincere purée and orange salsa, kabocha with condolences. Ah, but we have also corn sauce and watermelon salsa, and noticed that quite a number of jaunty pasilla barbecued jackfruit with pinenew places have popped up to soothe apple salsa ($6 to $7). ¡Salud! to that. our souls. Let us list the burgeoning spots we JAPANESE, PLEASE We’re encouraged by how Touhenboku Ramen most adore, shall we? reinvented itself. With the noodle MUCHOS TACOS Oh, you know us profusion in that area, it’s great to see too well. While La Catrina Mexican Yuzu Shokutei (854 Denman Street) Tacos down at English Bay has been expand its offerings beyond noodles drawing lineups over the past year, to offer an ever-evolving menu that we’re glad to see more entries in the includes rice sets, salads, okonomiyaki always popular Mexican market. ($8), and even poké bowls ($18 to $20). The chilled-out Avocado Bay Not far from there, we also wel(second floor, 1184 Denman Street), comed Tetsu Sushi Bar (775 Denman which opened on Canada Day week- Street). Its small size (in the former end, exudes a vacation feel with its Lanna Thai) belies its wide-ranging vistas of English Bay. Its all-avocado menu, which even includes rare ofmenu, though, is the clincher. More ferings such as yamaimo (mountacos are always great, but it’s the novel tain potato) salad with ume-infused items that pique interest: avoburgers (plum) Japanese mountain potato, ($7.95), made with tuna or veggies be- asparagus, organic spring greens, tween two slices of avocado in lieu of and seaweed ($7); miso-marinated
Best Eats
ig @kpat18
sockeye salmon sake kasuzuke ($11); and foie gras don ($15). Particularly pleasing are the reasonable prices for rolls ($4 to $5) and sushi ranging from tuna tataki (five pieces, $7; 10 pieces, $14) to aburi ($2.75 to $9.50). With limited seating that fills fast, we find this one’s great for takeout. HAPPILY HEALTHY Health-food options have been steadily increasing, suiting the area’s body-oriented fitness culture and plentiful outdoor activities. For instance, Fit Camp Foods (1107 Davie Street) is a convenient spot for grabbing nutritious chow on the go. Their prepackaged meals cover main dishes, bowls, salads, and wraps, including coconutcauliflower rice with seasoned broccoli, a sweet-potato-and-yam hash bowl, Thai noodle salad, and more (all primarily vegetarian, with meat or tofu additions). Learning about the ethical and environmental approach of the rustic Pasture to Plate deli and grill (1061 Denman Street) will remain a challenge for those dissuaded by its prices. Nonetheless, we’re heartened to know that it supports free-range, grass-fed herds with environmental practices to preserve soil health. The owners run a vaccine- and chemical-free Redstone, B.C., certified-organic farm that supplies the meat for the richly f lavoured likes of their voluptuous half-pound Kinikinik burger ($18) and their beef-wiener ranch see page 16
2280 Commercial Dr. 604.252.3957 South Granville 1488 W. 11th Ave. 604.733.2211
Jamjar Cante en opening at: U BC September 2017
Now delivering, Visit www.jam-jar.ca 14 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017
ARTS
At left, artist Corey Bulpitt sets East Van Pigeon in flight; Brit David Shillinglaw puts a new face on walls (Amanda Siebert photos); and (below left) Sandeep Johal lets son Safa pitch in (Holly McKenzie -Sutter photo).
Making their mark at the mural fest
“For many years, it’s been a shitty city for doing public art,” says Bulpitt. “I’ve been to places like Paris and Montreal, where there’s lots of public art and it’s a better vibe. Murals create a sense of community. You see people enjoying themselves and looking up The VMF returns to add more than 60 new public artworks rather than just walking by to the city. Meet a few of the people transforming our walls and rushing to get past an ugly building.” After adding more than 40 artworks to As one of the few artists in this year’s Vancoucity walls last year, the Vancouver Mural Festival ver Mural Festival lineup working outside the is upping the ante for its second celebration, Mon- Mount Pleasant area, Bulpitt is especially conday to next Saturday (August 7 to 12). scious of the effect public art can have on people It’s increased its artist roster, brightening up who rarely see it. Strathcona and Mount Pleasant with 60 murals A few years ago, he installed his carving Urban this year, culminating in a big daytime street party Eagle at Main and Hastings, and says he was and an evening Underplay Music Festival on Au- floored by the reaction. gust 12. A full 10 blocks in Mount Pleasant will “People were weeping with joy. I didn’t know be closed to traffic during the day, including Main it would have that impact,” says Bulpitt. “People Street between East 12th and East 7th avenues, as were sharing their whole souls with me. It brought well as the alley between Main and Quebec streets. back memories for them, of fishing camps, their Up to 100,000 people are expected to visit the com- struggles to get sober.” pleted murals and take in live art, music by the Urban Eagle was only up for a few hours, but likes of Yukon Blonde and Louise Burns, markets, East Van Pigeon—which will be unveiled at noon and a beer garden between noon and 6 p.m. on Tuesday (August 8)—is here to stay. Bulpitt has In the days leading up to that, look for speaker pan- been developing the design for a while, and it fits els presented by the Georgia Straight next Wednesday well with its locale. The pigeon pattern is a tribute (August 9) at Heritage Hall, gallery shows, and much to the neighbourhood, with variations in colour more. (See Straight.com and vanmuralfest.ca/.) to show that all pigeons—and people—are differThe beating heart of the fest is the artists ent, with their own colourful stories. whose work will help bring this city’s walls Birds are a Bulpitt motif—large creatures of flight to life. The fest was launched, in part, to help that make people look up. But he also comments on them access large, permanent public locations public art’s power to make people feel seen. on which to create their wild visions. Find“Some of the bleaker places I think need it the ing such spots in Vancouver—a city with the most,” says Bulpitt. “It shows the city cares about highest per capita concentration of artists in its people, bringing it back to the ground level of Canada—had been notoriously difficult. In- human beings.” > HOLLY M C KENZIE-SUTTER spired by the street art that thrived in cities elsewhere in the world and by similar events, the team formed to carve out that space for a DAVID SHILLINGLAW wide range of artists for the first fest last year. Life has become nomadic for in-demand Riding on that success, this year’s fest U.K. artist David Shillinglaw. Fresh off the brings together everyone from Indigenous artists to graffiti artists to gallery artists plane from Italy, the painter is touching down for who aren’t even known for murals. We wanted to a few days in Vancouver to tackle two murals, before jetting off for Zurich. He’s moved out of his introduce you to just a few of them. London studio, and is, in his own words, “temporCOREY BULPITT arily homeless”—dedicating his days to his art. “It’s a bit crazy-making,” he tells the Straight Corey Bulpitt has been spending his days on a on the line from outside a Vancouver coffee shop, lift at Columbia and East Hastings, painting a with a laugh. “I feel like I’m in a Woody Allen flock of pigeons onto Pigeon Park Savings. movie—like I’m this weird artist who travels He hasn’t been alone. The Haida artist has had around the world spouting nonsense on the telethe help of his nine-year-old son, manning the lift phone to people he hasn’t met.” and bringing him paint cans. And Bulpitt tells the A graduate of London’s prestigious Central Straight that people stop and talk to him all day long. Saint Martins university, Shillinglaw didn’t inti“It’s all positive,” he says. “People are happy ally embrace mural painting during his degree something nice is going on the wall. It was kind of studies. While artists like Banksy were picking up a grimy-looking building before.” international recognition, the painter was always This piece, titled East Van Pigeon, is far from Bul- conscious of street art, but more keenly aware that pitt’s first mural. He’s been doing graffiti since he his university looked down on it. It was an accident was 15, and Vancouverites will recognize his work that he started putting paint on walls. under the Granville Street Bridge, as well as his two “Somewhere along the line when I was making pieces from last year’s mural festival, at Main and installations, I started thinking about using the Broadway and on the side of the Native Education other parts of the space as well as the canvas,” he College on East 5th Avenue. His Haida name, Taa- recalls. “Then I began to realize that doing murals keit Aaya, translates to “Gifted Carver”, and he’s was something different from just trying to sell a perhaps best-known for his intricate totem carvings. painting. If it’s a wall, you can’t really sell it, so it But despite his body of work, Bulpitt remembers removes the commercial part of art and makes it a time when the crackdown on graffiti was so strict, more of a performance or experience. I really revhe was almost ready to move—particularly because elled in the superherolike quality of people going police wanted him to turn in the young street artists out in the night and painting graffiti, and art that he was working with. was outside started to really compel me.”
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The power of Shillinglaw’s work is in its ability to represent, as he puts it, the “human experience”. Many of his murals incorporate faces—but never recognizable people. Rather, his bright paintings depict generic characters: neither male nor female, old nor young, black nor white. Eyes, too, are a common motif—a theme Shillinglaw enjoys for its personifying aspect. “If you put eyes on a wall painting,” he says, “they think, ‘Ah, that building now has a personality’.” Often mixing randomly chosen words with his images, the artist creates a collection of universal symbols and ideas. “I enjoy all kinds of art,” he says. “Sometimes it’s just a word in a nice typography, sometimes it’s a pattern, sometimes it’s a figure. I see my work as a huge cauldron of different movements and influences—it mixes abstraction, surrealism, impressionism, fauvism, graphic design, illustration, and a whole lot of other isms. I steal ideas from the past, remix them, and make them mine. I think style is the mistakes that people make when they copy.” > KATE WILSON
SANDEEP JOHAL
Sandeep Johal has had a busy year. When her
2 maternity leave ended last October, she quit
her teaching job at the Immigrant Services Society of B.C. to work as a full-time artist. “It was very scary,” Johal tells the Straight. “I’ve just been hustling. It’s been good.” Johal looks after her two-year-old son during the day and spends her evenings on her art. And it’s paid off. Her work can be found on a series of banners in Surrey, a concrete planter in Strathcona, and a 22-metre barrier in New Westminster. She’s currently preparing her first solo show, Rest in Power, at Vancouver’s Gam Gallery this September. And this week she’ll be painting as a part of the Vancouver Mural Festival, decorating the side of Chutney Villa in Mount Pleasant, the neighbourhood she’s called home since 2006. “Either it’s because they’re Indian or I love dosas, I don’t know,” she jokes. “But it’s a really cool spot. I walk past it all the time, so it’s going to be really cool to walk past there and see my mural almost every day.” Johal is planning to combine her two signatures—geometric shapes and detailed black-andwhite figures—for her mural while also incorporating colourful floral patterns. It’s another step in her journey to discover her developing artistic voice. Johal says the support she’s received after joining the female art collective THRIVE Studio has helped her build the confidence to apply for opportunities like the mural festival. “I think the biggest turning point was me actually believing I could do this,” says Johal, “that having a career as an artist was attainable.” It’s been a long road to get here. Johal has been drawing all her life, and pursued a diploma in fine art at Langara when she turned 30, but the daughter of South Asian immigrants says that her parents haven’t always been on the same page. “I had a lot of cultural struggle and a lot of uncertainty when it came to that,” says Johal. “I don’t know if my parents really understand what I’m doing, but they can see that I’m succeeding at it and they can see that I’m really happy about it, so I think that’s been good for them.” As she prepares to start working on her muralfest piece, Johal has a lineup of friends, family, and peers at the ready to offer support. Her husband will be watching her son during the week, but he’ll be popping in every day to assist, possibly armed with a small paintbrush to make his mark on the work. see page 17
AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 15
YUJA WANG
West End hot spots
THE
from page 14
OPEN
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2015
dog ($14). A smart move has been to offer specials, such as weekend brunch items, quarter-pound sliders, and summer salads. With fish ’n’ chips joints like Mr. Pickwick’s and C-Lovers no longer in the area, there was a conspicuous absence of seafood places. Luckily, Louisiana-seafoodboil spot Holy Crab (1588 Robson Street) helped respond to demand. With a hands-on approach (tools are supplied), customers can literally rip into all manner of shellfish, from king-crab legs and Nova Scotia lobster to freshwater crawfish (seasonal rates). Holy crab indeed, Batman. There are also dishes like chicken strips ($9.50), seafood bisque ($6.50), and deep-fried calamari ($7.50) for those who don’t want to get their hands dirty. Quite promisingly, Hook Seabar, which Blind Sparrow owner Michael Gayman opened on July 13, has landed a prime beachside perch at the former Milestones English Bay location (1210 Denman Street). Seafood selections range from tempura salmon bellies with chili sauce ($15) and poblano and crab dip with a panko crust ($16) to whole branzino ($35) and pan-seared halibut ($35). The raw bar serves poké ($16), tuna tartare ($17), sashimi, nigiri, five varieties of oysters, and sushi rolls such as scallop ceviche and lobster ($16) and wagyu beef and crab ($18). But there are also nonseafood selections like a burrataand-beet salad ($14), barbecued rack of lamb ($32), and hamburger with bacon weave, apple-wood cheddar, and Kennebec fries ($19). With all this range, who needs to go to the beach?
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> Go on-line to read hundreds of I Saw You posts or to respond to a message < CATCHING EYES ON THE 99 ON A MONDAY MORNING
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s
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 31, 2017 WHERE: On the 99 to UBC on Monday Morning You were wearing a long black dress, brown birkenstocks and had a black herschel backpack. We shared a bus journey from Arbutus to Allison Rd and a walk up University Boulevard. We parted ways at the totem poll and we both looked back at each other. I’d like to cross paths with you again so I can actually say hi.
