Tag: vancouver

david proves his use as a perpetual witness. again.

Last thing we need now is a great leader, by Penn Jillette

My voting station was in the gymnasium of one of Vancouver’s oldest elementary schools, only a couple of blocks from my house. To get there, we had to walk through the thin strip of nameless industrial area that jackets the foot of Clark Drive, all auto-body shops and unidentifiable offices, where low rent prostitutes cluster on the corners at night. The way over was unremarkable, a short, pleasant walk of a couple of blocks, David and I discussing the Canadian women who fought for their right to vote back early in the 1900’s. The way back, however, is worth a story.

We’ve already crossed Clark, we’re not even a full block away from my house, when a speeding red “sportscar” hits the breaks next to us so hard the tires smoke, and the driver, a young, thin man of about twenty-eight yells intensely out the window at us, “GOTH IS GREAT! ROCK THE VAMPIRE REVOLUTION! I’M WITH YOU! FUCK EVERYTHING BUT BLACK! RAAAUUUGH!”.

Now, David and I, dressed as we are in perfectly ordinary clothing, are baffled. We stop, look at each other, decide simultaneously that he’s off his rocker, and look back at him.

“Excuse me,” I say as he stopped shouting to take a breath, “but we’re not even dressed a little like goths.” Disgusted that I managed to get a word in edgewise, he replies, just as loudly, practically frothing, “FINE, FAGGOTS, WHATEVER.” “Anyway,” I say, “their band practice is a block up. You’ve got the wrong street.”

He then growled at us, spat out the window, then drove off as fast as his car could actually go.

…

A few moments later, I turned to David, “Were we just goth-bashed?”
“I think so.”
“Wow. What a freak.”
“Yeah.”

winter foreshadowing at the gate

The Devil and the Monk

The clouds are so thick today, the sun has no direction, light merely comes from up. It’s as if the sky was removed by some photoshop freak who took out everything blue or bright and replaced it with a gluey, blank film of gray. They’ve swallowed the mountains, the ocean, and the tops of every building over fifteen stories high. They are omnipresent in every direction, painting everyone in a gentle, damp blanket of light sog. A continual light drizzle with a persistent dewy texture that slowly soaks in, drenching clothes slowly by osmosis.

It is not a terrible rain, a driving, slashing torrent of rain. It is merely misty. People are moist today. They are standing in archways, dripping, shaking umbrellas, cursing cold feet, disliking the rain, and refusing to smile at the bus-stop. Instead they stare seriously up the street, as far back from the curb as possible, torn between the hope they will see their bus and the illogical worry that their legs will be drenched by a passing car. (With rain this thin, there are no real puddles).

The Secret Thoughts of Harold Lawrence Windcrampe

using a telescope to find pumpkins

The world just got smaller again, Ben just did an utterly smashing cover for one of Pia‘s Dr. Who comics.

She’s actually going through a bit of a rough time right now, a close friend recently passed away from cancer, (she was sending us updates while we were away), so this is especially nice news. Help her out by voting for Y: the last man. I’m hoping soon we can get together again for coffee and ragging on the world, as the world so deserves. Any week now, David and I are planning on hitting up her husband Ian’s “Canadian Content” Urban Improv comedy night over in Kits, (every Monday at the Chivana Restaurant & Lounge), and buying them some commiserating drinks.

Until then, we’re mostly going to be staying in and being poor. David is an unemployed house-husband right now, (he lost his job to come on the trip), and my bank account is running scary low, especially as I may end up catching the entirety of the rent myself in November. I plan on setting up a photography space as soon as there’s room in the house, though, and selling prints for Christmas. I’ve got some concepts already sketched out that I’m really looking forward to bringing into being. Shots with white and red and metal, symmetry and pop. The house is too much of a mid-move disaster to get started, but soon, I’m hoping, soon.

In other news, my Hallowe’en costume is a go. I bought a lion tamer costume off eBay, a little ditty that comes with a corset with tails, (100% of my costume choice motivation right there), which saves me having to make one. I’ve always loved Hallowe’en and making my own costumes, but this year, I just hit a wall. Being back east in cities that actually celebrate Hallowe’en was just too much for me. Now I’m here, I want quick and dirty access to the joy that is dressing up. I don’t want to have to stay up until three in the morning figuring out a pleat, pins in my fingers, chalk in my hair, in a city that just doesn’t really care. I’m done with it. Time to simply give in to consumerism – keep the car running.

