Georgia Straight - SHANIA TWAIN Issue 2845

SHANIA

The country-pop icon on new music, self-love, and finding her voice again

DULF Compassion club is saving lives

By V.S. Wells

Eris Nyx didn’t think she’d be spending her time running a compassion club.

“I’m an artist by trade, I’m not a fucking drug dealer,” she says in a phone call with the Straight “And I certainly don’t like doing math.”

And yet, the co-founder of the Drug User Liberation Front (DULF) is running an ambitious, unsanctioned program that’s trying to remove people at high risk of poisoned drug death from the unregulated illicit supply by selling its club members pure, tested drugs—and studying what happens next.

As the unregulated drug emergency hurtles toward its seven-year anniversary, almost seven people are dying from poisoned drugs in BC every day. In Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, one in 200 people die every year from unregulated illicit drug poisonings. The municipal and provincial government’s interventions do little to change this death toll, leaving community members to come up with their own solutions.

DULF’s compassion club buys heroin, cocaine, and meth from the dark web and sends it to Substance in Victoria for batch testing. The substances are sent back, measured, packaged, and sold to the club’s 42 members at a fulfillment centre that operates like a regular storefront. Members participate in internal reviews, and researchers from the British Columbia Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU) are helping to gather data to study the impacts.

Since the program started around seven months ago, no member has died from toxic drugs.

Compassion clubs aren’t a new idea. They proliferated through the 1980s and ’90s in response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, where buyers’ clubs and cannabis compassion clubs bought and distributed hard-to-access or illegal medications to their members. The BCCSU wrote a whitepaper advocating for heroin compassion clubs back in February 2019. It suggests that heroin compassion clubs could “reduce the number of fentanyl-related

deaths and impacts of organized crime,” be set up with “little to no operating cost to the public,” and undertake “scientific evaluation to assess impacts.” The authors urge “an evaluation of this model” should be “urgently undertaken.”

Four years later, DULF is the only one—and it’s doing this work illegally.

Nyx doesn’t mince her words. “I’m only doing this because everyone else is too stupid and too fucking afraid.”

While the organization originally started off doing free drug handouts at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Nyx and co-founder Jeremy Kalicum decided something more organized needed to happen. The pair incorporated DULF in 2021 and spent months researching the best framework for a compassion club.

They wrote a proposal to Health Canada in August 2021, asking for Section 56 exemption to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. The exemption would give DULF permission to purchase pharmaceutical-grade substances for supervised sales. Vancouver city council voted that October to support DULF’s application, and then-mayor Kennedy Stewart wrote a letter of support. But the request was denied almost a year later, in July 2022.

“There was no working with us. There was no back-and-forth iterative process to figure out something that works,” Kalicum said. “They were just like, ‘Hard no. We’re not talking to you.’ And we felt like that was the wrong decision.”

DULF started the compassion club in August 2022, and to date has distributed

over a kilogram of tested substances to drug users at high risk of overdose. But the point isn’t just to give out drugs: it’s to gather evidence on whether compassion clubs work, and how they could be better.

“In the harm reduction field, there’s a whole long history of the affected community taking matters into their own hands,” said Dr. Thomas Kerr, the BCCSU’s director of research and head of the division of social medicine at UBC’s department of medicine. He helped DULF with some initial ideas on a research framework while it was organizing the compassion club, but the organization very much led the way—as is the case for many harm reduction interventions.

Drug users have spearheaded needle exchanges, crack pipe giveaways, safe consumption sites, and overdose prevention sites, he noted, long before any of those things were legal or regulated.

“Not a lot has happened on [the compassion club] front from the system level, but here we have people who use drugs kind of leading the way. This sort of seems like history repeating itself, where these demonstration projects happen, and then eventually they become standard practice,” Kerr said.

Distribution of hard drugs to people who use them is also nothing new. But safe supply programs, such as the heroin program at the eastside Providence Crosstown clinic, are medicalized: participants need diagnoses, prescriptions, and titration to carefully decide their dosage. Those programs are inaccessible to many drug users, especially ones who live more chaotic lives, as missing a single appointment can lead to losing all access. And that’s if you can find a family doctor or registered nurse to be your primary care provider in the first place.

“The thing that makes our [program] unique is that it’s demedicalized,” Kalicum said. “You don’t need a doctor, you don’t need a nurse.”

But the lack of legal recognition causes problems for a large, complicated operation.

“It’s a tremendous pain in the ass,” Nyx said. “It’s very difficult for us to expand when our operations are illegal, let alone

10-years’-jail-time illegal, or find volunteers, or find manufacturers, or other such institutions that want to work with us.”

And 40-ish people is all the compassion club can handle right now, as trafficking larger amounts of drugs is costlier and riskier. But the current sample size isn’t really big enough to draw quantitative scientific conclusions from.

“We haven’t wrecked anyone’s lives or increased the amount of crime. People aren’t getting sick, people aren’t dying. All these metrics that we’re taking, they’re not increasing, but if we are seeing them decrease, there’s not enough of a sample size,” Nyx said. “Were the results of our evaluation to be negative, we would pull the plug on the project. But that’s not what we’re seeing.”

Although the sample size is small, there’s solid qualitative data that’s gathered in interviews with the subjects.

“People aren’t really overdosing and needing to be revived… people don’t overdose off [heroin, cocaine, or meth] like they do off fentanyl,” Kalicum said. “People are telling us… which is a surprising finding, that they’re using less drugs.”

Kalicum said other reported effects include members feeling “safer and protected from overdose,” that they are involved in less crime, have less police interaction, and have improved mental and physical health. But the compassion club isn’t a magical panacea, either –it doesn’t help with housing stability, for example.

DULF is expecting to hear back from Health Canada about its judicial review by the end of summer. If the decision is overturned, it could buy drugs from pharmacies and eliminate the need for testing. It could scale up operations, and look into distributing other drugs or helping other communities set up similar compassion clubs, without the ever-present risk of criminal conviction.

If the original ruling stands, “that’s exactly where we are right now,” Kalicum said. GS

DULF is hosting a Parade of Horribles on April 14, to mark the seventh anniversary of the unregulated drug emergency.

You don’t need a doctor, you don’t need a nurse

– Jeremy Kalicum

Vancouver takes a close look at its nightlife

By V.S.Wells

For a city with numerous universities, millions of residents, and a lower median age than the country as a whole, it’s surprising that Vancouver grinds to a halt after 9 p.m.

“I don’t think anybody is really being well served by the nighttime economy,” Nate Sabine, an executive on the board of Hospitality Vancouver Association (HVA), told the Straight over the phone. “If we’re going to actually be a world-class city, then we need a world-class nightlife that is safer and more inclusive and innovative and more vibrant than it is right now.”

That’s why HVA, alongside businesses organizations Destination Vancouver and Downtown Van, have launched a consultation on what the local night economy needs.

As Sabine explained, the nighttime economy is about much more than just clubs and bars: it’s everyone who works “the other nine to five.”

“The nighttime economy is people from hotel workers and taxi drivers, to transit workers, to mom-and-pop stores and sex workers, and then all of the more obvious people like DJs, bartenders, and all of the business owners as well,” he said. The industry is “generally an afterthought—not just for Vancouver, but for many cities.”

HVA’s night economy overview notes that some cities, like Amsterdam, New York and Toronto, have implemented government policies and planning that make nightlife more vibrant, safe and inclusive—as well as more economically and culturally stable.

Sabine said that changes to capacity limits in the last few years were a good step, but issues around noise by-laws and roadblocks to setting up new venues or events remained. The consultation hopes to identify what people want from Vancouver’s nighttime scene, and figure out how to make those ideas a reality.

The consultation has a couple of different forms: one-on-one conversations and small roundtables with relevant business groups and cultural organizations; and an online survey, open to everyone, that aims to gather wide-ranging feedback on what Vancouver’s night scene needs.

However, time and money are limited: the survey will only be open for a few weeks. Then, a report will be compiled and presented to the City of Vancouver in late May.

Ultimately, Sabine hopes that the consultation will be used to help shape conversation around nighttime economy policy, and lead to the creation of a dedicated Nighttime Economy Office—though details on what exactly that would look like are still being developed.

Although plans for this kind of consultation have been in the works for a while, COVID-19 dramatically impacted the industry for several years.

Politically, ABC Coun. Lisa Dominato first proposed actions to help the nighttime economy in 2019, and former Vancouver Mayor Kennedy Stewart signed off on creating an Office for Night Time Economy last year. However, said office does not seem to exist in the municipal government yet.

ABC also included a promise to create a Night Mayor in their election manifesto. Sabine said that the vocal support from the municipal government meant “the timing is critical.”

“There is not only political will, but there is a will from city staffers and business owners and workers in the nighttime economy,” he said. GS

Interested individuals who want a hand in changing Vancouver’s No Fun City reputation can read HVA’s overview of the night economy at hospitalityvancouver.com and fill out the survey at surveymonkey.com/r/yvrnte.

push continues to make big oil pay up

By V.S. Wells

The organizers behind Sue Big Oil, a made-in-BC lawsuit, are looking to expand after Gibsons city council unanimously agreed to use at least $1 per resident to help fund the fight against global fossil fuel companies.

Sue Big Oil’s premise is simple: gather money from municipalities around BC, and use it to pay a team of lawyers to bring a class-action lawsuit to cover the

costs of climate change. Gibsons is a significant victory for the climate organizing campaign, after Vancouver’s city council voted to rescind a similar commitment earlier this spring.

“We did have a municipal election that shifted the scene here. We had, pretty much, success in 2022, and now we have completely no support,” said Vancouver-based Manvi Bhalla, co-founder of the youth-led climate justice non-profit Shake Up The Establishment that supports Sue Big Oil.

“That was very disappointing, and I know

morale was quite low after that decision… That was kind of a slap in the face.”

Vancouver had previously voted to fund a Sue Big Oil lawsuit in July 2022, to the tune of $1 per resident. But that was stripped out of the city budget, as was a motion by Green Coun. Adriane Carr to keep one cent per person. The city’s Climate Emergency Action Plan also did not receive more money in the budget and remains around $240 million short.

Andrew Gage, a staff lawyer for West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) who is also part of the secretariat of the Sue Big Oil campaign, said the move ignored how much of the city’s budget is spent dealing with the ramifications of climate change. Disasters like the 2022 heat dome—which researchers have definitively linked to climate change—cost the province tens of billions of dollars, with significant proportions borne by individual municipalities.

“Road maintenance costs, stormwater infrastructure upgrades, dealing with the damage to the Sea Wall, having cooling stations—these are all costs that are included in the [Vancouver] budget,” he told the Straight. “A lot of these costs can be actually traced back to climate change.”

Community groups in other municipalities, including Victoria, Powell River, Nanaimo, Whistler and Burnaby, are hoping to follow Gibsons’ lead.

Kate McMahon, an organizer in Burnaby, told the Straight that politicians were interested, but wary.

“While everyone is interested and supportive of the idea, so far councillors are pretty hesitant to actually put the motion forward,” McMahon noted in an email.

The core premise of the lawsuit is that the fossil fuel industry knowingly caused climate change, and covered it up for decades—and yet the costs are being entirely borne by taxpayers, all while companies continue to earn huge profits.

The lawsuit isn’t about punishing fossil fuel companies, but rather about “trying to get them to just do what all of us certainly have to do, which is to pay a share of the cost of climate change.”

Bhalla said the “polluters-should-pay principle is kind of the bedrock of the lawsuit.” The idea that the entities respon-

sible for environmental damage should be held financially liable is well-established, though its current usage is limited. BC currently applies it to companies that spill hazardous chemicals.

But there’s also some misunderstanding about how the proposed lawsuit would work. Gage said a claim would be brought under nuisance law, where courts recognize that a person who is brought harm by someone else’s actions can claim compensation. While different, the underlying principle is similar to class-action lawsuits against tobacco and asbestos. WCEL, as organizers, would not be the legal firm bringing the case.

“If you sell a product that you know will cause harm—not just it might, it will, inevitably when used in the way it’s intended to be used, is going to harm other people— you can be held liable for that,” he said.

Around 20 local government-led lawsuits against fossil fuel companies are ongoing in the US, and the Biden administration has sided with plaintiffs in Colorado who are suing Suncor. Friends of the Earth Netherlands has also successfully sued Shell for its obligation to reduce emissions.

ABC Coun. Lenny Zhou, when voting against the lawsuit fund, suggested that Coun. Carr could start a crowdfunding campaign, and promised to personally contribute $500. But the lawsuit needs municipal governments as plaintiffs. If a lawsuit went ahead, and won, that Vancouver was not a part of, the city would not be eligible for any of those funds to help cover the spiralling costs of climate change resiliency, emissions reduction, or infrastructure repairs.

Bhalla said that climate activists in Vancouver continue to care about the Sue Big Oil campaign, and “there’s a lot of work that can be done” before the next budget vote or election.

“City councillors, like any political leadership, it is their job to listen to you and you as an individual have the right to tell them [what you care about],” she said. “Communicating with city councillors is going to [be] helpful for other climate adaptation and emissions mitigation initiatives, where we will need city constituents to reach out to councillors.” GS

living wages and waging class war in sim city

By Sean Orr

During the 2022 Vancouver election campaign, a supporter came up to me and showed me their handmade tote bag with the words “Ken Sim = Class War” printed on it.

It was a fitting, albeit somewhat hyperbolic, slogan for a mayoral candidate funded by Chip Wilson, whose Pacific Prosperity Network also sponsored a film by controversial director Aaron Gunn called Vancouver is Dying that echoed far-right tropes painting progressive cities as dystopian hellholes. Even the National Post had to declare that Sim was “hardly a fascist.” Still, it wasn’t exactly clear what Ken Sim and his ABC party stood for, a typical hallmark of what the late political economist David Graeber called the “extreme centre”. We would have to wait to see how his party governed.

Although he missed the first police board budget meeting to go to the World Cup in Qatar (where 6,500 migrant workers died since the country was awarded the World Cup, and whose anti-LGBTQ2 policies came under scrutiny), and asked if the Vancouver Public Library had looked into generating revenue, it seemed Sim’s claims of a “post-partisan” council might hold up. His party passed a motion by OneCity Coun. Christine Boyle to make it faster and easier to build non-profit, co-op, and supportive housing in every neighbourhood (albeit with heavy amendments), and gave her a (literal) round of applause.

But then Sim defended ABC Coun. Brian Montague after the latter was spotted wearing the historically racist and divisive thin blue line patch. Then his council killed the renter office. Then it dismissed the Climate Justice Charter, which included a robust equity framework. Then it passed a motion to effectively muzzle non-profits by demanding members be “respectful.” And now, it’s decided to abandon the city’s Living Wage Program after six years.

All of a sudden, it seems that “Ken Sim = Class War” is no longer hyperbole.

A living wage is the hourly amount a family needs to cover basic expenses and still be above the poverty line. The latest calculation for Metro Vancouver is $24.08 per hour. The figure does not include debt repayment, future savings for home ownership, or the cost of caring for a disabled or elderly family member.

In a statement posted on March 2, the BC Federation of Labour called on council to reverse the decision, saying it was a “breathtaking abdication of leadership.”

The Vancouver and District Labour Council also called on City Hall to reconsider, saying it was disappointed the decision was “made without the opportunity for consultation with community, stakeholders, and affected workers.” Indeed, the decision was made behind closed doors at an in-camera meeting.