SAW YOU SLEEPY AT ROXY BURGER
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 25, 2017 WHERE: Roxy Burger Granville
You were sleeping at a booth across from your friends and the waitress came by to wake you up. You had a blue Winnipeg Jets hat on and an adorable beard. I was sitting at the bar - tall brunette with glasses and a floral dress. I wanted to come over and talk to you but couldn’t work up the courage. I am a huge Winnipeg Jets fan myself, love listening to trap rap and can cook a killer steak. I'm also into philosophy. Meet me at the Cambie at 8:30 pm next Friday. Let’s chat. I’ll be wearing the same dress.
YOU: RED MAZDA | ME: SILVER ELANTRA
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 24, 2017 WHERE: Langley 200th Exit You: cute and smiley male driving a red Mazda down HWY 1 eastbound, you took the 200th exit in Langley. I was driving the silver Elantra - dark brown hair, blue eyes... you probably caught me ‘hand dancing’ as you drove by me. You slowed down, made eye contact and we played eye tag until we both took the 200th exit. You signalled for me to follow you but I lost you.
‘BECAUSE I AM A GIRL’ EMPLOYEE- OUTSIDE CHOICES MARKET YALETOWN
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 28, 2017 WHERE: Outside Choices Market in Yaletown You were working for the ‘Because I Am a Girl’ campaign. Your name was Rob, 20 years old and said you just moved here from Ireland! We chatted a bit about you coming here on a 2 year visa and how you loved Vancouver, and also a bit about the beach. You were able to snag me to donate to the cause. You seemed like a fun guy to talk to and were insanely gorgeous but unfortunately my nerves got the best of me and I didn’t get the chance to ask you for your number! Would love to grab a coffee sometime!
HEADWATER CONCERT AT THE ANZA CLUB
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 4, 2007 WHERE: ANZA Club
AWESOME BUS DRIVER VIC 20
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 27, 2017 WHERE: Vic 20 Bus Kingsway I was on the Vic 20 and was talking to you. Another passenger was wanting to ride on the top “Bangladeshi style” lol and that drink you were talking about looked better by the second! It was your last run 5:45. I think you're amazing and would love to meet for coffee. Tell me the drink and your name so I know its you!
EAGLE MASK!! SPIRT GALLERY!!
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 22, 2017 WHERE: Spirit Gallery in Horseshoe Bay We talked about native carvings and that we shared an interest in art. I bought the eagle mask and you wanted to know about the other pieces that I liked. Never got your name I would love to meet again!!
I (last) saw you at the Headwater concert at the ANZA Club in July 2007. I was on a first date, you w/ friends. We had a dance. You and I had met two month’s previous; you’d come to my workplace to lead yoga and we ended up having a private class at one point. We connected and went on a Lynn Valley hike where sparks flew! I chose him over you and here I am, separated and en route to divorce because I ignored my gut. Your name starts w/ a ‘G’. If you’re in a place to reconnect, contact me; I hope your life is full of blessings!
WILD FRUIT - 21ST OF JULY @ THE ODYSSEY
LONGBOARD BAIL
SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING MOVIE
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I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 21, 2017 WHERE: Wild fruit @ The Odyssey Wild fruit @ Odyssey last Saturday, you complimented my necklace. We talked, kissed and I had to leave... somehow I messed up saving your number correctly even though I got it twice (Ugh). The odds are not in my favour lol. If by some fluke u read this then let's grab a coffee or some food?
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 27, 2017 WHERE: Edmonds St & Canada Way Bus Stop
I SAW A: I AM A: WHEN: JULY 23, 2017 WHERE: 5th Avenue Cinemas
You: bearded, bald, riding your longboard on Edmonds Street. Me: tall, short dark hair, just getting on the bus after work. We made eye contact, we both smiled, then you bailed on your board. We both laughed. If you see this, let me know. Maybe I can find you a band-aid.
Sat next to you during the late matinee. You had a cute laugh! :) I asked what you thought about the show after, you said: “Yeah, it was good.” I rushed out but wished I would have talked to you more. Ha, coulda, shoulda, woulda. Coffee, drink or another movie sometime?
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Visit straight.com to post your FREE I Saw You _ 16 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017
End’s best-kept secrets is Forkhill House Irish Bistro (1616 Alberni Street), which opened in time for St. Patrick’s Day. Tucked away in what formerly housed Le Gavroche, this modern spin on Irish cuisine brings traditional fare like Irish stew ($18) and bangers and mash (Bang the Duchess, $20) hurtling into the 21st century with aplomb and panache. The Taiwanese café 3 Quarters Full, set back a few steps from bustling Denman Street at 1789 Comox Street, is a stylish Asian-influenced alternative to the typical coffee shops. After all, where else in the area can you find black-sugar loaf, fried-tofu bao, matcha naidong roll, Taiwanese-style sandwiches, and handmade mungbean cake?
In the past, the long-running True Confections was one of the few dessert-specific spots in the neighbourhood, and we’re glad to see more places joining in sugarfuelled fun. We’d be remiss if the chocolate bistro Cacao 70 (1047 Denman Street) weren’t on our list. The Montreal-based company specializes in dark chocolate, with a decadent array of desserts and brunch items from fondue to waffles and sandwiches. (The bistro launched a revamped, streamlined menu on July 4.) Three more locations are set to open throughout Vancouver—two creameries and one to-go spot—but the West End location will remain the only full bistro. Peaked Pies (975 Denman Street) may be best known for its Australian savoury meat pies (’roo, anyone?) but it also serves an array of Aussie desserts, including lamingtons ($3.50), or coconut-sprinkled sponge cake, and mixed berry pies ($6.75). The vanilla slice ($3.95), perfectly pink for celebrating Pride with, is literally the icing on the cake. Meanwhile, the sweet and petite La Churreria (1105 Davie Street) has also charmed us with its sugarand cinnamon-sprinkled churros ($2.25), with filling options like chocolate, dulce de leche, Nutella, and jam ($3.25). After all, our beloved West End, we shall love thee better after dessert. Forever yours, Raincouver P.S. With sincere apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning. -
SWEET SPOTS
Making their mark
from page 15
“I feel like I can accomplish whatever I put my mind to,” says Johal. “Doors are opening for me. I’m working hard and I’m happy and my son gets to be a part of it. Seeing him interact with my art just gives me so much joy.” > HOLLY M C KENZIE-SUTTER
CRISTIAN FOWLIE
Local illustrator Cristian Fowlie he wanted to become an artist at a young age, but galleries and prestigious exhibitions were never places he visualized himself in. “Video games, films, comic books— they’re the works that I connected with the most,” he tells the Straight by phone. “And I felt that they were able to reach a greater audience while still being able to tell important stories.” Born and raised in Burlington, Ontario, Fowlie moved to B.C. five years ago, when he was accepted into Capilano University’s IDEA School of Design. He graduated with a certificate in illustration in 2015 and has since been employed as a freelance illustrator and part-time art director for the Capilano Courier. True to his aspirations, the artist partners primarily with publications and brands, so his playful, colour-driven works often find their way into the hands—literally—of readers, viewers, passersby, and even imbibers. A particularly notable project involved a collaboration with local design-and-branding firm Glasfurd & Walker that saw Fowlie devise drawings for the Banff-based Park Distillery’s line of bottled vodkas and rye whiskies. Bringing to life the picturesque mountains of Banff National Park with his soft, dreamlike strokes in a muted palette of blues, oranges, and greens, Fowlie earned the top prize in the packaging category of Applied Arts magazine’s Photography & Illustration Awards in 2016. His other works similarly paint reality as reverie, and feature figures like knitting millennials, ’30s swing dancers, and even local rock duo Japandroids with a delightfully imaginative quality. The artist creates digitally, sketching and conceptualizing with pencil as needed. “I’m taking subjects that are realistically depicted and putting them in a more surreal world,” he says. Most recently, Fowlie delved into public art when he transformed a Georgia Straight newspaper box into a cotton-candy-pink slice of Arizona desert replete with prickly cacti, cow skulls, and a tangerine-tinged sunset. Completed at the Vancouver Mural Festival’s Strathcona Street Party, the task was a warm-up for what Fowlie is tackling as part of the fete’s main event in Mount Pleasant:
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At left, Cristian Fowlie (in a self-portrait) expands on his illustration style for his mural, while Priscilla Yu plays with colour and geometry (Sean Karemaker photo).
a 13-by-7-metre mural at 137 East 4th Avenue. Portraying a girl and her Boston terrier seemingly leaping into the galaxy—as illustrated by what the artist describes as “bright rings, planets, stars, and cool space costumes”—the mural will be the largest public piece Fowlie has ever designed and painted. Given his initial hesitation when he was offered the sizable space as a canvas, the inspiration behind the work is especially close to the creative’s heart. “I was almost too scared to take it on at first,” he admits. “But my friends and my family just encouraged me to take it. And my mom, specifically, said, ‘If someone’s asking you to take a leap…’ And that word leap became the theme of this mural. Taking a leap—taking a leap of faith.” > LUCY LAU
PRISCILLA YU
Like many people, local artist Yu spent countless hours during high-school math class doodling on the algebra and trigonometry worksheets she was handed. Little did she know, however, that the pastime would eventually give way to what has become one of her work’s most distinguishing traits: the use of sharp lines, layers, and shapes like triangles, rhombuses, and tetragons that, together, create dizzying, 3-D–like dreamscapes that draw the eye from one place to another—and another—at rapid speed. “I’m really interested in the kinds of surprises that come out from just adding more and more [geometric] constraints,” Yu tells the Straight by phone. A graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design’s visual-arts program, Yu traces the roots of her distinctive abstract style even further back to when she was a kid. Constantly arranging and rearranging her bedroom, she quickly developed a knack for pairing seemingly contrasting textures and patterns. “I was doing a lot of ‘visual merchandising’ at the time,” she says.
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Combined with her fondness for natural geometry, this skill is ref lected in the plants, female figures, and architecture—anything from castles to convenience stores—she paints today. Limiting her depictions within the borders of hexagons, parallelograms, and more, she presents a vivid patchwork of textures, motifs, and shapes, so that a staircase is sliced with a confetti-specked black hole, or a television set is encircled by swaths of dual-toned squares. Often, the results present multiple, overlapping scenes. Look one way and you may see a large, robotlike figure dangling a bushel of grapes above her lips, another way and you may zero in on an intersection of teal, highlighter-yellow, and orange roads. “I really enjoy puzzles,” notes Yu, “and creating different planes and different negative spaces.” If geometry serves as a constraint, then colours are where Yu lets loose. It’s rare to count fewer than 20 colours in one of the young artist’s works, though lately, she’s been exercising restraint when it comes to special projects. A mural she completed this spring for Yaletown’s Banter Room, for example, uses a dozen hues of powder blue, pink, and seafoam green, while a design she live-painted for local footwear boutique Six Hundred Four—for which she will decorate a limited-run sneaker this fall—features only four shades of red, yellow, and black. For the Vancouver Mural Festival, Yu will be creating an 18-by-9-metre piece titled Befriend Your Demons in the alley behind 154 East 8th Avenue. Following her now recognizable style, the mural will be shaped by geometric figures and a palette of lucid blues, olives, and salmons that illustrate a female figure standing opposite an alligator. According to Yu, the creature conveys “things that I’m afraid of or that could possibly harm me”. “I would like people to contact me if they’re wondering what it’s about,” she says, “or if they’re curious about my work at all.”
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18 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017
Nadia Manzoor uses the 21 characters in her solo show Burq Off! to tell the story of her Muslim upbringing. John Keon photo.
