The Georgia Straight - Culture Crawl - November 18, 2021

FREE | NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021 Volume 55 | Number 2805

JUSTICE SEEKERS

Climate, LGBT+, and housing

MICROCREDENTIALS

Hot commodities in education

CULTURE CRAWL Meet seven artists, including product designer Madeleine Chaffee, who are eager to welcome the public into their East Van studios LESBIAN SELF-IDENTIFICATION

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KIRSTEN DUNST

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KRYSTLE DOS SANTOS

CLIMATE

CONTENTS

Rebel says civil disobedience is only way to avert a disaster

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

COVER

Meet seven Vancouver artists who are participating in this year’s 25th annual Eastside Culture Crawl.

by Charlie Smith

t the start of this month, a small group of SFU students won a remarkable environmental victory on campus. After they threatened a hunger strike to demand that the university divest from fossil fuels, the administration capitulated. All investments in oil, gas, and coal companies will be sold by 2025.

“I believe we have the record now for the shortest hunger strike in history,” thirdyear economics student and Extinction Rebellion Vancouver coordinator Zain Haq told the Straight over Zoom.

It came after eight years of campaigning

by SFU350 and various faculty and staff members. And it demonstrated to Haq the power of peaceful civil disobedience in bringing about societal change.

“I think Extinction Rebellion is centred around the idea that the past 30 years of sort of consciousness-raising and campaigning haven’t worked,” Haq said. “So now we need to communicate with the public in a manner that engages them emotionally.”

This is why he and other members of the group block traffic. He fully acknowledged that when they do that, people get upset.

“And when people get upset, that’s when you really get their attention, even if you’re despised by the population,” Haq noted.

“That doesn’t really matter because, as you know, the suff ragettes used to stop horse races all the time. That was a massive sort of inconvenience.”

Back in the days when women were struggling for the right to vote, people would ask what that issue had to do with interfering with horse races.

“But they did that because that is what got them the attention—and that engaged the public,” Haq explained.

This explains why Extinction Rebellion Vancouver held 14 consecutive days of protests in the streets of Metro Vancouver in October. The activists had a single demand: stop all government subsidies to the fossil-fuel sector.

Haq, 20, grew up in Karachi, Pakistan.

He very clearly remembers a deadly heat wave in June 2015 that killed about 2,000 people. Temperatures rose to 49° C in the cities of Turbat, Larkana, and Sibi.

“Hundreds of people died in my city,” Haq explained. “And no one was talking about climate change.”

Three years ago, Haq moved to Toronto, where an uncle and cousins are living. But he didn’t like it there, so he moved to Vancouver and enrolled as an international student at SFU. The biggest cultural shock was the difference in the standard of living in Canada

November 18-25 / 2021

By Martin Dunphy, Steve Newton, Carlito Pablo, and Charlie Smith Cover photo by Liza Heider

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EDUCATION

With the B.C. government’s encouragement, postsecondary institutions are striving to offer microcredentials to students hoping to get ahead.

By Charlie Smith

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MUSIC

Soul crooner Krystle Dos Santos talks about the abundance of great vocalists in Vancouver and that time she sang with Stevie Wonder.

By Steve Newton

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Here’s what people are reading this week on Straight.com.

2 CLIMATE 5 HOUSING 4 LGBT+ 9 LIQUOR Zain Haq was part of a group that convinced the SFU administration to divest from fossil fuels.

compared to his home country. He became engaged in climate activism after attending an Extinction Rebellion Vancouver protest on the Burrard Bridge on October 7, 2019.

“We need to be more humble in the sense that we’re going to lose all our savings,” Haq said. “People are going to lose the future for their children, and so they need to recognize that and confront that emotionally. And once you confront that emotionally—and the fact that you’re faced with a genocidal government—the only rational response to that is to listen to your emotions.

“If you recognize that you’re faced with a genocidal government, getting arrested is like a small step,” Haq continued. “But I think that’s the main challenge, to communicate that to the public: that their kids are going to starve and that they need to act without the expectation of a result.”

He added that some people are only prepared to be arrested if they’ll achieve a certain outcome. But he said that history has taught him that movements are only successful in driving societal change when they stop worrying about the consequences of their protests.

“They sort of enter into service to society, which involves sacrifice,” Haq stated. “It involves getting arrested, doing hunger strikes, going to prison, even. And I think we can learn a lot from the Indigenous community that’s been doing that for a while.” g

NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

10 MOVIES 8 PODCASTS 17 SAVAGE LOVE

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EDITOR Charlie Smith GENERAL MANAGER (ACTING) Sandra Oswald SECTION EDITORS Mike Usinger (ESports/Liquor/Music) Steve Newton SENIOR EDITOR Martin Dunphy STAFF WRITERS Carlito Pablo (Real Estate) SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT Jeff Li ART DEPARTMENT MANAGER Janet McDonald

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

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LGBT+

Activist urges everyone to advocate for trans rights

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by Carlito Pablo

icola Spurling finds it interesting how people react differently to homophobia and transphobia.

There’s a “double standard”, the transgender woman posted on Twitter.

Homophobia, prejudice against gay people, “tends to get shut down immediately”. However, transphobia, which is aversion or negative actions toward trans people, is “allowed to play out”.

“Even ‘allies’ seem to hesitate to speak up about one and not the other,” Spurling, who uses the pronouns she and her, observed on the social-media platform.

When reached at her home in Coquitlam, Spurling noted that there are two reasons for this situation. One is that most people aren’t informed about trans issues.

Hence, transphobia is “sort of given more of a pass by society at large”.

“People just haven’t come around to the realization that transphobia is just as bad,” Spurling told the Straight by phone.

The second reason is that trans advocacy is years behind the gay movement. She related that 20 years ago, it was “incredibly common for people to say, ‘That’s so gay,’ and bullying of gay kids in schools was fairly normalized, although changes were happening”.

Trans-rights campaigner Nicola Spurling encouraged her employer, The Flag Shop, to create a social-justice colouring book, which is expected to be released in advance of the holiday season.

“In Grade 9, I remember a gay man being brought in to discuss what it was like to be gay in society,” Spurling recalled.

Two decades later, she’s the one being brought into schools to talk about what it’s like to be a trans person in society.

Spurling noted there is a segment in the LGBT+ community that focuses only on sexual orientation instead of including

trans issues of gender identity and expression. She specifically mentioned the LGB Alliance, which was born in the U.K. and has a chapter in Canada.

Spurling started volunteering with the Vancouver Pride Society in 2013. That was when some of the questions she had been dealing with since elementary school “started to make sense”.

Growing up in Burnaby and Tsawwassen, the White Rock–born advocate lived the life expected of a straight male. Spurling competed as a cross-country skier, played soccer and field hockey, and participated in many physical activities as a young person.

Spurling was living in “stealth” as a trans woman before being accidentally outed when she ran as the B.C. Green candidate in Coquitlam-Maillardville in 2017. She was out to friends but not in public at the time.

Realizing there was no way to get back to her old life, Spurling decided to become an outspoken advocate for LGBT+ issues and causes like housing affordability.

She currently works as an advocate with The Flag Shop, where she successfully pitched the idea of a social-justice colouring book to the company. Copies are expected to be out before the holiday season.

“My style of artwork lends itself well to this format, and colouring for me is a meditative experience,” she said about her book.

Spurling believes that progressive-minded and, especially, influential individuals should “use their positions of privilege” to help fight hatred and discrimination.

“If they’re scared to speak up, it’s so much worse for trans people,” Spurling said. g

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HOUSING

Housing campaigner decries city’s conservatism

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by Carlito Pablo

ara Sagaii draws strength from the stories of ordinary people.