In a city long hailed as one of the most expensive to live in the world—made worse by historically low wages, rising inflation, and soaring corporate profits—this move can only be seen as a cold-hearted attack on working class families. It will greatly affect those workers already in precarious situations and it sends the message that you can work here, you just can’t live here.

Supporters will likely say paying workers a wage based on the five-year

average is to account for annual fluctuations in workers’ and contract employees’ salaries. But as many others have pointed out, you don’t pay for groceries or rent based on a five-year average. Someone who has the interest of workers in mind would know this. But this is exactly who ABC masqueraded as on the campaign trail. At the Women Transforming Cities event Centring Equity, a report card was presented where every single ABC councillor committed to “An Equity Lens on Councillor Motions.” Every single one. And yet this budget, and the move to cut the Living Wage Program, hardly falls within an equity framework.

In fact, this budget reminds us that prioritizing bloated police budgets and the colonial carceral system defunds all of us, especially those communities seeking the equity that ABC councillors so eagerly promised. It also doesn’t keep us safe.

An insidious side effect of the decision to cut the Living Wage Program is that corporations that currently offer a living wage will follow suit. In fact, we are already seeing this. It could also set

a precedent that other municipalities could follow, citing budgetary constraints and austerity measures—although Port Coquitlam, Quesnel, and Victoria have committed to pay their staff the new living wage.

But a bigger issue is the snowball effect that paying people less has down the line. As provincial manager of Living Wage for Families BC Anastasia French said, “Working poverty has enormous fiscal implications for social programs, health-care costs, education, employment, and criminality. Paying city workers the Living Wage is a key solution to solving these issues.”

ABC is showing its true colours and counting on voters to have a short memory. The hypocrisy inherent in a billionaire-funded campaign that ran on a platform of equity and affordability is staggering. Equity for whom? Affordability for whom? It certainly isn’t for renters, families, and workers. GS

Sean Orr is a writer, student, musician, activist, and former candidate for city council with Vote Socialist.

ABC is showing its true colours

Welcome to the collaborative world of Vancouver D&D

By Chandler Walter

I’m standing in a Vancouver back alley with a crowd about three-dozen strong.

It’s a cold October night, but the leftover adrenaline from the show

and the rising anticipation of what’s to come is keeping the chill at bay. We’ve all got eyes on the backdoor of the Vogue Theatre. A black SUV is parked beside the door we’ve all been willing to open, praying that the four performers don’t head straight back to the hotel they’re staying at for this stop on the tour.

Playing such high-energy Dungeons & Dragons can sap one’s strength, after all.

Not Another D&D Podcast, or NADDPOD for short, is a popular D&D play podcast composed of Brian Murphy, Emily Axford, Caldwell Tanner, and Jake Hurwitz, who may be best recognized for their time on the popular YouTube channel CollegeHumor. The quartet started the show in 2018 and quickly amassed a dedicated following that would eventually rank NADDPOD in the top 10 earners on Patreon.

It would also allow them to add tours to their repertoire, resulting in the soldout show in Vancouver for a crowd that includes myself and a few equally nerdy friends. I’ve never done the whole “waiting in the back alley after the show” thing before—not even for the rock concerts I’ve frequented since my older brother(‘s ID) turned 19—but those in the know from our group are assuring the rest that it’s well worth the wait.

And sure enough, out come the D&D players, smiles on their faces, greeting fans like old friends, shaking hands, posing for selfies, and signing shirts. They linger long enough for anyone bold enough to approach to get a quick “Hello” in before calling for a group photo, which finds its way onto NADDPOD’s Instagram page

days later. A few goodbyes and the awakened engine of the SUV later and they’re gone, off to the next city, the next show, and the next throng of dedicated fans.

It all left me amazed to realize that D&D players had somehow found a way to tour, and perform, like rockstars.

I’m walking into a windowless room in the basement of the Vancouver Central Library. You might even call it fittingly dungeonous, given that those who are timidly filing in are all arriving for a Dungeons & Dragons & You event.

For the uninitiated, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) is a tabletop role playing game (TTRPG) that allows players, with the help of a game master (GM), to create a story together using the roll of a dice to determine the outcomes.

It’s a two-and-a-half-hour session, the first hour taken up by a brief explanation of how to play, handing out character sheets, and a call for volunteers to be GM. I’m there as a reporter but also as a participant, and am no stranger to D&D I’ve had a consistent online campaign going since 2018.

So when I see the others at my table keep their hands planted firmly at their sides, I figure “Why not?” And raise my own to volunteer.

What follows is an hour-plus-change of half-baked voices, diabolically daft goblins, some deadly giant rats, and one particularly dangerous river as I try my best to give the table an enjoyable adventure. To the players’ credit, I’m having an absolute blast, as these D&D newbies are coming up with plans entirely out of left field. What’s most important, though, is that we’ve all bought in. We’re using silly voices, seriously inquiring about mystical runes that only

exist in our collective imaginations, and loudly celebrating any time the 20-sided die (D20) lands on a 20 (resulting in a critical success), no matter who rolls it.

The library has been running these events for years now, ever since a D&D night for teens in 2018 resulted in a call for the program to be expanded to adults and kids alike.

“Ultimately, we decided to offer these sessions because they’re actually really in line with VPL’s strategic priorities,” says William Dereume. He runs the adult side of the library’s D&D events.

“They offer things like an opportunity for shared experiences, a space for people to learn and get creative together. And they’re also a space where people can pretty easily make some new friends and connect with each other socially.”

Dereume walks us all through the basics, eagerly inviting people into the room and giving the designated GMs the one-shot adventure they would be running. He’s been playing D&D for nearly a decade now.

Multiple people I’ve spoken with said they started playing at board game shops, but the library’s event seems like a fitting

place to start, too. After the enemy had been vanquished—or, in my group’s case, successfully duped—and the official runtime of the event reached its end, I stick around to get some photos and chat with Dereume. Some of the players linger behind as well; excitedly recalling their heroics, chatting about real life, and, in a few instances, exchanging contact information to potentially get a group together for more D&D in the future.

“I love this program, and I love what it can do for people. I love to see people enjoy themselves in this game,” says Dereume. “D&D offers a means for people of all kinds, no matter what their identity is, or what their background is to find a place where they can belong.”

How’s that for No Fun City?

I’m sitting at Turk’s Coffee on Commercial Drive on a sunny Sunday. It’s March. Across from me is The GM Tim. He has somehow managed to turn being a table-top role playing game game master into a full-time gig.

Among folks I’ve spoken to for this feature, the guy is something of a legend—even if “legend” isn’t a title

Vancouver legend GM Tim is thrilled he gets to play D&D for a living. Chandler Walter photo.

he’d ever own up to. He’s humbly flabbergasted to have found himself getting to play D&D for a living.

When I tell him this, he’s equal parts baffled and ecstatic.

“I dig that we’re sharing each other because a lot of times in the community, in any community, you can get a lot of that… almost ego gatekeeping. And it doesn’t seem to happen in the Vancouver community as much,” he says over his coffee.

Tim’s a treasure trove of knowledge about all things TTRPG, having been a professional GM for private groups, conventions, and castle retreats alike. We talk Star Trek (he has a Star Trek–themed live-play show called Lost Voyages you can find on YouTube), charging for his services in an equitable way (“I don’t need toxic amounts of profit in order to do these things. I don’t need toxic amounts of growth all the time”), and the drag D&D show Fierce Adventures he used to run out of Café Deux Soleils, which stopped during the pandemic and has yet to find a new home.

When asked how he would describe Vancouver’s D&D community, Tim takes a moment to think.

“It’s quietly vibrant,” he says. “I think that the cost of venues, and the price of going to places in Vancouver, hinders us being bigger than we are. I think the gaming community in Vancouver could rival Seattle. Vancouver’s kind of like this forgotten gem.”

For Tim, TTRPGs have become more than a hobby; they’ve become his livelihood, his social scene, his way to travel the world, and, even, his identity. ‘The GM Tim’ isn’t just his brand, he says. It’s who he is.

I’ve never interviewed anyone more genuinely enthusiastic about their job.

I’m sitting around the table with a group of people I just met. That’s not entirely true. I did have a phone call with Sarah Fox and Matt Klassen, Producer and DM of the D&D podcast ADVENTURE.EXE respectively, a few weeks ago.

We’re here with Stacey Sellars and Markus Ristich, the other half of the core D&D group. I’m here because they invited me to do a guest spot on the podcast. While Fox and Klassen are incredibly kind hosts (and make a mean butter chicken) I’m still a little terrified.

In that phone call, I asked them how different it is to play D&D when you know that every word would be recorded, posted, and live on in perpetuity on the

internet.

“It’s a lot more fun and energetic playing on a podcast,” says Fox. “I’m not trying to be a lead character when I’m just sitting around with some friends. So I’d say the recording experience is a little more intense. It’s definitely different.”

And I think, over the course of the evening, I’m getting used to it. Either that or the beers I brought are making it easier to speak into the microphone.

Apart from those anxieties, podcast D&D is fun. The game develops at a faster pace, the players know to keep things moving, the spotlight is shared, the jokes are abundant. Of course, the leniency of a GM when it comes to shenanigans is a major factor in keeping that energy up.

“As the Dungeon Master, I am a little more open to improv rules for playing on the podcast,” says Klassen, AKA the Dungeon Mattster. “I’m more willing to say yes to certain things and let players do crazy things, just to see where they end up going, and then agree to the crazy directions … because it’ll be entertaining for our audience.”

ADVENTURE.EXE began in 2016 when Fox was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that kept them stuck at home, and D&D just so happened to be the kind of thing you could do with friends around a kitchen table in pajamas.

The podcast is now on its third season, with over 170 hour-ish-long episodes under its belt and more than 200,000 downloads. It has played host to a variety of guests, including yours truly, The GM Tim, and Eric Fell—GM for The Critical Hit Show.

It makes sense that players and GMs in

the city are so interconnected, given the D&D community is built around collective storytelling.

“I’ve gone to a few local conventions and played TTRPGs with people and I’ve had so many good experiences. It’s really encouraging,” says Klassen. We played for three hours, which, under Fox’s keen cutting, will break up into three episodes. It’s getting late but it still feels bittersweet to call an end to the session. When we say our fond farewells (and never-ending “thank you’s” from both sides for coming out to guest/being invited to join), I leave with a warm sense of accomplishment; we did foil the “bad” guys’ plan by (SPOILER ALERT) chucking them off a train car, after all.

“Everyone who’s into D&D has the same sort of cooperative [spirit]; they want to work together. It’s very fun. It’s not competitive. You’re all making something together,” Fox says. “I feel like [D&D] really attracts the best of the best kind of people. Not saying that’s who we are.”

I’m contemplating exactly what it is that makes D&D, or TTRPGs in general, so special to those who have made it such a vibrant part of their lives.

For Fox, playing D&D has helped them with navigating social cues.

“In the last year, actually, I found out I was autistic, and it makes so much sense why I lean towards D&D because I get to express myself and experiment with different types of characters and differ-

ent types of attributes and traits. It’s like practicing for real life, but it’s fun, and that’s what I love,” she says. “I feel like it’s literally improved my life, socially, and my confidence.”

Klassen was equally moved by getting into D&D.

“Starting to play D&D was just a huge moment in my life where, and I’m not exaggerating to say, it really altered the trajectory of what I was doing,” he says.

“It really nurtured a lot of interests of mine that I hadn’t explored in a long time, and career changes that I made. I’m a video game developer now, so I do world-building and narrative design games, which is basically related to a lot of D&D work that I’ve done.”

Dereume notes that he has been proud to be a part of a city program that brings people together in such a unique way.

“Connection is something that we all want,” he says. The library wants to foster spaces, “for belonging and connection. And so I think that D&D and other tabletop role playing games accomplish this quite successfully.”

For Tim, even before it became his livelihood, it was a place where he felt safe to be him.

“You can dive into things with the right people in the right sort of safe settings and explore that,” he says. “One of the biggest ways that people come out is by playing games like D&D. I did.”

As a GM, Tim makes sure to provide that safe, open setting for those he runs games for—at conventions or otherwise.

“I really believe that diversity is our key to the game,” he says. ”Having been a queer, in-the-closet gamer, having to deal with the ridiculousness of male toxicity in the ‘90s. [It was] fucking gross. And seeing it in the nerd culture to this day infuriates me to no end…

“If I’m known for nothing else than the fact that I pushed those limits in gaming at conventions, it would make me a happy human.”

So just what, exactly, was the point of me galavanting through Vancouver’s D&D community over the past month?

Well, as a chronic Vancouverite, I’ve always been bombarded by the sentiment that “it’s so hard to make friends in Vancouver,” or that “This is a No Fun City,” which I believe to be demonstrably false.

And I don’t think that’s more aptly proven than in the open-armed acceptance, collaboration, and camaraderie of Vancouver’s D&D community. GS

Dungeons & Dragons and its 20-sided die bring diverse communities together.

he’d ever own up to. He’s humbly flabbergasted to have found himself getting to play D&D for a living.

When I tell him this, he’s equal parts baffled and ecstatic.

“I dig that we’re sharing each other because a lot of times in the community, in any community, you can get a lot of that… almost ego gatekeeping. And it doesn’t seem to happen in the Vancouver community as much,” he says over his coffee.

Tim’s a treasure trove of knowledge about all things TTRPG, having been a professional GM for private groups, conventions, and castle retreats alike. We talk Star Trek (he has a Star Trek–themed live-play show called Lost Voyages you can find on YouTube), charging for his services in an equitable way (“I don’t need toxic amounts of profit in order to do these things. I don’t need toxic amounts of growth all the time”), and the drag D&D show Fierce Adventures he used to run out of Café Deux Soleils, which stopped during the pandemic and has yet to find a new home.

When asked how he would describe Vancouver’s D&D community, Tim takes a moment to think.

“It’s quietly vibrant,” he says. “I think that the cost of venues, and the price of going to places in Vancouver, hinders us being bigger than we are. I think the gaming community in Vancouver could rival Seattle. Vancouver’s kind of like this forgotten gem.”

For Tim, TTRPGs have become more than a hobby; they’ve become his livelihood, his social scene, his way to travel the world, and, even, his identity. ‘The GM Tim’ isn’t just his brand, he says. It’s who he is.

I’ve never interviewed anyone more genuinely enthusiastic about their job.

I’m sitting around the table with a group of people I just met. That’s not entirely true. I did have a phone call with Sarah Fox and Matt Klassen, Producer and DM of the D&D podcast ADVENTURE.EXE respectively, a few weeks ago.

We’re here with Stacey Sellars and Markus Ristich, the other half of the core D&D group. I’m here because they invited me to do a guest spot on the podcast. While Fox and Klassen are incredibly kind hosts (and make a mean butter chicken) I’m still a little terrified.

In that phone call, I asked them how different it is to play D&D when you know that every word would be recorded, posted, and live on in perpetuity on the

internet.

“It’s a lot more fun and energetic playing on a podcast,” says Fox. “I’m not trying to be a lead character when I’m just sitting around with some friends. So I’d say the recording experience is a little more intense. It’s definitely different.”

And I think, over the course of the evening, I’m getting used to it. Either that or the beers I brought are making it easier to speak into the microphone.