In Burq Off!, Nadia Manzoor reenacts the torment of growing up in two opposing worlds > B Y JA NE T S M ITH
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oming of age in a conservative Pakistani Muslim family in North London, Nadia Manzoor felt torn between two worlds. While her family warned her to wear modest clothes and prepare for a life of serving her husband, her British pals were discovering boys and partying. It was the most confusing and tormenting time in Manzoor’s existence, but now she’s come to terms with it all in a place that was once forbidden to her: the stage. “For me, the enjoyment comes from finding myself on-stage,” the vivacious actor tells the Straight from her home in New York City, before bringing her funny, sassily titled onewoman show Burq Off! to Vancouver’s Monsoon Festival of Performing Arts. “Where I came from, the stage was never a place that you could be— unless you were being married. “It’s the most transformative experience to do the play now. It’s the history of who I’ve become. I get to play wacky characters and I get to dance. And by playing all these characters and different voices from my past, I realize it is all me.” It was only when Manzoor left her family and community for Boston University, where she pursued a master’s in social work, that she started to consider creating a one-woman show. She had been experimenting with putting her trials and tribulations down in a memoir, and her reading group encouraged her to turn it into a performance. “I don’t think I even knew what a one-woman show was in 2011,” she says with a laugh. Manzoor had also discovered her love of improv comedy and, with that in mind, started writing the show with 21 characters from her past—from an Islamic teacher with a
penchant for porn to her judgmental twin brother, who turned more and more to strict tradition. “The first time I did the play the goal was to tell the story, in many ways for myself and for my family,” Manzoor explains. Now, though, she realizes the huge importance of sharing her experience in a divided world—one where “burkinis” are being banned in some countries, and entire Muslim nations are being barred from entering the U.S. “I see the significance of being a Muslim on-stage now, just showing a real-life perspective of how I had to reconcile my faith with my identity,” says Manzoor, who has performed Burq Off! around the world. True to the title, the play centres a lot on Manzoor’s complicated relationship with the hijab. “The biggest way my father taught me to express being a good Muslim girl was modesty in dress,” Manzoor explains, saying she was even told to cover her arms right down to her wrists in front of her teen brother. “I had to hide the curves of my body—essentially being a mystery to a man. And the only person that would ever have access to that mystery was my husband.” In Burq Off!, she tells a story about going to Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage as she was about to enter her teens, donning a full head covering and abaya there. “You have to wear a hijab in Saudi Arabia, and also it was the first time I was becoming aware of men’s leers. So I felt safe in my mind: it felt like freedom, like liberation, and felt great to me.” She contrasts that tale with another, when she wore a friend’s bikini to the beach. “At 18 was the first time I wore a bikini on a beach—which was a complete sin!” she emphasizes. “But then I also felt complete freedom. Everybody was free in their sexuality and in their bodies. So it was confusing to me that
both experiences could be freeing.” Today, she says, she has a more nuanced view of the hijab, which she refuses to wear. “Women needing to cover in order to be around the male gaze is a problem for me,” she states. “It assumes there’s a problem with a male gaze. And that perpetuates catcalling and rape culture. But it can be a very sacred garment. A year ago I was much less nuanced in my thinking. I was just against it: ‘It’s an oppressive garment.’ It’s definitely been an evolving idea.” Removing the hijab—getting her “burq off”—is a symbol of how Manzoor ultimately had to separate from her culture to discover herself. In audience after audience she sees people— from her own culture and others—relating to the identity crisis she faced as the daughter of first-generation immigrants. She’s reaching them with honesty and laughter—much as she does with her hit web series Shugs & Fats, a comedy about two “hijabis” living in hipster Brooklyn, which she’s now developing into a TV show for Amazon. “Finding myself really did mean I had to step away from my family and community for a significant amount of time—which can be really scary because they define you,” ref lects Manzoor, who, by the way, is these days happily married to a guy from Montreal. “It’s difficult for a lot of young boys or girls to separate and make those decisions. I’m not just doing this into the mirror: I’m getting feedback, big response, with people crying or wanting to talk to me after the show. And every time the audience reminds me of the significance of the show. That has been one of the most powerful things to me.” The Monsoon Festival of Performing Arts presents Burq Off! at the York Theatre next Friday and Saturday (August 11 and 12).
Artwork by Jane Koo
第 回パウエル祭
AUGUST 5 & 6, 2017 SAT & SUN: 11:30AM - 7PM | OPPENHEIMER PARK AND VENUES WWW.POWELLSTREETFESTIVAL.COM @POWELLSTFEST #POWELLSTFEST
AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 19
ARTS
Powell fest’s George and Noriko bang out blues > B Y M IKE USING E R
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s serendipitous first encounters go, the story of how the Japanese Blues Cowboy met the Tsugaru Shamisen Player isn’t nearly as thrilling as the music the two make together as George and Noriko. If life were a movie, George Kamikawa would have bumped into Noriko Tadano on a pilgrimage to Mississippi’s dusty and fabled crossroads, the two bonding over a love of old-time blues, a shared cultural heritage, and a belief that Takahashi Chikuzan would have loved hanging out with Blind Lemon Jefferson. Instead, the two made each other’s acquaintance Down Under on the other side of the world. And it was hardly the stuff that biopics are made of. “Actually, we met at an Asian grocery store in Melbourne,” Kamikawa relates with a laugh, speaking alongside Tadano on a conference call from Australia’s second-biggest city. “You know, because we are Asian.” Tadano quickly jumps in: “I’d heard of George from other people. They’d told me that there was a Japanese busker on the streets, but I had never seen him. George had also heard about me, that there was a Japanese girl playing the shamisen on the street. Finally, we met in that grocery store—I went up and asked, ‘Are you George?’ And started talking about music and maybe doing a jamming session.” That jamming session eventually morphed into George and Noriko, which finds Kamikawa (a.k.a. the Japanese Blues Cowboy) wailing on guitar and harmonica like a man raised on the music of raw and gritty giants R.L. Burnside and T-Model Ford. Tadano, meanwhile, hammers away on the shamisen (a kind of traditional Japanese banjo) in a way that’s as beautifully exotic as it is crazily percussive and generally badass.
Noriko Tadano plays her Tsugaru shamisen while George Kamikawa rocks the blues with his guitar and other instruments.
The two started out entertaining locals and tourists on the streets of Melbourne. They’ve since gone on to make two records (including last year’s unvarnished and scorching Howling Sun), land a second-place finish on the wildly popular Oz TV show Australia’s Got Talent, and become a favourite on the festival circuit. Right from the start, the band’s white-lightning bridging of Japanese
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folk and American blues led to huge crowds on the streets, a big part of the attraction being the ethnicity of the two people tearing into revvedup numbers like “Devil in Your Bed” and “Howling Dog Boogie”. Fixated on throwback blues and country, Kamikawa moved to Melbourne in 2001 determined to carve out a career in busking, something that everyone from local police to the
yakuza made it difficult to do in Japan. An early love of the Rolling Stones (his dad was a fan) led him to discover Keith Richards and Mick Jagger favourites like Muddy Waters. “From Muddy Waters I started doing a lot of reading,” he says. “That led to people like Robert Johnson. And that’s how I started playing the blues. The most difficult thing was that not many people like the blues in
Powell Street Festival forges new territory in translation, comedy, and more
In many ways, the Powell Street Festival will be about translating Japanese culture—whether it’s traditional or cutting-edge—in and around Oppenheimer Park this Saturday and Sunday (August 5 and 6). And one of new artistic director Leanne Dunic’s favourite events at this year’s fest takes that idea to new heights. Two of legendary Japanese author Haruki Murakami’s top translators—Jay Rubin and Ted Goossen—will take part in a talk about the icon. They’ll also help head a translation workshop (with both events Saturday [August 5] afternoon, at the Firehall Arts Centre and Vancouver Japanese Language School, respectively). “Theirs is a highly underappreciated art form,” enthuses Dunic. Keeping the theme of translation going, Dunic adds that the panels will have sign-language interpretation, as will the Sunday (August 6) George and Noriko show (see story above). Look for an ever-wider array of such offerings as Dunic finds her stride at the fest. “I come from various backgrounds of artistic disciplines myself,” says Dunic, a local writer, visual artist, and musician, “and I wanted to increase the diversity of the programming, and increase the programming and have a little more engagement.” Elsewhere at this year’s event, she’s also working with the mixed-heritage fest Hapa-palooza to bring in L.A. YouTube sensation Katie Malia for a screening and discussion of her comedy web series, Almost Asian, on Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at the Firehall. Malia will also perform standup comedy, on the Street Stage at 5 p.m.
MOUNT PLEASANT STREET PARTY
AUGUST 12TH MAIN STREET 12PM–6PM
@VANMURALFEST VANMURALFEST.COM 20 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017
> JANET SMITH
Japan, so I didn’t have many friends to share and play with.” Tadano moved to Melbourne to teach Japanese. The daughter of a Japanese shamisen player, she played in traditional folk groups at home, where everything was performed in the style of the old masters. “Absolutely I wasn’t doing any rock ’n’ roll, blues, or any western music,” she says. “It was all completely pure, old traditional Japanese folk songs going back 200 and 300 years ago. I never played blues and rock ’n’ roll in Japan—I only started when I met George.” For a great idea of how far she’s come—and how entertaining she is wielding her instrument while Kamikawa works the harp, guitar, and stomp box—consider how an Australia’s Got Talent judge complimented her. “He told me that I reminded him of Slash,” Tadano says with a laugh. George and Noriko acknowledge that they have become loved on the streets of Australia since that fateful meeting in the grocery store. Not only are they regulars on the festival circuit in their adopted land, but they’re also starting to catch attention internationally, which explains their upcoming local appearance at the Powell Street Festival. The attraction? Well, you shouldn’t really have to ask, but that won’t stop Kamikawa from trying to explain it. “When I’m playing with Noriko,” he says, “there are a lot of people going ‘What’s this? I’ve never seen that before, especially in Australia.’ They’ve never seen a shamisen before. And then there’s the blues-and-shamisen mixture—that’s something that not even I have ever seen before. It’s such a surprise that people really want to hear what we’re doing.” George and Noriko play the Powell Street Festival on Saturday and Sunday (August 5 and 6).
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ARTS
Blueridge hits many moods Summer chamber fest plays out like a relationship, from uplifting start to dark finale > BY A L EX A NDER VAR TY
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t’s summer, and for more than a few arts programmers it’s time to skew light—so how come Dorothea Hayley has lifted a theme from Game of Thrones for the Blueridge Chamber Music Festival’s August run? “I like to begin with a kernel of a poetic idea when I start programming,” the event’s co–artistic director explains, on the phone from her East Vancouver home, noting that for 2017 she’s been fascinated by the phrase “Red Wedding”. For those who haven’t been following what’s been going on in Westeros, that’s the name given to the massacre that took place at the nuptials of House Stark’s Edmure Tully and House Frey’s Roslin Frey. It’s not like the long knives will be out when Blueridge presents its nine-concert series—four shows that will each be performed twice, in North Vancouver and the city proper, alongside a piano recital by Shoshana Telner. In fact, the festival will open on a warm and friendly note with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Anton Dvořák, although it will then get darker and stranger before closing with a brooding string-quintet arrangement of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata and Dmitri Shostakovich’s enigmatic Piano Quintet in G Minor. “The season plays out like a relationship: it begins in a positive and uplifting sense, and then kind of goes
wrong,” Hayley says. “And there’s this instance of betrayal right at the centre of it all.” That betrayal, she continues, inspired Peter Maxwell Davies’s Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, which will also give Hayley a chance to display her own considerable prowess as a soprano. “I’ve been wanting to do this piece for a long time,” she says. “The story is about a woman—a real woman—in Australia. She lived in the 1800s, and she became the model for the Dickens character Miss Havisham. So this was a real lady who was jilted on the day of her wedding, and then lived in her house with the wedding breakfast laid out on her table for the rest of her life, and lived in her wedding gown. The preamble to the score quotes a news article describing her condition, and it’s exactly like Miss Havisham.” Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, she continues, is a companion piece to Davies’s better-known Eight Songs for a Mad King, but it’s less of a vocal tour de force and more of a character study. “It’s very bawdy, I would say, and sexual,” Hayley notes. “Her frustrated desires come out in all kinds of weird and wonderful ways, so that’s been fun to tackle. And I’m going to have a costume made by [acclaimed designer] Diane Park; I haven’t seen anything yet, but she’s said something about a really gigantic hoop skirt, which apparently was the mode in the year that Miss Donnithorne was set to be married.”
Celebratory cake will be served at both performances of Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot, although in deference to contemporary mores Blueridge is opting for cupcakes rather than the marzipan-covered wedding variety. For some listeners, though, the icing on the series will be the chance to hear a pair of works by composer in residence Chris Paul Harman—especially Midnight With the Stars and You, which shares the final program with the Beethoven and Shostakovich works. The title sounds romantic, although Hayley says Harman’s piece is anything but. “This one is based on a song by [British crooner] Al Bowlly—and it’s actually the song that is featured in the movie The Shining,” she explains. “It’s a very sweet and syrupy song, but it’s taken on these very dark connotations because of its association with this very dark movie, and Chris really delves into that darkness.…In a way, it almost makes the Shostakovich seem sunny.” Odd programming for summer, perhaps, but should July’s sunspangled heat wave continue into August, a little darkness might be just the ticket. The Blueridge Chamber Music Festival takes place at the Orpheum A n n e x , S t . M a r k ’s A n g l i c a n Church, and Mount Seymour United Church from Saturday (August 5) to August 19.
Master Class is a heavy lift TH E AT RE MASTER CLASS By David Pownall. Directed by Evan Frayne. An Ensemble Theatre Company production. At the Jericho Arts Centre on Wednesday, July 19. Continues until August 16
In 1948, legendary composers Sergei Prokofiev
2 (Chris Robson) and Dmitri Shostakovich (Chris
Lam) are called to the Kremlin for an audience with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (Tariq Leslie) and his righthand man, Andrei Zhdanov (James Gill). In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Soviet regime has brought other art forms to heel, and now Stalin and Zhdanov are bent on improving Soviet music and seeing “its present faults liquidated”. In a drunken late-night meeting, the despot and his sidekick alternately cajole and browbeat the composers. They accuse them of being, among other things, too formalist, too cowardly, and too gay. The script, written in 1982 by British playwright David Pownall, is a puzzling one. It’s exceptionally wordy—this production ran two hours and 20 minutes, excluding the intermission. Pownall seems to have made the new novelist’s classic mistake of beginning the play too early—the entire first half feels like exposition. And then there’s the question of power. The dynamism of drama often comes from the way power shifts among characters, within a scene and throughout a story. Look no further than Game of Thrones for examples of this— John Snow and Sansa, Arya and the Hound, and so forth.
