Girl at the Y
To the muscular woman at the Y. You look amazing. —Lazy guy trying to get into shape
Mister Policeman
I don’t dislike police, but please note that it is improper to use your lights to get a vehicle to pull aside just so that you can pass. As in this situation: 1) you are behind, 2) turn on your lights, 3) pass, 4) turn off lights. If you really have a crime you are…
Overcharged buying fish
So I’m driving through a town (in this province) and see a sign for “fresh fish/fresh lobster.” Since it was on my grocery list I stop and buy both haddock and lobster. When I get home my husband asks me how much I’ve paid and for how much, I tell him, we weigh it and…
Oh girl
I met you five and a half years ago next to a computer monitor at our place of work. I couldn’t tell whether you were 16 or 30; you’ve been intriguing me ever since. We live in completely different cities now and I haven’t seen you in months, but I adore you nonetheless. Your fuschia…
“Babies don’t need vacations…
…so why do I always see them at the beach?” One of my favourite Steven Wright lines. It’s fun to take the little ones to the beach on a hot day. And, yes, the laws of probability suggest that at some point you will probably have to change their diaper. But, riddle me this one,…
Lost in world called Halifax
I am lonely. That does not make me needy nor clingy. I am honest, highly independent and have many goals and aspirations. I am new to the city and my social life is failing. I would like to be in a relationship again and I hope this time it won’t fuck up. Not because I…
OK Stupid
Warning: There are some girls out there who are quite pretty but they will ask you to take them out to a nice dinner knowing they have no interest in you before they even sit down. I don’t give spare change to bums (because I can’t afford to, not because I’m a jerk) so please…
Green tanktop girl in Shoppers
I found your comment about the water I was buying to be very rude. How would you like it if I commented on your purchase and told you it was unhealthy, genetically modified and will give you cancer? Perhaps you should get off the fluoride, have some respect and think before you speak. —Distill this
Your window to the Ottawa Bluesfest
Words by Jonathan Briggins (@mixtape_mag), images by Scott Blackburn (www.gingersnapphoto.ca) Neko Case Neko Case was in fine form both musically and physically. Case, also known for her work with Vancouver indie giants The New Pornographers showcased a number of songs from her new album The Worse Things Get, The Harder I Fight, The Harder I…
From Lebanon, with love
It’s that time of year again! Halifax’s Lebanese Festival (July 11-14, Olympic Community Hall, 2304 Hunter Street) is busy preparing for its 12th anniversary and as always, it has many new additions to share with the city. Nicole Khoury, directory chair for the festival, suggests that people should definitely check out the opening ceremonies, Thursday…
Courteous Fickle Froggers
How many times do you spill something in a restaurant and the servers actually come clean it up for you without letting you help at all?! Very rare, right? But in the middle of a Saturday night rush, on Spring Garden Road?! I was even so willing with paper towel in hand. Well done, guys!…
Stop means STOP
Road rules apply whether you’re a car or a bicycle. And you on your bicycle decided not to stop at a stop sign. I was coming at you from the perpendicular, NO stop sign, and was forced to stop to keep from hitting you. Your brilliant excuse? “Well… you stopped. So durrr.. I didn’t have…
Enough Bitching About Driving
Yes Halifax, I know, the drivers suck. Im tired of reading basically the same post 100 times on this site. Everyone knows, everyone experiences it. Lets find something else to bitch about, mkay? —Enough Please
The end of Renaissance
The corner of Barrington and Blowers just won’t be the same without a window full of Converse kicks of all colours, will it? After 30 years in business, popular Barrington Street clothing and shoe store, Renaissance Clothing Co. (1549 Barrington Street, 422-3509), is bowing out. The shop’s owner Catherine Nathanson —who opened Renaissance with her…
Gun control in this country
A person, if they so choose, should be permitted to carry a firearm (shotgun, hand gun or a rifle) no matter the time of year or day into the woods. Basically for protection against some of the larger predatory animals out there. For instance against a bear or coyote. —GOVANNON
Hey, Cancer!!!
Chow down on a discount, mega-sized, bag of dicks. Nobody likes you, why are you even here? —Third time this year
Neglected Halifax Classic
You know what’s the best? Jaywalking Quinpool Road. If you don’t love jaywalking Quinpool Road, you must be from Moncton or Ontario or somewhere. —Abe Sorge
Love to Bitch
I’m moving out of the Maritimes, and there’s something I have to say before I go: I love The Coast. And as a guy that at times can be a little short tempered, I have submitted my fair share of bitch “issues” here. I love you guys for that. I personally have found that they…
Greenhouse Boom Boxers
To the people using a greenhouse in the north end as their venue for BLASTING the worst possible rap/pop music in the world, please, please, please turn it down. You are right next to an apartment complex and some of us work from home! —Had to close my windows in a heat wave
I Still Miss You
I’m trying to move on, but you’re still the last person I think about at night and the first person on my mind each morning. —T.F.
