Archive for the 'Web Exclusive' Category

What would make a per­son want to per­form hip hop karaoke?

For­tune Sound Club’s monthly Hip-Hop Karaoke night sells itself as the best time you can have on a Mon­day night any­where in Van­cou­ver. DJ Flipout hosts with a mix of soccer-coach pos­i­tiv­ity and sharp ban­ter, and DJ Seko plays boom­ing instru­men­tals on a full sound sys­tem. The crowd is loud and focused on the per­form­ers, and enjoys danc­ing, wav­ing hands in the air, and yelling. The stage has been blessed with “rap­pin’ ass rap­pers” (Flipout’s term for pro­fes­sional rap­pers) such as Jaykin, Kyprios, and the Ras­calz pay­ing trib­ute to the songs that inspired them to pick up the mic. But it’s equally wel­com­ing to ama­teurs, shy girls who bust out eerily accu­rate Li’l Wayne or Nicki Minaj impres­sions or nerdy dudes trans­form­ing them­selves into gangsta rap superstars.

Yet there’s still an intim­i­da­tion fac­tor. Unlike reg­u­lar karaoke nights, Hip-Hop Karaoke has no tinned canny instru­men­tals. There’s no video screen show­ing incon­gru­ous men in suits run­ning on a beach at sun­set. Most impor­tantly, there are no lyrics with a bounc­ing ball for per­form­ers to read. Per­form­ers need to mem­o­rize rap songs (which tend to have a lot of words, spo­ken fast) well enough to spit fire in front of hun­dreds of peo­ple. The crowd is patient with mis­takes, but screw­ing up can still be pretty embar­rass­ing. I asked four reg­u­lar per­form­ers why they loved Hip-Hop Karaoke.

Diana Theodora Christou

SM: How did you first hear about hip hop karaoke?

DTC: I saw a poster on a tele­phone pole and felt like the sky opened up and my des­tiny was call­ing to me!

SM: What was your favorite song that you performed?

DTC: Das EFX — They want EFX. It’s a really fun and tricky song, and I love how they rap.

SM: What about by another performer?

DTC: That’s a hard ques­tion, there’s been so many. But there was an Asian girl doing (sings) Whatta Man Whatta Man whatta mighty mighty good man!

SM: How often do you prac­tice a song before going on stage?

DTC: I usu­ally lis­ten to it every day for the two weeks before Hip-Hop Karaoke. I play it over and over again on the way to work.

SM: What do you love about per­form­ing here?

DTC: It’s a big release, and it makes me feel good about myself.

SM: Do you do any other live performing?

DTC: No, but even when I was four I loved to dance around and enter­tain my fam­ily. This is a great way to express that side of myself.

Lawrence Lua

SM: What was your favorite song that you performed?

LL: Breathe by Fab­u­lous, because it’s the one I screwed up the least!

SM: How did you get into Hip-Hop Karaoke?

LL: I came here for a few shows and then started to rap. I love rap and I love per­form­ing, it’s fuck­ing cool! Before doing it, I won­dered how it would be, to go through the stage fright and the whole experience.

SM: How long do you prac­tice for?

LL: A week or so. I usu­ally cram the night before.

SM: What do you love about per­form­ing here?

LL: The peo­ple. The vibe.

Next Fri­day: Part 2, inter­views with two more vet­er­ans and a pre­view of the Feb 13th show!
For more on Hip-Hop Karaoke, visit their Face­book Page.

okay folks, this is your nana speak­ing, i will keep it real and hon­est with my answers to your queeries. please remem­ber to remem­ber that i am old and a trans­plant of sorts myself here from sara­jevo, and may or may not always be able to relate to us all. i will try though, and make shit up if i have to. all i know is love is love is love is love! so here it goes!

My part­ner and I are exper­i­ment­ing with hav­ing an open rela­tion­ship. So far, it’s been fine because we’ve never run into each other on our respec­tive “dates.” We both want to go to a mutual friend’s birth­day party with our dates to see how it feels. Any advice?

1: don’t go to the same party unless you enjoy some very SPECIAL pos­si­bil­i­ties, and are really REALLY “open” to that…
2: go to the same party, you’ll run into eachother at the same party sooner or later any­way, get it over with and SEE how wide open you really are…
3: have group sex, cognac after­wards, in vin­tage­warm glass­ware, and go to sleep

My girl­friend made a com­ment about me being a bad kisser recently. It’s not the first time it’s hap­pened with a girl­friend. I am start­ing to feel really self con­scious, to the point that I don’t want to kiss her before stick­ing my hand in her pants. What do I do?