The Vancouver housing activist recalls one tragic tale about a gay refugee for whom she fought. The person was evicted from a rental apartment. The building was slated to be demolished for a new condo tower in the Metrotown area of Burnaby.

The loss of his home added to the many difficulties he was facing. Within a year of coming to Canada, the man was dead. He took his own life. “The stories of tenants you work with and advocate for always stay with you,” Sagaii told the Straight in a virtual chat. “It’s what makes someone like me stick around over the years.”

Sagaii is deeply moved by stories of immigrants and refugees, being an immigrant herself.

“I have seen firsthand how immigrants, especially racialized and low-income newcomers, are more likely to accept unfair treatments and not ask for their rights, not just because they don’t know their rights— which many don’t, never having received an education about it—but because, even if they do, they don’t feel confident to rock the boat in a foreign country,” Sagaii said.

The East Van renter arrived from Iran in

Housing activist Sara Sagaii questions why Vancouver city council has not wielded its power to the same degree as its counterpart in Montreal in pursuing more affordable housing options.

2009. She came for graduate studies in computer science and later worked in the tech industry. In 2014, Sagaii started teaching at a local college. A year later, she went back to school to pursue her interest in social justice.

“I came to support the initiative of a friend of mine, a fellow Middle Eastern woman, and cofounded a Jacobin magazine readinggroup branch in Vancouver,” she said.

The group took a lot of interest in a 98page study by the Coalition of Progressive Electors titled “Ending the Housing Crisis: International Best-practices for Creating a Vancouver Housing Authority”.

In it, the party declared that it is “fighting to clean out the profiteering real-estate corporations and their politicians at City Hall who keep housing prices high”.

Sagaii got involved with COPE and also started devoting her energy to the Vancouver Tenants Union. She pointed out that city governments have a lot of authority over housing, should they choose to wield their power, citing Montreal as an example. The city exercises its right of first refusal to purchase vacant lots and existing buildings.

“Unfortunately, the City of Vancouver is very conservative in the sense of being unwilling to try new things,” Sagaii said.

“They keep doing the same things and expecting different results.”

One example is generous incentives for developers to build new market rentals.

“Case after case, we see these supposedly affordable market rentals double, triple, quadruple in rent not long after they start, and they are contributing massively to the process of gentrification of neighbourhoods,” Sagaii said.

She wonders why the city refuses to accept that this approach is broken.

“It’s a religious-like ideological faith, and it unfortunately has a strong grip over the politics of the City of Vancouver,” Sagaii said. “It’s right-wing neoliberal faith in the market, and the eventual coming of the trickle-down messiah.” g

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EDUCATION

Employees upgrade skills through microcredentials

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by Charlie Smith

ne of the hottest buzzwords in B.C.’s postsecondary world is microcredentials. In September, the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Training released a set of guiding principles to ensure a consistent and coordinated approach to microcredential programs across public colleges, institutes, and universities.

According to the ministry, microcredentials can be credit- or noncredit-bearing—and this must be made clear in advance to anyone who enrolls.

“Microcredentials support lifelong learning by enhancing access to postsecondary education through shorter, competency-based training opportunities,” Advanced Education and Skills Training Minister Anne Kang said in a news release.

“Our government recognizes the need for opportunities to upskill and reskill, and these microcredentials will assist workers who want to transition to in-demand jobs.”

One of the first institutions out of the gates with microcredentials was Vancouver Community College. Last year, as a Certiport-authorized testing centre, it began offering a Microsoft Office Specialist exam.

Those interested in this microcredential

Advanced Education and Skills Training Minister Anne Kang dangled financial incentives in front of postsecondary institutions to encourage them to develop 35 new microcredential programs.

have the option of taking VCC courses in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to improve their skills. Students who pass the test receive digital badges that can be posted on Linkedin profiles.

The B.C. Institute of Technology offers microcredentials in three areas: digital transformation, essentials of natural resource and environmental protection, and introductory studies in mass

timber construction. Capilano College is also promoting microcredentials.

In September, the B.C. government announced $5 million in funding to support the creation of 35 more of these programs at public postsecondary institutions.

VCC’s dean of continuing studies, Adrian Lipsett, told the Straight by phone that his school is developing a microcredential in ecommerce that will include three courses.

“It doesn’t need to be yearlong,” Lipsett said.

“It can be quite short—quite compressed— and meet the student where they need it.”

He pointed out that ecommerce skills would be useful to VCC students in many programs, including fashion, in which graduates can benefit from creating online shopping portals. Lipsett said that emerging technologies in areas like clean energy, sustainability, and the automotive sector offer other opportunities to develop more microcredentials.

Then there’s cybersecurity, which is a key concern for many organizations in the wake of high-profile ransomware attacks.

Lipsett is happy that the Continuing Education and Training Association of B.C. is coordinating efforts by individual institutions to develop “collective efficiencies”.

“For instance, if one of us develops a microcredential or a particular program and we’re running it down here in the Lower Mainland…[there’s] an easy opportunity for us to license that out or share that out in some way with other institutions,” Lipsett said. “Really, the question we’re all trying to answer is, ‘How can we best serve our community, not just now but five years from now, 10 years from now?’ ” g

lasallecollegevancouver.com/events

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

Adler integrates culture into counselling education The master’s programs in Vancouver emphasize the value of social justice and socially responsible practice (This article is sponsored by Adler University)

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r. Pamela Patterson recognizes that her field, counselling psychology, has a “western oriented” heritage.

Moreover, the academic institution where she teaches, Adler University in Vancouver, is named after one of the great 20th-century western theorists in the field, Alfred Adler.

In a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, Patterson noted that this has led to some fascinating discussions in Adler University’s Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology thesis program. Some students have questioned how to make clinical counselling relevant to more collectivist cultures.

“We have had a number of students who’ve really pursued that through theses as well,” Patterson said. “It’s a really important area of training and research.”

Adler was an Austrian medical doctor and psychotherapist who advanced the idea that building strong communities can enhance mental health. At Adler University, this idea manifests itself in a curriculum that places a major emphasis on social justice and social responsibility.

“When you think of counselling—with

its history of two people sitting behind a closed door—it doesn’t particularly have a social context to it,” Patterson explained.

Professors at Adler University, on the other hand, address how mental health can be linked to a person’s capacity to engage with their community. This, in turn, focuses attention on how overall community health can foster that engagement.

“That brings it right down into the counselling program—this necessity to think about counselling with reference to social justice and social responsibility—which is really what we’re all about,” Patterson said.

All students at Adler University must spend 200 hours on a social-justice practicum, which begins in the first term. They work with organizations in the community to address social issues that have an impact on people’s mental health.

“We have a striking array of students coming from all kinds of backgrounds,” Patterson said, “and that creates really interesting and compelling conversation—and social dynamic—right in the classroom.”

In addition, the school offers extensive training in socially responsible practice to ensure students graduate with sufficient sensitivity and empathy around issues of Indigeneity, culture, national origin,

Dr. Pamela Patterson says that it’s critical for counsellors to understand different cultures.

religion, disability, sexual orientation, and gender expression.

“It’s critical,” Patterson declared. “Because when you are sitting with someone, those things are typically very personal.”

Thesis topics in the program have ranged from probing deeply into the grieving process within families who’ve lost a

child to how to support South Asian families or individuals seeking counselling.

Other theses have focused on counselling families with disabilities and counselling in connection with polyamory.

The Master’s in Counselling Psychology is a two-year, full-time program, though Patterson said that it can be extended for those writing a thesis. Some students attend on a part-time basis.

Patterson is proud of how Adler University integrates culture and diversity into an evidence-based approach to counselling theory and practice.

“I think our students are well recognized at the end of their program,” Patterson said.

“The last we heard, we had 100 percent employment at the end of our training. Our students are well respected and well received.”