Equality—the state or quality of being equal; correspondence in quantity, degree, value, rank or ability
Dear insane fish, who believes himself to be the most knowledgeable fucking MAN that ever existed but is, in fact, a sexist piece of shit: How dare you tell me you understand the meaning of equality and “believe” in it, and then continue on in the same sentence to tell me that you think women…
A hater’s remorse
I have been looking back on my life as a whole and always thought of myself as someone who was victimized by my peers, especially growing up, and was bullied on. I am now realizing my slate may not be so clean, and that I have bullied and judged myself. To you who I judged…
Community doesn’t trust city staff
Last Wednesday night’s city-run St. Pat’s-Alexandra consultation yielded more than just ideas for the future of the former school property. Residents gave HRM an earful about development in the rapidly-changing Gottingen Street area, and asked whether they could trust staff and council to listen. “Is the process going to be transparent?” a female speaker asked.…
Oceans Five is no more
Last Wednesday night was the curtain call for Oceans Five. The quintet, which formed as the back-up band for jazz legend and Haligonian Bucky Adams, played its last gig at the Harbourview, the bar in the Northwood retirement home on Gottingen Street. Present were about 60 residents, and a dozen or so visiting well-wishers, friends…
Revenge porn bill problematic
Feminist activist Stephanie Guthrie has devoted much of her work to ending revenge pornography. Now, she’s concerned about a private member’s bill that could make spreading intimate images without the subject’s consent illegal. “Sexual crimes tend to be undercharged, underprosecuted, underconvicted,” says the faculty member of Toronto’s Academy of the Impossible. “[But] we can’t just…
Pop goes Zafira Apparel
Shorts and pants and dresses, oh my! Zafira Apparel is having its first ever pop-up shop tomorrow (Friday July 5), in the old jane’s on the common space (2394 Robie Street). Owner, designer and creator Conni Zafiris—who currently sells her fashions online through Etsy and in an artisan boutique in Oakville, Ontario—thought the idea of…
Anne Macmillan: Lady of the Lakes
The Fieldwork residencies have allowed HRM artists who lean towards the natural and social sciences to shine this spring/summer (to July 2013, fieldwork-hrm.org), and Anne Macmillan’s current Fieldwork project, Little Lakes, has her diving right into her work (oh, this pun gets better later). Little Lakes explores Macmillan’s fascination with tracing, perimeters, containment and cataloguing…
First acts announced for Halifax Pop Explosion
Halifax Pop Explosion (October 22-26) is wetting your whistle for the 2013 festival with an early announcement of some headliners. As per usual, they are bringing 200 bands to 20 venues over five wonderful days in October, and among this year’s crop is rapper Killer “A.D.I.D.A.S.” Mike , comedian Brian Posehn, sludge masters Crosss, local…
Music Inspires!
Right now, Halifax is playing host to hundreds of music educators from across Canada and around the world. They’re here to take part in the Canadian Federation of Music Teachers’ Associations’ biennial convention, and last night, delegates were treated to a concert featuring a wide swath of Nova Scotian culture and music. The music ranged…
A Tribe Called Red
It’s National Aboriginal Day when I finally get a chance to chat with DJ Bear Witness, one of the trio that make up A Tribe Called Red, and the Ottawa native is already in the midst of what he says will be a non-stop summer. The day before Bear Witness, Ian “DJ NDN” Campeau and…
Cyndi Cain
Cyndi Cain’s newest album, Soul Food, released Saturday, July 13 at the Marquee for the Jazz Festival, is a live off the floor, recorded straight to tape R&B wonder, and it came from a little pain, a little love and a lot of friendship. “When I think soul food, I think community, it’s not always…
Letters to the editor, July 4, 2013
Scratch Bastid saves the day Well Halifax, you failed on Canada’s birthday! My friend and I ventured out for free pancakes to start the day off, only to arrive at 9am (an hour after it started) and quickly be informed: “Sorry, there are no pancakes left.” So we put our tails between our legs and…
Alex Cuba
Alex Cuba (AKA Alexis Puentes) moved to Canada for love, but so far, the sentiment is unrequited. “It’s not a secret that there is no market for Latin music in Canada. Anything I do will be considered world music, but world music has a very small-minded way of thinking about music,” says the Smithers, BC-based…
I don’t want chickens in my urban neighbourhood
In recent months, four major Canadian cities—Toronto, Hamilton, Winnipeg and Calgary—have joined Edmonton in deciding that farm animals, such as chickens, have no place in an urban setting. And this brings us to Halifax, where just one resident, who seems to want special treatment to have poultry in a dense residential area, is flaunting our…