Yet in this production of Master Class, the power never budges from Stalin. The composers are cowed, unfortunate saps from the play’s beginning to its end. This dramatic stasis isn’t helped by Evan Frayne’s direction and Lauchlin Johnson’s set. The set is a kind of Chekhov’s rummage sale, with the actors shuffling around the furniture like window-shoppers. The performers spend almost the entirety of the first act squashed by the furnishings into about 12 square feet downstage. Given the script’s specificity and verbosity, I wondered if a much sparer and more abstract staging, doing away with the trappings of a Moscow salon, might have freed up the play and players. At its heart, Master Class is a character study of an aging, capricious Stalin. Tariq Leslie rises to the challenge. His Stalin, getting increasingly schmozzled on vodka, first prowls and then teeters around the room, the ultimate schoolyard bully. He goes from brusque despot to the sloppy drunk bro at the frat party, and we’re convinced by his descent. But why produce this play in 2017? The obvious connection to make is with President Trump, but I saw little of the orange-skinned billionaire in the text or Leslie’s performance. And I wouldn’t list government censorship of the arts as a hot-button topic, at least not in western countries. Ultimately, Master Class is a heavy lift for the audience. It’s long and humourless, with a verbose despot at the heart of it. It’s also art about art, which is often about as fun as hearing about other people’s dreams. > DARREN BAREFOOT
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AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 21
straight choices
ar ts/ timeout THEATRE DANCE MUSIC COMEDY ET CETERA GALLERIES MUSEUMS
< < < < < < <
THEATRE 2ONGOING THEATRE UNDER THE STARS Annual outdoor-theatre event features productions of Mary Poppins and The Drowsy Chaperone on alternating evenings. Held over to Aug 26, 8 pm, Malkin Bowl (610 Pipeline Road, Stanley Park). Tix $30-49, info www.tuts.ca/. MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival presents William Shakespeare’s comedy set in 1959 Italy, where a group of actors and filmmakers celebrates the wrap of their latest movie. To Sep 23, Bard on the Beach (1000 Chestnut). Tix from $21, info www.bardonthebeach.org/2017/muchado-about-nothing/. THE WINTER’S TALE The love of two young people becomes the catalyst for reunion, redemption, and a family’s healing in William Shakespeare’s drama, which is presented by Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival. To Sep 22, Bard on the Beach (1000 Chestnut). Tix from $21, info www.bardonthebeach.org/2017/thewinters-tale/.
BLOCKBUSTERS IN THE PARK Theatre Under the Stars has two hit musicals drawing enthusiastic crowds to its historic outdoor stage this summer. So it comes as little surprise that the 70-year-old company’s just announced it’s going to extend the run to August 26 at Stanley Park’s tree-lined Malkin Bowl. Both Mary Poppins (shown here) and The Drowsy Chaperone have received rave reviews, our own critic calling the former the “first must-see show of the summer” and the latter a “colourful package” of “musical theatre, nostalgia, and sarcasm”. See one, see both, but don’t miss out before the summer’s over. FERGUSON-FORD Aug 11-12 2ADAM CHRISTIE Aug 18-19 2JOHN CULLEN Aug 25-26 VANCOUVER THEATRESPORTS LEAGUE Some of the world’s most daring and innovative improv. #NoFilter (Thu, 9:15 pm); Oh, Canada: The True North Strong and Funny (Thu, Fri, and Sat, 7:30 pm); Ok Tinder (Fri, 11:15 pm); Rookie Night (Sun, 7:30 pm); TheatreSports (Tue and Wed, 7:30 pm; Wed, 9:15 pm; Fri, 9:30 pm). Aug 2-9, The Improv Centre (1502 Duranleau, Granville Island). Info www.vtsl.com/.
2THIS WEEK
TIM AND ERIC Comedy duo composed of Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim tour THE MERCHANT OF VENICE Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival’s version of this for the 10-year anniversary of their TV serlegendary play is set in modern-day Venice, ies Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!. Aug 4, 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 exposing the consequences of how we Smithe). Tix $39.50-49.50 (plus service chartreat outsiders in our midst. To Sep 16, Bard ges and fees) at www.ticketmaster.ca/. on the Beach (1000 Chestnut). Tix from $21, info www.bardonthebeach.org/2017/themerchant-of-venice/. ET CETERA THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA Two friends love the same woman in Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival’s presentation of this Shakespearean tale. To Sep 17, Bard on the Beach (1000 Chestnut). Tix from $21, info www.bardonthebeach. org/2017/the-two-gentlemen-of-verona/.
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For up-to-the-minute, searchable Arts listings on your phone, visit
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ENSEMBLE THEATRE COMPANY’S SUMMER FESTIVAL Ensemble Theatre Company presents productions of Sarah Ruhl’s In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, and David Pownall’s Master Class. To Aug 18, Jericho Arts Centre (1675 Discovery). Info www.ensemble theatrecompany.ca/.
Thursday, August 3 | Doors 6pm
DANCE
Opening Night Vinyl Jazz by DJs Cam Dales & Scott W with screenings of Double Indemnity and night editor
2THIS WEEK THE DANCE DECK QUATRE The premiere of choreographer Serge Bennathan’s Dance Tales features dancers Gilbert Small and Séphanie Cyr. Aug 5-6, 4 pm, Casa Om (1745 Napier Street). Tix $30/25, info www.eventbrite.ca/.
MUSIC 2THIS WEEK
2THIS WEEK HARMONY ARTS FESTIVAL The all-ages celebration of art includes visual-art exhibits, an art market, outdoor concerts on two stages, licensed beach restaurants, food vendors, and drop-in activities for kids and adults. Aug 4-13, West Vancouver Waterfront (Argyle Ave. (between 14th and 16th), West Vancouver). Info www.harmonyarts.ca/. GAME OF THRONES LIVE: THE HODOR RISES Take in an evening of Game of Thrones–themed burlesque, swordfighting, comedy, and music. Aug 4-5, 8 pm, Rio Theatre (1660 E. Broadway). Tix $25/20, info www.riotheatre.ca/. POWELL STREET FESTIVAL 41st annual celebration of Japanese-Canadian arts and culture. Aug 5-6, 11:30 am–7 pm, Oppenheimer Park (400 Powell). Info www.powellstreetfestival.com/. MONSOON FESTIVAL OF PERFORMING ARTS: WELCOME THE STORM The second annual event features a spotlight on South Asian theatre, including presentations, workshops, and productions of Burq Off! and Malavika. Aug 6-13, York Theatre (639 Commercial). Tix from $15, info www.monsoonartsfest.ca/. VANCOUVER MURAL FESTIVAL The celebration returns with 60 new murals in Mount Pleasant and Strathcona, live mural-painting and art battles, the Red Bull Tour Bus Stage (with Yukon Blonde and Louise Burns), a Georgia Straight speaker series, and a Vancouver Craft Beer Week beer garden. Aug 7-12, various Vancouver venues. Info www.vanmuralfest.ca/.
VANCOUVER BACH FESTIVAL Early Music Vancouver presents an 11-day, 14concert celebration of the music of J.S. Bach. GALLERIES Includes a performance of Bach’s St. John Passion by the Pacific Baroque Orchestra VANCOUVER ART GALLERY 750 Hornby, and the Vancouver Cantata Singers. To Aug 604-662-4719, www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/. 11, Christ Church Cathedral (690 Burrard). 2CLAUDE MONET’S SECRET GARDEN Tix $10-68, info www.earlymusic.bc.ca/ (exhibit showcases 38 paintings that span series/2017-vancouver-bach-festival/. the career of the French artist who is regarded as a master of the impressionist COMEDY movement) to Oct 1
Double Indemnity・Night Editor・Shockproof・The Maltese Falcon The Glass Key・Gun Crazy・The Lady from Shanghai・Affair in Trinidad Dark Passage・Phantom Lady・Kiss Me Deadly
#filmnoir2017
22 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017
2ONGOING
MUSEUMS
THE COMEDY MIX 1015 Burrard, Century Plaza Hotel & Spa, 604-684-5050, www. thecomedymix.com/. Comedy club with pro-am night Tue at 8:30 pm, showcase Wed at 8:30 pm, and featured headliners Thu at 8:30 pm and Fri-Sat at 8 and 10:30 pm. 2EFTHIMIOS NASIOPOULOS Aug 3-5 2DJ DEMERS Aug 10-12 2ERICA SIGURDSON Aug 17-19
THE MUSEUM OF ANTHROPOLOGY AT UBC 6393 NW Marine Drive, www.moa. ubc.ca/. 2TRACES OF WORDS: ART AND CALLIGRAPHY FROM ASIA (multimedia exhibition examines the physical traces of words, both spoken and recorded) to Oct 9
YUK YUK’S COMEDY CLUB 2837 Cambie, 604-696-9857, www.yukyuks. com/vancouver/. Comedy club with Top Talent Tue at 8 pm, amateur night Wed at 8 pm, and professional headliners Thu-Fri at 8 pm and Sat at 7 and 9:30 pm. 2JOHN PERROTTA Aug 4-5 2LORI
TIME OUT ARTS LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit listings online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.
MOVIES
It’s been 11 years since Al Gore was in VanBY KEN EI SN ER
couver to promote his then-new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which sent several loud warning shots across the bow of S.S. Planet Earth. He spent some time with the Georgia Straight, and most of what we talked about then still pertains, unfortunately. The jury-rigged Iraq War, then at its peak, was horrible but a mere blip compared to the melting polar icecaps, he was sure. In fact, the projected changes in the environment as a result of climate change are moving many times faster than most models then predicted. In 2006, well-funded climate-change deniers were filling the airwaves with their own toxic pollution, and now they’re in charge of NASA, the EPA, and most other instruments of power. Currently, we have to explain to our children and grandkids why they can’t necessarily trust world leaders anymore. It’s in this brown-tinged environment that Gore presents An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power. The former U.S. vice president—who won the popular vote for president in 2000 but lost the election to George W. Bush in a still-controversial Supreme Court decision—was in Toronto recently to talk about the new movie (which opens Friday [August 4] ) and what he’s seen since the first one. “There are really two changes that have taken place,” Gore says by phone, in his light Tennessee accent. “The climate-related extreme events are way more common now. I know that B.C. has some really big fires right now. We had a hundred new fires break out in California just last night, and many more throughout the American West. There are big downpours and floods, as well as drought, and sea
A change in the climate
An Inconvenient Sequel’s Al Gore (centre) is convinced that U.S. president Donald Trump’s refusal to take action on climate is stimulating concerted efforts from others.
and opposite reaction. Back in the Reagan years, when he scared the hell out of people by accelerating the nucleararms race, it led to the Freeze Movement and, eventually, As Al Gore revisits our global crisis in An Inconvenient to meaningful arms control. Sequel, several developments offer hope for the future Now, with Trump on climate, levels rising everywhere. The other big development there’s a huge upsurge of progressive activism in is that some real solutions are here! The price of re- the U.S. like I’ve never seen before.” newables for electricity has come down so far and so Indeed, recent catastrophes can be read as supplefast that it’s really changing, well, everything.” mentary slides for Gore’s travelling presentation. Also in Hogtown is one of the new doc’s lead “Every night,” he says with a sardonic chuckle, producers: Jeff Skoll, a Montreal-born filmmaker “the evening news is like a nature walk through who helped make advocacy docs like Citizenfour the Book of Revelations.” and The Merchants of Doubt as well as politically Skoll picks up the thread: “These days, it’s hard to minded features like Fair Game, Spotlight, and find anyone who hasn’t been affected by floods, fires, Bridge of Spies. He continues the theme. monsoons, or freak storms. This is not a coincidence. “The economics for clean tech offer incredible And we have to take action now to protect ouropportunities,” Skoll asserts. “Many of the leading selves from what’s going on. The website inconvennext-generation companies are embracing this. ienttruth.com has a beautiful 10-minute version of I think back to a recent chat with your mayor in Al’s slide show that you are free to take, and there are Vancouver, and with Catherine McKenna, your a number of ways there to get involved.” [federal] minister of environment and climate, With cable and free media swamped by corporand they have mandates, and budgets, to do good ate demands and fake news about, well, fake news, work on innovation, technology, and climate this Canadian expat figures it’s up to filmmakers mitigation. For American entrepreneurs who to keep things moving. are seeing a frosty atmosphere in the U.S., the “You can’t underestimate the power of storyopportunity to partner in Canada has been very telling to affect the human condition,” Skoll decompelling, and I believe there will be a number clares. “It’s something we’ve done since we lived in of interesting announcements to come out of this caves. But the modern version of storytelling has before the end of the year.” been corrupted by money, and this is pretty imFor Gore, climate deniers aren’t just wrong; portant to our future as a democracy and a civilthey are also small-minded in the business sense. ization. We certainly have a battle on our hands.” “There’s a lot of free-floating anger about Sadly, many of Gore’s allies, including the Clinthings that are unconnected to climate, and that tons, don’t seem to find the climate threat worth colours the discussion. But in the U.S., solar em- talking about—and that certainly had an effect on ployment is growing 17 times faster than other last year’s election. “I think it’s finally beginning to change,” the forjobs, and the single fastest-growing job is windturbine technician. These new economic realities mer veep says after a long pause. “There are many members of Congress that have recently taken up this are starting to take hold. “There’s a law in physics that has become a cli- issue. There have even been a number of Republicans ché in politics: for every action, there’s an equal who have changed their positions. There’s something
called the Noah’s Ark Caucus, which is not only a reference to the Great Flood but also because they have to join in twos: one Democrat and one Republican. We are close to a working majority on climate now. But you’re just not hearing about it yet.” That might have something to do with the alleged man at the top, who—beleaguered by accusations of treason, corruption, and other problems of his own making—has taken time out to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. Suddenly, people are getting used to working around America’s leadership instead of counting on it. “If you look at what [Gov.] Jerry Brown is doing in California, and [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo in New York, you see that,” Gore insists. “Lots of cities are making the commitment to go 100 percent renewable. Hey, if Atlanta, Georgia, can do it, any city can do it.” Skoll, a founding figure of eBay who put most of his money back into media, adds that he “happened to be with” a group of tech moguls, including Elon Musk and Bill Gates, the day of Trump’s infamous announcement. “The response in the room was absolutely unanimous,” he recalls. “They said, ‘We are going to double down on clean technology. We’re going to find ways to win this, with or without the U.S. administration.’ ” A constant theme here, and in the movie, is that adversity is actually speeding up the resistance. In fact, Gore is sure the Paris terror attacks, coming just before the climate-change conference, probably deepened the resolve of those gathered to fight back where it matters. “I really think it had a galvanizing effect,” this Inconvenient Truther concludes. “It’s really hard to put it into words. Every one of the 150 world leaders who spoke there began with condolences and then moved on to solidarity with the others. They said, ‘This is a real opportunity to make something good out of the evil that occurred here.’ I believe it had a very profound effect on the success of the conference. And I believe it still will. We’re all in this for the long run.” -
N OT EV ERYT HI NG’ S A- OKAY I N B R I GSB Y B E AR >>>
I
f you were too young to be there, the ’80s must look like a genuinely haunted time for North Americans. “The regional Christian children’s educational entertainment is particularly fun and interesting to us,” says Dave McCary, calling the Georgia Straight from New York’s West Village. “Already these ’80s and ’90s children’s educational shows are fun and nostalgic and have those unintentionally funny moments and the low production values. The homemade art, the creatures, the puppetry—we love all of that stuff. When you add the layer of preaching a religious view, or a worldview, to a very vulnerable child who is taking everything as gospel? That adds such an interesting and disturbing aspect to it.”