In addition to a Master’s in Counselling Psychology, Adler University in Vancouver also offers a Master’s in Counselling Psychology: Art Therapy, a Master’s in Counselling Psychology: School and Youth Concentration, a Master’s in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, and a Doctor of Psychology in Clinical Psychology. g For more information about Adler University, visit www.adler.edu/georgia.

Graduate Degrees for Social Change Master’s programs in Industrial & Organizational Psychology, Public Policy & Administration, Counselling Psychology, and Counselling Psychology - Art Therapy Doctor of Psychology in Clinical Psychology (PsyD) Adler University’s mission to train socially responsible practitioners, engage communities, and advance social justice is built into every one of our programs. We invite students who share our passion to learn more about us.

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NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

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EDUCATION

Below the Radar fills a void created by pandemic

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by Charlie Smith

hen Am Johal and his team at the SFU Vancouver campus decided three years ago to create a podcast called Below the Radar, it was an experiment with public outreach. After all, that’s been his job since 2010 as the director of SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement.

In his position, Johal has worked closely with local festivals and various SFU faculties. He’s put on scores of speaking events.

His efforts were recognized when he won SFU’s Warren Gill Award for Community Impact for the relationships that he helped forge between the university and its partners in Vancouver’s urban core.

But unlike his more famous brother Jas, Johal had never been a professional broadcaster, so a podcast was venturing into new territory.

“Interestingly, we started this off the side of our desk just to try out a new form of engagement,” Johal told the Straight by phone.

But in March 2020, something unexpected happened. The World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was a pandemic. And that put an end, at least for a while, to public events at SFU Woodward’s, where Johal is stationed.

Much to his surprise, the Below the Radar podcast emerged as his office’s primary means of engagement—so much so that it went from a biweekly to a weekly podcast.

“We get listened to in an average month in over 50 countries,” Johal said. “In that sense, it’s given us an opportunity to engage with a much larger public outside Vancouver.”

He emphasized that the largest audiences are still in Vancouver, Burnaby, and Surrey, where SFU’s three campuses are located. But there is also a sizeable number of listeners in the United States.

“We have a loyal audience, for some reason, in Columbus, Ohio,” Johal said. “We have one in Berlin, Germany, and many other places. So in that sense, we’re at over

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

The director of SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement, Am Johal, has discovered that a podcast offers a way to do public outreach during the pandemic. Photo by Tracy Giesz-Ramsay.

50,000 listens after three years, altogether.”

His team’s goal is to boost that number to more than 100,000 by the time they’ve recorded 250 episodes.

On November 20, the Vancouver Podcast Festival will feature an online discussion called “Podcasting Climate Change”, which Johal will moderate. He described it as a “special show of Below the Radar”, featuring four guests: interdisciplinary artist and climate-governance researcher Julia Kidder, West Coast Environmental Law staff lawyer Eugene Kung, Kanaka Bar Indian Band chief Patrick Michell, and climate-action storyteller Grace Nosek.

It’s far from the first time that Below the Radar has addressed the climate emergency in its 144 episodes. Previous shows have featured conversations with Grand Chief Stewart Phillip; Squamish Nation

NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

council chairperson Khelsilem; Sierra Club B.C. climate-justice lead Anjali Appadurai; and novelist Amitav Ghosh, who has called on the literary community to incorporate the climate crisis into their stories because it’s the most urgent issue facing the world.

“It’s definitely a theme that we’ve always been interested in,” Johal noted.

In fact, he has written or cowritten two books on the subject, including one that was an offshoot of his PhD thesis. He recently passed through the Fraser Canyon community of Lytton, which suffered a devastating fire in this past summer’s heat wave.

“Ninety percent of the town burned down, and just seeing the remains of houses and cars is really jaw-dropping in so many ways,” Johal said. “It still just leaves you breathless in terms of how quickly all

of these things can happen. In the case of Lytton, you know, there was no evacuation alert, even—it went straight to an evacuation order at 6 p.m.”

Within an hour, most of the town had disappeared.

Johal emphasized that it wouldn’t be possible to create Below the Radar without its production team of students and recent graduates: program coordinator Fiorella Pinillos, communications coordinator Melissa Roach, program assistant Paige Smith, research assistant Kathy Feng, podcast assistant Alex Abahmed, and communications specialist Alyha Bardi.

“They’re way more tech savvy than I am,” Johal declared.

The podcast’s objective is “amplifying ideas that fly below the radar”. One way this is being accomplished is through “containers” focusing on certain topics. For example, Bardi documents lived experiences of women from diverse backgrounds in the workforce. Community organizer Al Etmanski hosts another container focusing on the power of disability. Johal is planning to launch another container focusing on precautionary notes for a future pandemic.

According to him, there are significant educational advantages that come from doing a podcast through a university. Transcripts are maintained and episodes can become citable material for graduate students.

“There’s also a scholarly orientation to what can happen,” Johal added.

Not only that, but Below the Radar gives him an opportunity to contact anyone in the world and ask for an interview.

“So it’s been a great way to just reach out to people I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to engage with or be able to talk to,” he said. “So it’s been really a learning process, I think, for the entire team that produces the podcast.” g The Vancouver Podcast Festival takes place virtually on Saturday (November 20).

LIQUOR

Baileys Apple Pie captures the spirit of a classic

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by Mike Usinger

s a valuable public service, we crack open spirits from B.C. to Bahrain and beyond, and then give you a highly opinionated, pocket-flask-sized review.

TODAY’S FREE POUR

Baileys Apple Pie THEIR WORDS

“Apple Pie is a timeless dessert, loved broadly across America for its heartwarming, nostalgic taste. This fall, Baileys invites you to gather round friends and enjoy the taste of freshly baked Apple Pie a la mode blended with Irish dairy cream. Baileys Apple Pie is the perfect autumn treat to enjoy as a drink over ice, in chai tea, and over ice cream—a classic flavor for a modern Adult treat.”

TASTING NOTES

There’s a proverb dating back to ancient times—the 1970s, in case you’re curious— that goes “If ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”. (For the curious, variations on that proverb include “Leave well enough alone” and “Never change a running system”, both of which are shorthand for, according to ye olde Wiktionary, “Leave something alone; avoid attempt-

ing to correct, fix, or improve what is already sufficient (often with an implication that the attempted improvement is risky and might backfire).”

That proverb is obviously not pasted on a wall at the Baileys Irish Cream distilleries in Ireland. When first unleashed on the world back in 1971, Baileys came in one flavour— cream, Irish whiskey, and cocoa. Sometime in the early 2000s, the experimenting began, starting with mint chocolate and crème caramel varietals in 2005, followed by offerings that have riffed on everything from coffee, hazelnut, and biscotti, to vanilla-cinnamon, red-velvet cupcake, caffe latte, pumpkin spice, and salted caramel.

The great thing about Baileys Apple Pie is that it actually smells like fresh-cut apples.

Or maybe that’s freshly baked apple pie just like Mom used to make—assuming, that is, that your mother actually baked, as opposed to loading up once a week at Costco.

Drink it straight and the apples are front and centre, to the point where you’ll start thinking of summers in the orchards of the Okanagan Valley rather than fall monsoons in waterlogged Greater Vancouver. Whether real or imagined, the very mention of apple pie brings up vivid associations—cinnamon

something created in a cozy kitchen in rural Ireland—as opposed to something whipped up by a team of white-coated flavourists in a Riverside, California lab. Added bonus: in re-creating the taste of all-American apple pie, they wisely decided that the last thing anyone wanted was a slice of melted cheddar cheese on top.

COCKTAIL TIME

Just because you can drink Baileys Apple Pie straight or in a coffee, or drizzle it on a slice of pie, that doesn’t mean you have to.