Apart from those anxieties, podcast D&D is fun. The game develops at a faster pace, the players know to keep things moving, the spotlight is shared, the jokes are abundant. Of course, the leniency of a GM when it comes to shenanigans is a major factor in keeping that energy up.

“As the Dungeon Master, I am a little more open to improv rules for playing on the podcast,” says Klassen, AKA the Dungeon Mattster. “I’m more willing to say yes to certain things and let players do crazy things, just to see where they end up going, and then agree to the crazy directions … because it’ll be entertaining for our audience.”

ADVENTURE.EXE began in 2016 when Fox was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder that kept them stuck at home, and D&D just so happened to be the kind of thing you could do with friends around a kitchen table in pajamas.

The podcast is now on its third season, with over 170 hour-ish-long episodes under its belt and more than 200,000 downloads. It has played host to a variety of guests, including yours truly, The GM Tim, and Eric Fell—GM for The Critical Hit Show.

It makes sense that players and GMs in

the city are so interconnected, given the D&D community is built around collective storytelling.

“I’ve gone to a few local conventions and played TTRPGs with people and I’ve had so many good experiences. It’s really encouraging,” says Klassen. We played for three hours, which, under Fox’s keen cutting, will break up into three episodes. It’s getting late but it still feels bittersweet to call an end to the session. When we say our fond farewells (and never-ending “thank you’s” from both sides for coming out to guest/being invited to join), I leave with a warm sense of accomplishment; we did foil the “bad” guys’ plan by (SPOILER ALERT) chucking them off a train car, after all.

“Everyone who’s into D&D has the same sort of cooperative [spirit]; they want to work together. It’s very fun. It’s not competitive. You’re all making something together,” Fox says. “I feel like [D&D] really attracts the best of the best kind of people. Not saying that’s who we are.”

I’m contemplating exactly what it is that makes D&D, or TTRPGs in general, so special to those who have made it such a vibrant part of their lives.

For Fox, playing D&D has helped them with navigating social cues.

“In the last year, actually, I found out I was autistic, and it makes so much sense why I lean towards D&D because I get to express myself and experiment with different types of characters and differ-

ent types of attributes and traits. It’s like practicing for real life, but it’s fun, and that’s what I love,” she says. “I feel like it’s literally improved my life, socially, and my confidence.”

Klassen was equally moved by getting into D&D.

“Starting to play D&D was just a huge moment in my life where, and I’m not exaggerating to say, it really altered the trajectory of what I was doing,” he says.

“It really nurtured a lot of interests of mine that I hadn’t explored in a long time, and career changes that I made. I’m a video game developer now, so I do world-building and narrative design games, which is basically related to a lot of D&D work that I’ve done.”

Dereume notes that he has been proud to be a part of a city program that brings people together in such a unique way.

“Connection is something that we all want,” he says. The library wants to foster spaces, “for belonging and connection. And so I think that D&D and other tabletop role playing games accomplish this quite successfully.”

For Tim, even before it became his livelihood, it was a place where he felt safe to be him.

“You can dive into things with the right people in the right sort of safe settings and explore that,” he says. “One of the biggest ways that people come out is by playing games like D&D. I did.”

As a GM, Tim makes sure to provide that safe, open setting for those he runs games for—at conventions or otherwise.

“I really believe that diversity is our key to the game,” he says. ”Having been a queer, in-the-closet gamer, having to deal with the ridiculousness of male toxicity in the ‘90s. [It was] fucking gross. And seeing it in the nerd culture to this day infuriates me to no end…

“If I’m known for nothing else than the fact that I pushed those limits in gaming at conventions, it would make me a happy human.”

So just what, exactly, was the point of me galavanting through Vancouver’s D&D community over the past month?

Well, as a chronic Vancouverite, I’ve always been bombarded by the sentiment that “it’s so hard to make friends in Vancouver,” or that “This is a No Fun City,” which I believe to be demonstrably false.

And I don’t think that’s more aptly proven than in the open-armed acceptance, collaboration, and camaraderie of Vancouver’s D&D community. GS

Dungeons & Dragons and its 20-sided die bring diverse communities together.

Gastown7 a new and vital creative hub

By Eleanor Tremeer

It’s a quiet Tuesday night in Gastown, but descend into the basement of an apparently closed restaurant, and the first thing that will hit you is the sound.

Hip-hop beats float over the buzz of inebriated chatter, fusing into an atmosphere of intoxicating excitement. Venture further, and you’ll discover art pieces bedecking the walls of the cellar bar, transforming the space into a dynamic underground gallery, as the artists themselves mingle with friends, newcomers, and creators from all disciplines.

This is Gastown7, an eclectic gathering of artists and other creatives who’ve come to meet, mix and admire the artwork on display—and it’s exactly what Vancouver’s art scene needs.

Loosely named after the Group of Seven (Canada’s famous interwar landscape painters), Gastown7 is a new fortnightly event that is bringing Vancouver’s creatives

HEY

together, offering novice artists the chance to connect with veterans of the scene. Born out of a desire to foster community, founder Liam Greenlaw wanted to break down the “stark blank page” of a gallery wall.

“Showcasing art in a vibrant noisy environment is key,” Greenlaw says. “I wanted to create an interactive gallery where people can step out of their comfort zone.”

Although its inaugural event spotlighted three artists, Greenlaw assembled seven artists for its second event, and more are getting involved all the time. And as it gives people the opportunity not only to sell their art but to also make connections with other creatives, it’s easy to see why this grassroots event is already gaining so much traction.

“What makes Gastown7 so refreshing is the ambience,” explains Andrelle Jingco, one of the first “Gastown Sevens.” For her, the conversation is as important as the art: “The language is poetic, intelligent, and often the people who come believe in a vagabond, free spirit way of living.”

Gastown7’s bohemian, fluid social dynamic can be difficult to find in Vancouver. While there are many interesting, and innovative events, the creative scene is dominated by static stage-and-audience performances that don’t encourage meeting new people. You sit, you see the show, you leave, usually right after the show ends, all without venturing outside your own friendship group. And there are even fewer events for visual artists to meet their peers. For newcomers and fledgling creators, such evenings make it hard to break into the community—and they certainly don’t offer many creative opportunities.

That’s something Greenlaw wants to combat. Hailing from the UK, when he first arrived here Greenlaw found Vancouver to be “pretty segmented,” but he created Gastown7 so that people can make connections beyond their social cliques.

“This event enables all the different creative cultures to come together and they seem to get on really well,” he says.

Jingco, who says she’s had difficulties finding her niche in the Vancouver art scene, finds Gastown7 “invigorating” by

“The best part is you’ll never know who you’re going to bump into,” she says.

This approach has already proved its effectiveness. Two young artists have found mentors at Gastown7, which Greenlaw calls encouraging. Most creatives know the importance of support from their peers, especially when they’re starting out. Greenlaw wants to help

“It’s about building confidence,” he says.

“Sometimes you need somebody who’s been there before to point you in the right direction, or just tell you ‘you can do this.’ ”

Greenlaw wanted to provide a space where artists could tell their stories, and for Silouan Hainsworth, this was immensely helpful.

“I sold nearly everything I brought, which I take as a great testament to the importance of conversation,” they say. Much of Hainsworth’s art is inspired by their unique experiences with gender nonconformity. “Allowing people to get to know me in person seems more honest to my work, as it is absolutely an extension of my being, my heart, my voice and my passion.”

Of course, making it as an artist isn’t just about social opportunities and mutual support. The biggest barrier many new artists face is financial, because getting their art out there often has a large price tag attached.

“There’s not a lot of money going around,” says Greenlaw, “so it’s important to keep Gastown7 open and free.”

In a town where space, quite literally, is at a premium, it can feel like the creative community is fighting for room to breathe. But with more events that promote connection and offer artists a cheap and easy way to present their work, the artistic community will not only survive, but thrive.

Or at least, that’s what Jingo thinks.

“Gastown7 shines a spotlight on our beloved neighbourhood’s art community that once was, I believe, so strong,” she says. Over time, it “scattered and wilted, but is now being revived through art events like this.”

In the future, Greenlaw hopes that Gastown7 will only grow, and start to perpetuate itself.

“I don’t know how long I’ll run it,” he says. “What I’m hoping is that it goes by itself. I just like hanging out with the artists and hearing their stories.”

Although he’s focusing on visual art for the moment, Greenlaw envisions Gastown7 expanding into other mediums.

“I hope it develops into poetry or jazz… all of that is on the table, it’s the vibe.” GS

Gastown7 takes place every other Tuesday at Rosette (120 West Hastings). For updates, follow @gastown7official on Instagram.

Gastown7 founder Liam Greenlaw.

A musical celebration of Canadian civil rights hero Viola Desmond - the fearless woman on Canada’s $10 bill

from davie to the drive, A genesis guide to drag

By V.S. Wells

Every year in the bleak midwinter (February), Celebrities on Davie comes alive as 24 performers compete over four weeks to be named Vancouver’s Next Drag Superstar. On March 2, Genesis emerged as cream of the crop—becoming the first person assigned female at birth to win in the competition’s 10-year history. They accepted their crown in a spangled bodysuit, with a face full of glam and dramatic black moustache.

“It’s been so crazy,” they tell the Straight over the phone. “It feels like a lifetime ago, but also like no time has passed because I’ve barely left my house since then.”

Genesis has been performing since childhood, but their journey into drag is relatively recent. They started burlesque four years ago, and drag only a year and a half ago.

“Growing up in theatre, there were so many of the boy characters I always wanted to play that just would never be accessible to me because of the way that people perceive me,” they recall.

Burlesque placed similarly binary, gendered expectations on their performance. “In the drag world, I can play any of those characters, or none at all, or create my own character… You can really make your own rules. It’s very vast and I think it allows for tons of creativity.”

Previous winners of the event include

Canada’s Drag Race stars (and Bratpack members) Kendall Gender and Gia Metric; Drag Race Down Under’s Anita Wig’lit; and local stalwarts like Jane Smoker and Kara Juku. They’ve got some pretty big heels to fill. So what better person to break down Vancouver’s drag scene?

VANCOUVER’S SCENE

In a word, Genesis says that the city’s drag scene is “diverse.”

We start with Davie Street, the traditional home of cis gay night clubs, and where Vancouver’s Next Drag Superstar took place.

“You’re gonna see a lot of what you see on Drag Race, your more stereotypical, mainstream type drag,” they say , “which is going to be very beautiful, glamorous, top 40 music.”

But even in the West End, you won’t just find twinks twirling to Taylor Swift.

“There’s a really great group called Enby 6, that is all non-binary people and they within the group express so many different styles of drag every week within their shows,” Genesis says.

And every Sunday, there’s Legends, presented by veteran queen Jaylene Tyme at the Junction. “That’s always an all-ages show, and Jaylene is a wonderful, wonderful person in the drag community who is very good at educating audiences about what’s going on.”

If you want a bit of variety, look out for Kings and Things shows, which platform drag artists that do more masculine or gender-bending drag. There’s been more of these events popping up in the Village.

“That’s something that wasn’t as popular a few years ago, there’s always been a bit of a stigma against people who are assigned female at birth doing drag, and it’s sometimes a lot harder for those people to get bookings or to get paid as much,” Genesis says. “But in the last couple of years, I’ve seen the tides changing and there’s more appreciation for those performers.”

And, of course, there’s East Vancouver, traditionally home to all the queer and trans people who didn’t fit into Davie’s vibe.

“There you definitely are going to find a lot more alternative drag styles,” Genesis enthuses.

While Eastside Studios, the hub of sapphic nightlife, shuttered earlier this year, Genesis says the community will likely find new spaces to thrive in. “There’s going to be lots of different shows popping up in different places as we look for a replacement for that,” they say.

Further afield, you can find drag everywhere: shows are running on UBC campus, in Coquitlam and Maple Ridge. Breweries and cafes are hosting family-friendly, all-ages Drag Brunches, while classic staples like Drag Bingo remain elsewhere. The type of drag that happens at all-ages shows, especially Drag Storytime events, is deliberately calibrated to be appropriate for kids. More adult material remains gated to the 19+ club events.

“You can find drag pretty much anywhere that you look for it,” Genesis says. “There’s so much to see.” >>>

Genesis says the word “diverse” sums up the city’s drag scene. Timothy Nguyen photo.

You really can make your own rules

– Genesis

tumes, shows—everything that’s involved takes so much work.”

If you’re short on cash, that’s okay too. Like so many other kinds of art these days, drag thrives on social media exposure.

“If you’re not able to tip, a really great way to support people is on social media: just by posting videos of them, following them, sharing their content. That’s often the way that lots of people get booked for shows,” Genesis reveals. “If [producers] see that someone is being shared a lot, then that can be really helpful in that performer getting more work.”

DRAG ETIQUETTE

So, you’ve found a show you want to attend. Now what?

“Consent is so, so, so, so important,” Genesis says. “Sometimes when people see people dressed maybe a bit more provocatively, or they’re onstage and really revealing themselves and showing a different kind of level of vulnerability, audience members feel like they sometimes have more of a right to touch those people.” Look, don’t touch, is the rule of thumb.

Then there’s the matter of tipping. Head to an ATM to break out those fives—performers have put a lot of time and work into entertaining you.

“Performers are doing this for free a lot of the time, or for a very small fee. A lot of us are doing this just out of passion and the love of what we do,” they say. “But it does cost a lot of money to do. And there’s so much preparation that goes into it as far as practicing dances, lyrics, wigs, cos-

about how to break into the drag world: they were in a single drag show before COVID-19 shut down performances.

“So many shows are offering new performers opportunities all the time,” they say. “It’s very welcoming to new people to the scene, especially coming out of 2020 and 2021 with all the craziness [of the pandemic].”

Some of the all-ages shows, like Legends, are very welcoming to performers young and old. It’s where Genesis made their true drag debut. “That is a space where lots and lots of people in the city have their drag debuts, get their first glimpses into the drag scene.”

They also recommend 1181 as another spot on Davie that welcomes new performers. Their other piece of advice is just to see a whole lot of drag before you ever get on stage.

“Going to a lot of shows, getting inspired by other performers, is the best way to learn both what kind of drag you want to do and what art inspires you,” they offer. “Then you also get to know who is hosting shows, who are the people to speak to. And it’s really nice to become a part of that community before trying to take your own space in it.”

A SUPERSTAR’S REIGN

In the future, Genesis wants to move towards doing more in-depth shows. Some of their favourite numbers have been large-scale, like a performance as the Little Mermaid during the Next Drag Superstar campaign; or turning it out as Puss In Boots at a Shrek-themed night.

“I definitely want to start hosting and producing more of my own shows,” they say. “My goal moving forward is quality over quantity. I would love to be doing more, bigger shows, and a bit more of a higher production value.”

The prizes from winning Vancouver’s Next Drag Superstar may help them on that road: $2,000 in prize money, a custom outfit by designer Evan Clayton, and a variety of beauty products alongside a six-month contract with queer production company TFD Presents. But it’s not the glitz and glamour that motivates Genesis: it’s how drag makes them feel alive.

“I had done drag one show prior to the pandemic and then obviously couldn’t do any performing for quite a long time. And I realized how much I felt like I wasn’t my true self when I wasn’t able to express that side of myself.”

