Hopkins

Tucked between the Cockscomb mountains and the Caribbean Sea, Hopkins is the Belizean cultural center of the Garifuna population, hosting its own community holiday and drum ceremonies. In 1942 the nearby village of Newton was devastated by a hurricane and Hopkins was built to replace and rehouse its residents.

Hopkins itself was a pleasant place to spend a little time with some very enjoyable food but not more than a few days of activities. The north end of the town (Baila) was  quite touristy while the south end (False Sittee) was a sprawl of enormous fenced houses, typically with multiple boat launches tucked underneath.

 

The Garifuna are a people of mixed African and Amerindian ancestry that began on Saint Vincent. Much of the populace were transplanted to Central America in 1796 after a series of conflicts with the English known as the Carib Wars. The Garifuna language is an offshoot of Arawak with numerous European influences and in 2001 was declared, along with their music and dances, to be a “Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible History of Humanity” by UNESCO.

 

The Garifuna have their own flag are very proud of their culture, in a manner which reminded us of the Metis in Manitoba. We experienced several instances of Garifuna music and culture in our visit, including a very memorable music performance in Hopkins with a band that would randomly increase in size as additional members arrived.

 

Kathryn was of course dancing in the thick of it and having a grand time.

 

Sociable Summer

Between my summer schooling and Kathryn's multiple jobs, its been a very hectic but well spent summer so far. We've still managed to fit some socializing into our evenings and weekends, with a few highlights shared here. First off, I helped my good friend Vicki with her small business selling crystals at a Latin American Carnival festival for a weekend recently. While I spent most of my time in helping in the booth, these Brazilian drummers walked right around our area, and they reminded me so much of Kathryn's drumming days that I had to snap a picture.

 A few weeks later, we had back-to-back dock parties with various whale watching groups. The community is pretty small and Kathryn wanted to be sure to visit everyone, so we had one evening on Granville Island with the folks at her company and the next night we caught a ride down to Steveston for another party held by another group. The trip was entirely worthwhile if only for the amazing burgers and salads, made all the better by a nice chatty evening on the pier in the far south of the city where Vancouver seems a little less omnipresent.

 Rounding things out, we have had one of three evenings of fireworks in English Bay just recently. We had a nice cross-section of old friends, classmates and coworkers come by to enjoy the sun, watch the fireworks, and indulge in a post-explosions Mojito.

 

There's still plenty of summer to come and while Kathryn is working like a Japanese beaver, I am hoping to savor a few moments of relaxation before September rolls around and I go back to BCIT part time to finish my degree.

Three Very Different Nights Out

After months with few performances of interest in town, we had 3 nights out in the space of 10 days recently. We started off with Metric, who we saw open for Imagine Dragons last year and were totally taken with. Kathryn is not tall enough to enjoy floor tickets at concerts, but she got us some great seats to enjoy the show from. David Suzuki showed up as a surprise guest and the picture below captures the intensity and energy of the evening, even if the performers are almost impossible to make out.

 Shortly after that, we went to see Chris Hadfield perform with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra doing a mixture of songs and anecdotes about his time in space. While he mostly plays smaller guitar pieces, there were also several classics by Holst and modern composers on a space theme which made the whole night quite fun. The Orpheum Theatre is quite striking in its own right as well, and I thought a picture of the venue is more distinct than the performers in this instance.

 Rounding out our trio, we saw Noel Fielding live at the Vogue theatre, and while I will totally admit we forgot the camera at home that night and the picture below is not ours, it is representative of the weird nature of his act. He starts out normally enough with a bit of standup comedy, but the show gets gradually weirder until the end where a member of the audience dressed as a night, Fantasy Man (played by Noel) and a harlequin (think deranged jester rather than romance novel) travel to the plasticine world to fight a minotaur (and a reverse minotaur with a human head) and a lecherous triangle to save Noel the dark side of the moon. We really enjoy his work in the Mighty Boosh and it was fun to see him live :)

Busy busy busy

We've been fairly slow about updating our blog the last few months, and to be fair we've been ridiculously busy getting caught up on our socializing and taking in all the summer fun to be had in Vancouver. This week has had 3 nights of fireworks (with the stunt flier shown below), a concert, a get together with classmates, and work functions for BOTH our employers.

 We saw Imagine Dragons at the stadium and they put on a suitably over the top and fantastic show. They put on a great live show and are notable for switching instruments and each doing backing vocals more than most bands.Not only where they excellent, but both of their opening acts (Hallsey and Metric) were good choices we want to follow up more with as well.

 The week ended as it started with another night of fireworks as part of the Celebration of Light. The picture below is an 8 second exposure close to the finale of the Canada presentation that ended the festivities. All in all a wonderful but hectic week of summer fun and we'll try to get back to our regular update schedule for both of our regular readers before long ;)

Ministry

 It had been a long time since I'd been to a loud concert, so when I found Ministry was playing in Vancouver and that tickets were not as outlandish as I had feared, I found a good friend to go with and was thoroughly rocked. Opening act This Sixxis was not bad and certainly scored extra points for being the first metal band I have seen that prominently featured a violin.

 Ministry has been around in various incarnations since 1981 and I got into them in the mid 90's. Having seen them twice before (once in Winnipeg, once in Vancouver) I knew what to expect and my expectations were thoroughly met by an excellent set. If it's your particular cup of tea to hear a 57 year old scream about the NSA, Fox News, and climate change deniers while being blasted by a wall of guitars then this is certainly the band for you.