Instead, get adventurous with this recipe from celebrated Instagram food-content creator Abhishek Dekate.

CARDAMOM-SPICED BAILEYS APPLE PIE MARTINI

Baileys Apple Pie tastes like something that was whipped up in a rural Irish kitchen.

sticks and fresh ginger also make a fleeting appearance.

Making one think that there’s some truth to the “natural flavor” listing in the ingredients, Baileys Apple Pie legitimately tastes like

1 oz. Baileys Apple Pie 1 oz. vodka 3/4 oz. cardamom simple syrup Cinnamon sugar rim Whipped cream Cinnamon sticks

Combine Baileys Apple Pie, vodka, and cardamom simple syrup in a cocktail shaker. Shake, strain, garnish, and enjoy. g

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

9

MOVIES

Kirsten Dunst is finally attracting awards chatter

by Radheyan Simonpillai

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Kirsten Dunst’s role in The Power of the Dog, as a young mother who is emotionally terrorized, is generating buzz during Hollywood’s awards season. Photo courtesy Netflix/Cross City Films Ltd.

irsten Dunst isn’t a big fan of that meme y’all are sharing. “I don’t get it,” says the Power of the Dog star, referring to a still image lifted from her performance in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. She doesn’t think the meme is very funny.

And she is already siding with people who say they’re sick of it. “I was like, ‘Me too!’ ” I, on the other hand, kind of love it. The meme borrows a moment from Spider-Man when Dunst, playing Mary Jane Watson, is at her lowest. MJ’s acting career isn’t panning out. She’s working at a diner. And as Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker runs into her on the street, Watson, out of embarrassment, tries to cover up her uniform. But her employer steps out onto the street, berating her loudly in public for coming up short on her till.

Watson can only snap back that she gets it.

It’s a humiliating and vulnerable moment for Mary Jane Watson, but social media has latched onto the defiance on Dunst’s face.

They reimagine the moment, framing the

image with quotes that make Dunst’s character appear as though she’s speaking up for a defenseless and oafish looking Peter Parker in the background. A moment of weakness is reappropriated, flipped into something powerful. Sure, it’s a joke. But it also seems to just grasp Dunst’s vibe. She demands reevaluation and turns weaknesses into strength.

Dunst is that actor who, as a teen, confronted hypersexualization by starring in 1999’s The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola’s stunning debut feature about young and put-upon women channelling their sexual energy into desperate acts of rebellion. She is also the actor who, after recovering from a severe bout of mental-health issues, gave one of her greatest performances in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, channelling dark and debilitating feelings and pouring them into a rare film that really grappled with depression. Dunst puts her vulnerability out there and makes that frank honesty her superpower.

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

You can see that in her performance in The Power of the Dog, too. “It was playing an old part of myself,” says Dunst, referring to the insecurity she puts on-screen in Jane Campion’s western as Rose, a mother crumbling in a toxic environment. And for that emotional performance, Dunst has been the subject of the most awards-season buzz so far in her already laudable career.

The Power Of The Dog, which opens in theatres Wednesday (November 17), is a critical look at masculinity and repressed sexuality in which Dunst’s Rose is cornered like an emotionally terrorized bystander.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays an alpha-male rancher named Phil. Jesse Plemons plays his polite and passive accounts-minded brother George. The latter brings home Rose as his new wife, which Phil, for some reason, finds threatening. Phil begins gaslighting Rose, and she can only respond by spiralling into depression.

“Playing Rose was not really a fun role,” Dunst says, describing the vulnerability and dark spaces she had to tap into for Campion, an iconic filmmaker who can also be rather intimidating. Dunst’s performance and the way she describes the tortured experience drums up memories of Shelley Duvall in The Shining. “It’s nice to be done with the movie and be able to hang out with Jane [Campion] in a different way; have a good time and go to dinner and not be stressed out about making a film.”

Dunst is generally taking a more relaxed attitude to her work, a common side effect to parenthood. She recently gave birth to her second child with Plemons, her costar and real-life partner.

“After my first child, there is a sense of freedom where you’re less hard on

yourself,” Dunst says. She echoes so many parents who stop measuring their self-esteem against their careers but also find they end up taking more swings and performing better at work without that critical pressure. “There’s always another take. We’re not even using film these days, so it’s like, ‘Who cares?’ Anything goes. It gave me more freedom.”

And while she’s currently reaping praise for her performance in The Power of the Dog, along with awards chatter that somehow eluded her throughout her career, Dunst has been noticing more and more fandom online. There’s a new, or perhaps more vocal, generation celebrating everything she’s given us, like 1994’s Interview With the Vampire and Sofia Coppola’s critically panned 2006 revisionist take on Marie Antoinette, which, as the discourse today will now tell you, was well ahead of its time. “Marie Antoinette gave permission for people to have more freedom with period films.”

And then there’s the cheerleader movie Bring It On, which was once dismissed as a horny teen comedy in the vein of American Pie and Can’t Hardly Wait but revealed itself to be far more groundbreaking. The 21-yearold film is an uncommon take on racial tension, and it gave Dunst the opportunity to play the first white girl in a popular movie to acknowledge cultural appropriation.

“And then they made many, many, many other Bring It On’s after that,” Dunst says, laughing. Unlike that meme, she gets the appeal, and she adds that she has been discussing making a sequel with costar Gabrielle Union and director Peyton Reed.

“The script would have to be good. It would have to be so good, because otherwise it would just be very sad.” g

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THE EUROPEAN UNION SUPPORTS CAMPAIGNS THAT PROMOTE HIGH QUALITY AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

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ARTS

Culture Crawl artists invite public into their studios The 25th annual event kicks into full gear from Thursday (November 18) until Sunday (November 21)

B

elow, you can learn about seven of the more than 400 artists participating in this year’s Crawl. Visit CultureCrawl.ca for safety protocols and a list of all the East Van locations.

TIFFANY BLAISE A central component of Vancouver artist Tiffany Blaise’s practice is exploring links between her personal emotions and the landscape. That’s because she feels that landscapes and seascapes around Vancouver are full of dynamism.

“I find there’s a huge connection between that and my own personal thoughts,” Blaise told the Straight by phone. “So that’s how I kind of channel everything through my painting.”

Growing up in West Vancouver, she was exposed to roiling seas and captivating mountains. Her paintings show a finely tuned appreciation for the light in a landscape because she believes that this adds a spirited sense of liveliness. She also emphasized that her paintings do not simply record these scenes as they appear to the eye.

EASTSIDE CULTURE CRAWL

a visual arts, design & crafts festival

open studios nov 12-14 by appt. & nov 18-21, 2021

Painter Tiffany Blaise enjoys interpreting how light can affect perceptions about bodies of water, mountains, and the clouds. Photo by Daniel Kaga.

Product designer Madeleine Chaffee’s playful fanny packs (right) demonstrate her passion for making goods in bright colours. Photo by Kenji Eu.

“I kind of imagine what colours would make the landscape more vibrant…and I use a lot of jewel tones,” Blaise said.

One of her paintings, Glimmering Shore, is an example of this. It shows the edge of the sea looking almost like gemstones ringing a shiny, golden beach.

“With that piece, it was really about highlighting the light and the texture,” Blaise said. “So that’s why I really worked in several thin layers of oil paint, just to create that luminescent look in the sand.”

She revealed that she added drama by building up the texture of the waves. In this instance, Blaise accomplished this by applying wax and oil paints with a palette knife.

She relies on photographs for inspiration, sometimes incorporating the sky from one image with a wave from another picture.

“I find that as I continue in my career, my work has gotten more and more dynamic and more expressionistic,” she said.

Blaise earned a fine-arts degree from Concordia University in Montreal before moving to Melbourne for an artist residency. She feels very lucky because her parents always supported her passion to become an artist.