1: unfor­tu­nately, this is often a deal breaker when it comes to sex­ual inti­macy.  why don’t you write back and tell us what makes you a bad kisser? are you dry kiss­ing with bad breath, or drool­ing out of con­trol with your tongue in places it has no busi­ness being at? you say this isn’t the first time, hmmmm.… how into these women are you, were you? if you are really into your girl­friend, i would ask her to show you how she wants to be kissed, relax and lock those lips together.
2: try not stick­ing your hands down her pants until your kisses make her defense­less, at least for a lit­tle while…
3: agree to have sex with­out kiss­ing and see if she misses your bad kisses… good luck!

I’m in love with this per­son, who is per­fect in ever way, but picks her nose and wipes it on the sheets. I’ve put Kleenex by the bed and made play­ful jokes, but it’s snot mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. Now she does it when she thinks I’m not look­ing. What’s a polite way to get her to stop?

1: well, if your lover is per­fect in every­way, except with the snot busi­ness, you are not telling us the truth! and why be polite, too late for that, con­sid­er­ing it is down right rude to sleep in snot with your loved ones, unless they are babies or ill. so i would pull a dick van dyke and get twin beds side by side with your own night tables. while you are at it, buy your­self some bright yel­low egypt­ian cot­ton bed­sheets and pur­ple satin pil­low cases.  she can snot all over her own bed­sheets any­time she likes, but not on yours. prob­lem solved, since every­thing else is per­fect, you two are set!
2: with­hold sex until she sees the wrong­ness of her dis­gust­ing habit and stops the snot­ting around,
3: this could be worse than you think, check other places, like under tables, walls and curtains.

Does every­one pee in the shower? It seems like I’m the only per­son who (a) hasn’t heard of it and (b) thinks it’s dis­gust­ing.

1: okay, you are very spe­cial if you don’t ever pee in the shower. so, no you are not the only one my dear girl. it is per­fectly nat­ural and sat­is­fy­ing, to say the least! if it dis­gusts your roman­tic shower part­ners, don’t tell them you are doing it, or don’t do it when they are in the shower with you. clean­est place to have a nice warm tin­kle i say!
2:  i heard from a cou­ple of young men today that pee­ing on your feet in the shower is a good idea for all sorts of ail­ments.
3: have a piss­ing con­test and make new friends.

Do you have a ques­tion for Nana? Send it to asknana (at) sadmag.ca

Usu­ally we com­ment on things that make us un-sad, but there’s a fight going on between the Rio and the LCLB that’s mak­ing us sad and mad. For­tu­nately, the Rio’s Cor­rine Lea is not back­ing down, which is mak­ing us glad. As does rhyming but I digress.

On Thurs­day, Jan­u­ary 26, the Rio was sup­posed to be cel­e­brat­ing their suc­cess in achiev­ing a liquor license, an achieve­ment which was an inte­gral part of con­tin­u­ing as a viable busi­ness.  Instead, the event became a fundraiser to off­set their losses and fund future resis­tance to the restric­tions out on the Rio due to that very license.

Lea has had to can­cel film screen­ings as venues clas­si­fied as “movie the­atres” can­not serve alco­hol. Lea main­tains they are a multi-media venue and so are mis­clas­si­fied. She also notes that her license only runs from 6pm to 1am, and she is not insist­ing that liquor be served at screen­ings, only that screen­ings be able to take place. After they screen the “Rocky Hor­ror Picture-less Show” on Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 27th, when the sound­track will play and the film enacted by a  shadow cast, they don’t have any­thing sched­uled until Feb­ru­ary 4th. “As far as the blank days go, we’re just going to scram­ble and try to fig­ure out what to do. We might have an open mic night every night or a karaoke night…If the gov­ern­ment were to reverse their deci­sion I could have movies in those slots like that.” She snaps her fin­gers with the type of gusto required when going up against said government.

Since being told about the caveat on her license, there have been many state­ments issued — by Lea, by Solic­i­tor Gen­eral Shirley Bond, and by Liquor Con­trol and Licens­ing Branch gen­eral man­ager Karen Ayers — but lit­tle con­struc­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion seems to be hap­pen­ing.  Ayers has made many com­ments in the media about the var­i­ous rea­sons the Rio is in this predica­ment and not, say, Roger’s Arena. Ayers touts pub­lic safety and notes the arena’s secu­rity as a rea­son for venue’s such as that being licensed. Lea notes that she was never given the option to increase secu­rity as a means to secure the licens­ing she needs.