The 32-year-old filmmaker is talking about his friend Kyle Mooney’s reportedly massive collection of vintage VHS tapes and the shared obsession that these two Saturday Night Live contributors—McCary writes and directs digital shorts, Mooney is an increasingly popular cast member— have moulded into the poignantly funny new film Brigsby Bear. Opening Friday (August 4), it’s a high-concept feature that could have traded, but pointedly doesn’t, in all the “stranger danger” panic that gripped people back in the Reagan era. As the film starts, Mooney’s character, James, is presented as a man-child obsessed with the titular kids’ TV show. Gradually, we learn that James lives in a bunker with his parents because the outside world
In Brigsby Bear, Kyle Mooney plays an adult survivor of child abduction.
is apparently toxic. It then transpires that, actually, James was kidnapped as a child and held captive inside this bizarre construct. The rest of the film deals
> BY ADRIAN MACK
with James’s reintegration into the world and the creative impulse that drives him to rope his new friends and biological family (plus the FBI officer who rescued him, played by Greg Kinnear) into a feature-length homemade re-creation of Brigsby—which, it turns out, was created entirely for James by the man who abducted him (Mark Hamill—told you it was high-concept). Remarkably, McCary and Mooney, who have been friends since middle school, have come up with an edge-free and remarkably warm film. Brigsby Bear is high on offbeat laughs, and very, very low on cynicism. As for the show within the show, the team nails the “low production values” of ’80s TV, right down to tape glitch, and complete with the kind of
☞
low-level social engineering that was increasingly being laced into kids’ entertainment. In the case of Brigsby Bear (the show), any messages embedded into it by James’s abductor are, of course, wildly “incorrect”, as McCary puts it. But Brigsby Bear (the film) is so committed to its sunny and compassionate vibe (welcome to the feel-good hit of the summer, everyone) that the director has no problem at all mounting a defence of its putative villains. “They are multidimensional and they do want to protect this ‘child’ of theirs, and they don’t want to hurt him and they are operating out of love,” he offers with a chuckle. “They just happen to be completely wrong in what they conceive the world to be.” -
AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 23
MOVIES EXCLUSIVE GIVEAWAY details at straight.com
Moka’s Diane (Emmanuelle Devos) seeks revenge by tracking down the driver who killed her son in a hit-and-run accident.
A fierce mother fuels Moka REV IEWS MOKA Starring Emmanuelle Devos. In French, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable
Everyone grieves differently,
2 but not everyone gets a gun.
InconvenientSequel.com
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That’s the eventual response of Diane Roy (French star Emmanuelle Devos), a resident of Lausanne, Switzerland, whose cycle-riding teenage son was recently killed by a hit-and-run driver on the road between that town and Évian, on the French side of Lake Geneva. Both French and Swiss police seem to have lost interest in finding the culprits, so Diane has hired her own detective to look into it. After she splits from a lakeside sanatorium, armed with info about a few mocha-coloured Mercedes in the area (hence the title), she decides to track down the owners herself. Luckily for her, the most likely vehicle is for sale and—in a development you might find in a Patricia Highsmith novel—she begins to insinuate herself into the lives of the couple who drive that Merc. (This is actually based on a book by Tatiana de Rosnay, whose earlier Sarah’s Key was made into a so-so historical thriller with Kristin Scott Thomas.) Diane knows that a blond woman was behind the wheel on the fatal day. So target number one is Marlène, the well-put-together, 60-something owner of a beauty shop in Évian. (She’s played by Nathalie Baye, best known for international hits in the 1970s and ’80s.) Handling the car-vending duties is Marlène’s much younger partner, a handsome, devil-eyed fellow (David Clavel) who also works at the spa of the hotel where Diane is staying. There’s definitely something in the waters. She probes both for information, somehow managing to keep them separate until, well, she doesn’t. Along the way, our troubled mother also spends time with Marlène’s sullen daughter (Diane Rouxel), who brings out her maternal instincts, and a youngish local hustler (The Love Punch’s Olivier Chantreau), who doesn’t. He’s the mustachioed fellow who gets her that blackmarket gat, and this allows Swiss director Frédéric Mermoud (who directed Devos in his previous feature, Accomplices) to keep pushing the 90-minute movie into Hitchcock-Chabrol genre directions while never letting go of the more psychological character study at its centre. The smoothly structured, beautifully acted Moka builds slowly toward a tug of war between thriller conventions and deeper emotions. And the audience wins. > KEN EISNER
AN INCONVENIENT SEQUEL: TRUTH TO POWER A documentary by Bonni Cohen and John Shenk. Rated PG
During the presidential race of
2 1952, candidate Adlai Steven-
son famously said of Republicans, “If they will stop telling lies about the 24 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017
Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them.” Despite this and many other bon mots, Stevenson lost to Dwight D. Eisenhower. Twice. Al Gore knows something about that. But he put the passion he may have been lacking in campaign style into his concern for the environment. Released in 2006, An Inconvenient Truth was a wake-up call for a First World population sleeping through its own demise. Where that was a feature-length extrapolation of his touring slide show, this Sequel is a validation of the earlier film’s projections, most of which show the biosphere much worse off than expected 11 years later—especially when it comes to melting polar ice. That’s familiar territory to directors Bonni Cohen and John Shenk—best known for The Island President, which detailed the effects of rising tides on the Maldives—who take over from Davis Guggenheim here. They concentrate more on the drama of Gore’s sometimes quixotic journey, occasionally to the doc’s detriment. We spend much time with this veteran glad-hander working with grassroots foot soldiers, and prepping for the Paris Agreement of 2015. That’s fine, but Jeff Beal’s music works too hard ennobling our protagonist when a grittier, less admiring tone would be more effective. And the ending reaches for optimism that can be hard to justify. The movie is on surer ground when it points out that war contributes to global warming, and that climate change—drought, wildfires, flooding—feeds both war and mass migration. It also makes the case that the anti-science lobby, in ascension since last November, has moved from merely smearing the messenger (“Look. Al Gore’s using a coal-powered cellphone!”) to covering up the falling costs of alternative energy. It’s clear that Trump’s big-oil buddies aren’t going to stop lying anytime soon. So we’ll need lots more serious truth—win, lose, or draw. > KEN EISNER
THE TRIP TO SPAIN Starring Steve Coogan. Rated PG
In which Steve Coogan and Rob
2 Brydon continue their joint so-
journ through the eateries of Europe, this time taking Coogan’s Range Rover from London to the coast of España and further south. Once again, this team of rivals is working on tasks relating to food and travel, with Coogan again positioning himself as the senior partner. Actually, I should say that about Coogan’s character, as well as Brydon’s, who only happen to be named after the stars. The frequent references to Philomena and other past projects are real enough. But domestic scenes and phone calls with Brydon’s wife and young children, as well as Coogan’s current (and married) girlfriend, are invented, as is a subplot about Steve losing his agent and being asked to share his new script with an up-and-coming writer. “I’ve already up-and-come,” complains the two-time Oscar nominee. These side stories add notes of
middle-aged desperation to the comic artists, who spend much of their downtime with physical exercise, the better to stave off the effects of time and too much deliciousness. The rain in Spain has never looked better, thanks to silky direction by Michael Winterbottom—and this third installment is indeed compressed from the irregular Brit TV series, which they shoot on breaks from, say, the Despicable Me and Huntsman movies. (Breathtaking aerial shots, courtesy of first-time feature cinematographer James Clarke, make those Spanish castles magical, much like the sardines.) The new film’s dramatic subplots add a melancholic edge, but they also detract slightly from the fun—which consists largely of these two snarky improvisers one-upping each other with stentorian impressions. In the best English tradition, this requires just as much respect for (and memory of) text as it does an ear for intonation. This time, we get not only duelling Michael Caines but more of Roger Moore, Anthony Hopkins, and Richard Burton (Brydon is Welsh, after all), as well as dead-on visits with David Bowie and Mick Jagger. In the real world, it might be a pain to keep hearing the voices in their heads, but for a roughly 100-minute journey, they are good company indeed. > KEN EISNER
BRIGSBY BEAR Starring Kyle Mooney. Rated PG
Saturday Night Live’s Kyle
2 Mooney wrote this bit of thin
whimsy with lifelong pal Kevin Costello, and their basic concept is pretty nifty. At age 32, Mooney plays 25-year-old James Pope, kidnapped as an infant and raised in a Utah desert bunker by his abductors (Mark “Not Actually Your Father” Hamill and Jane “Bearly There” Adams). The shaggy-haired lad has only been exposed to one form of (what he thinks is) popular culture: a longrunning series following the quasieducational exploits of someone in a giant ursine head. When finally transported back to that other fallout shelter known as suburbia, he discovers that the titular show was created specifically for him. The movie’s start exhibits the most charm, in a Michel Gondry kind of way, with VHS clips of the Brigsby Bear series. But even that wacky French stylist had trouble sustaining his ideas over more convoluted efforts like The Science of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—which likewise examined the fate of innocents navigating pitiless reality. With pedestrian direction provided by SNL veteran Dave McCary, Mooney and company drop the ball just when they decide to ground James in the world he left behind. Someone must have called the FBI and the local sheriff’s department, but their military-level response includes neither a social-services counsellor (despite one briefly played by Clair Danes) nor the detective see next page
who knows the most about the case (cast standout Greg Kinnear), leaving our man-child understandably traumatized. Later, Michaela Watkins and Matt Walsh try to convince as parents robbed of their first-born, while Ryan Simpkins is perhaps too believable as a teen sister who barely registers his return. There’s some yadda-yadda about fractured families, but all are pretty much content to simply let James—who exhibits almost no curiosity about them or what he has missed—go about his business. Instead of horndogging around or plowing through the local library, he focuses obsessively on continuing the instrument of his brainwashing by making a lo-fi, full-length feature spinoff of the Brigsby series. Since the script never suggests what its creators meant to make of James’s undernourished brain in the first place, his efforts don’t carry much philosophical weight. But they do take up a lot of the movie’s dragged-out 100 minutes,
most of which manage to be neither funny nor profound. After several months in “civilization”, our modernday Kaspar Hauser still hasn’t figured out how to use money; that he hasn’t had to is the most meaningful thing here. It’s evidence of the sort of comfortable materialism that allows wellmeaning, moderately amusing people to dream up funky twists on society without actually understanding anything about it.
