If you’ve walked down Bloomfield Street lately, you might have noticed the nondescript signs on the former union clubhouse advertising the recently opened Rich Forest Cafe. The words “where friends meet,” printed beneath the restaurant’s name, reveal little about the pleasant surprise that awaits you in this windowless basement. The Rich Forest Cafe is a […]
Lizzy Hill
Posted inArts + Music
Angela Carlsen captures buildings’ sleeping beauty
Angela Carlsen is wearing a hardhat, bodysuit and steel-toed boots, preparing for a moment she’s been anticipating for months. Entering the abandoned Halifax Infirmary has become an unshakeable obsession of hers. She’s stared longingly at the infirmary for days, while working at her day job at Atlantic News. She pleaded with the head of the […]
Posted inLifestyle
How to explore McNabs Island
The waves are smashing against our tiny boat, soaking us with water of questionable cleanliness. McNabs Island appears like a faint glimmer of hope in the distance. Suddenly, a massive cargo ship emerges through the mid-afternoon mist, heading straight toward my friend Walter and I. We paddle desperately against the current, but the ship pulls […]
Posted inLifestyle
How to be a nudist in Halifax
Whether you’ll admit it or not, you’ve probably succumbed to the urge to rip your clothes off on a secluded beach—-and if you haven’t, you’re missing out. While many conservative Nova Scotians are terrified of naked bodies, living a clothing-free lifestyle can be managed. For a handful of Haligonians, skinny-dipping is more than just a […]
Posted inArts + Music
Singing Christina Murray’s praises
Camerata Xara is definitely not your grandmother’s choir. The cutting-edge young women’s choir is pushing the boundaries of traditional choral music. The group’s conductor, Christina Murray, avoids conventional church music, finding inspiration in trippy dream sequences; feminist theories of power-inversions; foreign melodies that confuse Western ears; edgy Scandinavian choral ensembles and theatre. “The group has […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Government funding freeze hits Nova Scotian non-profit organizations
Officials from the Department of Community Services are patting themselves on the back because they didn’t slash funding to nonprofit community organizations, but many ground workers think the department’s priorities have been wrong for years. In April, the department froze the budget for over 200 organizations provincially at $230 million. Community Services spokesperson Linda Laffin […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Sheikh’s Batmobile
In his latest, The Sheikh’s Batmobile, Richard Poplak documents his bizarre two-year pilgrimage through the Middle East, where he investigates the fate of Western pop culture when it winds up in the Muslim world. The result is a humorous, astute and vivid account of Poplak’s misadventures. Poplak discovers the spirit of punk through an Indonesian […]
Posted inArts + Music
Special Forces drawing lessons
The heads of disembodied stick figures float from one end of the screen to the next. Childlike drawings of planes and explosions ricochet across a swirling dark sky of scribbles and ghosts. The looped sounds of robotic screaming and rapid-machine-gun firing set the mood. Quebecois filmmaker Pierre Hébert and electronic composer Bob Ostertag sit in […]
Posted inLifestyle
Ocean Samuel gets us fighting fit
Looking to get healthy and bash some heads? Lizzy Hill steps into the ring for mixed martial arts training, and discovers that along with pain, sweat and discipline comes a good time among people with cool nicknames.
Posted inArts + Music
Bite and Burn Encore review
An odd assortment of metal-heads, indie-kids and the old-guard gallery crowd came together last Saturday in the spirit of morbid curiosity, voyeurism and artistic enlightenment. A hushed silence and palpable air of tension fell over this group of over 50 people, who jam packed around a small stage at Mount Saint Vincent Gallery for the […]
Posted inArts + Music
Jason Fitzpatrick’s skin city
Jason W.F. Fitzpatrick hopes to “stir things up a bit and challenge the way people think” at Mount Saint Vincent Art Gallery this Saturday night, by deliberately making himself and others feel uncomfortable. Fitzpatrick talks excitedly of his plans to rig up a “floaty, kind of bouncy stage” out of pink insulation and gyprock, upon […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
No deal for DHX
“We’ve all been dealing with a lot of heartache and hardship in the last 18 months, which everybody’s tried to downplay,” says Kris Gilbert. “People are losing their homes and losing their cars and losing all over the place in town, but that’s a bad news story and nobody wants to tell it.” Gilbert, manager […]