At major intersections and SkyTrain stations, on you way home from work or while shopping this holiday season you will notice street vendors selling the Hope In Shadows calendar. These friendly folks are part of a charitable organization that aims at creating positive social change in communities impacted by poverty and marginalization. Most vendors are low-income or homeless individuals who, through the support of the program, have participated in a financial literacy workshop and received some sales training to help them make the most of their entrepreneurial venture. Vendors purchase the calendar for $10 and sell it for $20, so each purchase directly benefits the person you buy it from.

The calendar itself is the result of an annual photography contest  - coordinated by the Pivot Legal Society – which gives Downtown Eastside residents the opportunity to portray their community through their own eyes. 200+ disposable cameras are handed out to DTES residents and collected again over a single weekend. The best images are then selected by popular vote and used to create the calendar.

Because of its focus on community, the images featured can be best described as authentic. These are pictures that may not have been taken if the the photographers didn’t know their subjects. Trust, familiarity and a sense of support come across in each image.

It’s not an easy job standing in the cold for hours. A couple vendors I talked with mentioned how cold they were. I’m sure it is even more difficult in the rain. If you do plan on making a purchase, making it on a rainy day would certainly brighten up a vendor’s day.

This is the ninth year for Hope In Shadows and they have already broken their previous year’s sales record. You can see a selection of the winning photographs on exhibit at the Havana Gallery from December 11th to January 3rd.

Last night at the SFU Woodwards campus, an auditorium full of media professionals and student hopefuls sat down to hear Kai Nagata explain himself after setting the internet of fire in July with his blog post Why I Quit My Job, which effectively buried a promising career in broadcast journalism.

The presentation was fast-paced and witty with relevant video clips – all the things you would expect from a broadcast journalist – but ultimately uncontroversial. His critique of “the news” filling air time with consumer reports, event coverage and kittens in trees wasn’t new. Pointing out that psychology and statistics are used to keep audiences simultaneously entertained and anxious was no revelation. The fact that advertising space has been sold well in advance of the broadcast so that new (not quality) content production is driven by that money, fell flat. It became quickly apparent that Kai Nagata is a social crusader, who found himself in an upwardly mobile job that paid him to forget his convictions and abridge his journalistic integrity.

So he quit. So what?

Well, Kai remained true to his passion of story telling and wrestling with issues. He decided to take his training and experience and apply it to grassroots reportage to effect change in the world and everyone wanted to know how he was going to do that. What phoenix would rise from the ashes of his career? How will he lead the charge of socially conscious citizen journalism in new media?

His answer is to make sacrifices and make them while you are young, without obligations like a family and mortgage. Although there were a lot of young, nodding heads in the room, this answer didn’t sit well with me. Kai’s advice was the same you would give someone considering a stint on a cruise ship or spending a year abroad. It wasn’t sustainable.

Not that he isn’t leading by example. Kai took a 90% pay cut from his CTV job and is currently living out of a tent in his father’s yard while doing some writing for the The Tyee. His tent flooded the night before. He uses an iPhone and a borrowed laptop. He drives a pickup truck he’s obviously not proud of. He also advised young idealists to do other things to pay the bills while producing their own brand of responsible journalism. My knee-jerk reaction was to envision an army of journalist/barristas but surprisingly he suggested raising chickens and growing kale.

Kai Nagata is clearly a smart guy with an amazing skill set and experience to back him up, but until he (and by he, I mean all of us) finds a means to support meaningful journalism that hasn’t been diluted, focus-grouped and dumbed down, it is only a matter of time before he burns out or sells out.

click on image for gallery

The people at Restricted Entertainment have been putting together various industrial, goth and fetish events in Vancouver for a long time already but last night’s Wild Kingdom party was their inaugural kick-off as the in-house long weekend event promoter for Celebrities Nightclub. Congrats guys!

Besides a great DJ line-up, throwing down crunchy industrial, dirty electro and new wave tracks, they put on a fantastic fashion show featuring local stores and designers Priape, New World Designs & Starfrukt Wearables.

The animal themed costume night brought out some fun and original ideas ranging from body paint to a full-on furry mascot costume. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves but be warned, this entry is NSFW (Not Safe For Work).