Images from Bernie Wrightson’s FRANKENSTEIN

can’t wait for the parade of lost souls

A close-up of a wet leaf taken by “Sophie” with a Canon Powershot A610,
from Wired.com Editor’s Choice Macro Photo Gallery.

My Own Private Tokyo, by William Gibson

Nuit Blanche was one of the most positive experiences I’ve ever taken part in. I came out of it exhausted, but feeling newly born. Slumped at a table at the Gladstone Hotel, trying to pull up the blinds behind my eyes long enough to focus on a breakfast menu, I was as useless as a corpse at a dance party, yet feeling better about the world than I had in a very long time. Merciful hell, it was good to be home.

Being back in Vancouver is harsh. My daily bus-route takes me through the heart of Crackton, where junkies scream in the streets, collecting like politics destroyed, running into traffic, swearing for Jesus and mercy and junk. Used needles collect in the gutters and hide in the cracks of the sidewalk, shattered plastic a lot like the people, waiting for someone to care enough to pick them up. There are always police cars, as persistent as the obscene graffiti and greasy breath of the people who cage rides on the bus, bags of found cans and bottles slung over their shoulders, teeth missing, spider prints of tracks inside their arms. Before I left, I was used to it, but now, having spent a few weeks in places more civilized, where such ghettos are unheard of, it’s grating at me again, like it used to years ago, before I became acclimatized.

7 things you thought you could recycle, but can’t.

As a result, I can feel myself hiding, taking refuge in my apartment and the changes within it as we prepare for David moving in to replace Karen, who’s moving out to be with her boyfriend too. Narratives converging. We spent most of Monday moving in nine bookshelves bought on Craigslist that we’re going to use to convert Karen’s bedroom into a library for our fourty boxes of books. I know it’s not quite escapism, we’re doing something useful, staying in, but that’s not what it feels like as I consider my morning commute to work through the blown out neighborhood that abuts the downtown.

Men with tangled beards, muttering about tangled affairs, clawing at their stomachs as drug cravings tear at their insides. Women in miniskirts, scarred down both sides, prostitutes who look like they’ve survived explosions, who might have been only thirty once, maybe even just last year. Children dragged behind single mothers in lycra and t-shirts, fed sugar water and kraft dinner, skin pocked with malnutrition because the school system doesn’t care enough to feed them when the parents can’t afford to. Cat fighting in the alleys, pushers and johns, addicts and the crippled that our health care system left behind. (There’s even an entire genre of YouTube videos which involve semi-drunken suburban college boys cruising through in their cars, pointing cameras out the windows, with soundtracks that consist almost entirely of “holy fuck, lookit that!”). There’s nothing else like it in Canada. It’s heart-breaking, skin thickening, horrific, and one hundred percent howling day to day.

Yet, somehow, Vancouver got picked for the 2010 Olympics. Hope all you Canadians are voting today.

she’s making us dinner later, too

Lung‘s other best friend, Melo, is in from Montreal this week, so last night we took her to some of our favourite places, starting with a delicious dinner at Phnom Pehn, moving on to dessert at Cloud 9, (where the food is expensive and terrible but the view is unparalleled), and ending the evening with a late night drive around Stanley Park, stopping to take tourist pictures on the seawall in the dark. I think she’s wonderful. Not only is she incredibly fun, she looks like a Russian fashion model, tall, and solid, with the sort of black cut hair and pointy-toed boots I’d expect from a Red Mob girlfriend in a William Gibson short story.

Today he’s taking her to Granville Island Market, the LuluLemon store, (she wants to shop), and possibly the Museum of Archeology. Does anyone know if there’s any Giant Sequoia trees within a day’s drive? I’m fairly certain they’re all either on the Island or down in California, but she says she read something about local ones. Apparently she’s never seen any truly massive trees before and really wants to see some trees bigger than anything else alive, as if real mountains versus Mt. Royal wasn’t enough size shock.

Tonight David and I are going to the Pay What You Can premiere of Letters from Lithuania, a Mortal Coil Performance Society production at the Stanley Park train, before catching up with them again.

Based on a true story, originator and performer Bessie Wapp recounts: “For generations, my ancestors lived in a small Lithuanian village called Varniai. Fleeing from the pogroms of Europe, my great, great grandparents immigrated to the United States in the later 1800’s. Of the large extended family who remained in Varniai, only a young mother and her three daughters survived World War II. After the war, they were reunited and the mother wrote to the only living relative she knew of, her brother-in-law in South Africa. But she didn’t hear back. Twenty years passed, and then word came from the son of the brother-in-law in South Africa. While sorting out his recently deceased father’s belongings, he had found her letters. But they were unopened: his father had kept them for 20 years but had never read them.”