This year, Blaise is participating in her fourth Eastside Culture Crawl in her fourth studio, this time at Studio One One Six (116 East Pender Street).

“It’s been a wonderful experience every year,” she said. “I always look forward to it.”

by Charlie Smith

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

MADELEINE CHAFFEE The Eastside Culture Crawl is not just an exhibition of painters. It also showcases jewellers, sculptors, makers, weavers, potters, photographers, and glassblowers.

One of those designer-makers is Madeleine Chaffee, who operates a 90-squarefoot studio in the MakerLabs space at 780 East Cordova Street. Her company name, Maddles Made, came from a nickname for Madeleine that her mother gave her as a child growing up in Melbourne, Australia.

“My mom runs a quilting business from our home, so I just grew up around fabric and sewing machines and all of that stuff,” Chaffee told the Straight by phone.

When she moved to Vancouver three years ago, it seemed to her like a lot of people were dressed in blacks and greys.

That stood in contrast to the more colourful attire that people wear in Melbourne.

So she has decided to become a “colour rebellionist” in Vancouver, offering a panoply of bright hues on the clothing, tea cozies, fanny packs, toilet-paper rolls, tissue boxes, and other products that she creates.

“I always dressed colourful back in Melbourne,” Chaffee said. “I feel like I’ve become even more addicted to colour since I moved here.”

She’s keenly interested in making sustainable products, quipping that she tries

really hard not to run to the fabric store because it’s “dangerous”. Instead, she prefers creating items from fabric that she finds in thrift stores or from leftover scraps.

“It’s a case of exploring how to reuse these textiles in my work,” Chaffee said.

She meticulously designed her small space to enable her to do everything from product design to the fabrication work on sewing machines at her desk. She also makes use of communal work areas at MakerLabs.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia in 2015, Chaffee designed plastic and metal goods for different companies.

“You want to make products that are sustainable, but you also have to design products that are cheap and easy to manufacture,” Chaffee said. “There are all these things that drive you to design products that aren’t as sustainable. I guess that experience makes me want to do better with my own work.”

This year marks her third straight year in the Eastside Culture Crawl.

by Charlie Smith

CARLA TAK Carla Tak was certain, from a very early age, that she would be an artist. She was even sure of exactly the kind of art she wanted to create. see next page

MUSICALLY SPEAKING

NOV

19

“I started at 50, and now I’m 68.”

She moved into Parker Street Studios— “It was hard to get in here, but with a realestate background, you never give up”— and everything clicked. “I’ve been in the building for 18 years, and now I have a beautiful 1,100-square-foot studio [#310].

“I did a Culture Crawl soon after moving in,” she recalled of her first year in the century-old former mattress factory, “and this will be my 18th.”

She loves the Crawl, explaining that the Vancouver Art Gallery picked her up for its art rental and sales program after that first exposure.

“Every year, it gets better and better,” she said of the East Van tradition. “It’s such a beautiful exchange.”

She said the inspiration for her large abstracts is a bit mysterious—“I would say it’s very unconscious; I don’t even understand my process”—but she is a big fan of postwar artists from the late 1940s and ’50s like Jackson Pollock, Grace Hartigan, and Joan Mitchell, “that whole era back then”.

And she wants to keep her potential inspiration cryptic, or at least at arm’s length: “As soon as I started painting, I stopped going to galleries because I didn’t want to be influenced by anyone.”

TOMORROW! Fri, 7pm | Orpheum

Romeo and Juliet like you’ve never seen it before! An innovative mix of shadow puppetry and live digital video brings to life the timeless love story as Maestro Tausk leads the VSO in Prokofiev’s lush and romantic ballet score. This is something very special. Limited seating.

Don’t miss out!

Carla Tak not only doesn’t put titles to her abstract works but she stopped going to galleries when she took up painting so that she doesn’t get influencd by the styles of other artists.

She just didn’t think it would take almost four decades to get there.

“I was destined to be a Picasso after doing a book report at age 12,” she told the Straight by phone. “When I did that book report, I just knew what I was going to be: big paintings, abstracts.”

Tak said that family trauma—including her parents’ divorce and her dropping out of school at 14—was a hallmark of her early life in West Vancouver. “I needed therapy then; I really did,” she said of that time.

She ended up moving to California as a young teen, then worked in real estate before returning to Vancouver at age 34.

But she still wasn’t ready to follow her artistic muse. She continued selling properties while indulging her interest in art to the point of even planning to get into the art business (but not as a practitioner).

“I was continuing my therapeutic process, and my daughter had moved to New York…and I had always collected art,” she explained of her slow-motion impulse to change direction in life.

Then one day, someone she trusted told her to fish or cut bait.

“My therapist told me, ‘You need to paint—you have homework.’

“That weekend I bought some oil paints and I loved it,” she said. “I’d looked at enough art, and I knew it was good.

Romeo & Juliet

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From Apocalypse Now to Bugs Bunny, Wagner’s music is sewn into popular culture. Discover his greatest symphonic moments with Maestro Tausk and the VSO. Plus, Principal Cellist Henry Shapard plays the gorgeous Lalo Cello Concerto.

Traditional Christmas DEC

1–19

Christopher Gaze

Dec 1–4 | Across Lower Mainland Dec 18 | 4 & 7:30pm | Orpheum Dec 19 | 4 & 7:30pm | Orpheum

The annual tradition returns this Christmas with host Christopher Gaze. Performances take place around the Lower Mainland the first week of December and at the Orpheum Theatre December 18 & 19.

by Martin Dunphy

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LONDON DRUGS POPS

DEC

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Come and see me at the CRAWL

A Dee Daniels Christmas Fri & Sat, 8pm | Orpheum

An evening of Christmas magic. Vancouver jazz legend Dee Daniels will enchant you with her thrilling renditions of O Holy Night, O Come All Ye Faithful, Duke Ellington’s take on the Nutcracker, and other holiday classics.

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VancouverSymphony.ca NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

604.876.3434 THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

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from previous page

DAVID WILSON No one in Vancouver paints the rain quite like veteran artist David Wilson. His sumptuously colourful images typically feature soaked streets and sidewalks in the day or night. They often include umbrellatoting passersby and motor vehicles making their way through the city.

But at this year’s Eastside Culture Crawl, Wilson is revealing his artistic take in those in-between periods in Vancouver.

Entitled Day Into Night, this exhibition at the Parker Street Studios (206–1000 Parker Street) also includes new monochromatic works on paper, board, and canvas.

“I want to create an exhibition of Vancouver for Vancouver,” Wilson told the Straight by phone. “The theme Day Into Night is meant to capture the sort of transitional period: the shift from day to night or even night to day.”

He pointed out that residents sometimes miss these transitional moments because they pass so quickly.

As a kid growing up in Powell River, Wilson drew cartoons and pictures for hours on end. A high-school art teacher introduced him to painting. Back then, Wilson read that it takes about 20 years for an artist to solidify a career, so he decided to go for it. He took courses at what is now Emily Carr University of Art + Design, but he said that mostly he learned through trial and error. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

Nowadays, Wilson can usually anticipate what a painting will look like long before it’s completed. “Sometimes,” he added, “I’ll have something arise that wasn’t expected.”

Wilson noted that this is more often the case with works on cardboard in comparison to art on canvas or boards.

“Preparing canvasses is a fairly large investment of time and money, whereas cardboard is disposable,” he said. “It’s recyclable.”

A resident of East Vancouver, Wilson has painted landmark locations all over the city.

He has a simple philosophy when it comes to paintings: whatever he lets out the door must be a work of art that he would be really happy hanging on his own wall.

“Sometimes there are works that just don’t meet that standard,” Wilson revealed. “I end up painting over top of them or I cut them up and throw them away.”

by Charlie Smith

JANINE BRECK Janine Breck’s entry into the art world was fairly common: finger painting at age two.