My opin­ion, and the opin­ion of groups like CAMRA, is that the province and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment are main­tain­ing pro­hi­bi­tion era statutes. I would add that even the LCLB’s ratio­nal­iza­tions seem out­dated, not to men­tion incon­sis­tent. It would bet­ter serve pub­lic safety to ban alco­hol at vio­lent sport­ing events than at the movies. I’d def­i­nitely put my money on not see­ing see any post-event riots at the Rio, screen­ings or oth­er­wise. While Ayers has been answer­ing objec­tions one at a time, there are easy fixes to these, which Lea is more than will­ing to put into place. For exam­ple, wor­ry­ing about minors hav­ing liquor in the dark could be assuaged if the Rio doesn’t serve alco­hol dur­ing film screen­ings. Lea notes she sim­ply wants to serve liquor at events, not movies.

Bond has issued a state­ment, picked up by sev­eral out­lets, that her office is “aware of the chal­lenges,” are “con­sid­er­ing what changes may be appro­pri­ate” and they “look for­ward to hav­ing more to say about this in the near future.” While this may sig­nal progress, the lack of specifics are wor­ri­some to Lea. As of Sun­day, Jan­u­ary 29th, Lea has yet to hear from the Solic­i­tor General’s office or the LCLB on any options she might have going for­ward. The Rio is con­sult­ing with the British Colum­bia Civil Lib­er­ties Asso­ci­a­tion as to whether their civil lib­er­ties have been curtailed.

The Rio is sched­uled to host films from the Van­cou­ver Island Film Fes­ti­val, which begins Feb­ru­ary 10th. This is just one effect the Rio oper­at­ing with­out screen­ings will have, and rep­re­sents a real dead­line for action. The Rio sup­ports a vari­ety of com­mu­ni­ties beyond film – music, com­edy, bur­lesque, dance and more – by being a unique and acces­si­ble venue. It also rep­re­sents a part of Van­cou­ver his­tory, as the Tyee points out, an archi­tec­tural and cin­e­matic his­tory that is being demolished.

Thus it’s not sur­pris­ing that peo­ple are rais­ing their voices not just in the street forums (which is what I call cof­fee shops and face­book com­ments), but in the press (sim­ply Google “the Rio The­atre Van­cou­ver” for a flood of sto­ries) and among politi­cians (Jenny Kwan and Heather Deal are both speak­ing out on the Rio’s behalf). It even tran­scends polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions, with Leo Knight,  “Law and Order” opin­ion colum­nist, to agree on an issue with a Vision Coun­cilor “for the first time in liv­ing history.”

This issue is hot, not only because the Rio and Lea are so sup­port­ive of and beloved by Vancouver’s arts com­mu­nity but because, espe­cially to that same arts com­mu­nity, it rep­re­sents major issues in Van­cou­ver and BC. It’s a hard place to suc­ceed as a small busi­ness, and is full of demol­ished unique cul­tural venues, archaic liquor and pub­lic safety laws and a gen­eral dis­re­gard for what access to arts does for a com­mu­nity both socially and eco­nom­i­cally. The story at the Rio has become a point of ref­er­ence  the chang­ing of BC liquor dis­tri­b­u­tion, but it’s truly a point of ref­er­ence for the inter­sec­tion of arts, busi­ness and government.

On a pos­i­tive note, the Rio fundraiser née cel­e­bra­tion was a suc­cess. “We had 200 peo­ple attend  – it was a beau­ti­ful event. Pan­dora and the Lock­smiths made for a really classy evening with a lit­tle bit of tease. On a per­sonal level I found it really uplift­ing to see every­one face to face. It was really great to per­son­ally go around and thank peo­ple. It was a real good night for peo­ple to talk about the issue,” says Lea, sound­ing hope­ful despite her los­ing thou­sands of dol­lars every day her the­atre is closed.  MLA’s Jenny Kwan and Shane Simp­son were in atten­dance, as was Leonard Schein, the pres­i­dent of Fes­ti­val Cinemas.