It’s Genesis’ world: we’re just living in it. GS

Finally, they have a more serious point: people who appreciate drag need to step up to support it in the face of anti-LGBTQ2S+ protests. There’s “lots of vitriol” being spewed, Genesis says; and queer and trans people and drag performers should not have to fight it on their own.

“Any way that you can show allyship to performers, particularly trans performers, performers of colour, is so, so important,” they maintain. “Not just saying they’re an ally, but actually being an accomplice and stepping up and showing support…People can show that they appreciate [drag performers] and are there for them and want to protect them and support them by being there physically, or speaking up online, is extremely important right now.”

DRAGGING UP

What about if the mood takes you to try performing for yourself? As a (relatively) new drag performer, Genesis knows all

A dance and theatre performance by Hillel Kogan (Israel)

Genesis has been crowned Vancouver’s Next Drag Superstar. Timothy Nguyen photo.

i would love to be doing more, bigger shows

– Genesis

Know your local podcaster

garth mullins is fighting the drug war with the Crackdown podcast

> WHAT DO YOU DO?

I’m Garth Mullins, an organizer with the Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users [VANDU]. I make a podcast called Crackdown, and I’m a musician.

> HOW DID CRACKDOWN BEGIN?

I’m an old-school dopey and I used heroin for a really long time. I’ve been on mostly methadone recently. But it means I’ve experienced two officially declared overdose crises—one in the ’90s and the one now. A year or two into this one, I was working with a lot of people at the VANDUand we just didn’t like how the media was representing our struggle, talking about the drug war, and representing us.

I’d been getting a little bit of skills in radio documentary making. I’ve also been playing in punk bands forever, so you learn a little bit about the recording process and the mixing process and all that, because you have to do it all yourself. So I thought this could be a good contribution and we started making the podcast five years ago.

Crackdown is the drug war covered by drug users as war correspondents. We try to cover it from the movement’s perspective. There’s a social movement of people who use drugs who are fighting for our rights to be decriminalized and not die. And we’re sort of trying to produce radio storytelling documentaries that go issue by issue through the drug war and explain to people what it’s like on the inside.

We’re irregular, posting like once every six weeks. We don’t have a day or an hour when it comes out. But we make audio documentaries, right? A lot of podcasts are just people talking or interviewing. We take you on a little journey, so it takes a lot more work. We also have an editorial board,

so we have a democratic activist process behind the podcast that’s involved in all of that. So, it’s a little bit slower to make. It’s slow radio, but it’s worth it.

> HOW’S THE RESPONSE BEEN?

I played in lots of little bands, so I’m used to playing to rooms with 12 people in it, and they’re the people in the other bands. So I was prepared for it to be like that, you know—[that] nobody would care or only people who were involved in making it. Or maybe [people] making other podcasts might care.

But we went right to the top of Apple’s Canadian podcasts. We won some pretty prestigious awards—the Sidney Hillman Foundation Prize for Investigative Journalism, the Third Coast International Audio Festival’s Impact award, and the New York International Festivals Radio Award. We did pretty good.

I was frankly shocked, you know, when we picked up thousands and thousands of listeners all over the country—and the world. We hear from office holders. Ministers of the Crown listen to us. And we hear from them. But most importantly, people who are drug users, who are isolated out there in the world—they don’t have any organization to go to or anyone they can talk to—they listen in and they write back.

> WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED ABOUT THE CRISIS THROUGH DOING THIS THAT YOU MAYBE WOULDN’T HAVE LEARNED OTHERWISE?

What I realized is something that I’ve known as an organizer, but it’s really come home for me, is that it’s not that the government is missing some information, or they just need the right study, or the

right person hasn’t been at the right meeting. It’s not like that. They know exactly, in detail, how many of us are going to die in the next fiscal quarter or whatever. They have models that predict it and they know that more people will die if they don’t do something. And they mostly choose to do nothing. I’m sometimes facing people sitting across the table from us who do not care if we live or die. So that’s been reinforced to me.

Then, in the last couple years, there’s a whole bunch of people who are blaming addicts for all the world’s problems, saying things like, “Elect me for mayor, I’ll hire more cops and stamp out this issue,” you know? You get an up-close, granular view of the human condition, and I don’t mean us [drug users]. I mean the people on the other side of the drug war—the deep, deep cowardice. This sort of, I don’t know what you call it, necropolitics. You know that this city is just all the way back

built on blood, to its founding, and you can never escape that.

> HAVE YOU SEEN THE WORK MAKE A POSITIVE IMPACT AT ALL?

I think we’ve changed a little bit of the journalism culture in Canada. Six, seven years ago, people used to talk about the drug war and drug users a lot differently. There were kind of two modes of storytelling. There was the “zombie scumbag criminal,” you know, that sort of right-wing way of describing us. And then there was this political centre, mushy liberal middle way. That was kind of like, “Oh these poor helpless waifs, they need to be saved.” They didn’t give us very much agency, so I think we’ve shown our agency and our ideas loud and clear. And I think that’s changed a little bit of the way that people talk about the drug war in Canadian journalism. GS

Crackdownpod.com | @garthmullins

Garth Mullins at his studio in the Downtown Eastside.

Photo by Jon Healy.

bizarre is better in Vancouver’s alt comedy scene

By Eleanor Tremeer

“But the best thing about tacos, right, is when the guac hits juuuuuust–”

The man on the stage abruptly stops. Comedian Colin Cowan has spent the last seven minutes extolling the virtues of various taquerias, blending his words into an almost incomprehensible slurry of surfer slang. Each review has been interspersed by his strange, robotic jerks and screeching feedback from the speakers. But hey, everyone has their bad nights.

Now, though, he stands stock still, eyes rolled back into his head, as from his mouth issues rasping, alien phrases that seem ripped from the pages of Dune. After delivering a lengthy tirade on the history of his war-torn people, he offers his true mission: to finally find the Guac’Dip (pronounced like “Maud’Dib”), the rarest of guacamoles that hits just right.

Welcome to the Hero Show, a collection of bizarre comedy monologues where anything can happen. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg that is Vancouver’s alternative comedy scene.

When it comes to entertainment, Lotusland is one of the richest cities in Canada. With multiple shows to be found around town on pretty much any night of the week, if you want to relax and have some laughs after work, you’re absolutely spoiled for choice.

But while the glittering stars of Vancouver’s comedy scene may be the standups, dig a little deeper into the city’s comedic offerings and you’ll discover the most bizarre shows you’ll ever see—and they’ll be some of the funniest, too.

“I started the Hero Show because I wanted a place where it was expected for comedians to do weird characters and try out bizarre ideas,” says Cameron Macleod, who began hosting the live comedy show 15 years ago, making it the longest-running of its kind in Vancouver.

Inspired by the surreal stylings of Portlandia and American comedy duo Tim & Eric, Macleod explains that he wanted to create a platform “where anything can happen.” And by inviting comedians to break their own molds and get weird with it, Macleod has curated an environment where the last thing you can expect is the expected.

In any other city, the Hero Show might be the only one of its kind—but if this town of barely reformed theater kids can do nothing else, it’s to produce a seemingly endless string of innovative performances. Where else but Vancouver could you go to an improv outing where the performers are stoned off their asses?

…Okay, plenty of cities—but where else would that be the premise of the show? Such is the case for Puff The Magic Improv Show, which actually began before weed was legalized in British Columbia—and this year it was featured in the Just For Laughs festival.

Just as Macleod’s show was born from Vancouver’s comedy scene, so too was Puff The Magic Improv Show, which had a truly grassroots beginning.

“It all started because we used to stand around in circles after other improv shows and smoke joints and talk about how funny we are now that we’re high,” says Sarah Dawn Pledge, one of the organizers.

“Weed wasn’t legal then so we started the show underground in the basement of a pizza joint in Gastown and smoked in the alley at intermission.”

Created by the Momentous Comedy team, that humble invite-only event has grown into a “high calibre” show, in which audience members are also invited to smoke with the performers at intermission for the full immersive experience.

And it’s that kind of innovation that makes Vancouver’s comedy scene so special, creating a space where genres, interests, and subcultures fuse to form new and exciting combinations. Such is also the case for No Tea No Shade, which combines the classic panel show structure with queer standup, drag, and even live musical performances.

Comedian and writer Jason Martin, who describes No Tea No Shade as “a comedy panel meets variety show celebrating all things campy, queeny, and queer,” explains that he created the show because he felt like he was missing a sense of LGBTQ2S+ community in Vancouver’s comedy scene. No Tea No Shade brings comedians together onstage for a good-natured competition, and

no matter who wins, everyone gets fun goody-bag prizes—even audience members, who are also invited to participate. Because, why not?

And that really is the sentiment behind these, and so many more of Vancouver’s off-the-wall showcases: why not? Why not perform your weirdest possible characters for one night only? Why not compare your sober jokes to the bizarre stuff you come out with when you’re high? Why not animate the classic panel show format with drag acts?

No matter what niche interest you have, someone in Vancouver has probably done some comedic spin on it. From D&D improv (The Critical Hit Show is a monthly staple at the Rio) to lore-heavy wrestling (Boom! Wrestling is always worth checking out at Commercial Drive Legion), you never know what you might find onstage—if you know where to look. GS

The Hero Show will be back on April 7 at China Cloud; Puff The Magic Improv Show returns on April 21, also at China Cloud; No Tea No Shade will be back in May (new location TBD).

Cameron Macleod (front row centre) created the often-surreal the Hero Show.

SOME

THE IDENTITY BUREAU

A BOLD EXISTENTIAL THEATRE PRODUCTION NOT TO BE MISSED

APRIL 2023

DRAGONETTE April 4 , Hollywood Theatre

Martina Sorbara’s first outing since 2017.

AMAI KUDA ET LES BOIS April 5, Shadbolt Centre

Hailed as “earthy and rootsy and good for your ears” by CBC’s Errol Nazareth.

100 GECS April 7, PNE Forum

Dubbed “one of today’s most thrilling and logic-defying live bands.”

SLEEPY GONZALES April 7, Fox Cabaret

Genre-bending indie band from Surrey.

CHIIILD April 7, Hollywood Theatre

Canadian experimental soul artist.

COVET April 8, Biltmore Cabaret California guitarist/ composer/multi-instrumentalist Yvette Young.

LATRICE ROYAL April 8 Hollywood Theatre

Drag performer, recording artist, and reality television personality.

PINK MOUNTAINTOPS April 8 The Cobalt Stephen McBean and old friends.

MOM JEANS April 8, Rickshaw Theatre Sweet Cali rock.

SABRINA CARPENTER April 8, PNE Forum

Actor and pop star on the road in support of latest album, emails I can’t send.

TARTA RELENA April 9, Chan Centre

Catalan duo reimagines song traditions across generations and geographies.

JOHN MAYER April 10 Rogers Arena

Mayer’s first ever acoustic tour.

SCREAMING FEMALES April 11, Rickshaw Theatre

Shredding in from New Jersey.

TWO ANOTHER April 11, Fox Cabaret Aussie dance pop duo.

DEL BARBER April 12, Biltmore Cabaret

Del Barber has shaped the folk music canon in Canada with five critically acclaimed studio albums under his belt.

GRAVEYARDS AND GARDENS April 12-15, SFU

Goldcorp Centre Sound and dance performed by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw and Vancouver-based choreographer Vanessa Goodman.

MIESHA AND THE SPANKS April 13, The Lido Calgary garage rock on tour in support of new effort, Unconditional Love In Hi-Fi.

HAYLEY BLAIS April 14 Wise Hall The coolest fucking bitch in town.

RUBY SINGH & THE FUTURE ANCESTORS April 14, Shadbolt Centre Sonic remedies to heal, guide and inspire the spirits of our kin, both known and unknown, seen and unseen.

FATOUMATA DIAWARA April 14, Chan Centre Hailed as a vital standard-bearer for modern African music.

VANCOUVER METROPOLITAN ORCHESTRA April 15, Queen Elizabeth Theatre Spring concert feature Beethoven program.

DEBBY FRIDAY April 15, The Cobalt Buzzy hyper-pop and R&B from Toronto by way of Vancouver.

JILL TOWNSEND JAZZ ORCHESTRA & SHARON

MINEMOTO TRIO April 15 Orpheum Annex Orchestra delights audiences with splendid arrangements and outstanding soloists.

HYPERSPACE METAL FEST April 15, Rickshaw Theatre Featuring Lords of the Trident, Judicator, and Exmortus.

JILL BARBER April 15, York Theatre Celebrating the release of new album, Homemaker.

BROADWAY RAVE “THE MUSICAL THEATRE

DANCE PARTY” April 27, Hollywood Theatre Party to Hamilton, Wicked, Rent, Hairspray Les Mis, and more!

BIG SUGAR April 15, Commodore Ballroom

Toronto rockers celebrating 25th anniversary of Heated.

TEI SHI April 18, Fox Cabaret Colombian-Canadian artist in support of new EP, Bad Premonition.

THE CREAM OF CLAPTON BAND April 18, Hollywood Theatre Four stellar musicians with family and musical ties to the Clapton legacy join forces to perform this inspirational new concert.

PUSSY RIOT April 19, Hollywood Theatre

Feminist performance art punks from Russia.

BUDDIE WITH DEVOURS April 20, The Lido

Buddie are celebrating their newest release “Agitator” with special guest Devours.

SLEAFORD MODS April 20, Commodore Ballroom English post-punk duo.

TENNIS April 20, Vogue Theatre Dreamy indie rock.

FEAR WITH D.O.A. April 21 Vogue Theatre

Two pioneering punk bands on one bill.

KIMMORTAL X NADUH April 21, Biltmore Cabaret

Two of the most exciting acts in Vancouver’s music scene right now.

DAWN PEMBERTON April 21, Fox Cabaret

Jazzy soul from Vancouver.

NIKKI LANE April 21, Hollywood Theatre

First lady of outlaw country.

THEY MIGHT BE GIANTS April 22, Commodore Ballroom Brooklyn alt-rock.

THE INTERRUPTERS April 23, Commodore Ballroom L.A. ska-punk.

BRIDAL PARTY April 25 The Cobalt

Victoria dream pop on tour in support of new album, Cool Down.

NILS FRAHM April 25, Chan Centre

Berlin musican, composer, producer.

CARCASS April 25, Commodore Ballroom

Melodic death metal pioneers from Liverpool.

GIPSY KINGS April 26, Orpheum Theatre Iconic Gitano-French band known for hits like “Bamboléo”.

SILVERSTEIN April 26, Commodore Ballroom

Prolific Juno-nominated punks.

MEGADETH April 28, Abbotsford Centre

L.A. thrash metal stalwarts kicking off Canadian tour.

FKJ April 28, PNE Forum French multi-instrumentalist, singer, and musician from the city of Tours.

DOUGIE POOLE April 28 The Cobalt Singer-songwriter based in Brooklyn. THE HOME TEAM April 28, Rickshaw Theatre Pop punk from Seattle.

CHRIS WEBBY April 28, Vogue Theatre

Rapper best known for his versatile flow, creative punchlines, pop culture references, and love for cartoons.

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM April 29, Rickshaw Theatre Masters of atmospheric black metal.

TED PARK April 29, The Cobalt Korean-American rapper.

MAY 2023

SHANIA TWAIN May 2-3, Rogers Arena

Let’s go girls! The country-pop icon is back with a triumphant new album, Queen of Me.

