June 9th, 2009, 4 Comments »
There’s a back lane behind our house. It’s an unusual feature on the west coast, and presumably it’s a reflection of the neighbourhood being at least a hundred years old. As children have done for at least that long, there’s a couple of kids who haul nets, sticks and a tennis ball into the lane to play hockey. They’ve even chalked out a little ice rink, with faceoff circles and a centre ice line.
As you probably know, the NHL playoffs are winding down. In fact, if Detroit beats the Pittsburgh Penguins tomorrow night, they’ll hold aloft their fifth Stanley Cup in 12 years–a remarkable feat.
I was walking down the lane the other day, and noticed a new addition to the chalk-and-cement rink. Somebody drew an oversized, stick-wielding bird with legs akimbo at centre ice:
The lane is sloped, so you pay a price when you miss the more southerly net. I instantly recognized this as a kid’s decent interpretation of the Penguins’ logo, which appears at centre ice in Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena:
Here’s another view, for some perspective. Clearly the kids are pretending to be Crosby and Malkin, not Zetterberg and Datsyuk.
I was a pretty solitary kid growing up. I preferred to tape out a goal on one wall of our two-car carport, and shoot tennis balls at it from the far side. If a ball took a particularly bad bounce, it ended up on the steep, wooded slope between our house and the neighbours. I had to psych myself up to retrieve those wayward balls. The neighbours had a surly Doberman named Sasha, and she didn’t care for children.
Mellon arena photo by EnsErmac.
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May 11th, 2009, No Comments »
I’ve seen worse:
Surely there’s a book of these for non-punny pastors? Yep, this looks like a winner.
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April 3rd, 2009, 4 Comments »
It’s never fun when somebody loses their pet, but I was struck by the careful wording on this sign that I spotted in Victoria. He’s not big or fat, he’s heavier set:
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January 19th, 2009, 3 Comments »
Last Saturday night we saw alternative country singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards at the Alix Goolden Hall (needs a Wikipedia page) here in Victoria. It was an all-around excellent concert experience. Edwards is a great songwriter blessed with a distinctive voice. I read one critic recently who described her as a “persuasive live performer”. That’s very apt–she demands that you listen to her.
She has three albums of really strong material, and any fan would have gone home happy with her well-chosen set list. In fact, the only song that I could name (without consulting my MP3 collection) that she didn’t play was “One More Song the Radio Won’t Like”. For the encore, she played a delightful version of “Mercury”, and then she and her husband-bandmate stepped in front of the mics to play a lovely, quiet version of the Everly Brothers “When Will I Be Loved”. Finally, they finished with a terrific, tumbling cover of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart”. It’s a confident singer who ends her show with two covers.
It was, all in all, an excellent concert going experience, enriched by my first visit to the Alix Goolden Hall. It’s a converted 800-seat, 19th century church, and now belongs to the Victoria Conservatory of Music. I tried to determine what denomination the church had been, but couldn’t find anything on the web. It’s quite an austere space, with white walls, a sloped, curving balcony and ornate stained glass windows, so we guessed Greek Orthodox. It also had lovely acoustics–aside from the Chan Centre, probably the best my in-expert ears have heard on the West Coast.
You can read more about the space and see a panorama (MOV file) if you’re interested. Those links go to some web company’s staging site, so I’m not sure how long they’ll last.
Edwards’ opening act made me feel old. It was Dustin Bentall. Yes, that’s Barney Bentall’s son. Barney Bentall, for the unintroduced, was kind of a regionally-famous singer in the eighties and nineties. He played with a band called “The Legendary Hearts”, and they had hits like “Something To Live For”.
Photo by John Benson.
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December 4th, 2008, 1 Comment »
There was a beautiful sunset in Victoria (and apparently Vancouver) tonight. This photo doesn’t really do it justice (click for the super-sizing)
Here’s another similar photo I snapped (available in humungous size for your desktop).
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November 20th, 2008, 8 Comments »
The Belfry Theatre is, in my view, the best producer of mainstream theatre in the province. They’re more consistent than The Arts Club or The Vancouver Playhouse, and yet they take more risks with the play choices.
Yesterday I got a media release from the Belfry, summarizing their AGM and reporting on their last year’s work. It reminded me that they’re also currently one of the most financially stable and successful theatres that I know of.
They have an huge subscriber base of 6700 people for a theatre that only seats 277. Their average attendance for their mainstage shows last season was a mind-boggling 92%. They recently extended their production runs from four to five weeks when many Canadian theatres are reducing theirs to three.
I’ve always been an keen observer of arts funding and economics, and so was interested to see where the Belfry got its money from. And, as regular readers know, I love a chart. I produced a couple. The first shows where the Belfry’s revenue comes from:
The second shows the blue chunk of the big pie–private fundraising:
I asked Mark Dusseault at the Belfry about why ‘gaming money’, funding from BC Lottery Corporation, is under ‘private fundraising’. He explained that there were various reasons: government accounting practice, no peer review process and the way the money used to be doled out.
When gaming was originally set up we (staff and volunteers from the theatre) had to go and work the events. We spent a couple of days a year either at a bingo parlour or casino. We were, in essence, fundraising. We had to apply to participate and there was no guarantee as to how much money we would make (or lose).
I actually remember doing this once at a casino for some Vancouver theatre company.