The crowd at the show was pretty great and varied as well. Beyond the usual meatheads there to charge into each other, there was a guy in a wheelchair in the main area about 6 feet from the stage and a family with their 8-ish year old daughter sporting a fine pair of industrial strength earplugs. Since Ministry has been around so long, they have a pretty big and varied fan base with people well in their 60s alongside the usual wispy early twenties goth crowd. Heartily recommended!

Khatsalano Street Party

 For the 4th year in a row (and somehow the 1st year we actually heard about it), part of Kitsalano shuts down for a massive street party 10 blocks long with a typical turnout of over 118,000 people. Below is a shot up the hill into the crowd from one end of the street party. Note that there is an equally large party happening on the other side of that hill, so quite the shindig.

 Any event like this attracts its fair share of buskers and street performers, but we were particularly delighted by this fellow who was blowing  enormous bubbles for donations in the middle of the crowd. He was quite talented and able to blow smaller bubbles into the larger ones as they formed. There was also an excited gaggle of children hanging around waiting for any bubbles to stray into their reach.

 Another main draw for the street party is the collection of music stages which have a variety of performers which change every hour. We had never heard of them before, but Kathyrn was particularly keen to see 'I, Braineater' shown below. They are a group of artists/aging punk rockers who put on a pretty good show and were certainly all involved in the show. The chap in the creature costume on the left was playing the drums 20 minutes later and singing as we left, so they certainly keep things varied.

Nine Inch Nails

A bit late with this post but whatever. At the end of November Geordie I went to go see Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails for the 3rd time in the 3rd city (the others being Winnipeg and Seattle). It is always a good show with amazing lighting effects.

For a fellow in his late-40s he still has the pipes and energy to (for lack of a better word and to use a tired cliche) rock.  The house was not full but it was a pretty happy and energetic crowd.  We missed a wee bit of his opening band but they were really good too. They were called Explosions in the Sky. I like opening acts as often I don't know the band and if they catch my ear I go find more. This guys did and I have a couple new albums to listen too.

Speaking of albums, NIN are promoting the new album "Hesitation Marks".   It's good. Not the best but on par with Year Zero.  Worth listening to for sure.  It's hard for photos to give the lighting justice as its always moving and changing. Below is an example but it really doesn't give the proper feel.

It's All Just Bricks in The Wall

Geordie and I  have been to quite a few big name concerts. Seeing Roger Waters nee Pink Floyd's The Wall has always been on my must see list.  Geordie and I saw him when he did Dark Side of the Moon and it was amazing and The Wall was no less then 3 hours of mind-freak fantasticness.  We were stressing about getting in as we had showed up half an hr early and there was a 45 minute wait. Security processing was glacial and problematic. A serious problem as the concert had started and there was still lots of people outside. We made it by the skin of our teeth.  So 'Boo' to bad ticket taking setup but 'Yah' to instantly on the scene medics who aided someone who had gotten badly hurt outside.

Thanks to Chris Arnott who lent us a little point and shoot. Not the best quality camera but we knew we would not be allowed in with our professional gear. The photo below was taken during the polyrhythmic 'Bring the Boys Back Home'. Projections were put on the ever growing wall of Pink's (Roger Waters) isolation. They did some really neat stuff with the lighting and puppetry. A very visual show.

It's not a PF show without a floating pig.  And quasi-Nazi costumes.  And marching hammers. And a gun that fires very convincing blanks. You could see the shells coming out! Our seats were pretty good being just slightly to stage left directly across. Though in the photo below it looks like the hammer flags are drapped over the wall it is actually light projections. On the right behind the scaffolding you can see Waters firing that gun. I like that concerts are filming and projecting the performers so those in the nose bleeds can see.  Oh and they also crashed a plane  into flames onto the stage but I was too busy saying 'GAH!' to grab the camera. So if you ever get a chance go see!

The Theatre

First off, an apology to any of my 5 readers for being so slow to update lately, 2 of you were visiting and then we've had a bit of a cold in the apartment lately so everythings been a little sedate and behind pace, but I'll try and get things regular again.
So being patrons of the arts, Kathryn and I went to see the Evil Dead Musical around Halloween which combines the best of 'Evil Dead 1 + 2' and 'Army of Darkness' into a campy two act musical.
Anyone familiar with the material should understand exactly whats going on when a zombie moose head starts driving a one armed man insane... in song. The songs are all uniformly hilarious and the acting is campy and winking-at-the-audience enough that its thoroughly enjoyable throughout and I would recommend it to any fan of the movies.
Like all great artforms, this musical also incorporates a 'splash zone' in which the first 5 rows cost extra but result in you being doused constantly in fake blood. We sat one row behind this area so we could enjoy watching other people get it but not quite have to go through it ourselves.

U2 at a bit of a distance

Kathryn and I had tickets to see U2 last night at BC Place which can seat 60000 people. We'd bought the tickets months and months ago but didn't want to pay for the $250 premium seats prefering our affordable nosebleed seats. They put on a really great show with shout outs to the local transit system, Bill Gates (who was apparently there somewhere and it was his birthday), and Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma. The light and sound show were great and they play a very solid set of favorites from their careers. Very much recommended to anyone that has the chance to see them someday.Since we were a bit far back I ran one of our photos through that picture enhancing program people always have in movies.. I don't know the settings very well so the results were mixed, but it was a great show all around, even if our pictures aren't too sharp or close.