Then in elementary and high school, she gravitated toward the projects where students got to make things and paint stuff and decorate. But after that, she didn’t get heavily into art again until 2014, when her receptionist signed her up to take part in a live painting competition called Art Battle.

“It’s probably my own personal therapy, to be honest,” she says. “I’ve always used it as an outlet of expression, of energy, of just

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14

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

David Wilson’s Close to Home (above) shows how the city appears through the eyes of a seasoned artist; Tangled Up in Blue exemplifies Janine Breck’s preference for creating art with fluidity.

fun. I never really had an intention with it; it’s just whatever made me feel good. I never really married a style, either. I’m doing a certain style right now, but I’m very open to changing with how I feel. I’ve always kind of put myself first with art—it has to feel right, and, yeah, it keeps me sane.”

Nowadays, Breck specializes in alcohol inks and resin. “I think, especially through this COVID stuff, I was very drawn to art that just makes you feel calm and is just loose.

So I gravitated a lot towards fluid painting in general, where it’s beautiful and it’s peaceful to look at. It’s very therapeutic to create.”

The 35-year-old’s favourite artists these days include James Nares, a British transgender woman artist living and working in New York City. “The main thing that she’s known for are these big, beautiful, fluid brush strokes,” Breck raves, “and I could just stare at them for ages.”

The painter also finds much joy and inspiration in the work of her fellow Vancouver creators.

“Jessica Craig, who’s my studio mate, is constantly inspiring me. I think she’s got an incredible work ethic. And another artist I really love is Tiffany Blaise. She’s in a studio not far from ours, and she does some really cool watercolour and ink undertones. And then William Higginson—who was the first artist that encouraged me after my live painting—I just love for his talent and mentorship.

And for just being a great human.”

by Steve Newton

MICHELLE MATHIAS Artist Michelle Mathias encounters many “urban wolves” when she walks from her West End home to her Downtown Eastside studio. This is her term for people living on the fringes of society.

“They make an impression on me,” Mathias told the Straight by phone. “And I paint them because the uniqueness of an era is often defined by the urban wolves.”

Mathias’s vibrant oil paintings serve as a colourful narrative for Vancouver in the 21st century. Whether they feature a hunchedover street person in an alley or two middleclass women at a cocktail bar or a rich couple eating dinner, they reflect Vancouver’s growing divide between the down-and-out and those who’ve been more lucky in life.

Then there are the canines that pop up in several of her paintings, including in one nude called Young Woman With Pitbull.

“It seems like never in history have people had so many dogs,” Mathias said.

“Like, 40 years ago you hardly ever saw a pit bull. Now you see pit bulls all the time and from all walks of life.”

Mathias isn’t one to write long descriptions alongside her paintings. She prefers snappy titles, such as Cement Futon, Confessions With Cocktails, and Graffiti Guy. “I saw a middle-aged couple kissing on a restaurant patio and I just wanted to capture see next page

aspect into my work,” she said.

In addition to the stories her grandmother told, Mehlis also absorbed the heady atmosphere of the many street festivals in Bolivia. She recalled dance troupes, or comparsas, marching to exhilarating music on the streets. Performers with masks and colourful attire combined “angelic or devilish or animal forms”.

“They’re very organized and choreographed dancers, and the costumes are just amazing,” Mehlis said.

As an artist, these elements “just kind of came around”. “It wasn’t something conscious,” she said. “It was something natural that evolved.”

Educated in both Bolivia and Canada, the artist settled in Vancouver in 2001.

In her early works, Mehlis played with a lot of animal narratives, like mammals running with fishes. Sometime around 2016, she started drawing and painting half-human and half-fish images for what she now calls her “anthrofish” collection.

About three years later, Mehlis began doing half-human and half-bird creations that currently form a separate “ornithrope” set.

The Vancouver artist continues to produce new paintings and sculptures for these two collections, partly as her way of telling her own story as an immigrant. She chose the salmon and the cliff swallow as models because they are migratory creatures. Mehlis finds animal migration to be a gentle phenomenon because the movements happen in the course of nature.

“There’s no borders,” Mehlis said. “They just have patterns in the world that they follow. And they’re always the same patterns, and they come and go in these patterns.”

Human beings also move around, but it’s different: “Because we have these borders, they become complicated on many levels,” she noted.

Mehlis’s display at this year’s Eastside Culture Crawl is in suite 315 at the Parker Street Studios (1000 Parker Street).

by Carlito Pablo

NOVEMBER The Lisa Nemetz International Jewish

Performing Arts Festival

4 TO 24

Live Performances at the Norman & Annette Rothstein Theatre & other venues at the JCC | Plus Digital Streaming

C O M E DY

Avi Liberman | November 20 | 7pm Israeli-American’s quirky style has made him a comedy club favourite. W/ guest Jacob Samuel and host Kyle Berger.

Pilar Mehlis creates works of art that blend fantasy with reality. The intricate details in her paintings and sculptures make it easy to believe in the supernatural.

The Vancouver artist likes juxtaposing human and animal forms, drawing inspiration for the latter from salmon and cliff swallows. Mehlis describes her influence as a “language” she learned growing up in La Paz, the capital of Bolivia.

“My grandmother was a great storyteller, and she would tell myths from the old times,” Mehlis told the Straight by phone.

Her grandmother regaled her with tales that “often involved something unexplainable or mystical or magical”: “The magical was embedded into the ordinary life,” Mehlis said.

In literature, it’s a style called magical realism. “That was kind of a pattern, a vocabulary that was already ingrained in me, so it was very natural to channel that same

Integrating movement and the visual art of HIV activist Tiko Kerr

Ne.Sans Opera & Dance | world premiere Solo for Orpheus Israeli-Canadian choreographer Idan Cohen draws inspiration from the myth of Orpheus and Gluck’s opera Orfeo ed Euridice. Featuring Ted Littlemore.

Dance Double Bill: November 16 & 18 | 7pm

Surplus Production Unit | A Timed Speed-Read of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Trial Transcript November 21 | 6pm and November 22 | 11am & 7pm With only a stopwatch and a stack of paper, and some theatrical magic, this true story comes to life in an immersive experience.

Sponsored by Actsafe Safety Association

Josh “Socalled” Dolgin with Strings | Di Frosh November 19 | 7pm

MUSIC

by Charlie Smith

PILAR MEHLIS

Alexis Fletcher | Vancouver premiere light in the rafters

THEATRE

that emotion in their relationship, the happiness,” Mathias explained. “But I figured if I gave it a romantic title, it would be really sappy. So I called it My Mate Is in Real Estate because they looked kind of rich.”

Mathias switched from sculping to painting several years ago because she enjoys how this art form triggers a thought or feeling that leads to introspection. “Painting is like climbing the highest mountain,” she said.

“And if I do it, I have to have a modern edge.”

Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in San Francisco, Miami, and Paris. But this is Mathias’s first appearance in the Eastside Culture Crawl.

Her new studio is in the former Vancouver police station at 312 Main Street, which is within the festival’s boundaries.

The outside door is always locked, so she encourages anyone who wants to visit during the Eastside Culture Crawl to email her at paint.sculpt@gmail.com—even at the last minute.

writer, actor, director, producer and podcast host performs her new solo show.

DANCE

Michelle Mathias populates some of her paintings, including Behaviour Modification Training (above), with menacing canines; Pilar Mehlis threads magic with realism in her sculptures.

Iris Bahr | November 23 | 7pm Award-winning Israeli-American

Rediscovered Yiddish songs with Dolgin accompanied by a string quartet!

Guy Mintus Trio | A Gershwin Playground November 24 | 7pm Magnificent Israeli jazz combo channels the legendary George Gershwin.