AVEY TARE May 3, Biltmore Cabaret Animal Collective’s David Michael Portner.

ROSE CITY BAND May 4, The Cobalt Ripley Johnson’s psych-country project.

LISTINGS ARE A PUBLIC SERVICE PROVIDED FREE OF CHARGE, BASED ON AVAILABLE SPACE AND EDITORIAL DISCRETION. SUBMIT EVENTS ONLINE USING THE EVENT-SUBMISSION FORM AT straight.com/AddEvent. Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

ASSEMBLY THEATRE COMPANY PRESENTS

> ARTS TIME OUT

APRIL 2023

SIBLING REVELRY April 5 to 23, Ferry Building Gallery Textile art by Eliza Massey Stanford, photography by Nathaniel Massey, sculpture by Raymond Massey, and ceramics by Vincent Massey.

HERE AND NOW To April 28, Pendulum Gallery

An expansive investigations into the histories of this place, the material culture here, and the changing streetscapes

CHERRY BLOSSOMS: A TEXTILE TRANSLATION

2023 April 5 to 30 Silk Purse Arts Centre 14th annual exhibit of textile art inspired by the cherry blossom.

START WITH ART To May 13, Seymour Art Gallery

A unique exhibition that focuses on encouraging young people to appreciate, collect, and curate their own art collection

DISCO INFERNO April 7 to 15, Russian Hall

Get ready to boogie on down to the sounds of the 1970s with “Disco Inferno,” the latest production by the non-profit society, the Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret.

QP WORKSHOPS: LEARN IMPROV COMEDY! April 3, Tightrope Improv Comedy Join QueerProv in this special improv workshop series and learn the improv games and skills you see at our live improv shows.

FUN is the goal - no experience needed. All welcome!

OPERA PUB — BY AGAINST THE GRAIN THEATRE

April 7, La Fabrique St. George AtG’s Opera Pubs are improvised, wild nights that offer up your favourite operatic arias and ensembles performed by both established and emerging opera talent.

SINGLE, NOT SINGLE April 6, The Improv Centre

Whether you’re coupled, throupled or none-of-theabove, you’ll have a belly-aching, heart-breaking good time as our performers explore the ups and downs of relationships and the lack thereof!

FRENCH NOIR April 7 to May 3, Vancity Theatre

In this series we dig out the French roots of film noir, and the seedy, jazzy, cool French crime movies of the late ’40s and ’50s.

BUSYBODY April 15, Deep Cove Shaw Theatre

When Detective Superintendent Baxter is called to investigate a murder, he is surprised to find that Mrs. Piper, a friend from way back, is the principal witness.

RUBABOO To April 30 Granville Island Stage

Derived from the Michif word for “leftovers stew” or “big pot,” Rubaboo will take audiences on an intimate, moving, and joyous journey—guided by powerhouse Métis performer Andrea Menard.

EXPERIENCE SYNCRA To April 30, Croatian

Cultural Centre Experience SYNCRA is a futuristic cyberpunk city with interactive exhibits that merge music, tech, sci-fi, interactivity and visual design.

STUDIO 58 PRESENTS: THE KITCHEN To April 9, Studio 58. Studio 58 presents The Kitchen, live at Studio 58 at Langara College, from March 30 to April 9. Immerse yourself in the high-pressure and precisely choreographed world of The Kitchen in our freshly renovated theatre!

EURYDICE IN LOVE April 8, Newmont Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre Alexander Formos performs a very personal and intimate monologue play about the traumas of a female sex worker, drawing inspiration from the candid experiences he witnessed on the streets of Paris in the 1930s.

BAD COMPANY BURLESQUE PRESENTS: SPRING

FLING April 8. Morrissey Pub Get ready to shake off the winter blues with Bad Company Burlesque presents: Spring Fling! at The Morrissey Pub.

MATRIARCHS SEEN AND UNSEEN To June 25

Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art Featuring over 20 striking portrait photographs of matriarchs of the Northwest Coast, the exhibition celebrates and honours the work of these women, showcasing their strength, wisdom, and deep connections.

HERE AND NOW To April 28 Pendulum Gallery

Capture Photography Festival Exhibition includes expansive investigations into the histories of this place, the material culture here, the changing street-

scapes, cultural inheritance, and sites of leisure that contribute to the intangible but formative elements of the city.

STUPID F*CKING BIRD April 12 to 23 Historic Theatre . Sort of adapted from Chekhov’s The Seagull, Posner’s contemporary retelling of the comedic tragedy has original songs, live music, and irreverent wit.

HEY VIOLA! April 13 to 22, Gateway Theatre

Hey Viola! is a musical exploration of Canadian civil rights trailblazer, Viola Desmond – the fearless woman featured on Canada’s $10 bill.

HILLEL KOGAN: WE LOVE ARABS April 13 to 15, Scotiabank Dance Centre. In Hillel Kogan’s award-winning duet We Love Arabs, a well-intentioned Israeli choreographer chooses an Arab dancer to create a work with a message of peace: what unfolds is a corrosively funny takedown of politics, ethnic stereotypes, and contemporary dance itself.

THE SHAPE OF OUR MEMORIES: EXHIBIT OPENING RECEPTION April 14 Mackin Heritage Home and Toy Museum This exhibit partners local artists with our collection of artifacts to create new pieces of art. Enjoy new works from talented visual artists, as well as a performance by Kelsi James.

DIRTY LITTLE SECRETS IMPROV SHOW April 14

Tightrope Theatre

Everyone writes an anonymous secret as they enter, then Vancouver’s Top Improv Comedians get inspired as the secrets are spilled!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH MICHELLE GELLAR

April 14, Little Mountain Gallery

Local comedian Randee Neumeyer hasn’t had a fun birthday in years, so this year she’s celebrating Sarah Michelle Gellar’s birthday instead.

PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT To April 13, B1 Gallery

This exhibit is part of the Beaumont’s Juried Artist to Watch 2022 program of Vancouver artists.

WHITE NOISE April 15 to May 7. Firehall Arts Centre White Noise explores what it means to live in Canada from two different paradigms and asks us to consider: How do we deal with internalized racism? Do we keep pushing it away and pretend to live safely in our day-to-day?

POSSE POWER: A GROOVY GALA OF CABARET AND BURLESQUE April 15. Hollywood Theatre

Combining the energy of classic burlesque, vintage cabaret and dance, this show will transport you to a different time that celebrates splendour in all its forms.

BIRD BY KYLIE VINCENT April 18 to 22 Vancity Culture Lab Bird, written and performed by 22-year-old Kylie Vincent is equal parts stand-up, memoir, and fever dream and is about a Gen Z trainwreck soaring beyond her childhood trauma.

THE LEGEND OF GEORGIA MCBRIDE April 20 to May 21 Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage An Elvis impersonator embraces a new way of life.

SEEMA SHAH: UNTHOUGHT KNOWN April 21 to May 12. B1 Gallery. A multimedia installation of art & text filled with narratives that are dark and questioning. The exhibition is part of Beaumont Studios’ Artist To Watch Award.

CRAZY FOR YOU April 27 to May 14. Massey Theatre. A classic romantic comedy about a boy, a girl, and a theatre in need of salvation, it is full of humour, larger-than-life characters and some of the greatest show tunes of all-time.

SANSEI: THE STORYTELLER April 27 to 29 Shadbolt Centre for the Art Through an engaging blend of dance, spoken word, historical audio, family interviews, and unexpected humour, Kunji Mark Ikeda weaves an illuminating and profoundly personal tale.

LISTINGS ARE A PUBLIC SERVICE PROVIDED FREE OF CHARGE, BASED ON AVAILABLE SPACE AND EDITORIAL DISCRETION. SUBMIT EVENTS ONLINE USING THE EVENT-SUBMISSION FORM AT straight.com/AddEvent Events that don’t make it into the paper due to space constraints will appear on the website.

The radical self-empowerment of shania twain

By Yasmine Shemesh

The skin was important. A diagonal line from collarbone to thigh. And to be braless underneath an open, semisheer black shirt. Then, the posture: confident, at ease. It’s symbolic, all of it. She wanted a visual that was self-empowering, something that depicted the vulnerability, the responsibility, the very statement of being comfortable in your own skin. After all: that’s what this was about.

Queen of Me. Shania Twain’s expression is serene as she contemplates the cover artwork of her new album—the portrait of her, with all its layers, its immensity and intention.

“It represents challenge, and overcoming the challenges and doing it with confi-

dence—or finding confidence on the other side of it,” she says, thoughtfully, after a few seconds, speaking to the Straight from her home in Geneva, Switzerland. “I’m in a really good place, in that sense. And I think that capturing it in the photo was very important.”

This is the first record Twain has released since having open-throat surgery in 2018 to reinforce her vocal cords, nerve-damaged from contracting Lyme disease over a decade earlier. She had been slowly losing her voice, the signature soprano-contralto, that, with consecutive diamond-certified records The Woman in Me, Come On Over, and Up!—had made her one of the best-selling artists of all time. On Queen of Me, a celebratory collection of songs full of verve and

Shania Twain describes herself as in a good place on Queen of Me. Louie Banks photo.

self-love, she found it again.

A longtime resident of Geneva, Twain moved there in the late ’90s, reportedly as a respite from fame. She is looking relaxed on our Zoom call, wearing a white T-shirt and jean jacket, and there is recording equipment in the background.

Twain was still in Las Vegas for her Let’s Go! residency at Planet Hollywood’s Zappos Theater when the world shut down. The songs that would make up Queen of Me poured out right away, and all the way through the lockdowns, as she retreated to Canada for a while. Writing, and her approach to it, worked as an exercise of well-being in the face of the pandemic and everything happening with her voice, which collided with a terrifying bout of COVID-related pneumonia.

“I ended up, really, writing this album to save my own frame of mind, and to write things that were taking charge of my mood,” Twain says. “That meant lifting my spirits, putting some up ‘in my giddy.’ Just finding that optimism and really holding myself responsible for my frame of mind. So, I started writing lyrics that made me smile and laugh, and melodies and rhythms that made me want to dance. And it worked. It was this fabulous therapy that ended up becoming my happy album.”

A GLIMPSE INTO TWAIN’S mindset can be seen in her 2022 Netflix documentary, Not Just a Girl. There’s a particular scene towards the end where she’s in a boat on the water, eyes closed, acoustic guitar in her lap, softly singing a few lines of the title track’s chorus: “I’m not a girl/I’m not a boy/I’m not a baby/I’m not a toy/I’m a queen.” It’s a quietly profound moment that shows just how much the release of these words relieve the weight they carry.

“I really mean all the lyrics on this album, and they’re very personal in a self-searching kind of way,” Twain says. “And then, in that search, you’ve got to come to the conclusion that you have conviction in being your own boss. No one can put you in that position. I don’t think you can even talk yourself into that. You just really have to live it and feel it. But because there’s a lot of responsibility that comes with it, that means the good, the bad, and just taking the ownership of how you’re going to live your life, what you represent, and your own self-value.”

There has always been a resilience to Twain’s songwriting. It comes from the nature of her spirit. She had a difficult upbringing in Timmins, Ont., which

included singing in bars as a child to help support her family, and taking care of her siblings after her parents died in a car accident in 1987.

“I turn to music to sometimes escape challenging things in my life, or to just find peace,” Twain notes. “I let my imagination go. It’s an uninhibited environment.”

Queen of Me’s electro-pop banger “Waking Up Dreaming” perfectly explains it, she offers. Music pulls her out of wherever she is and returns her feeling better, rejuvenated.

“I’ve always turned to songwriting for that,” Twain reveals. “It’s a great escape. It’s another world. And it allows me to express things that maybe I wouldn’t, because I’m just talking to myself in that moment. I’m just literally talking out loud half the time. I’m singing out loud. I’m laughing out loud. I’m entertaining myself and having fun. Whether I even make songs out of some of this stuff is not even

flirting with a cute guy on Miami Beach. She’s wearing a cropped top, no bra, with her midriff showing. Modest as it sounds now, it was a watershed moment. As Twain puts it in her documentary, she was a disruption to the image of country music—and it turned Nashville on its head.

“Nobody really knew how I was going to materialize the song, visually. And I’m not sure I really did either, until I got there,” Twain admits, adding that Mercury Records gave her a small budget and sent her to the department store to pick out a few things to wear. “I just gravitated to what I felt good performing in. It was the first time I realized that, by stepping into a visual creative space, I could leave my shyness behind and…”

important some of the time. Sometimes it’s just the therapy of it that is so freeing and so, I guess, cathartic.”

When she was growing up Twain listened to all kinds of music, particularly thrilled with country and rock. She was attracted to strong female artists who made room for themselves. She loved Heart and Pat Benatar. And Dolly Parton—“Amazing songwriter. Beautiful singer. Incredible musician. A very profound person.”—was a big inspiration.

“She was a great mentor for me, even without me ever knowing her in my own development as a kid,” Twain says. “And I admired her confidence of getting out there and not compromising her aesthetics for the sake of her art. She didn’t allow herself to be intimidated by not being taken as seriously for her actual art because of her taste in style and fashion and beauty. I admire her for that: for standing up, for being bold, and everything that she was, all at one time.”

Like Parton, a feminist thread has run through Twain’s career, driven not only by her determination and artistic vision, but by the fearless way she blazed trails in a sexist music industry. Before breaking through in 1995 with The Woman in Me, Twain released her self-titled studio debut in 1993—and while she has expressed frustration at how little creative control she had on it, what she did have control over was her look.

The music video for her first single, “What Made You Say That”, shows her

Twain pauses. “I guess it’s more than shy. I was just insecure about being a woman. I was wearing two bras, not no bra. And so, when I got in front of the camera and I was getting into this creative, liberated space, I just said, ‘Forget the bra altogether!’” She laughs. “So, when that image came back to the label, they were like, ‘This is not what we were expecting.’ But I’d found myself at that moment. And I realized that, like songwriting, it was a creative space, and I could start to see where my visual extension was the first song that I wrote.”

Twain got resistance from the industry, of course. CMT even banned the video. Country music had become increasingly conservative and the media was, as recent cultural reckonings have highlighted, generally awful to women in the ’90s. But the fans loved her.

“I was being true to myself, and I think the fans understood that. I was just being me, like Dolly was being her. She wasn’t anything of the country music mold that I grew up listening to and watching. She broke that mold wide open. And I felt that I had the right to do the same thing. She gave me the courage to do that. And then I found that expression and freedom the minute I had control of it, and I just ran with it.”

Twain grins. “Oh, yeah. I felt like a naughty child when they saw the footage. And I enjoyed it. It was good. It was good for me. I was very lucky to have that freedom. I just don’t think they took it that seriously.”

TWAIN CONTINUED to be the artistic director and editor for all her music videos. It went hand-in-hand with the boundaries she was pushing with her music,

Queen of Me showcases Shania Twain’s unique ability to turn pain into power.

I turn to music to sometimes escape challenging things

–Shania Twain

as she combined the genres she always loved, blending country sensibilities with unforgettable pop hooks and rock and roll guitar, underscoring it all with sensuality and confidence. Nobody had done it like Twain before. She found a like-minded collaborator in producer and her now ex-husband Robert John “Mutt” Lange (AC/DC, Def Leppard), and forever redefined both pop and country music with The Woman in Me and 1997’s Come On Over—the latter of which cemented her as a crossover artist and remains the biggest-selling studio album by a solo female artist to this day.