> KEN EISNER
RISK A documentary by Laura Poitras. Rated PG
It’s hard to know what to make
2 of this. A very haphazard follow-
up of sorts to director Laura Poitras’s Oscar-winning Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour, which was the third film in a trilogy, Risk arrives as if it has no real place in the world. The filmmaker began this portrait—if that’s what it is—of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after the release of the
inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London following rape allegations made in Sweden. Heavily re-edited after a reportedly more sympathetic cut screened last year at Cannes, it now exists to seemingly spotlight the charmless demeanour of its subject. In the film’s most talked-about scene, Assange insists on blaming his predicament on “radical feminists”, to the unambiguous horror of his lawyer, Helena Kennedy. Later, Assange mirthlessly quips that he could increase his celebrity with more sex scandals. These moments aside, Risk brings an odd lack of focus to Poitras’s dour exercise, made no more convincing by her flat voice-over interjections. (“I don’t think he likes me” in the beginning; “I don’t trust him” in the end.) The director insists that she’s made a film about journalism, and to that extent, Assange seems The documentary Risk spotlights to be at his most sincere when WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. talking about his “obsession” Iraq War Logs over six years ago, and with the criminality of the global just before his claustrophobic asylum power class. At other times he’s
KYLE MOONEY GREG KINNEAR
CLAIRE DANES MATT WALSH
vain, stubborn, haughty—or so it appears once Poitras has turned who knows how much footage into a slim 98 minutes. It’s easy to forget that we’re watching a high-profile enemy of the United States who’s been cornered inside a tiny building for over half a decade. Who wouldn’t be a bit fucking weird? Most disorienting, if you didn’t already know the story, is the demise of colleague Jacob Appelbaum, seen at first in a rousing public confrontation with Egyptian telecom bosses over spying and censorship, later disgraced after another murky round of sex-abuse allegations. That Poitras admits to a relationship with Appelbaum doesn’t exactly help. Eventually, a clueless Lady Gaga turns up to frivolously “interview” Assange, whereupon the entire muddy spectacle hits a cringe-inducing low, probably taking WikiLeaks with it. In Citizenfour, Edward Snowden repeatedly stresses that he doesn’t want to become “the story”. Here’s why. > ADRIAN MACK
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MUSIC
Despite legal limbo, Rodriguez keeps jamming It’s universally agreed among
2 film mavens that Malik Ben-
djelloul’s 2012 Searching for Sugar Man is a classic of its kind; the low-budget feature swept just about every award it was eligible for, including a 2013 Oscar for best documentary, in the process becoming a box-office hit as well. But acclaim didn’t buy Bendjelloul happiness; suffering from depression, the Swedish director committed suicide in 2014. And while the film brought its unlikely star, Sixto Diaz Rodriguez, back onto the concert stage, he remains nearly as enigmatic a figure as he was in South Africa during the 1970s. There, as Searching for Sugar Man details, the Mexican-American singer-songwriter—who performs and records under his last name alone— enjoyed both pop success and underground cachet despite being essentially unaware of his overseas fame. The film is a tangled tale of fanboy enthusiasm, apartheid-era censorship, and music-industry malfeasance—and real life is even more complex, but don’t expect Rodriguez to shed much more light on the details. What is known, though, is that in the wake of Searching for Sugar Man’s success, rights to Rodriguez’s two early-1970s releases, Cold Fact and Coming From Reality, became the subject of still-unresolved legal controversy, with two competing companies claiming ownership. And now we also know that until the courts rule on the matter, we probably won’t hear new music from the 75-year-old artist. “I’m tied up in this legal stuff, so I don’t want to put anything out there unprotected,” Rodriguez tells the Straight in a telephone interview from his Detroit, Michigan, home. “I want it to be free and clear.…We’ve got great representation, and I’ll tell everybody how it goes. But I’m still finding out details, and I want to get free from these old contracts and stuff. And that’s been a long distraction for me, anyway.” Whether he’s been told to say no more or is just naturally wary, Rodriguez sounds almost as opaque as his jet-black shades and hair. He sidesteps the issue of whether he’s been actually writing new material, admitting only that, in concert, he and his band have been fleshing out songs from the film with an assortment of covers. Whose songs might they be? He doesn’t say, but a recent San Francisco show found him adding the Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love”, Elton John’s “Your Song”, and the Doors’ “Light My Fire” to his own hits before ending his four-song encore with Frank Sinatra’s bon-vivant anthem “I’m Gonna Live Till I Die”. Why his music made such an impact in South Africa seems straightforward enough: as a Hispanic kid from inner-city Detroit, he was using songs such as “Street Boy” and “Crucify Your Mind” to wrestle with the same topics of poverty and discrimination that bedevilled residents of District Six and Soweto. Asked to elaborate on that notion, though, Rodriguez jokes about how it’s hard to remember those times, “because you’re trying to forget”. Instead, he slides into a discussion of what seems to be his current obsession, the price of an education. “I think they should forgive those student loans, because they’re all on paper,” he says. “They’re imagining these high interest rates kind of coming back to them, and that’s not going to happen. So why pretend you’re going to get all this interest money because it’s on paper? They should forgive those loans, and that’s a political statement.” As for Bendjelloul’s suicide, Rodriguez comes close to giving “No comment” as an answer. “The reason I don’t know all about the details,” he says, “is because I don’t know all the details.” But he’s enthused about touring again, this time with a band. “Music, for me, it’s a universe,” he says. “I love music, and so do my fellow musicians, because they wouldn’t be jamming so hard if they didn’t!”
Clockwise from left: comeback king Rodriguez; the unflinching Margaret Glaspy; positive party starter Ku-J.
U.K. duo Royal Blood is open to sonic evolution Royal Blood is a rock ’n’ roll band
2 that has eschewed the use of
that rock ’n’ roll staple, the six-string guitar, but don’t ask why. No, really. Don’t. Singer-bassist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher have made it quite clear in recent interviews that they are weary of being called upon to explain their project’s lineup. Fair enough. The Brighton-based pair have earned the right to avoid questions they find tiresome at this point in their career. Royal Blood’s self-titled debut album hit No. 1 in the U.K. when it came out back in 2014, and its second, How Did We Get So Dark?, did the same upon its release this June. It’s worth noting, however, that the latter LP rarely comes across like the work of only two men. It’s a huge-sounding affair, and while Kerr’s bombastic, distorted bassplaying and Thatcher’s hammer-ofthe-gods drumming are what propel riff-driven rockers like “I Only Lie When I Love You” and “Hook, Line & Sinker”, it’s a more sophisticated and nuanced record than its predecessor. “Look Like You Know”, for example, boasts ambitiously layered vocal harmonies, while “Hole in Your Heart” is buoyed by an electric-piano line that carries the verses. Calling from his dressing room at the WayHome festival in the township of Oro-Medonte, Ontario, Kerr tells the Straight that when he and Thatcher were laying down the tracks for How Did We Get So Dark?, they weren’t concerned with how they would pull it all off on-stage. “I think every musician recognizes that playing live and making a record are two different worlds anyway,” he says. “There’s always an element of separating those two. I guess for us, it doesn’t really matter what we do on a record, as long as it’s me and Ben doing it. I think it’s just sort of by chance, really, that we’re able to do all of it live without anyone else, currently.” Currently? Surely Kerr realizes that he’s making it very, very hard not to ask questions about Royal Blood’s lineup—like why the band hasn’t added a third member to flesh its sound out even more. “It just so happens that currently there is two of us,” the cagey bassist continues. “I just think we abide by the music, really. And, at the moment, the music we’re making we felt sounded better with less on it, you know. We’ll cross that path when we come to it, basically, but we’re fairly open-minded about that happening.” If that does happen, it will inevitably alter the group’s sonic dynamic, > ALEXANDER VARTY which is based on the telepathically tight interplay of two men with a Rodriguez plays the Orpheum on common aesthetic. Kerr seems surSaturday (August 5). prisingly willing to let that happen.
“I think every artist looks to develop and move forwards,” he says. “Whether they do that or not is a different story. For us, it’s about development. We’re always looking to evolve and try something new. We’re probably quite fortunate in the sense that two records in we have a fairly established sound—so we’re probably in a good place to destroy it.” > JOHN LUCAS
Royal Blood plays the Commodore Ballroom on Tuesday (August 8).
It’s not always personal in Glaspy’s songwriting Margaret Glaspy isn’t new to
2 making music, which makes the
accolades that have been showered upon her debut, Emotions and Math, extra rewarding. Don’t try and get her to acknowledge the record’s considerable charms, though. Asked if—after two largely overlooked solo EPs—she finally realized she’d locked onto something, she’ll admit to nothing more than pride at having completed something that was a long time coming. “It’s not out of trying to be humble or something, but it’s more that I was so close to the record that there was a sense of accomplishment at it just being done,” Glaspy says, on her cell from a tour vehicle headed to Toronto. “Since I’d had the songs for so long, it wasn’t like there was some sort of aha moment. And in terms of there being a revelation about it being good, I think I was more proud of myself just for finishing it. To talk about how good it is, that’s kind of hard.” Let’s do that for her, then. Now based in New York, the 28-year-old has crafted a record that draws on everything from discordant indie pop to deconstructed math rock to sweetened postgrunge. Bleeding through songs like “You and I” and “Somebody to Anybody” is the sense that Glaspy has crawled out of the wreckage of more than one painful relationship. As noted, she didn’t come out of nowhere with Emotions and Math. After attending the famed Berklee College of Music, the Californiaraised singer did time on the Boston folk scene, both as a solo artist and as a member of the old timey country-folk unit the Fundies. Her two solo EPs—Homeschool (2012) and If & When (2013)—put the emphasis on spartan acoustic guitars and the jazz-drunk vocals that fell somewhere between Billie Holiday and Beth Gibbons. At some point that changed. Many of the songs that ended up on Emotions and Math have been on Glaspy’s set lists for years; hop on YouTube and you’ll discover a version of “No Matter Who” more geared to Norah Jones fans than the K Records crowd. Acknowledging that the version we
hear on Emotions and Math is rawer and more discordant, Glaspy credits the work of Elliott Smith with her decision to change things up. “I had to find my way with the harmonic choices that I was making, for sure,” she says. “I listened to so much Elliott Smith when I was making this record, and it really changed my life a lot. It changed the way that I perceived chords and their function in songwriting. I got obsessed with his records, and then I made this record.” One of the hallmarks of Smith’s work was, of course, the intensely personal nature of his lyrics. It’s only fitting, then, that Emotions and Math is unflinching to the point where it seems confessional. Consider the distortion-tinted “Love Like This”, where Glaspy starts out singing “People lie, cheat/Kill for love like this” and finishes with “There’ll be too much time spent/Wondering where your heart went/Have mercy on me/Take your things from the apartment.” Asked if she was working with some difficult stuff while writing the songs on Emotions and Math, Glaspy responds by politely taking the Fifth. As someone who’s not exactly new to the game, she knows nothing strips away the magic like pulling back the curtain. “I don’t really talk about it,” she says, bluntly but honestly. “I don’t know how other songwriters work, but I think sometimes people would be surprised as to where songs come from. It’s not always personal, but it’s not always impersonal. It really runs the gamut—it’s a very wide net.” > MIKE USINGER
Margaret Glaspy plays the Biltmore Cabaret next Friday (August 11).
Ottawa-based Ku-J won’t make musical junk food It wasn’t easy for reggae artist
2 Ku-J to leave behind the white-
sand beaches and crystal water of Sint Maarten, his Caribbean island home. The location where he was first given a keyboard by his father and started to build a musical fan base, the 37-square-mile tourist haven was initially a land of opportunity for the budding performer. But after his songs started to reach a wider audience, the artist traded his flip-flops for snow boots and headed to Ottawa—a city that, he hopes, will provide him with more musical prospects. “The island is full of talent, but we do not get the exposure there, no matter how good you are,” KuJ, born Jawara Joe, tells the Straight on the line from Canada’s capital. “A lot of us tend to branch out and move to different places. I needed to get out of Sint Maarten for a bit. Moving here let me realize how it’s just a drop in the ocean.” Not trading his signature sound
for Ottawa’s indie-rock feel quite yet, however, the performer has made sure his Caribbean culture and rhythms still dominate his music. Beginning his musical education with hip-hop, Joe took a few years to find his niche in reggae before deciding to fuse his riddims with genres like gritty dancehall and smooth R&B. “I think all those sounds represent me,” he says. “I’m not the kind of person who is very rigid in what I’m listening to. I explore a lot of different styles. It grows your mind, so why not experiment? If you’re a human being, you’re complex. If you really want to express yourself, your music also becomes really complex. But if you have a beautiful mind at the same time, your songs won’t seem busy or cluttered.” That thoughtfulness is a characteristic of Joe’s output. A fan of socially conscious hip-hop and also well aware of reggae’s history of protest songs, the musician often writes tracks that address political injustices or the social order. Take, for example, his latest single, “No 45”. “In a lot of modern-day dancehall, gun violence is glorified,” he says. “Everyone wants to be a tough guy, everyone wants to be a badman. If you’re a gangsta, you go everywhere with your gun. But a party is meant to be a place where you have fun, enjoy yourself, and meet people. You’re supposed to bring creative and joyful energy there. When you carry a gun, the weapon brings destructive energy. So you cannot say you intend to have a good time when you’re carrying something damaging with you to the establishment. It was important for me to say that in the song. “A lot of times people don’t want to talk about what needs to be talked about in their music,” he continues. “They want to write about what’s popular or popping or hot. But often people want to hear something else. Let me put it like this. If you’re someone that eats junk food all the time and then you eat a healthy meal, maybe it doesn’t taste as good because it’s not something you’re used to, but it’s what you need to sustain your body. It’s the same kind of thing with music. The industry is a lot of fat and junk food, and there are very few artists who are healthy. So that’s why I tend to write a lot of songs and lyrics that address the political situation, so I can be the organic musical food.” > KATE WILSON
Ku-J plays the One Love Westcoast Festival at the Rickshaw Theatre next Friday (August 11) and Swangard Stadium next Saturday (August 12).