Along with the return (kind of) of gam­ing based arts fund­ing, the con­tro­versy and sup­port the Rio’s lat­est bat­tle has drawn may her­ald change. But to win, Lea needs our sup­port. Here’s how you can help: raise your voice and write to your MLA, the Solic­i­tor Gen­eral and the LCLB; on Jan­u­ary 31 Heather Deal is pre­sent­ing a motion at City Hall to have the movie ban removed, and you can come and speak for the Rio; and sup­port the Rio finan­cially by attend­ing their amaz­ing upcom­ing LIVE events. Find the addresses and emails, up to date info, FAQs and next steps on Rio’s Face­book group.

The Rio may not be screen­ing movies right now – but there’s still amaz­ing events com­ing up. Let’s wrap up this chap­ter of the ongo­ing saga with a few events com­ing up. You can check out full details online includ­ing advance tick­ets, but Lea had a few extra tid­bits to share with Sad Mag readers.

Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 4: Patrick Mal­iha presents the Legion of Stand-Up Come­di­ans
Tick­ets: $10 Doors: 7pm Show: 8pm

“This is a really excit­ing night because Patrick Mal­iha is a well known come­dian about town and always puts on an excel­lent event. Gra­ham Clark will be a spe­cial guest, which is amaz­ing, peo­ple love Gra­ham Clark. He’s added some­thing like 23 bur­lesque dancers last minute, so it’s going to be fabulous.”

Fri­day, Feb­ru­ary 10: Tongue N’ Cheek: Sex, Dance and Spo­ken Word
Tick­ets: $12 advance $15 door Doors: 8pm Show: 9pm

“We’re very excited about this show because it fea­tures my four favourite bur­lesque dancers in town, [Sweet Soul Burlesque’s Crys­tal Pre­cious, Lola Frost, Lit­tle Miss Risk and Cherry On Top].  This is kind of my baby, this par­tic­u­lar show, because I’m com­bin­ing two of my favourite things, bur­lesque and spo­ken word. C.R. Avery, Mike McGee and Jamie DeWolf are three really pow­er­ful spo­ken word artists and we’re get­ting them to col­lab­o­rate, it’s not ‘here’s a dance, here’s a poem’, we’re get­ting them to work together. [Plus] there’s 8 local poets who will be com­pet­ing in the Dirty Haiku con­test. … It’s com­ing up on Valentine’s Day week­end so it’s a good date night.

Tues­day, Feb­ru­ary 14: The 2nd Annual Sweet Heart Ser­e­nade
Tick­ets: $10 advance, $14 at the door Doors: 8pm Show: 8:30pm

“Last year we attached it with a movie, and we had planned to show Shake­speare in Love but with the predica­ment we find our­selves in, we are not going to be allowed show it with a movie. So, now it will just be live music but it will be a spe­cial night because we’ve hand picked per­form­ers from some really great bands in town. It’s a more stripped down, inti­mate per­for­mance which makes it per­fect for a date night. It’s adults over so they can have some wine to enjoy dur­ing the evening.”

Other events com­ing up:

Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 9: David Choi with Spe­cial Guests (Gen­eral Admission/All Ages Show)
Tick­ets $20 Doors:8 pm Show: 9pm

Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 12: The Rio The­atre & NightHeat Present: Chali 2na MC
Doors: 8pm Tick­ets: $18 + S/C advance

Friday, Feb­ru­ary 24: Com­edy Fest: Marc Maron (WTF) with David Cross and Bob Odenkirk
Show: 7pm Tick­ets: http://comedyfest.com/show/wtf-marc-maron

Comic by Monique Wells

Do you miss read­ing the Sun­day comics every week­end, because you live in the 21st cen­tury and no one gets a phys­i­cal news­pa­per deliv­ered to their front door any­more, they just get all their news from Boing Boing any­way? And you don’t even have a front door, because you live in a base­ment suite, and you’re tired of being deprived of comics just because Van­cou­ver has an oppres­sive rental market.

Well, enough of that. Start­ing this week­end, Sad Mag will be bring­ing you an orig­i­nal web comic every Sunday!

This week’s web comic is by one of our very favourite illus­tra­tors, Monique Wells! See more of her work at her web­site.

Do you know some­one whose work should be fea­tured on Web Comics for the Week­end? Tell us on Face­book or Twit­ter!

The near­est beach may only be a few blocks from my seat at Gastown’s Nel­son the Seag­ull, but with mid-January hang­ing heavy over Van­cou­ver, noth­ing feels so far away as sum­mer. How­ever, as I start to chat with Jody Glenham—local musi­cian and lead singer of newly minted surf rock combo Plea­sure Cruise—our con­ver­sa­tion turns away from the drea­ri­ness of winter.