Come On Over dominated the charts and airwaves for three whole years, yielding back-to-back hits like “Don’t Be Stupid (You Know I Love You),” “You’re Still the One,” “From This Moment On,” and “That Don’t Impress Me Much.” The enormous success paved the way for future female crossover stars, like the Chicks and Taylor Swift. Twain was smashing the patriarchy with style and having fun doing it. And perhaps nothing exemplified it best than “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”.

With its clever title, opening blows of brass, and Twain’s call to the masses—“Let’s go girls!”—the song itself stands as a rally for liberation: a woman taking charge, leaving inhibitions behind, not asking for permission from anyone.

“It was very much just my own independent thinking,” Twain notes. And then, the music video: Twain in a top hat, bustier, tie, trench coat—a look designed by frequent collaborator Marc Bouwer—and backed by her mannequin-like man-band, playfully subverting gender and riffing on Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love.” It immediately became a touchstone of the zeitgeist, and has since transcended as one of the most iconic moments in modern pop culture history— and an anthem for all.

“It was less about fashion than it was about this hybrid thing to wear and to represent,” Twain says, adding, “It was all so fun. It was really quite a statement. I didn’t realize how impactful it would be.”

Despite all her achievements, Twain never felt a movement of the boundaries that she was pushing so hard against. Not until much later.

“I’m only now feeling the respect from a lot of people for what I really actually did and what I really meant to my own career, and the roles that I played,” she says. “At the time, I kind of accepted that I knew I wouldn’t get that respect. I never

knew that I would eventually get it. I’m glad I did, but, at the time, I just didn’t let it bother me. I carried on just being the best that I could be. And I had an advantage to my determination because I really had nothing to lose.

“I had nothing to go back home to, you know?” she continues. “Nothing. My parents were gone. I had no financial support system. I had no back-up. And I’d also learned to be fearless. I was going to make it work, no matter what. I think when you’ve got nothing to lose, you just go for it.”

Twain’s voice is more dramatic now. It’s still undeniably Shania. It soars in new directions, with the inflections and phrasing that always characterized her vocal identity very much intact. It took her a while to get there, years before doctors figured out that Lyme was the cause of her dysphonia. Twain thought it was over, she admits, that she’d never have a singing career again. It was devastating. She could only dabble in her instrument, not sustain it. In 2002, after touring in support of Up!, she went on indefinite hiatus.

“What I did to get through that—that grief, while I didn’t know how to get it

back or even what was really wrong with it—was I was a new mother, and I was so enjoying that,” she recalls, referring to her son, Eja, now 21. “And it was, in a way, now the silver lining, because I just indulged in parenting. And it was such a blessing. I got to enjoy being a mom. I was able to raise my son in normalcy, so his most impressionable years were, you know, mom taking him to school, picking him up. Lots of time together.”

Once Eja was older, the reality of losing her voice hit Twain harder. She began rehabilitation and seeing specialists, strengthening her voice enough to release Now in 2017. She eventually saw a neurosurgeon who, while acknowledging that her condition is incurable, suggested an uncommon procedure that would at least help stabilize her vocal chords.

“I took the chance,” Twain says. “I jumped in, I faced the fear, and did it. And it worked. I don’t know how long it will last. I know that it may not last forever. It’s been explained that way—because the anatomy is what it is, and it could give

again. But I’m going to make the most of it and make records that I love and sing on stage. And all the more reason to make a happy record.”

Queen of Me showcases Twain’s remarkable capacity for processing pain into power, tragedy into triumph. It beams through the ebullient soundscape in playful couplets that feel like affirmations—hard-won and feel-good wisdom that Twain wants to share with the rest of the world.

On the spirited “Inhale/Exhale AIR,” for example: “What you gonna do with that air?/Get up, you can stand, put your hands in it.” Written in response to Twain’s experience with pneumonia, while also feeling symbolic of what she’s endured with her health, the lines reference air’s life-giving force and offer encouragement to embrace it all while you can.

Then there’s “Waking Up Dreaming,” with, “Every moment holding you is a moment stolen/Gotta be now or never, time ain’t waitin’ forever.” And “Giddy Up!”—a punchy stomp that winks at Twain’s affinity for punctuation—where she sings, “Smiles for miles, all upon my face/Wear it, share it, ‘cause we ain’t got time to waste.”

“I feel like I’ve accomplished this new frame of mind that is really, really empowering and very liberating as a human being, as a person that is, of course, imperfect,” she says. “But I don’t hate myself for being imperfect. And that was a really big sentiment going into this whole album experience.”

A lot of realizations came with age, Twain adds. Now, she feels more unapologetic than ever. “Why did I wait so long to look in the mirror and go, ‘Wow, okay: I’m not perfect, but this is me and I better start loving it now?’ What am I waiting for? What am I wasting time for, not liking myself or wanting things to be different all the time?”

The key, she notes, is understanding that the strength, the resolve, comes from within. And, even when it’s hard, we must remind ourselves that it’s always there.

“You are in charge of how powerful you are. Only you. It’s not given to you. Your self power is not given to you from society, from parents, from legislation. You give it to yourself. And you have to believe that it’s there, that you have it, first of all. And that’s why I wrote the song ‘Queen of Me.’ I’m not the queen of anyone else.”

Twain smiles. “Just myself.” GS

Shania Twain performs at Rogers Arena on May 2 and 3. She returns to Rogers Arena November 14.

Shania Twain: “I jumped in, I faced the fear, and did it.” Louie Banks photo.

Avey Tare searches for transcendence with 7s

By Stephen Smynuik

Anyone who’s ever been can attest, no two Animal Collective shows are ever the same. But at its best, the music is delirious and melodic, chaotic, and communal (the audience as much a part of this ritual), everything pulsing with strange electronic rhythms and the reverberated yelps of Avey Tare.

It’s weird, exhilarating stuff—and exactly what Tare, aka Dave Portner, has always had in mind. From the very beginning, his M.O. has been exploring new routes in the music, finding new ways to express himself, depending on his mood, the vibe in the room, or the feeling of notes on any particular night.

“I’d like somebody in the audience to feel like they’re exploring with me,” Portner says, speaking from his home in Asheville, North Carolina. “Like there’s some kind of journey happening,” “I always wanted a live performance to be this happening, going back to the old acid tests. That kind of thing. I do like improvised music quite a bit, and I think there’s something you can only get out of an improvised music set—some kind of feeling that you can’t get with somebody recreating a record note for note.”

Portner has set out on his first solo tour in four years, and it’s literally a solo tour—just him and his rig. It’s a “nerve-racking” approach, he admits, in part because he hasn’t done it enough. He’s performing songs from his latest album, 7s, as well as older solo material, finding the space between “jammier moments and more straight up moments.”

“I’m trying to figure out ways for it to feel organic, because that’s important for me: having fun on stage and keeping it interesting and having it feel like it’s not this set thing that’s always the same way,” he says.

Fan responses on the Animal Collective subreddit to the first run of shows of the tour back this up, with some noting that the old transportive approach is alive and well, even without the rest of the Animal Collective in tow. And in some ways, the live experience feels like an extension of 7s’ recording, which itself was a response to the isolation Portner experienced during the pandemic, particularly while recording AnCo’s lauded 2022 album, Time Skiffs

“I just needed to get out of my home studio,” he says. “Being alone, when you’re used to collaborating a lot with people and making records that way— when that’s all taken away from you and you’re just alone with your thoughts [through] this pandemic thing… it just got to be a little much.”

Portner set out to record at the studio that a close friend, Adam McDaniel, had built. The writing process had technically begun in 2019, when he wrote “Hey Bog.” There was something about that tune in particular that he felt needed to be at the centre of this new project, so he wrote the other tracks around it, with “Hey Bog” serving as the album’s centrepiece and emotional core.

“7s was… so spontaneous that in some ways, it didn’t matter to me if everything was in the same world. I just felt good about

[“Hey Bog”], so it was a matter of just constructing a record around that idea.”

Each song inhabits its own universe, skipping from the breezy refracted pop of the album opener “Invisible Darlings” to the squelching ear-wormy head-trip “Neurons.” There’s a weightlessness to 7s, riding cosmic vibes most commonly associated with Portner’s AnCo bandmate Panda Bear—and feels like the flip side of his 2022 collaborative album with Sonic Boom, Reset

It’s this trifecta of albums (which includes 7s), in fact, that has marked what some consider a renaissance of sorts for Animal Collective in the post-pandemic era. Gone are the fickle experimentations of the ’10s AnCo, which seemed to push

as far as possible from their most critically and commercially successful work, 2009’s seminal Merriweather Post Pavilion Instead, the band seems to have settled into a comfy middle age, embracing the experimental pop of past records without ever sounding like retread.

That’s the critical assessment, anyway. Portner sees it differently.

“Time Skiffs was just me marking time,” he reveals. “I felt like I had a good record there, and was excited to put it out. And I feel like it also ended an era for me of where I’m at creatively, and just is allowing me to move on and away from that. It’s weird when somebody just takes one record as, like, ‘Now they’re back!’ I’m very appreciative of all the love that Time Skiffs has gotten, but I also feel like a lot of people felt like maybe an older Animal Collective was back.”

Portner says new Animal Collective music will be released at some point this year, though he can’t say how much or in what format. But as always—like everything he’s ever done—it’s a mere milepost, a stopover, until whatever comes next. Wherever that is, he’ll see you there. GS

Avey Tare plays at the Biltmore Cabaret on May 3.

Animal Collective’s Avey Tare is ready to hit the road solo for 7s. Photo by Amy Grace.

I just needed to get out of my home studio

– Avey Tare

Louise Burns escapes with her epic element

By Yasmine Shemesh

There is a rural village located in Baja California Sur, with buttery sand and warm turquoise waves that fall into perfect breaks, prime for surfing. Before the pandemic, Louise Burns had been spending a lot of time there, at the beach. The easy roll of the ocean and the chirping birds and their flapping wings offered relief from her daily grind, where Burns had been working to the bone to prove herself as a producer and musician. The beach, and its calming effect, would also inspire her new album, Element, a stunning collection of songs out on April 21.

“I think I make better art when I’m in a space of curiosity,” Burns tells the Straight, cradling a mug of tea in her hands, sitting outside the Federal Store in Mount Pleasant’s crisp winter sun. “It just reignites my passion for being creative.”

When she was bound to her Vancouver apartment, Burns held on to that beachy feeling, wanting to channel the breezy energy into something when the time came. It was tough, at first. She felt blocked as she attempted to write again. But suddenly, a switch flipped.

“I just started writing and I realized it was really creating a sense of escapism,” Burns says. She sought to craft something that evoked a sense of wanderlust and that purgatory state where you’re so jetlagged you don’t know where you are.

“I love that feeling. And I wanted to make that into my art. And that became a little bit of an obsession for me. It was just like this wonderful thing I could do for myself.”

It was also the longest stretch of time Burns had been home since 2001. Back then, she was still living in Cranbrook and was one-quarter of the girl group Lillix. It was just before the pop-rock band signed to Madonna’s record company, Maverick, and Burns was rehearsing every day after school in between horseback riding, snowboarding, and doing “normal early

2000s teenager stuff”.

“Watching Blue Crush,” she says with a grin, “having a picture of Brandon Boyd on my wall, like, all the classics: wearing hemp necklaces, puka shells. That was me.”

After Facing Uphill—Lillix’s 2003 debut that featured MuchMusic mainstays like “It’s About Time” and “Tomorrow”—Burns never lived full-time at home again. She was traveling constantly. Being in her formative years, it embedded a restlessness in her that she must always be on the move.

This time, stasis forced the dust to settle. It helped that Burns is an introvert and thrives in solitude, anyway. But the isolation allowed her to embrace the anxiety and fully dive, headfirst, into her work.

“I was like, ‘Fuck it,’ ” she offers with a laugh. “ ‘I’m just going to be a perfectionist. I’m going to be insane. I’m going to go into my headspace and I’m just going to stay there.’ And it was actually really fun. I enjoyed it a lot, because I allowed myself to be more lighthearted about it and less worried, I guess, of what the result would be.”

Building on her previous albums—the gothic pop of Young Mopes, the hookiness of Portraits, the electronica of her remix EP, Silhouettes Element is Burns’ most epic yet, and showcases the meticulous brilliance of her craft. It’s a hypnotic sonic experience that soothes like a sundrenched daydream, with a sparkling soundscape that breathes, layered with satisfyingly lush synths and real rhythms of whales, waves, and birds.

Burns’ voice unfurls in haunting and euphoric tones as she sings of loving, longing, and letting go in the tripped-up “I Don’t Feel It Like I Used To” and the intoxicating “Play Pretend.” Compassion underscores the shimmering title track, with Burns imploring, “Could you imagine anything as good as the feeling of being understood?”

As is her signature, though, the lyrics are more psychedelic than literal.

“The diary entry-style of writing is

not something I’ve ever enjoyed or been particularly good at,” she notes, adding that, to her, the best thing is when lines materialize seemingly out of nowhere and everywhere, like a gift from the cosmos. “That’s what I live for, that feeling of a good idea that you don’t have to think about. It just comes out.”

Element was co-produced with Jason Corbett (who also fronts the post-punk band ACTORS). Corbett and Burns are old friends, which lent a built-in sense of trust and respect that translates beautifully to the music. In 2020, they paired up on a heady cover of Depeche Mode’s “See You” and it set the tone for a dream collaboration that Burns describes as a perfect match.

“We have similar influences, as well, and I could reference, like, early ’90s rave music and Depeche Mode and all kinds of things. He totally gets it,” Burns says, adding that Corbett made her feel safe to freely explore her wide palette of musical interests, from Enya to Aaliyah. (“She’s always been a huge influence on me,” Burns notes of the late R&B star.)

While working on Element, Burns was

also reading The Beach, the novel by Alex Garland, later adapted into the Leonardo DiCaprio film of the same name. She got obsessed: with the book, the movie, the soundtrack.

“It totally just blew my brains apart,” Burns shakes her head.

The themes of Gen-X and ennui and how they remedied it by running away and backpacking in Thailand to figure out what the real world was about—she couldn’t help but wonder: was Mexico her version of The Beach?

“Am I being an asshole tourist?” Burns asks. “Am I being an adventure tourist or a sort of existential crisis tourist? I got really, really deep into thinking about what it was that I was doing, searching for something, always travelling, always leaving, always moving forward. What am I running from? I don’t know if I can answer that… Travel is one thing, but making a point to escape something? That’s interesting.” GS

Element is out on April 21.

Louise Burns does her best work in a space of curiosity. Photo by Matthew Miller.

Pink Mountaintops spread the love

By Stephen Smysnuik

Check out the itinerary for Pink Mountaintops’ latest tour and you’ll think, “What the eff—has Stephen McBean hit the skids?”

The psych-pop-folk-punk-et-al side project of Black Mountain guitar wizard and homegrown hero McBean is hitting Powell River, Gibsons, and Cumberland (Cumberland!), along with dates in Victoria and Vancouver. And look, these aren’t bad places. These are, in fact, wonderful places! But they’re hardly conventional tour stops for a musician whose band once opened for Coldplay on a strange stadium tour many moons ago, and who took Bon Iver on that outfit’s first tour a couple years later.