Larsen loves the life of a creatively driven nomad Horribly terrifying as the idea
2 might be, sometimes you have
to take a major risk to get to a place where life becomes a blessing rather than something to be endured. For professional nomad Stu Larsen, that moment came after an eye-opening trip to Vietnam, and before he walked away from everything that he once knew. “Vietnam was my first trip outside of Australia,” the singer-songwriter says from Brighton, England, where he’s been filming a video. “I was a super shy, nervous kid—I’d love to go back and experience it with more open eyes. After then, I went back to Australia and just hung around my little hometown. And I honestly thought I’d just hang around that town, work my job, and be happy there for the rest of my life. It was really comfortable. I had a good job and was earning cash on the side doing cover gigs. But I think life for me got too comfortable. It got to a point where I wondered ‘Is this it? Is this my life for the next five, 10, 20 years?’ “So I decided,” Larsen continues, “that it was too simple, too easy, too straightforward, and too routine. And see next page
AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT 27
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Stu Larsen
from previous page
that’s when everything changed for me. It was 10 years ago that I gave away a lot of my stuff and hit the road.” That’s where the Aussie singersongwriter has been ever since, touring and occasionally settling in a farmhouse or apartment to write records like the just-released Resolute. Scattered across the 10 tracks are references to life on the move, and the adventures that have unfolded. Over soft piano and hushed guitar Larsen longs for a reconnection with friends in “Aeroplanes”, and he pulls out the banjo to recount making his way across America in “Chicago Song”. Even when he’s playing things melancholy, as on the smoky breakup ballad “What’s a Boy to Do”, one gets the sense he’s always looking at life with a sense of wonder. “I’ve realized that I just like being in different places and having new things in front of me,” Larsen says. “I’m addicted to that, and when I stop for more than a week or two I start to get a bit itchy, like I need to keep moving. I can’t really explain why, but maybe that’s because, after living this way for 10 years, I’m just used to moving on after a few days.” If there’s a downside to being without a home, it’s that there’s always so much to take in that sitting down and actually writing a record isn’t exactly easy. “It’s hard,” Larsen admits. “When I do stop, I try to find isolated little places with, hopefully, no phone or Internet signal where I can just kind of check out. But when I do, I find myself just enjoying a good book or the sound of nature and don’t pick up my guitar very quickly. That wasn’t the best thing when I look at the process of writing this album.” The compensation for that? Well, as he makes crystal clear in the languid “Going Back to Bowenville”, he doesn’t regret the path he’s chosen. (Sample lyric: “When I turned 26,/ Well, I just walked away/I think about it all the time, what if I had’ve
Wolf People’s music blends British Isles folk-revival melodies with the crushing electric-guitar sounds of proto-metal acts like Black Sabbath.
stayed.”) And then there’s the lovely folk-country ballad “I Will Be Happy and Hopefully You Will Be Too”, in which he acknowledges that, although he’s seen over 40 countries on the planet, there are so many more on his bucket list, from Cuba to Japan to St. Vincent and the Grenadines. “I sometimes think that I love travelling even more than I love music,” Larsen says. “It’s just music is my ticket to travel. I was talking to someone yesterday who said they save up every year for their three or four weeks to travel, and then they go back and work again to do it the next year. I’m very lucky. I’m able to play a show wherever I go and then make enough money to get to the next town.” > MIKE USINGER
Stu Larsen plays the Fox Cabaret on Thursday (August 3).
Wolf People can’t escape its Brit-folk influences Their enemies called them the
2 Nachthexen, or Night Witches. During the Second World War, the pilots of the Soviet Union’s 588th Night Bomber Regiment flew lowaltitude harassment campaigns against Nazi troops on the eastern
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 Company functions I really don’t want to attend company functions nor do I want to hang around with my coworkers outside of my work schedule. I honestly feel uncomfortable in such settings and especially being around with people who are fake and with negative intentions. My personal time should be my personal time to live my personal life not my employer’s.....
NEW ORLEANS INSPIRED CUISINE
I caught myself Moving on. I met somebody last night and for the first time in so many months I didn’t think about my ex at all. I finally have reason to believe I’ll be okay.
City Life I remember when I lived in smalltown BC. Buying your firewood for the winter was a big expenditure. Here in the city, not a day goes by where I’m not pulling out my wallet left right and center for anything and everything. I guess I wouldn’t be able to do the work that I do in the woods, but sure do miss that life.
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28 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT AUGUST 3 – 10 / 2017
beach tart The sound of your flip flops smacking away, is like the sound you make chewing gum with your mouth open.
Ripoff for replacement of electronic car keys where do they get off charging so much for these keys? You can almost buy a used car for the bucks they demand as ransom. Same for any electronic panel on an appliance, you can literally buy a new stove for the price of the electronic display panel. Let’s go back to a horse and buggy and a wood burning stove!
Visit
to post a Confession
front, dropping explosives on their positions from the silent, dark sky. Most demoralizing of all to the German soldiers, the Soviet regiment was made up entirely of women in their teens and early 20s. It’s a fascinating chapter in history, and the U.K.–based band Wolf People tells it vividly through its song “Night Witch”. As the track alternates between stately, melodic verses and passages of blisteringly heavy acid-etched lead guitar, frontman Jack Sharp sings “I’d fly every night if I could/On wings of paper and wood/ Delivering death wherever I go/As graceful and quiet as snow.” Reached at his home in Bedford, England, Sharp tells the Straight he would rather draw inspiration from history or folktales than pen confessional lyrics about his romantic ups and downs. Even so, the singerguitarist inevitably finds that his personal life has informed his work more than he expected. “That’s all in there,” he acknowledges. “I struggle to find interesting viewpoints to write about that kind of stuff from. It’s been written about so many times before, and personally, as a listener I don’t like listening to stuff that sounds like someone complaining about their girlfriend or boyfriend, you know what I mean? And you get that quite a lot. I would rather that it looked at it from a different angle. You can still write songs that are like that, that are about relationships, but you have to find some kind of angle that hasn’t been done before. And I think that’s really, really hard, so I’ve almost taken an easy route out, and find stories to write about. “Often you’ll find out about something and you’ll write a story about something that’s historical, in folklore, or whatever, and you’ll look back at it and go, ‘No, that is actually about something that’s happened to me,’ ” the singer-guitarist continues. “Or it is about a relationship that I’m involved with or something that is happening in my life as well. That’s why we like folk music, because it’s kind of universal truth. It’s the same things that everyone deals with.” Indeed, Wolf People started out as a solo project inspired by Brit-folk revivalists including Pentangle, Fotheringay, and Fairport Convention. When recording last year’s Ruins, however, the quartet (which also includes drummer Tom Watt, guitarist Joe Hollick, and bassist Dan Davies) fully indulged its riff-rocking tendencies, taking inspiration from the likes of Black Sabbath and its more obscure Scottish contemporary Iron Claw. As it turns out, though, Sharp long ago internalized the folkloric sounds of the British Isles. “With the last record, I consciously was like, ‘I don’t think we need to try to put folk music into it,’ because it’s so much a part of our musical background—me and Joe more than the other guys—that if we write something, it has those modes in it,” he says. “It has those tunes within it. So we don’t need to try to make it folk-rock anymore; it just is. “I actually tried to get rid of all traces of traditional and folk-sounding stuff in the record, but it didn’t work,” Sharp admits. “It’s still there. Which is nice.” > JOHN LUCAS
Wolf People plays the Fox Cabaret on Monday (August 7).
sale Aug 4, 10 am, $18.50 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
THE UNDERACHIEVERS Brooklyn hiphop duo tours in support of latest release Renaissance. Oct 31, 10 pm, Fortune Sound Club (147 E. Pender). Tix on sale Aug 4, 10 am, $75/46/20 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketweb.ca/.
music/ timeout
THIRD EYE BLIND American rock band performs on its Fall of the Summer Gods Tour. Nov 9, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Commodore Ballroom (868 Granville). Tix on sale Aug 4, 10 am, $47.75 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
CONCERTS < CLUBS & VENUES < OUT OF TOWN <
CONCERTS
2THIS WEEK
2JUST ANNOUNCED SCOTIABANK AIDS WALK TO THRIVE AND MUSIC FEST Charity walk and concert raises funds for the Positive Living Society of British Columbia, which supports people living with HIV/AIDS. Includes music by Humans, Mu, I M U R, Skylar Love, Desiree Dawson, Shanel, Ilona, South East, Rose Butch, Maiden China, and Cleopatra Compton. Sep 16, 11 am–4:30 pm, Malkin Bowl (610 Pipeline Road, Stanley Park). Info www.aidswalktothrive.ca/. GRYFFIN American EDM DJ, record producer, and musician. Oct 8, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, The Imperial (319 Main). Tix on sale Aug 3, 10 am, $20 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketweb.ca/. WITT LOWRY American hip-hop rapper performs on his I Would Not Plan This Tour, with guest Ro Ransom. Oct 31, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, The Imperial (319 Main). Tix on
EMPLOYMENT
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www.straight.com
WATERPARKS Rock band from Houston, Texas, tours in support of debut full-length album Double Dare, with guests As It Is, Chapel, and Sleep on It. Nov 14, 6:30 pm, Rio Theatre (1660 E. Broadway). Tix on sale Aug 4, 10 am, $20 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
ECHO AND THE BUNNYMEN AND THE VIOLENT FEMMES English new-wave band coheadlines with American alt-rock group. Aug 3, doors 6:30 pm, show 7:30 pm, PNE Amphitheatre (2901 E. Hastings). Tix $55 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. STU LARSEN Australian folk singersongwriter tours in support of upcoming album Resolute. Aug 3, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Fox Cabaret (2321 Main). Tix $20 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. TY SEGALL American rock musician, singer-songwriter, and producer tours in support of latest self-titled release. Aug 3, doors 8 pm, show 9 pm, Vogue Theatre (918 Granville). Tix $28 (plus service charges and fees) at www.ticketfly.com/. DAVIE STREET PARTY Highlights include eight DJs at the Fido Silent Disco, a showcase of bands and poets, two perform-
HIRING ONE FULL-TIME SHEET METAL WORKING $18/hr, Speak basic English, high school or equivalent, Math & Geometry an asset. On-the job-training & extended health insurance DUTIES: Read specifications/follow verbal instructions, lay out, set up & operate one or more light/heavy metalworking machines; power presses, drills, brakes, slitter, punch presses & other hand tools to cut, bend, roll, ream, punch & drill, shape & form metal stock into parts/ products, check products for correct shapes, dimension & other specifications troubleshoot & perform corrective action or minor repairs & document work completed Email: el.mano70@hotmail.com Tel: 604-723-7944 Esther's Sheet Metal 3890 1st Ave Burnaby BC V5C 3W1
HOSPITALITY/FOOD SERVICE Hiring one full-time Cook
$17/hr, high school, speak basic English, several yrs. of cooking exp. Duties: Prepare & cook complete Thai meals or individual Thai dishes & foods, oversee kitchen operations, schedule, supervise & train kitchen staff, maintain inventory & records of food, supplies & equipment, plan menus, determine size of food portions, estimate food requirements & costs, clean kitchen & work area Email: baibuathaicuisine@gmail.com Baibua Thai Cuisine 1-2443 E Hastings St. Vancouver BC V5K 1Y8
MARKETING MANAGER PERMANENT FULL-TIME POSITION
REQUIREMENTS: • A university degree in arts is required; • At least one year of experience as a marketing manager in child care industry is required; • Strong ability of communication, cooperation, analyzation and programming; • Bilingual (English and Chinese) is preferred; • Having Valid BC Driver License required; • Be good at grasping the hot spots of markets and be sensitive to the markets
South Central Montessori Child Care 6020 Steveston Hwy, Richmond, BC, V7E 2K8
37.50 HOURS/WEEK SALARY: $77,025/year
Please email your resume to centralmontessorihr@gmail.com
It is no accident we are #1
ance stages, food, and new art. Presented by the Vancouver Pride Society. Aug 4, 6 pm, Davie Village. Info www.vancouverpride.ca/.
RODRIGUEZ American folk-rock vocalistguitarist performs with a full band. Aug 5, doors 7 pm, show 8 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 Smithe). Tix $115/85/65 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/. THE DECEMBERISTS American indie-rock band tours in support of latest studio album What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, with guest Olivia Chaney. Aug 8, doors 6 pm, show 7 pm, Orpheum Theatre (601 Smithe). Tix $42.50/35 (plus service charges and fees) at www.livenation.com/.
2UPCOMING HIGHLIGHTS TRUCK STOP CONCERT SERIES Red Truck Brewing presents the annual summertime concert series, featuring performances by Lee Fields and the Expressions, Vince Vaccaro, and Real Ponchos. Aug 12, 4-10 pm, Red Truck Brewery (295 E. 1st). Tix at www.truckstopconcertseries.com/.
on the web!