The northbound side of the Cambie bridge was closed for this rally and it was pretty cool to wander around on the road with a crowd of people. There was a little of the usual mischievous glee at disrupting car traffic but this demonstration was really positive and on point.

The Kyoto Accord is set to be renegotiated in Copenhagen this December and activists are working hard to raise awareness and pressure politicians to become leaders in industrial emissions reduction. Bridge to a Cool Planet wants to see Canada enter a legally binding agreement to cut emissions in half by 2020.

After a few quick speeches the crowd marched to the Science World for an eco-fair and a stage with live music.

The booth that caught my attention most at the fair was that of the Green Party. Actually it was the promo cards they were handing out which read, “Your parents F*UCKED up the planet.” I’m gonna call it now and say that politicians will be allowed to swear like sailors by 2020.

This year’s Sin City annual party was nothing short of the explicit and casual display of fetishes one would expect from an event billed as a Sextravaganza.

With a strictly fetish dress code in effect, all kinds of freak-alicious people came out to show off their appreciation for whips, corsets, PVC, masks, leather, cross-dressing, bondage, body piercing and bare skin.

On the main floor, the crowd danced to a mix of electro-synth, techno and gothic industrial music. Upstairs, voyeurs could watch the dancers or ‘play’ in the sectioned off dungeon with restraints and paddles.

It was more of a kinky Halloween party than anything Hollywood would have you believe about the fetish crowd. I met a lot of friendly & fabulous people and can recommend this event to anyone with an exhibitionist streak in them.

Warning: This entry is Not Safe For Work.

It’s no small secret that marijuana plays a significant roll in Vancouver culture. If you’re not complaining about the number of grow-ops in town then you’re complaining about the quality of your weed.

There is a long (and proud) history of pot activism in this city and as prohibitionists lose political traction, demonstrations for legalization grow larger and bolder.

Supposedly the world’s largest 4/20 (aka National Pot Smoking Day), thousands of people gathered around the Vancouver Art Gallery to participate in an impressive display of peaceful civil disobedience.

People smoked from bongs and pipes while others passed around joints. The police kept traffic flowing and the stoners from getting run over. There were no riot squads in the wings or a charge of horses. In general, it was a protest everyone could be proud of.

There are not enough art spaces like The Fall in Vancouver. Where else can you appreciate the work of young artists on the gallery walls or browse for fetish wear in the retail space on the ground floor, all the while hearing the staccato buzzing of a needle gun from the tricked out tattoo and piercing studio in the loft space above?

This weekend I had a chance to check out their art opening “Blood, Guts & Gore”. I would describe it as a meditation on mortality and the body as raw material, ranging from the macabre to the whimsical. The show runs til March 5th – go for the art, stay for the tatooes and piercings.

Last night Luv-A-Fair brought back Post-punk, New Wave and Synthpop in a strong way at the Bowie-Glamball.

Celebrities nightclub caters to an eclectic mixture of people but this time it was exceptionally diverse – filled with sparkly aliens, androgenous club kids, glamorous models, gothic road warriors and eccentric aristocrats.

This is definitely the event to hit if you want to dress up and dance to old favourites like Japan, Depeche Mode, Gary Numan, Klaus Nomi, Eurythmics, Culture Club, Visage, Telex, The Normal, Sisters of Mercy, Joy Division, Duran Duran, Bauhaus, OMD, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Divine, Psychedelic Furs, Nina Hagen, Soft Cell, Human League, U2, Nine Inch Nails, Billy Idol, Spandau Ballet, Fad Gadget, Echo and the Bunnymen, Blondie, Devo, The Cure, Ladytron, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Grace Jones. etc.

Even at a sold out concert, I have never seen such a high level of sustained energy and enthusiasm than at the Flight Centre‘s sales party. After everyone had lubricated themselves with alcohol during the opening speeches, it was instant and constant mayhem as awards were given out over the next couple of hours.

Good times were had by all. The only thing I would have changed would have been the DJ. He used the same intro music for each and every award for hours. Even now, looking at these images I hear AC/DC’s lyrics

We’ve got big balls
We’ve got big balls
We’ve got big balls
Dirty big balls
He’s got big balls
She’s got big balls
(But we’ve got the biggest balls of them all)