The green slice is public money from sundry agencies: Canada Council for the Arts, CRD Arts Development and BC Cultural Services are the biggest contributors. Their entire budget is about $2.3 this year.
Where Does the Money Go?
I suppose the other question is how is that money spent?
I don’t have any great insights into these numbers. I just wanted to explore them a little, and make pretty charts. Do you have any insights?
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November 14th, 2008, 1 Comment »
I confess near-complete apathy towards local politics. I voted in Vancouver once or twice, but it was from a position of near naivete. My interest in politics declines as it becomes more local. People try to convince me that local politics is where my vote counts most. That may be true, but I care a lot more about, say, saving the Great Bear Rainforest (more on this next week) or our troops in Afghanistan than a sewage treatment plant for Victoria.
Both issues matter, but one matters a lot less in my worldview.
In any case, tomorrow I’m getting out to vote in my local election. That’s because our personal trainer, Nick Baker, is running for city council. He’s a thoughtful guy, and makes sense on the issues that seem to matter to Victorians:
I applaud the efforts made by the city to handle the homelessness problem, but it feels like too little, too late. The emphasis on homelessness, while definitely an important issue, neglects or even directs blame to the wrong people for the mess our downtown has become. Drug use and addictions need more aggressive tactics to rid our streets of the drugs and crime. by focusing on providing safe detox centers with ongoing rehabilitation, we can save lives and money.
Debating strategies for combating drug addiction has also made working out slightly less miserable.
Nick’s also got a Facebook page.
On the Vancouver Front
I spent some time trying to identify the major differences between Peter Ladner and Gregor Robertson, the two leading candidates in the Vancouver mayoral race. I’ve met Mr. Ladner, and he seemed like a savvy, straight-up guy (and apparently a former editor of Monday Magazine). He gave me a straight, non-politcal answer to a question I asked about (of all things) landfills. A bunch of my peers advocate strongly for Mr. Robertson.
Looking at their platforms, I’m having a hard time picking between them. I don’t have a vote in Vancouver, so happily it’s academic.
Who are you voting for, wherever you live (assuming, you know, that you live in BC)?
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November 3rd, 2008, 1 Comment »
I’ve seen a couple of these signs attached to telephone poles around my neighbourhood:
They are, it turns out, a band. Maybe I’m overly curious, but a simple sheet of 8 x 11″ paper with the band’s (admittedly peculiar) name printed on it was enough to get me to look further. Had it been your ordinary photocopied indie band poster, I probably would have ignored it.
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October 20th, 2008, 13 Comments »
As you’re no doubt aware, hockey season has begun. In the furnished apartment, there’s only a crappy, old, 20″ CRT television. Broadcast television, of course, is getting more and more widescreen. Watching hockey broadcasts on a traditional TV, I have the sense that I’m missing a good 20% of the action beyond the edges of the square screen.
So, I want a 26″ widescreen LCD TV. We’re going to get a whole home theatre setup when we build our house, so ours is a temporary need. I hoped to lessen the impact of the purchase by buying used, and selling or giving away the TV in a year or two.
That’s proven surprisingly tricky. For three weeks, I’ve been keeping an eye on Craiglist and Used Victoria, and there are very few televisions that fit that description. I’ve also searched on eBay, where there are more options. However, the shipping charges generally make the TVs more expensive than going down to Future Shop and carrying it home.
Finally, I visited a pawn shop here in Victoria. They had exactly one TV–an old CRT among the dozens of speakers and stereos. I asked about this, and they explained that they’d just been through the ‘back to school rush’. Bloody university students, eh?
Here’s what I’m seeing: stores mark down new televisions so much that there’s little incentive to buy a used one of a similar calibre. Or maybe few people are done with their first LCD TV, and the used market will expand in a few years. What do you think?
UPDATE: Here’s another possibility. The prices of these TVs have dropped sharply in the past three years. When people are ready to upgrade, they’re bummed to find out that their three-year-old $1200 TV can be bought for $400 new. So they don’t bother selling it used.
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July 17th, 2008, 12 Comments »
I’ve been meaning to write a few posts about my new hometown of Victoria, but other more worldly things keep coming up. There’s a bizarre retail phenomenon in downtown Victoria that deserves mention. On Johnston Street, a busy shopping street in the centre of town, there are three comic book shops within a block of each other. In fact, two of them are next door to each other. Check it out:
View Larger Map
I was reminded of this unlikely confluence while in Legends Comics and Books buying the final issue of Y: The Last Man (a truly superb series). I should have asked the guy behind the counter what the deal was (maybe somebody owns more than one of the shops?). I’ll do so the next time I’m down on Johnson Street.
I know there’s some retail theory about assembling a group of similar shops, and a tide that raises all boats. But this doesn’t feel sustainable. Still, if I remember correctly, there have been three shops on Johnson for years. Weird, eh?
LoJo: Really, You’re Going With That?
Incidentally, there’s a City of Victoria-backed effort to rebrand a few blocks of Johnson Street with the heinous epithet ‘LoJo’. It feels like an awful, desperate attempt to associate that area with the SoHo’s of New York and London.
Informal neighbourhood names shouldn’t come from City Hall–they should be devised by the people in the neighbourhood. Maybe that’s what happened here, but I’d never heard the term before I saw it on a silly banner on a lamppost.
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