Instead, in the hours before Plea­sure Cruise’s PuSh Fes­ti­val Club PuSh per­for­mance, which will find the band along­side local insti­tu­tions like Bend Sin­is­ter and CBC Radio 3 per­son­al­ity Lisa Chris­tiansen, we end up dis­cussing (maybe per­versely, over hot cof­fee) the hazy warmth of low-fi gui­tars, the excite­ment of new hori­zons for the still-nascent project, and redis­cov­er­ing the fun of performance

Plea­sure Cruise, which Glen­ham describes as “the Ramones meets the Ronettes,” came together, rather by chance, in the sum­mer of 2011. “Dustin [Brom­ley] and Quinn [Omori] were look­ing for a female singer. At the time, I had an injured hand, so I wasn’t play­ing. And the way they were look­ing for a singer was on Twit­ter. They were actu­ally tweet­ing back and forth, and I hap­pen to fol­low both of them.” Glen­ham stops and jokes: “So I was on the inside track. And I half jok­ingly tweeted back at them ‘I sing, just saying.’”

Before the night was out, Glen­ham had a series of “bed­room demos” in her inbox; a col­lec­tion of sweet, sum­mer pop songs fea­tur­ing Quinn Omori—Shindig vet­eran, music jour­nal­ist, and pro­pri­etor of From Blown Speak­ers—on vocals. From those hyper­me­di­ated begin­nings, the trio (now a four­some with the addi­tion of bassist Kyle Bourcier) began tak­ing steps in the oppo­site direc­tion, towards a low-fi, sun-drenched aes­thetic, rem­i­nis­cent of con­tem­po­rary acts like Best Coast and Cults, and for Glen­ham, the 50s’ pop and girl group revival of the 1990s.

“I think our first band prac­tice was actu­ally on the beach,” Glen­ham recalls. “I just started join­ing them dur­ing their Third Beach after­noons and talk­ing with them, and that started click­ing. So we decided to get into a jam space with no idea what to expect.” This rough-shod hap­pen­stance, the kind that only sum­mer after­noons can offer, is imme­di­ately appar­ent on the band’s first EP, Busi­ness, or…, which jan­gles and echoes through tracks like “Sum­mer Fling” and throw­back piece “I Really Wanna Know.”

In a city where sun is scarce, Plea­sure Cruise has quickly become a bright spot, catch­ing the eager atten­tion of fans and jour­nal­ists alike. Before they had even played their first show, Wes­t­En­der had chris­tened the combo “Vancouver’s newest super­group” and sin­gled them out as one of five acts to watch for in 2011, along­side 2011 Polaris Prize longlist nom­i­nees Yukon Blonde and 2012 Polaris short­lis­ters, The Pack A.D.

Asked why she thinks Plea­sure Cruise’s par­tic­u­lar brand of “sum­mer beach music” seems to have con­nected so quickly with lis­ten­ers, Glen­ham offers a fairly sim­ple and extremely con­vinc­ing answer: “It’s fun! Doing your own solo stuff, you can get caught up in being so seri­ous all the time, and this is just so fun! I think peo­ple rec­og­nize that and respond to it in a gen­uine way.”

I have to agree. There’s some­thing about Plea­sure Cruise that recalls the do-it-yourself, do-as-you-will punk her­itage on which Van­cou­ver sits; that com­pul­sion to make music that just works, and to do it joy­fully, along­side friends. And that’s exactly what Plea­sure Cruise does—a jour­nal­ist, a singer-songwriter, and a for­mer punk musi­cian mak­ing slap-happy surf rock that audi­ences love.

The com­ing months, Glen­ham says, include a pos­si­ble vinyl release, some poten­tial fes­ti­val dates, and sink­ing “fish­ing lines” into record label inboxes. But for the most part, the future of Plea­sure Cruise seems to be as indul­gently casual as its past. In Glenham’s words: “what are you plan­ning? I’m plan­ning on doing what­ever the uni­verse hands me.”

You can down­load Plea­sure Cruise’s debut EP Busi­ness or… for free on Band­camp. The band will be play­ing Feb­ru­ary 3rd at Lucky Bar in Vic­to­ria and Feb­ru­ary 14th at The Biltmore.