For up-to-the-minute, searchable Music Time Out listings, visit
www.straight.com
PNE SUMMER NIGHT CONCERTS Performances by Mother Mother (Aug 19), Billy Currington (Aug 20), the Pointer Sisters (Aug 22), High Valley (Aug 23), ZZ Top (Aug 24), Chicago (Aug 25), Colin James (Aug 26), Huey Lewis and the News (Aug 27), Tom Cochrane and Red Rider (Aug 29), the B-52s (Aug 30), the Doobie Brothers (Aug 31), Rick Springfield (Sep 1), the Gipsy Kings (Sep 2), and the iHeart Radio Beach Ball (Sep 3 and 4). Aug 19 to Sep 4, PNE Amphitheatre (2901 E. Hastings). Free with PNE admission (reserved seats available), info www.pne.ca/.
WESTWARD MUSIC FESTIVAL Music by RAILWAY STAGE AND BEER CAFÉ 579 Dunsmuir, 604-564-1430. Comedy Tue, Gov’t Mule, Vince Staples, A Tribe Called darts Wed, live music Wed, Thu, Fri, and Red, Dear Rouge, Charlotte Day Wilson, all day/night Sat. 2MUD FUNK Aug 3 Pup, Hannah Georgas, Touché Amoré, Watsky, Too Many Zooz, Busty and the Bass, 2RON ARTIS II Aug 4 2DRIED OUT Aug 4 Bliss n Eso, Youngblood, Beach Season 2THE CUT LOSSES AND WAX COWBOY Aug 5 2KYLE BOTTOM Aug 8 and Neon Dreams, DD Dumbo, Ralph, and Midnight Sister. Sep 14-17, Vogue Theatre RICKSHAW THEATRE 254 E. Hastings, (918 Granville). The event also runs at 604-681-8915. 2EVERY TIME I DIE Aug 2 Biltmore Cabaret, Imperial Theatre, Fox Cabaret, and Red Truck Brewery. Tix $59.50- 2ANCIIENTS, DEAD QUIET, MENDOZZA, HASHTEROID, SEER Aug 4 2IN THE WHALE 224.50, info www.westwardfest.com/. AND THE PLODES Aug 5 2EL TRI Aug 6
CLUBS & VENUES
BACKSTAGE LOUNGE Arts Club Theatre, 1585 Johnston, Granville Island, 604-6871354. Vancouver’s only live-music venue on the water, with music nightly. Hot Jazz Jam night on Tue. 2TOY ZEBRA Aug 3 BILTMORE CABARET 2755 Prince Edward, 604-676-0541. 2PUSSYPOWER! A PRIDE BURLESQUE PARTY Aug 6 2MARGARET GLASPY Aug 11 2VNV NATION Aug 14 BLUE MARTINI JAZZ CAFE 1516 Yew, 604-428-2691. Live jazz, soul, and blues. Closed on Mondays. COMMODORE BALLROOM 868 Granville, 604-739-4550. 2ROYAL BLOOD Aug 8 2LUCENT DOSSIER EXPERIENCE Aug 10 FRANKIE’S JAZZ CLUB 765 Beatty, 778727-0337. Live music Thu-Sun. and menu items that include fresh housemade pastas and signature entrées. FUNKY WINKER BEANS 37 W. Hastings. Evil Bastard Karaoke Experience seven days a week.
WALKERS REQUIRED
$50/1hr Massage. Air-Conditioned. 604-709-6168
careers@straight.com
Quoting WALKER2017 in the subject line NO PHONE CALLS PLEASE
CHILD CARE CHILD CARE PROVIDER
Supervision and care required for our son (under 2 years) at our residence in Surrey. Optional accommodation may be available at no charge on live-in basis. Note: This is not a condition of employment. This job posting is open for everyone who qualifies including aboriginal, youth and new immigrants. DUTIES INCLUDE: Bathing, changing, dressing, personal cleanliness. Preparing light vegetarian food, healthy soups and feeding the child. Light housekeeping and laundry.Take care of the sleep and wake up hours of the child. Keep record of the activities of the child on daily basis. QUALIFICATIONS: Completion of Secondary school required. Must have relevant experience or 6 months training or certificate as Caregiver. Fluency in English required. Non-smoker and clean habits. $11.00 Per Hour haylatoffice@gmail.com
ENERGY HEALING Do you suffer from depression? Anxiety? Pain? Bio-Energy is an effective therapy that narrows in on the exact cause of these illnesses bringing you back to perfect health. For more information, call Sara at: 604-724-9946 Or visit facebook.com/HolisticHealingNow/
SUMMER SPECIAL Bodyscrub $65/70min. Waxing 20% off. Massage $28 604-438-8714
EDUCATION
CAREER TRAINING Body Massage Certificate Training Program
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reflexologyschool.ca 778-885-5188
HOME & GARDEN SERVICES
MBS
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778-886-3675 D/T.
Leelawadee Thai Spa 889
Helmcken St. 778.886.3675 www.leelawadeethaispa.com
OUT OF TOWN 2UPCOMING HIGHLIGHTS LEGENDS VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVAL Music by Body Count, House of Pain, Magic!, Sloan, Five Alarm Funk, the Harpoonist and the Axe Murderer, Delinquent Habits, Forgotten Rebels, Funkdoobiest, Mat the Alien, Kytami, Bend Sinister, Dayglo Abortions, the Gaff, Illvis Freshly, Caleb Hart and the Royal Youths, Power Clown, Antipolitic, Cocaine Moustache, Getaway Sticks, and Ganjo Bassman. Aug 23-27, Laketown Ranch Music and Recreation Park. Tix $30-329, info www.legendsvalleymusicfestival.com/.
IVANHOE PUB 1038 Main, 604-608-1444. Pub with live bands on weekends and open jam night Sun from 4 to 8 pm. Pool tourney Thu. No cover.
AESTHETICS
Interested candidates please email your resume to:
WISE HALL 1882 Adanac, 604-254-5858. 2THALIA FEROUCIA COUTURE AND SHANNON MARIE AUGUST Aug 3 2MARY GAUTHIER Aug 4
THE IMPERIAL 319 Main, 604-868-0494. 2BETTY WHO Aug 7 2QUANTIC Aug 19 2POKEY LAFARGE Aug 24
HELP WANTED
The Georgia Straight requires energetic, physically fit, and customer service oriented walkers. Walkers will distribute The Georgia Straight on the West Side (Approx. 3-5 hrs) Vehicle Required.
VOGUE THEATRE 918 Granville, 604-5691144. 2TY SEGALL Aug 3 2JAMES VINCENT MCMORROW Aug 15
MOVING & STORAGE TwoGuysWithATruck.com
Moving & Storage, Free EST. Visa Okay. 604-628-7136
ANNOUNCEMENTS
EVENTS - ONGOING WOMEN'S SUMMER FAIR & FLEA MARKET
JUNE 10 - SEPT 30, every Saturday from 11am - 4pm. 200 Block Columbia St. @ Cordova. For info: dewc.ca/womens-summer-fair
TIME OUT MUSIC LISTINGS are a public service provided free of charge, based on available space and editorial discretion. Submit listings online using the event-submission form at straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.
OTHER
BODYWORK
ASPIRING DOCUMENTARY FILM-MAKERS WANTED
COCO'S THAI MASSAGE
I am setting up a documentary film company here in Vancouver & am interested in hearing ideas that pertain to political and societal causes. Email James at: indy19781@hotmail.com
MUSIC
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REHEARSAL SPACE
Suna Studios Rehearsal M-F 6-12, Sat/Sun 12-12 East Van Hourly ($16.66/hour) & L/O, www.sunastudios.ca 604-563-5460
PANDORA'S BOX
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DATING SERVICES
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savage love My wife has been seriously ill for
three years, and I have been her sole caregiver. The doctors here weren’t getting the job done, so we made the difficult decision for her to move 2,000 miles away to start over and be near her family. Our sex life has been nonexistent since she became ill. She offered me a “hall pass” with two rules: (1) It couldn’t be anyone I worked with and (2) she didn’t want to know about it. She offered multiple times, but I was taking care of her 24/7 and never used it. I started to consider using it after she moved. But I didn’t want to just fi nd some random person on Tinder. You see, I am a cross-dresser. My wife knows. She’s never seen me dressed and isn’t interested in knowing more about it. So instead of paying for a traditional escort, I found someone who would dress me, do my makeup, go out to dinner with me, but no sex. We met three times. However, one time I did hire a trans woman who dressed me and we did have sex. Obviously, I had to lie at times about where I was when I was using my hall pass, but I considered it a white lie to meet Rule No. 2. But my wife flew home unannounced to get her things (with her ex-husband along to help) and found my clothes out and quickly got out of me what I had done. She was beyond pissed. She says I had a hall pass for sex but not cross-dressing. She belittled me for the cross-dressing and said the sex was supposed to be a one-and-done thing. She knew I was a cross-dresser, and I derived more pleasure from this cross-dressing experience than having anonymous sex
> BY DAN SAVAGE
with an escort. My questions: Did I’m a 22-year-old nonbinary I violate the hall pass? Was I wrong person and I’m debating whether to come out to my father as nonbinary. to cross-dress? > DUDE RELISHING EROTIC Complicating things is the fact that SEXCAPADES SUDDENLY I tried to come out to him at 18 ENTERTAINING DIVORCE back when I thought I was “only” a hetero-leaning bi cross-dresser. He P.S. I am quite convincing when did not take the news well. Today dressed and blend well in public. we don’t talk about it, and I think he pretends it never happened. I’m Your wife went home to get well and wanting to move toward living in “start over”. And it sounds like she got a less gender-conforming way—inwell—at least well enough to fly—and cluding changing my name—and started over with her ex-husband. am considering making a second atI don’t think you were wrong to tempt. Pros: not feeling like I’m hidcross-dress, DRESSED, and if you vio- ing who I am, maybe I get him off lated that hall pass, it was only because my back about kids, being able to be your soon-to-be-ex-wife didn’t share out on Facebook. Cons: screaming all the rules with you until after you matches, strong possibility of beused it. It looks like a setup to me. Your ing disowned and losing the modsoon-to-be-ex-wife gave you permis- est amount of fi nancial support I get sion to fuck someone else—permission from him, small possibility of him that came with rules that were dis- telling my mom (they’re divorced). closed and secret bylaws and codicils Any advice? > ONE FOOT OUT that were not—because, consciously or subconsciously, she wanted to catch you doing it wrong (in your case, What’s more important to you, OFO, DRESSED, doing it more than once, living authentically or living off your cross-dressing when you did it, et cet- dad? If being your authentic self era). Because now she can divorce you means giving up the money he sends with a clear conscience, since she’s not you and you don’t desperately need to blame for the split—you and your his money, the choice is obvious. But if his money is all that stands bedick and your dresses are to blame. You might want to brace your- tween you and gender-nonconformself for some hard-core blaming and ing homelessness, you might want kink-shaming, DRESSED, and for the to think through your options, the very real possibility she’ll out you as risks and the rewards, before going a cheat and a cross-dresser to family nonbinary official on Facebook. and friends. But however the divorce plays out—and here’s hoping it doesn’t I’m a 25-year-old man who get ugly—at least you’ll soon be free to is mostly interested in women but find a partner you don’t have to hide I like to mess around with men sometimes. I also love wearing high your cross-dressing from.
heels and makeup—not to “pass”, but just because I love it. Most women seem to be instantly turned off by these two things. I usually do very well with women, but they bolt when I tell them, and some have been quite hurtful. My family is very understanding about the high heels and my sexuality—even my father—but the average woman doesn’t seem to like it when I do something that they deem “theirs”. Which is so unfair. Women can do anything they please—wear pants if they like, have same-sex experiences—but I must submit or face the life of an outcast. Any advice on how to deal with this while also dealing with the bitterness and envy I feel? > ENRAGING GENDER AND DOUBLE STANDARDS
Let’s start with those feelings of envy, shall we? While it’s true that women can wear pantsuits without causing alarm (or winning the White House), and while it’s also true that women can have samesex experiences without freaking out the men in their lives (because straight men are likelier to be aroused than repulsed), women’s choices and their bodies are subjected to much more scrutiny, control, and violence than our male bodies are, EGADS. Until politicians legislate against your right to control your own body (and wear your own heels), you can note the few areas where women enjoy more latitude than men, but you aren’t allowed to bitch about them.
And this should put your pain in perspective: According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than half the women murdered in the United States every year—55 percent—are killed by their husbands, boyfriends, or exes. It sucks to be dumped for your sexual orientation or gender expression, I know. And people kink-shaming is more painful than non-kinksters realize. But none of your exes have stalked and murdered you. Now the good news: There are women out there who dig men in high heels, there are women out there into bi guys, and there is a significant overlap between those two groups of women. If you succumb to bitterness at your young age because you’ve been dumped a few times—if you despise all women because you were dumped by women you wouldn’t want to be with anyway—you’re going to scare off the women who are genuinely attracted to guys like you. The women who bolted did you a painful favour, and you should be grateful. Because with those average women out of your life, EGADS, you’re free to go find an above-average woman who wants an above-average guy like you. Pro tip: you’re likelier to find those women at a fetish party or club, or via a kink social-media site or dating website. Good luck. On the Lovecast, “sub space” with Mollena Williams at savagelove cast.com. Email: mail@savage love.net . Follow Dan on Twitter @fakedansavage. ITMFA.org.
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