And as if that isn’t fascinating enough, it features friends who are A+ performers, stilt-walking, shadow puppets, and a klezmer band on a miniature train. How could anyone say no? I don’t think there’s a better ticket in Vancouver tonight.

last minute

Though I rarely attend poetry slams anymore, having fairly burned out after winning too many games of my Poetry Slam Bingo, (containing such squares as: No One Understands Me, War Sucks, I Was A Highschool Misfit, If I Punch The Air You Should Clap, Let Me Show You My Angst, I Lesbian, Counting Makes Rhymes Easy, and many more), I’m going to be working the door tonight, because holy sneezes…

Sheri-D Wilson will be featuring tonight at the Vancouver Poetry Slam!

How fantastic is that, you ask? Pretty damned fantastic. And as if having the mama of dada swing by isn’t enough, it’s also the Decathalon Slam – 2 teams, 10 rounds. As many people as possible on each team. So come be a part of the fun. It’s going to get creative. There’s going to be a cupcake eating round, a sock puppet round, a mime round, a team piece round, a 1 minute poem round, an improv poem round, and so on.

On the 1st, 3rd, and 5th Monday of every month, at Cafe deux Soleils: 2096 Commercial Drive at 4th Ave. Doors and sign up at 8. Show at 9. Only $5

whoring my friends, part II

Duncan is going to be starring in one of Spectral Theatre’s Late-Night Double Features!

Every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night through until the end of the summer, Spectral Theatre has been presenting two one-act horror plays for the price of one ticket. Coming up in the final set of their summer series, they’ll be featuring two sci-fi/horror shows:

Nimbus, “a journey into the far reaches of space where the mysteries of creation end and the madness begins”,
written by Blake Drezet, directed by Michael Cope and featuring Aurora Chan, Joanna Gaskell, Vincent Riel & Devan Vancise.

and

The Hunted, “marooned on distant shores, stalked by an alien menace that boggles the imagination”,
written by Blake Drezet, directed by JC Roy and featuring Blake Drezet, Vincent Riel & our very own
Duncan “the big man” Shields.

At the Spectral Theatre Studio, 350 Powell Street. Doors at 9:30, show at 10:00. Tickets are $8. It’ll fill up fast so book your tickets early.

renegade lantern festival

PASS IT ON

The Illuminares Lantern Procession will be happening this evening.

pretty typical

6 pm -11:30pm at Trout Lake at John Hendry Park.

Twenty years ago, Illuminares started as a thirty person house party that made lanterns, walked them around the park, then burned them at the beach. The next year, there were double the people, the year after that, even more. Now it’s an annual event which brings wonder to over 30,000 people. People show up with custom lanterns of all shapes and sizes, ranging from simple paper bags with a tealight candle to large complicated structures. Stilt-walkers, costumes, fire breathers, and topless wish-faries are de rigeur. As Public Dreams is not hosting it this year, we’re going back to basics. The audience, once again, are the organizers. Performances will be spontaneous and lanterns will be brought from home – technically, we are all just enjoying the good company of friends.

Because this is not an “official event” please be extra responsible. All of the things that require funding – like floodlights, vendors, fireworks, emergency personnel, outhouses, and, of course, permits – will not be happening this year. As there are no permits, it is almost certain that the Vancouver Police will show up to shut us down, so if you see anything that is of concern, call people on it, and make sure to use camp-ground rules: leave everything better than you found it. Remember, too, this is a family event with lots of children, so try to keep it dry.

mike is still stranded in new mexico, so no that 1 guy

After all day at the folk fest, I’m wiped out. Too tired for a reasonable, decent, glad report. If you missed it, I’m sorry you did. It’s magical, our festival, it’s right by the ocean, cradled by mountains and lakes and forest and city, all at once. It’s the only event in Vancouver where I regularly look around me and think, “this city is beautiful”. I’m going back again today, to sit and listen to music and dance as much as possible. I don’t expect to be home until tomorrow.

I was part of the lantern procession last night, I carried a heart made all of fire, and dipped it over children and held it over the heads of smiling couples. I think I changed a little girl’s life last night, she looked as if I had shown her the moon.