Valentine’s Day is a time to cry, whether it’s because you have no one to swap roman­tic sen­ti­ments and/or body flu­ids with, or because your swapping-partner gave you a box of choco­lates with the best ones already eaten. What­ever your rea­son for resent­ing the hol­i­day (just a lit­tle, you’re not bit­ter) join us for Sad Com­edy to laugh and drink away the pain!

Hap­pen­ing at our favourite hang­out (The Cobalt), the show fea­tures a stel­lar line-up of come­di­ans and is hosted by Ghost Jail’s Caitlin Howden.

If that isn’t awe­some enough, a full-on dance party is hap­pen­ing after the show, with DJs Jef Lep­pard and Robo Santa spin­ning tunes until close. We’ll have a cry­ing booth and a kiss­ing booth set upfor photo ops all night.

The $10 cover gets you a year’s sub­scrip­tion and admis­sion to the show and dance party! So gather up all your Valen­tines and get your cry­ing face ready for Sad Comedy!

Sad Com­edy: Valen­tine Edition

The Cobalt (917 Main St)

Thurs­day, Feb­ru­ary 9th, 2012

Doors at 8:00PM, show at 9:00PM

Cover $10 (includes subscription)

RSVP on Face­book

Start­ing today and run­ning for the next two weeks, Canada Line rid­ers can check out orig­i­nal art by Sad Mag Issue 5 cover star Dou­glas Cou­p­land, in the form of colour­ful QR codes. His work, enti­tled Van­cou­ver Codes, is part of the 10 Sec­ond series, one of 15 pub­lic art projects com­mis­sioned by the city as part of Van­cou­ver 125.

Accord­ing to the press release, “Van­cou­ver Codes is the eighth in the 10 Sec­onds series of com­mis­sioned works for the Canada Line video screens as part of a year­long project cel­e­brat­ing Van­cou­ver 125.” The 10 Sec­onds series was curated by Paul Wong and pre­sented in part­ner­ship with On Main and InTransitBC.

Cou­p­land cre­ated QR-code paint­ings last year, two of which (“Live Long and Pros­per” and “Every­thing Beau­ti­ful is True”) are dis­play­ing on Canada Line video screens until Jan­u­ary 31st.

Van­cou­ver Codes link to sites for var­i­ous Vancouver-related videos, art works and sites includ­ing “pho­tographs of var­i­ous sites such as Grouse Moun­tain and Van Dusen Gar­dens; pub­lic art­works includ­ing Coupland’s Dig­i­tal Orca and Terry Fox Sculp­tures” and more.

After Coupland’s tran­sit exhi­bi­tion wraps, new work will be fea­tured for the months of Feb­ru­ary and March. To see the pre­vi­ous art works exhib­ited on the Canada Line, visit the On Main website.

Van­cou­ver Codes

Jan­u­ary 16 — 31, 2012

Canada Line Stations

Free!

Note: A fab­ri­cated image from a con­struc­tion site in South Sur­rey Helma Sawatzky, The Phoenix Com­plex (2012) c-print. Cour­tesy of the artist and Elliott Luis Gallery

Art lovers: check out Beyond Vague Ter­rain: The City and the Ser­ial Image, which opens at the Sur­rey Art Gallery this Sat­ur­day, Jan­u­ary 14th.

Show­cas­ing the way Metro Van­cou­ver is always chang­ing and simul­ta­ne­ously offer­ing “beauty and banal­ity” in its sprawl­ing sub­urbs and mer­cu­r­ial neigh­bour­hoods, the exhibit includes 13 artists and fea­tures video, pho­tog­ra­phy, paint­ing and drawing.

High­lights include “a grid of shim­mer­ing graphite rub­bings of eroded date-stamped side­walks on Vancouver’s West­side, a 109 foot long light box pre­sent­ing a panorama of Metro Van­cou­ver as seen from a mov­ing Sky­Train, and an inter­ac­tive pho­to­graphic data­base of every bus stop in Sur­rey.” A depar­ture from postcard-perfect views of down­town Van­cou­ver, much of the work focuses on “street inter­sec­tions, indus­trial dead zones, and sub­ur­ban sprawl,” to chal­lenge our ideas about urban­ity, mar­gin­al­iza­tion and history.

Beyond Vague Ter­rain: The City and the Ser­ial Image

Sur­rey Art Gallery

13750 88 Ave, Sur­rey, British Columbia

Jan­u­ary 14th– March 18th, 2012

By dona­tion

Open­ing recep­tion: Jan­u­ary 14th, 7:00PM-9:00PM

Give the gift of Sad Mag for just $12, and remind your friends and fam­ily of your good taste the whole year through. Or maybe it is time to “treat yo self.”