Israeli artists are sponsored by the Consulate General of Israel

Tickets and Event Details: chutzpahfestival.com Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver

NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

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CHILL.

Enjoy stress-free reading without the noise on CreatorNews.

ARTS | CULTURE | LIFESTYLE ,QWURGXFLQJ WKH ŦUVW QHZV DJJUHJDWRU GHGLFDWHG WR WKH DUWV JOREDO FXOWXUH OLIHVW\OH DQG FUHDWLYH QHZV /HDYH GLYLVLYH SROLWLFV FULPH DQG IDNH QHZV EHKLQG ZLWK H[SHUWO\ FXUDWHG UHOD[LQJ UHDGV

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THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

MUSIC / SAVAGE LOVE

Krystle Dos Santos sings with a whole lotta soul

Y

by Steve Newton

ou might be a big Stevie Wonder fan, but I’ll bet you’re not as big a Stevie Wonder fan as is Krystle Dos Santos.

When she was four or five years old, the local soul vocalist would sing along to his LPs, trying her best to read along with the words. Then, six years ago, the music legend came to Seattle, so Dos Santos paid the most she ever had for a ticket— US$275—and headed south with a friend.

It’s a good thing she did, too, because she wound up singing with Wonder on-stage.

“We’re sitting on the floor and Stevie’s jammin’ away,” Dos Santos recalls from her New Westminster home, “and he says, ‘You know us musicians, we like to jam, and I was just wondering if there were any singers out there who want to jam with us.’

I couldn’t believe the words I just heard, and my friend grabbed me by the pants and basically threw me into the aisle.

“Our seating was absolutely perfect for this exact moment,” she adds, “so I literally ran—and nobody else in the whole arena seemed to be even moving. Like, I was thinking, ‘Did I hear this wrong?’ but my friend heard it too, so I’m running to the front of the stage, and when I get there somebody just points and says, ‘You! Come on up.’ And I couldn’t even believe it.”

The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity didn’t result in Dos Santos getting to wow the crowd with a few lines of “Superstition” or “Sunshine of My Life” or anything, but she wasn’t complaining.

“He wanted to do this sort of jam,” she says, “so he just said, ‘Well, repeat after me,’ and it was more of a scat thing, like ‘Doo doo doo dooo, doo-doo-doo.’ He kissed me on the cheek and asked me when my birthday was, and then when I got offstage, I got backstage passes to go meet him backstage. And then while I was waiting for my friend in the hallway, his manager guy said, ‘Come with us,’ and I walked Stevie to the next meet ’n’ greet arm in arm. It was insane.”

As well as Little Stevie, Dos Santos grew up idolizing the likes of Aretha Franklin and Etta James. But the city in which she grew up, Edmonton, wasn’t exactly a soul mecca.

Krystle Dos Santos grew up idolizing Stevie Wonder before getting to join the music legend onstage in Seattle. Now she’s making a name for herself in Vancouver as a stunning soul singer.

“There wasn’t a huge soul scene, that’s for sure,” she says. “But there was a huge blues scene. So you could go to Blues on Whyte and see a really amazing blues artist from the States who no matter what is gonna have incredible soul. There was always a little bit of inspiration there.”

When she moved to Metro Vancouver in 2011, Dos Santos found the music scene a little more welcoming to the soul stylings she hoped to specialize in.

“But it did take some work,” she points out.

“I have a monthly night at Guilt & Company down in Gastown, and that’s been going on for almost seven and a half years—eight in April—and it has been invaluable to have a night like that because it builds community. That was sort of the mandate of it, and in building that community, I’ve had a huge and warm embrace of my music: any style of it I bring to that stage, I feel like people are really into it. They eat it up.

“And then in terms of my original music, I mean, it’s always a bit of a haul for original music, and soul music is not necessarily a Vancouver or a western Canadian thing. But, you know, I have small recognitions like the

I’ve had a huge and warm embrace of my music: any style of it...

– Krystle Dos Santos

WCMAs [Western Canadian Music Awards] or a really good festival circuit in Alberta and B.C. and things like that.”

Dos Santos has released three albums so far, her self-titled 2008 debut, 2011’s Fame Fatale, and 2020’s Bloom/Burn. The debut—which she recorded before she even had a band or started performing—won the urban recording of the year category at the WCMAs, which was a big surprise to her.

“I was completely shocked,” she says.

“Because, a) I was the only female in the category, and b) it was the very first

year that they ever had an urban-music category. And c): it was my very first project. I was just elated.”

Bloom/Burn also won a WCMA award, for R & B recording of the year, and after listening to a deeply emotional tune like “I Cry”, it’s easy to see why.

“That song has an interesting history,” Dos Santos explains. “I wrote it probably over 10 years ago, and I had an amazing first recording of it. Then I rerecorded it with a new producer for this album, and I was feeling like the vocal performance on the old one was better, ‘cause my voice was younger and more energized. But, you know, it’s all perspective, isn’t it?”

“I Cry” might make an appearance when Dos Santos—joined by Scott Verbeek on guitar, Mary Ancheta on piano, and Chris Davis on drums—plays the Ironworks on Friday (November 19) as part of the Coastal Jazz & Blues Society’s IronFest concert series. As well as tracks from all three of her albums, the set list is expected to include Mel Torme’s “Comin’ Home Baby!” and the Shangri-Las’ “Remember (Walking in the Sand)”.

Less than a week later, on November 25, Dos Santos will perform at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in a program titled Kings & Queens: Pop, Rock & Soul Icons of the 20th Century, which will see her joined by no fewer than five vocalists: Patrick Gavigan, Tiffany Rivera, Josh Wyper, Bradley Barkman, and Marie Hui (the official anthem singer for the Vancouver Whitecaps.)

Dos Santos likes to surround herself with great singers, which seems to be an easy thing to do in this town.

“Oh my gosh, yeah,” she agrees. “That’s another reason why I love my monthly night, because I bring vocalists in to play with the band, and I just get to sort of hang out and jam with so many different singers. And, of course, doing session work and corporate gigs, you meet them too. There are just so many amazing vocalists here.” g Krystle Dos Santos performs on November 19 at the Ironworks and November 25 at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

No law says you can’t self-identify as a lesbian

by Dan Savage

b I HAVE A fun little labelling question. I’m a nonbinary person who was assigned male at birth (AMAB). I gravitate toward femininity in life and in love.

My question is about the inclusiveness of the label lesbian. Is this a label only for women? Or is it inclusive of everyone who is feminine and is attracted to femininity?

My goal is to label myself appropriately without infringing on others.

- All Loves Labelled Inclusively

As labels go, ALLI, lesbian seems pretty darn binary to me.

Now, the meaning of any given word evolves and changes over time, of course, and meaning follows use. But lesbian currently means—and is currently used to mean and will most likely continue to mean—a woman who is exclusively attracted to other women romantically and sexually*. So, frankly, ALLI, I’m confused about why someone who’s your brand of nonbinary (AMAB, femme, and into femmes) would even want to identify as a lesbian. Since you’re neither

a woman nor a man, ALLI, why would you want to use such a gendered label? (Why you might feel entitled to use it is another subject, one I’ll leave for commenters to discuss.)

That said, no one can stop you from using the term lesbian to describe yourself. You know how they say in antianti-cancel-culture discourse that there’s no such thing as cancel culture, only accountability? Well, ALLI, there’s no such thing as gatekeeping or gatekeepers; there are no see next page

NOVEMBER 18 – 25 / 2021

THE GEORGIA STR AIGHT

17

from previous page

requests, explicit or otherwise.

From here on out, WTFWT, make demands.

Unambiguous, unequivocal demands. And go get tested.

identity cops out there with the power to make arrests or issue fines. There are only people who might find your shit annoying.