What gives, man? The answer, fortunately, is that everything’s hunky dory for the Straight’s old pal. He had some dark times during COVID—but who didn’t? It’s the emerging out of that darkness that’s led to this tour, which McBean’s unofficially dubbed the “Going Coastal Tour,” or the “Relic Beachcomber Tour.”

He’s linked up with veteran Victoria punk promoter Marcus Pollard to book shows in corners of the province that don’t typically see this kind of rock ’n’ roll attention. It’s also a chance to catch up with old friends post-pandemic, many of whom McBean knows from his time in Vancouver and Victoria and who have fled for smaller, quieter communities.

The current touring iteration of Pink Mountaintops includes actor-musician Tygh Runyan on bass and Andrew Moszynski on drums, though each stop will feature a rotating cast of guest musicians. Every show will be a unique and celebratory gathering of the freaks.

“It’s harder and harder to catch up sometimes. So, I was like, ‘Hey, I can just knock out a whole bunch of visits at once, see the friends, spread some love,’” McBean says, speaking on the phone from his adopted home of Los Angeles.

McBean’s been living in L.A. for over a decade now, but had left the Silver Lake/

Echo Park area for a house in suburban Arcadia shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. He was in the early stages of making a new Black Mountain album with longtime collaborators Amber Webber and Jeremy Schmidt, in fact, when the lockdowns happened.

“Amber had rejoined Black Mountain, and her and Jeremy had come down to L.A. So, at that time, we were wrapping our brains around writing a new Black Mountain record,” McBean says. “And then the world closed up shop.”

Instead of giving up on recording, he started “fucking around” in a makeshift studio he’d built in a spare bedroom. Then he noticed other musician friends were holing up in their makeshift studios and looking to collaborate.

“Everyone’s tour got cancelled,” he says. “We just started writing and then sending stuff back and forth.”

The result is 2022’s Peacock Pools, the first Pink Mountaintops album in eight years, featuring an impressive slate of collaborators, including Schmidt, Steven Shane McDonald, and Dale Crover from Melvins and Redd Kross, former Black Mountain/current Destroyer and Lightning Dust drummer Josh Wells, and Dave Ogilvie, who mixed the record.

It’s a true pandemic album—“a soundtrack or mixtape of a COVID mess,” McBean says. He suggests it’s one that never would have been made had the lockdowns never happened: conceived by McBean and featuring a little help from his holed-up and

isolated friends. The rotating lineup contributes to the eclectic nature of the album, which hops around various styles that have clearly influenced, from electro-fried psych to thrash metal to ’80s-inspired cock-rock.

The album opens with the Black Flag cover “Nervous Breakdown,” which McBean initially recorded to make sure his gear was set up properly. He liked it so much that he led the record with it.

Four of the tracks were recorded live in studio—masked up and everything— with McDonald and Crover, with McBean living out his “teenage wet dream” of essentially fronting the Melvins. One of these was “Lights of the City,” which was initially earmarked for the scrapped Black Mountain record. It’s a dusty rocker that showcases what McBean does best—huge riffs, glorious harmonies (courtesy of Emily Rose, formerly of the Ty Segall Band) and a guitar solo you wish could stretch on into infinity.

Then there’s “All This Death Is Killing Me,” arguably the heaviest thing McBean has committed to tape (his hardcore outfit Obliterations very much withstanding), which distills all the weird confusion, anger, and anxiety of the lockdown era into a two-minutesand-change thrash-metal mind-fuck. Where Pink Mountains was at one time the yin to Black Mountain’s yang—a clearing-house for McBean’s mellower or more experimental tendencies—it instead became a salvation to spare his sanity during the pandemic.

“It was this necessity for trying not to lose your mind and just do something,” he says.“[The album] definitely helped me. It gave me something to do, because there was definitely, for everyone, a lot of emotional ups and downs. Definitely a lot down.”

Which, ultimately, is what the Relic Beachcomber tour is all about—McBean heading back to the evergreen embrace of the BC coast. Chasing the light. Fuck that darkness. He’s heading home. GS

Pink Mountaintops play the Cobalt on April 8. Tickets for all shows on the tour can be bought at pinkmountaintops.com/tour.

Stephen McBean worked through the pandemic darkness with Pink Mountaintops’ Peacock Pools. Photo by Laura Pleasants.

I can just knock out a whole bunch of visits at once

– Stephen McBean

rose city band’s Spaced out on garden party

By Stephen Smysnuik

“Spaced out, chasing rainbows.” Consider the line. What does it conjure for you? A child-like state of wonderment? The psychedelic experience? A bitchin’ bumper sticker?

Let’s consider it as a descriptor for the life’s work of Erik “Ripley” Johnson, the space-rock visionary behind Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo—and now Rose City Band. The line was, in fact, written by Johnson for the song “Chasing Rainbows,” the lead single and first track off Rose City Band’s latest album, Garden Party. It’s both a thesis statement for, and a depiction of, the man at this stage of the game: cosmic warrior, melting faces, chasing rainbows.

Now, with Garden Party, Johnson has settled comfortably into this new era. Where Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo issue fuzzy broadcasts from some weirdo, far-away galaxy, Rose City Band’s receiving the messages back home, funneling it through some lysergic and resplendent countrified rock.

“I think coming up with a title Garden Party, I was trying to do something that’s kind of a celebration, with an optimistic thrust,” Johnson says, speaking from his home in Portland, Oregon, whose “City of Roses” moniker is the band’s namesake. “I am trying to make something that is easygoing and it isn’t just fluff, it isn’t just AM radio, yacht rock or something. It’s a fine line.”

While Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo are primarily collaborations with other people, Johnson can indulge his otherwise dormant authoritarian tendencies with Rose City Band, controlling all aspects of the records. All four albums were recorded mostly solo, with occasional backing duties doled out to a small number of musicians. The live experience—which includes Barry Walker on pedal steel guitar, Dewey Mahood on bass, Dustin Dybvig on drums, and Paul Hasenberg on keyboards—is a different beast altogether, with songs stretching out into improvised cosmic weirdness.

“These are not guys who are normally

listening to country, except for Barry,” Johnson says. “We’re not a straight-up country. There are plenty of people out there who can play country music really, really well. So we just try, and our approximation makes it a little weirder.”

The project started out quietly, beginning with 2019’s self-titled debut, released without much promotion or even any indication that Johnson was behind it. The near-perfect Summerlong a year later was recorded with the intention of assembling a live band to tour with. The COVID-19 pandemic foiled those plans, and Johnson leaned deeper into the work.

“It was kind of a bomb for me. When COVID hit, Rose City Band became more pointed—the motivation was to do something positive,” he says. “I was taking more and more comfort in this music from my childhood. There’s something about music that you’re exposed to when you’re young, this emotional resonance that I think stays with you forever. And I wanted to make some music that was honouring that.”

Johnson says he wanted to make his “country rock record”, while admitting that Rose City Band is hardly that. The music is more akin to the rural rock of bands he listened to when he was

young—bands like (um) The Band, Bob Dylan, and the Grateful Dead. Rose City Band might actually have its closest analogue to the Grateful Dead, especially the terrain explored in their seminal 1970 album Workingman’s Dead. Rose City Band’s first three albums inhabit the imaginary Fennario, fabled land of Dead lore, where echoes of Jerry’s own playing swirl through layers of pedal steel and a rollicking rhythm section.

Garden Party, which was produced by Tortoise’s John McEntire, stretches out in new directions, particularly in the final run of the album that begins with the exquisite “Mariposa,” which dives into jazzier Dead territory. Echoes of Neil Young, Flying Burrito Brothers, and Johnny Cash abound as well. It’s easy listening without feeling superficial. It’s spacey, without ever getting too weird.

“I have found that it has broader appeal,” Johnson says. “I think people of

different ages can get into it. Friends of mine who are not music nerds—who like Wilco, or Bruce Springsteen, or maybe even Taylor Swift—they’re into it. It’s a little easy on the ears.”

Johnson says he’s currently working on a new project with Moon Duo/Rose City Band collaborator (and Vancouverite) John Jeffrey. He also says he “might do some Moon Duo stuff later in the year.” For now, the focus is Rose City Band, rehearsing and touring the West Coast and Europe this spring.

“The good thing about this project is, being the dictator in chief, I could just decide to make a record. I don’t need to plan it with other people and schedules and all that stuff,” Johnson says. “It’s like I could start working on one tomorrow, and just whenever I feel like it.” GS

Garden Party comes out on April 21. Rose City Band plays the Cobalt on May 4.

Erik “Ripley” Johnson and his trusty Telecaster. Photo by Sanae Yamada.

Presented by the

Tofino: Where the war in the woods still whispers

By V.S. Wells

The nine-seat Cessna from Iskwew Air flew so close to the snow-capped mountains you could count the evergreens, poking out from underneath scraps of cloud on our journey from Richmond to Tofino. In just over half an hour, you see city, then sea, then forest, then mountains. Long strips of sand bordered by the brilliant blue ocean were visible as we descended.

The tiny airport, midway between Tofino and Ucluelet, feels like a remnant of a past time. It was built by the US military during the Second World War, when the country wanted Pacific-side air bases. A framed typewriter note in the lobby from June 1942 says the area’s “boggy muskeg” land and “heavy wooded” surroundings posed challenges—and yet, here it still is, 80 years later, servicing daily Pacific Coastal flights. A thumbprint of war that now serves tourists flying into unceded ƛaʔuukʷiʔatḥ (Tla-o-qui-aht) land.

A short drive away is Tin Wis—Nuuchah-nulth for “calm waters.” It’s both the Tla-o-qui-aht name for Mackenzie Beach, and the name of the yawning beachfront Best Western resort where we stay. Every room has west-facing windows, showing the sprawling beach and array of little islands. When the tide goes out, the smooth sand becomes a water-slick mirror. It looks like the world goes on forever.

“This is where we anchored our whales,” artist Hjalmer Wenstob tells us, back in the days of Tla-o-qui-aht whale

hunts, before they were taken “to butcher them up and spread them out amongst our communities.”

He’s our host for naaʔuu, a Tla-o-quiaht cultural experience that presents traditional stories and dance alongside a feast. A dancer, using masks that Wenstob carved, shows us different characters. There’s an inquisitive raven whose beak opens and closes to steal shiny objects; a smooth mask that gains a mouth to celebrate the revitalization of the Nuuchah-nulth language; another that marks COVID-19, the way previous generations carved masks to record smallpox outbreaks.

The Tin Wis convention room has been transformed into a longhouse, the cedar-wood entrance and back wall adorned with carvings beneath a sloped cloth ceiling. It’s the first time the Nation has engaged in such clear cultural outreach, combining a feast prepared by Heartwood Kitchen with

an evening of education and entertainment.

The thread throughout our time in Tofino is the tension of what tourism means. The tiny town sees hundreds of thousands of tourists every year, flocking to the edge of Vancouver Island to experience the wild West Coast: hiking, surfing, and paddle-boarding in summer, storm-watching in winter. Travellers drive the local economy. But tourism’s impacts are far-reaching—and not always positive. Trails can be eroded, trash can pile up. Visitors can be destructive, extractive, inconsiderate. When they leave their holiday home, the locals are left with the aftermath.

Part of the Tla-o-qui-aht plan to do things differently is the creation of Tribal Parks. All the Nation’s traditional, unceded territory is part of one of four parks, which are protected by ƛaʔuukʷiʔatḥ laws, rights, and title. Guardians steward the land to ensure sustainability and conservation. Reciprocity—living in balance with nature—is baked into the Nation’s stories and histories.

“The laws of nature stated that we only take what we need. When we take, we’d

give something back,” Wenstob tells us. “Thousands of years ago, we found a way to make a form of balance with the world. We found a way to live with as much harmony as we could with the world around us. Once again, that balance has since been thrown off.”

Businesses in and around Tofino can sign up to the Tribal Parks Allies program, agreeing to look after the area and donate one per cent of revenue to Tribal Parks Regional Services. That pays for the Guardians’ work—which is obvious in a place like Wah-nuh-jus–Hilthoois Tribal Park, also known as Meares Island.

This is the site of the War in the Woods, one of the largest acts of mass civil disobedience in Canadian history. In 1984, Nuu-chah-nulth people refused to let logging company MacMillan Bloedel clear cut the island.

“Their plan was to harvest 90 per cent of Meares Island,” says Moses Martin, an elder and language keeper. He’s

When we’d take, we’d give something back – Hjalmer Wenstob

Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation lands and resources director Saya Masso. Photo by V.S. Wells.

soft-spoken, one of a handful of fluent Nuu-chah-nulth speakers who helps pass the language on to future generations. He was elected as Chief in 1983.

“We thought this was getting too close to our backyard, so we said no. My people said ‘No,’ ” he says.

Just as naaʔuu’s feast shares food with visitors, Martin tried to do the same thing with the logging company. We’re walking around the Naa’Waya’Sum Coastal Indigenous Gardens as he tells us about that moment. “What I decided to do was invite them ashore and share some food with us. They didn’t take it.”

The resulting decade of blockades throughout the Clayoquot Sound led to nearly 900 arrests in 1993, as the province fought the Nation in court over who was allowed to issue logging permits on unceded land. Eventually, the province re-opened its treaty procedures to try and agree on a treaty with the Tla-o-qui-aht Nation. No treaty has yet been signed.

The clear cutting was averted, but the legacy of that activism lives on.

When we visit Wah-nuh-jus, it’s in the pale morning sun, skipping across the waves in a water taxi. The verdant greenery contrasts with the shimmering

azure of the water and the flecks of white foam on the wake. It is a place that’s full of life, the old-growth forests supporting rare biodiversity.

The picturesque island is home to an ecosystem of towering trees and lush ferns. Tla-o-qui-aht people have been gathering cedar from trees here since they began occupying this territory, at least 10,000 years

ago. There are thousands of these culturally modified trees throughout the woods. You can see the indents, where people cut planks for longhouse boards or harvested bark to make clothes—taking only what they needed, and leaving the tree to grow. These trees are proof of long-time cultural and historical

connections to the land.

Saya Masso, lands and resources director for the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, explains the work the Guardians have put into maintaining the historic site. The oldgrowth forest stretches towards the light; below our feet, planks of repurposed cedar line the path. The older parts are worn and smooth, braced with metal bars for grip. As the trail winds further, newer planks are obvious from their bright orange hue. Tour groups and hikers coming to the area have to pay a fee, which goes towards conservation. Masso gestures to the signposted Tree of Life. This tree was featured in National Geographic when it covered the protests in glossy photospreads. Here it still is: over 1,000 years old, growing huge and straight, its branches spiralling towards the clouds. Keeping the world in balance isn’t cheap, or easy. But it’s worth it for places like this. The air is moist and clean. Sound is muffled by thick vegetation. The trees have survived so much. They deserve another 10,000 years here, with the salt and salmon and sky. GS

WAKE UP FROM WINTER

Wake up to longer days and endless ways to play in Whistler this spring. Where else can you ski, bike, and golf all in the same day? And after all that adventure why not cap things off with après on a sunny patio, indulging in a spa session, and digging into springinspired dining deals. It’s the perfect time of year to maximize your stay.