Order before Decem­ber 17, and a hol­i­day card will be sent to the recip­i­ent that noti­fies them of their new sub­scrip­tion, in time for Christ­mas. Mean­while, gen­er­ous Van­cou­verites that place an order before Decem­ber 17 will also earn an entry into a draw for a $100 gift cer­tifi­cate to Burcu’s Angels vin­tage cloth­ing store. Visions of vin­tage furs and sequins dance in our heads!

Mar­i­anela Ramos Capelo pulls up the leg of her jeans to show her right ankle. “Excuse my hairy leg,” she cau­tions, as she reveals a 3-inch tat­too: one con­tin­u­ous line that forms the out­line of a dog pulled length-wise. “It’s a line draw­ing of a weiner dog. It’s based on a Picasso draw­ing,” she explains. Picasso’s sim­ple sketch was a love let­ter to a Daschund named Lump; Capelo’s ren­di­tion is a trib­ute to her child­hood pet: “He was my best buddy grow­ing up. The best mem­o­ries that I have with my fam­ily are with that dog there. He was amaz­ing. That was the first one.”

Photo: Mar­i­anela Ramos Capelo

Capelo has three tat­toos: she has another on her left wrist, and a third on her left bicep. She tells me the story behind each one, and then reveals that a year ago, she had no tat­toos. It’s pos­si­ble, then, that the year-long art project she just com­pleted might have swayed her to get a lit­tle ink.

Nearly every­day since Sep­tem­ber 2010, Capelo, a 22-year-old com­mu­ni­ca­tion arts stu­dent, has been ask­ing strangers about their tat­toos. In the hopes of over­com­ing and under­stand­ing her shy­ness, she chal­lenged her­self to talk to 365 strangers. Capelo approached peo­ple in cafés, on cam­pus and on Com­mer­cial Drive, where she lives, ask­ing them to show her a tat­too and tell her the story behind it. With an iPhone and a smile, she found 420 peo­ple who let her take a photo of their body art and share the gen­e­sis story on her blog, A Stranger A Day (astrangeraday.tumblr.com).

In July, she cap­tured a vividly coloured por­trait of Karma that stretched from a man’s armpit to his hip (he got it just for art’s sake). Last Octo­ber, she pho­tographed a dot of ink below a woman’s eye (the stranger wanted to remem­ber the tears she had shared with her hus­band). The tat­toos vary, but Capelo dis­cov­ered “some­thing really beau­ti­ful” in the rela­tion­ship all the strangers had with the art on their skin. “It’s hard to get some­one to say some­thing pos­i­tive about their bod­ies,” she says. Not very many peo­ple say, ‘Oh look at my nose! Look at my fin­gers!’ But with tat­toos, it’s very easy.”

On Octo­ber 24, she posted her final photo, and cried. “I was done! I was just really happy. But that was about 30 sec­onds and then it was onto the show.” Less than two weeks later, she and three friends drew about 200 Van­cou­verites to a tiny, nar­row art gallery on East Geor­gia Street to show the com­plete work. It was almost impos­si­ble to walk through the room and take in the images and sto­ries; the gallery was packed with bod­ies. Atten­dees were wait­ing out­side before the show even started at 7 p.m., many of whom were the inked strangers from her web­site. They’d heard about the one-night exhibit on CBC Radio or read about it on the blog Van­cou­ver is Awe­some and came to see their pic­ture on the walls. “It was really cool,” the artist says. “One of my main goals of the show was to reach out to the strangers, and for them to see what they were a part of, because it was all about them.”

Each stranger’s tat­too gave Capelo a doc­u­ment of a mean­ing­ful encounter. “A few strangers came by and I couldn’t remem­ber their faces. But they would show me their tat­too and I would say, ‘I remem­ber every­thing about you now!’ And I would. I would remem­ber where they were and who they were with.” As Capelo has learned, tattoos—or even pic­tures of them—make indeli­ble mem­o­ries and mem­o­ries indeli­ble. When a per­son gets a tat­too, she says, they’re choos­ing to put a story or image on them for the rest of their lives. No mat­ter the cir­cum­stances of get­ting the tat­too, good or bad, “It’s a mem­ory they don’t regret.”