In the case of your specific shit, ALLI, some lesbians are gonna find it annoying— extremely annoying—but annoyed lesbians can’t prevent you from self-identifying as a lesbian any more than annoyed Slate writers can prevent Louis C. K. from selling out stadiums. No one can cancel him; no one can gatekeep you.

b CIS, MARRIED, STRAIGHT man here. You’re my gay crush. Given the chance, how would you seduce me? I’ve never had man sex before, because I really like pussy and the way women feel, but I think I could do it for you.

You’ve always been my celeb “man-pass”.

How can we get this started? I’m just a straight guy writing to a gay guy, asking him to fuck him.

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For more Join OurpatSupport, Education know that he would fitinformation, into an unhealthy my one chance to sleep with a real man!” In caregivers are welcome.

For more information, Join Our Support, Education email info@badgut.org. &they Action Group email info@badgut.org. tern of mine: guys who aren’t sure what reality, LAD, what most gay men are thinking & Action Groupany Women who experienced Is your life affected by someone else's drug use?

Dan advises an AMAB reader who identifies as nonbinary and leans “toward femininity” that they can Women experienced any formwho of male violence. want and areFamily todrug make when a straight guy hits on us is, “Jesus Christ, Is your life affected byreluctant someone else's use? commitments.

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CALL Vancouver Relief & Women's Shelter self-identify as a lesbian because there are no identity cops out there. Photo by Paul Bradbury/Getty .

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Call the Volunteer 24hrGroup Information line atthat could Do just enjoy the sex occur? this dude is gonna shit all over my dick.” Now, CALL Vancouver Rape Relief & Women's Shelter 604-872-8212 Call theI Volunteer 24hr Information line atand 604-878-8844 for a list of meeting locations 604-872-8212 604-878-8844 fornumber a list of ismeeting locations and myself? times. notto monitored) Or do I (This steer clear protect disappointment of being ghosted by a dude I was annoyed because I had condoms next that thought doesn’t stop some gay men from RECOVERY International times. (This number is not monitored) RECOVERY International FEAR? DEPRESSION? PANIC ATTACKS? www.naranonbc.com to the bed. But I also felt partly responsible sleeping with straight-identified guys who are really connected with?

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Call for info: 9am - 5pm Kathy 778-554-1026 9am - 5pm Kathy 778-554-1026 We continued dating and used condoms straight-but-situationally-heteroflexible guy tern—your propensity for getting attached I took a call on the Savage Lovecast last week on with a very specific crush on one of us. But it’s to guys who aren’t sure what they want and/ from a woman who was angry about being after that until one night when I was highBodywork Bodywork or can’t commit—have you been able to enjoy ghosted by a man—a neighbour whose front edibles and he didn’t use a condom. This was always annoying when a straight guy assumes SEXAHOLICS ANONYMOUS - Vancouver, sex without allowing yourself to get attached to door she BC had to walk past every day—and after he asked me earlier if I felt comfy go- his straightness is an aphrodisiac that drives - Vancouver, For SEXAHOLICS those desiringANONYMOUS their own sexual sobriety, BC please desiring their ownthen sexual sobriety, please the coroner wheeling the guy’s ing without condoms again and I explicitly gay men wild and asks questions like, “Given guys with commitment issues? If For the is she saw go those to answer www.sa.org for meetings times and places. go to times and places.

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Call toll free 866-424-8777 Al-Anon can help.

We are a support group for those whoanswer have to try, if I had the chance. the nicest person. fuck this guy.

But if the is no—if you fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

We are a support group fordrinking those who have been affected by another's problem.

So you could say I’m just a gay guy recan’t fuck guy catching feelings— As for your battle, GAH, look on the bright - What The Fuck Was That been affected byaanother's drinking problem.

For more information pleasewithout call: 604-688-1716 For more information please call: 604-688-1716 sponding to a straight guy, asking him to get then don’t fuck this guy. side. The first date you went on after getting Sex Addicts Anonymous back on the apps went pretty well! There was What that was, WTFWT, was fucked up. And over himself.

Sex Addicts 12-step fellowship of menAnonymous & women who share 12-step of men & women who each share Massage their experience, strength and hope with no second date, and that’s too bad, and assum- that guy wasn’t nice. There’s not a lot you can do b I’M Afellowship THIRTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD Massage theirthat experience, andcommon hope withproblem each cis woman living other, they maystrength solve their other, that they may recover solve their common problem and help others from their sexual ing he isn’t dead, it was rude of him to ghost about it now besides learning from the experiin the South.

Dating here is a nightmare.

It feels * A shout-out to all the asexual lesbians, who and help others recover from their sexual addiction.Membership is open to all who desire to on you like that. But if there was one guy in ence. First, don’t drop hints. Don’t put condoms are attracted to other EMPLOYMENT Music like everyone atlist women romantically but addiction.Membership isgot openmarried to For all who desire to22 and is super stop addictive sexual behaviour. a meeting EMPLOYMENT Music stop sexual behaviour.

For a go meeting list asaddictive well as email phonebroke contacts to our into Jesus.

I&&just up with someone and your area you could have an amazing first date on the nightstand and hope the other person not sexually, and to all the aromantic lesbians, as wellwebsite. as emailwww.saavancouver.org phone contacts go to our website.

Musicians Wanted (Free) got back onwww.saavancouver.org the apps, and the first date I went with (even if it went nowhere), GAH, it’s not takes the hint and uses a condom. Tell the other who are attracted to other women sexually but Musicians Wanted (Free) on was amazing. Really cool liberal, age-appro- unreasonable to assume there are other guys in person the condoms are there to be used and not romantically. IBeatles see you and your pride flags; Tribute Band Beatles Band inavatars; Drummer with lots Tribute of experience tribute with your anime and I priate dude with a similar sense of humor. I had your area you could have equally amazing first that if there isn’t one on his dick, his dick isn’t I am familiar Drummer with lots of experience tribute bands (Stones, Zeppelin, Beatles)inseeks to of your getting anywhere near your hole/holes—and if affirm the validity so much fun, and we exchanged numbers. And dates with (dates that might go somewhere). bands (Stones, Zeppelin, Beatles) to g form Beatles Tribute Band.lesbianism.

Ability toseeks sing and form Beatles Tribute Ability to Call singorand harmonize a must, as Band. is vaccination. text his dick gets near your hole without a condom then… nothing. I bit the bullet and followed up harmonize a must, is vaccination. or text 778-628-6240 for as more information, Call including 778-628-6240 for more information, including b I DATED SOMEONE recently for a few weeks on it, or if the condom should magically dis- Follow Dan on Twitter and still haven’t heard anything.

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At what point do I write this guy off as and had sex. It was unprotected, and I found appear after his dick is in your hole, you’ll be podcast at www.savage.love.

Email: questions@ a ghost? And how do I deal with the utter out immediately after that he had herpes. I filing a police report. And, second, don’t make savagelove.org.

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A MDABC peer-led support group is a safe place to Ashare MDABC peer-led support groupand is aaccomplishsafe place to your story, your struggles share your story, your struggles and accomplishments, and to listen to others as they share similar ments, and Please to listenNote: to others as they shareare similar concerns.

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2 THE GEORGIA STRAIGHT JUNE 25 – JULY 2 / 2020 GEORGIA STRAIGHT JUNE 25NOVEMBER – JULY 2 / 2020 2 18 THETHE GEORGIA STR AIGHT 18 – 25 / 2021

The Compassionate Friends (TCF) Burnaby Friends (TCF) Burnaby TCFThe is a Compassionate grief support group for parents who have TCFexperienced is a grief support group parents the loss of a for child, at anywho age.have the loss of athe child, at any age.p.m.

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