WHISTLER.COM/SPRING-THING

1.800.944.7853 *Visit

Naaʔuu will return to Best Western Tin Wis later this fall.

The view from the back of the boat in Clayoquot Sound. Photo by V.S. Wells.

Indie restaurants struggle to survive

By William Johnson

The response was fast and curious. On March 22, when Ubuntu Canteen shared on Instagram that its final day of service would be April 16, the comments section said it all. People were sad (“Truly heartbreaking”). They were appreciative (“Thank you for everything you’ve done”). And a few had questions (“The people, the food, the bread will all be missed. I would love to know why”). It mirrored the collective sentiment from a week

earlier, when news broke that Chinatown’s Kent’s Kitchen would shutter after 40 years.

Ubuntu and Kent’s are just two of a long list of restaurants to recently announce closures for varying reasons. Others include Chewies Oyster Bar in Coal Habour, Weirdo Cafe, Benkei Ramen, and Kind Cafe & Eatery.

While the birth and death of restaurants are part of every city’s hospitality ecosystem, some business owners told the Straight last week they are worried that this recent slate of closures could reflect a

broader trend. And they are trying to raise awareness around the challenges that Vancouver’s independent establishments face as they grapple with the lingering effects of the pandemic and other issues.

The national numbers on independent restaurants (typically, non-chain establishments with one or two locations) tell a clear story. According to data from Restaurants Canada and NPD Group, 13,800 fewer independent restaurants were operating across Canada in 2021 than in 2000.

The situation is likely to get worse, according to Matt Senecal-Junkeer, co-owner of Gastown’s The Birds & the Beets and Strathcona’s Hunnybee Bruncheonette. Senecal-Junkeer believes oncoming headwinds could sound the death knell for businesses contemplating a smorgasbord of economic issues like rising labour and food costs, paired with a labour shortage and a decline in sales.

“It’s sort of the perfect storm,” he says. The tipping point for many food and drink establishments may come later this year when the federal Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loan program shifts, adds Senecal-Junkeer.

CEBA offered interest-free loans of up to $60,000. According to government data, 122,890 BC businesses were approved for loans from the program worth $6.6 billion. Many were hospitality businesses.

The loans are interest-free until December 31, after which the remaining loan amount will automatically convert to a two-year term loan with interest of five per cent per year. Businesses that pay back an initial $40,000 by December 31 will get the remaining $20,000 forgiven.

But for the majority of independent restaurants (76 per cent, per Restaurants Canada/NPD Group) that are pulling in under $500,000 in top-line revenue, $40,000 is two years of profit, explains Senecal-Junkeer. For many of them, paying back the loans is completely unrealistic, he argues. In fact, only 13 per cent of small businesses have been able to fully repay their CEBA loan to date, according to the CFIB.

“It’s hard to imagine a scenario where if you weren’t able to pay the [$40,000] on December 31, you’re gonna be able to pay the $60,000,” he says. “Those are

probably restaurants that will have to look at what does that bankruptcy look like? How aggressively is the CRA going to come after those? You know some of them are personal guarantees if you have a sole proprietorship, and some of them aren’t. But that’s probably, in my view, the extinction event for a lot of independents that are just clinging on.”

Adrienne Vaupshas, a spokesperson for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, said the current repayment deadline and loan forgiveness structure was “intended to support hard-working business owners as they continued to recover from the pandemic.”

Senecal-Junkeer believes the government saw CEBA loans as investments into pivoting or adding retail and other revenue lines.

“But I think in reality, at least in our case,” he says, “and from a lot of operators I’ve talked to, those went to operational expenses: the staff, rent, things that you’re not seeing any benefit from today. Wages were number one, rent was number two. Because it was survival mode for everybody.”

With pandemic health restrictions over and the CEBA loan deadline nine months away, the challenges independent eateries must navigate remain immense—one of which is that there simply may be too many places to dine out.

Doug Stephen, who operates Downlow Chicken Shack and a growing collection of businesses, believes the notion is worth considering.

“There are probably more restaurants open than the market actually has the ability to sustain at any given time,” he says, adding that it leads to a hypercompetitive marketplace. “As a new restaurant opens, the amount of dining dollars remains the same—or in this kind of economic state, it might even be decreasing… And so the inevitability of closures exists.”

Those holding on must grapple with a record property tax hike in Vancouver, ongoing safety issues across the region, and what appears to be a permanent change in day- and night-time dining habits.

“BIAs [Business Improvement Areas] are begging everyone to come back to the office, but there’s just a permanent shift in our culture,” notes Senecal-Junkeer. GS

City’s art scene feels sadly adolescent ideas

By Eleanor Tremeer

“So how does Vancouver’s art scene compare to Montreal’s?” I’m several drinks deep when I ask this of Malinka, an artist visiting town from Montreal. “I’m not sure,” she muses. “There’s some really cool stuff here. But it still just feels like a teenager, y’know?”

I do know, and it’s vindicating to hear someone else say it.

I moved to Vancouver in June 2020, probably the worst time to discover the city’s cultural scene. But when the city started to cautiously open up, I attended every artsy event I could, eager to discover what Vancouver had to offer.

Vancouver’s creative culture is incredible. It’s weird, it’s innovative, it’s vibrant. As a theatre kid who grew up south of London then moved to Berlin, it’s safe to say that I’ve seen a lot of art. But in Vancouver, there are people making things in ways I have never seen before.

Too bad the city won’t let them get anywhere.

There always seems to be new events, new galleries, new parties, but many just burn out—and those that have survived fought tirelessly to do so. I can see why Malinka’s impression was that Vancouver is stuck in a state of arrested development, because with the challenges the creative scene faces, it’s hard for anything to grow up.

The problem seems to primarily be that of space, which, of course, is also a ques-

tion of money. Take open mics, for example. Comedy, poetry, music, performance art—anything goes at an open mic event. They are veritable breeding grounds of talent, essential to the development of any city’s creative scene.

Vancouver doesn’t have any. Or rather, it doesn’t have many. Those that exist are pretty much restricted to comedy (especially now that Cafe Deux Soleils has closed its doors, its popular spoken word open mic shuttered along with it), and they aren’t well attended.

This is something that surprised comedian and writer Sasha Mark when he came here from Winnipeg—a city with a thriving open mic scene.

“In all the open mics I’ve done in Vancouver there have been three or four people in the audience, It’s a very, very big difference,” they say.

So, why don’t open mics exist in Vancouver? The issue, once again, is space

have braids. I leave smiling every time I come to your location, but perplexed on how to respectfully get your number while you’re at work.

From: M to F

JJ BEAN BABE

I come in for my morning London Fog and Umami Wrap. You’re usually working and even if you don’t help me, we share glances. You have the sweetest smile, blue eyes, and such a nice energy to you. I’m usually wearing all black and

plus money. These events aren’t particularly lucrative, usually hosted by venues that don’t charge for use of the space. It’s a mutually beneficial situation, as open mics bring in bar sales to support venues on slow weekday evenings.

At least, that’s the case in most cities. The open mic scene is what I loved most about Berlin, and it’s how Mark got his start in Winnipeg. But Mark says that Vancouver’s already small open mic scene has shrunk even more. “We lost a lot of open mic spaces during the pandemic. Venues either shut down or they said, ‘We’re struggling, we need to charge for this now.’”

For a creative scene to develop and thrive, there needs to be space for people to share their art. And this isn’t just a problem of event venues: Vancouver also has many restrictions on how and where you can creatively express yourself.

Back in Berlin, one of my favourite places to go was Mauerpark, a park in the Prenzlauer Berg district. Every weekend this nondescript expanse of scrub would overflow with musicians and other artists, all creating art loudly just for the hell of it.

Such a park does not, and cannot, exist in Vancouver. To play music in a public space, you don’t just need a permit, you must also pay a fee for it: an annual permit is $135.44 before tax. Groups of more than three performers are also banned. Paying fees is only viable for buskers— you can’t just create music for free, as the denizens of Berlin’s Mauerpark do. There are some exceptions to the permits, such

ever glanced upon. I was wearing an all-white sweat suit, white shoes, and a white toque. You smiled at me just before the train pulled up and I hesitated to say hi. I got on and you didn’t. I should have just stayed to chat, I hope you see this.

as sidewalks beside certain SkyTrain stations, but these areas aren’t ideal for recreation. While Berlin’s city ordinances allow performances in designated recreation spaces without needing a permit or fee, Vancouver’s restrictions hardly encourage such free expression.

And that’s because Vancouver views art not as a social need but a profit venture. You cannot create art for the sake of itself—your art is your business, making money the ultimate outcome. And any effort to sell your art will also come at a price.

Marcus James Wild, who has been creating art in Vancouver since 1998, bemoans the cost of booths at markets like Car Free Day ($120) and the Khatsahlano Street Party ($250).

Vancouver’s artists are struggling to survive in the margins. Sure, there are grants to be applied for, but who would do that for an open mic night? Who would pay a fee just to gather with some pals and play music on a sunny afternoon in the park? It’s no surprise that Vancouver’s art scene feels adolescent.

And what’s really sad about this is that Vancouver is young. Comparatively, its lifespan as a major city has been short. The city itself is still developing—but as vacant lots are eaten up by highrises for high earners, artists are being left out in the cold.

For art to develop, and thrive, it needs space to breathe. Vancouver needs to loosen the reins, before they become a noose. GS

When: Wednesday, March 29

Where: JJ Bean on Main and 14th

DARK LIPSTICK

You were wearing a cute pencil skirt with white sneakers, dark lipstick, and the most captivating eyes I have

From: M to F

When: Wednesday, March 22

Where: Waterfront—Canada Line

CANUCKS VS LA KINGS—CRYPTO.COM

ARENA, LOS ANGELES

We met standing by the glass, behind

the Canucks bench at the Canucks/LA Kings game in LA last Saturday—but we are both from Vancouver. We pretty much have the same name. We had a great chat about the team while watching the warm up. We ran into each other after the game and after a big hug I went off with my friends… I should have thought to give you my number…

From: F to M

When: Saturday, March 18

Where: Crypto.com Arena, Los Angeles

It still just feels like a teenager, y’know?

– Malinka

From: F to M

When: Monday, February 27

Where: Vancouver/Delta

PACIFIC CENTRE GENTLEMAN

You had a woolen blue jacket. It looked warm. Light stubble, olive skin, and big brown eyes. We chatted about the snow. You said you were coming off of a very bad breakup, and needed time. How much? I’d like to get to know you. We didn’t exchange info for that reason, but now I regret it. I had long blonde hair, green eyes, and you complimented my Loubs (weird, but fine). Find me, please.

From: F to M

When: Friday, February 24

Where: Pacific Centre

Wall Centre flower

Your name is Naomi from Surrey, and I saw you at the Wall Centre for an Alternate Education Conference. Keynote speaker had us mix and mingle with picture cards. Mine was of a bench, and I made you laugh. Your laugh and your smile blew me away. Would love to grab a coffee and hear you laugh again.

From: M to F

When: Thursday, February 16

Where: Wall Centre in Vancouver

the sex-starved, the soft, and the homebodies

by Dan Savage

DEAR READERS: I hosted an Ask Me Anything session on my website —Savage. Love—last week, where I answered as many reader/listener questions as I could get to in 90 minutes. Here are some of the questions I didn’t get to before the buzzer sounded…

> 30S LESBIAN IN A NON-MONOGAMOUS SEXLESS MARRIAGE HERE. Do you think it’s ever possible to re-spark a sexual connection if both partners are open to it? The context: I love good sex and have had incredibly hot sexual connections with other partners, but sex in my 10-year relationship with my wife has always been infrequent, i.e., two to three times a year. She’s generally a very tired, low-energy person, and she’s so low-energy during sex that she’s literally fallen asleep mid-sex on a lot of occasions. This has done a number on my self-esteem, and the last decade of my life has been characterized by loneliness, yearning, and dissatisfaction. And lately, resentment has creeped in. You might tell me to go have amazing sex with other partners, but my wife is verrrry controlling of those connections. I’ve come to embrace the truth that this is not enough for me for the rest of my lifetime. I’m not sure how to

dig my relationship out of this dynamic. We’ve been in therapy together for four years and although she says she wants the same exciting sex life that I want, nothing has changed.

Help A Lesbian Out

One of the superstar commenters at Savage.Love—BiDanFan got to your question before I did, HALO, and I liked her response: “She says she wants the same exciting sex life that you want but her actions say the opposite. She only wants sex once or twice a YEAR, and doesn’t want you to have sex with anyone else. This isn’t fair. Four years of therapy haven’t solved anything. Your wife is paying lip service to wanting to re-spark your sexual connection so you won’t leave her. But how many decades of your life will you spend like this? But don’t go have amazing sex with other people yet! Divorce your wife, then go have amazing sex with other people.”

Personally, HALO, I don’t think you have to wait until your divorce is final before you go have amazing sex with someone else. Hell, I don’t think you have to wait until you’ve even initiated a divorce. Your marriage is open and

non-monogamous, which means you’re already allowed to get sex elsewhere. So, why wait? And if your wife gives you the cold shoulder, that’s something you should bring up with your therapist.

I think it’s time to issue the dreaded ultimatum: “It’s open on my terms—it’s open and joyful—or it’s over.” Your wife may pick “over,” and that may be the best outcome for both of you. But she may decide… once she realizes she can’t control you with her moods and/or run out the life-expectancy-clock in therapy… to be happy for you when you get it elsewhere.

> MY PARTNER OF FOUR YEARS—he’s male, age 59—recently started having trouble maintaining an erection. He and I have discussed it, we’re both still having a great time, and he’s going to bring it up with his doctor soon. Any tips for being a supportive and enthusiastic partner when he goes soft? Do I switch up whatever activity I’m doing when it happens? Or do I carry on? How can I be a better partner in these moments?

Having Anxieties Regarding Dick

If your partner goes soft while he’s fucking you, HARD, you obviously can’t carry on. And if he goes soft while you’re sucking him, well, blowjobs are a lot of work and sucking a soft cock is (usually, not always) wasted labor.

The better idea would be for you to pivot—I mean the plural you—to an activity that takes the focus off his dick and that relieves him of the pressure to get hard

again right away or at all. He goes down on you, mutual masturbation, you bust out a vibrator, you could even borrow a page from the lesbians and get a strap-on dildo.

> HAVE YOU/ANYONE YOU KNOW HAD A MID-LIFE CRISIS? How did you/they handle it? How long did it last? Only asking as I’m slightly worried that my hubby (40-year-old gay man) might be having one and there are only so many saunas, bathhouses, threesomes, etc., I can indulge him in before I just get bored. Also, moving to a UK city-centre flat and going clubbing has zero appeal for me, a 35-year-old gay man. Any thoughts you could share?

Tired Of Going Out

When my husband was in his 20s he didn’t wanna go out so much, and neither did I. But when he turned 30, he suddenly wanted to go out. So, I let him go out, and I even went out with him once in a while. And now that he’s in his 50s… my husband still wants to go out. Not as often, TOGO, but it’s clear going out wasn’t a midlife crisis or something he would get out of his system in a year or two. It’s something he enjoys, and something he needs. So long as he’s considerate, so long as he’s there when I need him, so long as he doesn’t wake me up when he gets home, it’s not a problem. GS

Send your burning questions to mailbox@ savage.love. Podcasts, columns and more at Savage.Love!

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