Zulkamoon
“What’s on the horizon for us? Well, we’re coming out with our own coffee—we’re gonna be selling it as merch,” says Mike Nahirnak, one of the guitarists behind Zulkamoon’s “folk, rock, blues, jazz, reggae, ska, cumbia, you name it, it’s in there” sound. Inti Gonzalez, Mexico City transplant, the other guitarist and the nucleus around…
Triple play
If you’ve always wanted to start a band but you don’t know how to play an instrument, or, if you have an unused vacuum collecting dust in your closet (is that irony?), then take a page from the book of Benoît Charest. Charest is the composer behind the music of Les Triplettes de Belleville, an…
Gypsophilia
Keep your eyes peeled for Gypsophilia this summer. Identifying features, you ask? Well, what do seven people lugging around at least as many hefty instrument cases getting on a Greyhound bus look like? If Ross Burns is to be believed, probably like they’re having a lot of fun. Burns and six of his best pals…
Triple play
If you’ve always wanted to start a band but you don’t know how to play an instrument, or, if you have an unused vacuum collecting dust in your closet (is that irony?), then take a page from the book of Benoît Charest. Charest is the composer behind the music of Les Triplettes de Belleville, an…
Putnam County fares
F-u-n-n-y. Q-u-i-r-k-y. G-r-e-a-t. You get the picture. The TAG production of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a fun evening of theatre that features a cast of outstanding singer/dancer/actors. The first act includes three intrepid audience members who become part of the action as a band of misfit prodigies try to spell their…
Fogg season
There’s a storm of ideas brewing in Larry Fogg’s head, but opening his own restaurant isn’t one of them. “Restaurants, for me, are over,” the 20-year veteran chef says. “We’re really looking at doing events.” Harnessing community ingredients with innovative services, Larry and his wife Gilly Fogg are shaping the future of local cooking from…
Pandora’s box of gay porn probs
Q I’m a 24-year-old woman who just ended a five-year relationship. It sucked. I cried. It was my first breakup, so I’ve felt totally insane for the last three months. Now I’m in the dating world, and I go out with people only to find that we have no physical chemistry. My mother says, “You’re…
Free Will Astrology
HAPPY BIRTHDAY CANCER! (June 21-July 22) “Thomas Gray was a renowned 18th-century English poet best remembered for his “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” It was a short poem—only 986 words, which is less than the length of this horoscope column. On the other hand, it took him seven years to write it, or an…
Savage Love Live in Halifax October 3
Logical, compassionate and fearless, Dan Savage’s Savage Love column has graced the Coast’s pages since 1996, the first paper in Canada to run his syndicated advice column. You know him, you love him. He’s brought life to santorum, DTMFA, GGG and the inspiring It Gets Better Project, while single-handedly answering your most intimate queries in…
The Lone Ranger
John Depp plays Tonto, making any and all revisionist flares The Lone Ranger attempts all the sadder. With a stupid bird on his head, Depp’s “noble savage” rescues attorney John Reid after being ambushed by ruthless outlaws. Now a “dead” man, Reid dons a mask, loads up some silver bullets and sets out to avenge…
Despicable Me 2
Ideas prove the least important part of filmmaking, in the creatively bankrupt but nevertheless existing Despicable Me 2. Let’s unpack this; following up on 2010’s super villain spectacle, DM2 finds the Anti-Villain League enlisting ex-baddie Gru (a boilerplate Steve Carell) to recover a powerful mutagen and find out who’s stealing secret laboratories via giant magnets.…
Summer of Resolutes
There’s a darkness in EB Anderson’s songs, a whiskey-soaked, dusty-booted throwback vibe conjuring Johnny Cash and Townes Van Zandt. It’s classic country music. “I think there’s a lot of honesty in that kind of music—people are going back to it a little bit more, but almost playing dress-up,” the Trenton native says in his weathered…
The Wind-Up pitch
“To be honest after the last one was such a drawn-out process, we didn’t want to take that route this time,” says Marc Kiely of Wind-Up Radio Sessions. He’s talking about Yeti Sounds, the folk-rock EP WURS made in just three days with Blinker the Star’s Jordon Zadorozny. “After the last one, we were like…
Buy Locavore
Take a trip down memory lane in Locavore: Works from the NSCAD Community in the Dalhousie Art Gallery’s Permanent Collection. The comprehensive exhibit covers more than 100 years of Haligonian artwork from former NSCAD students and instructors. The exhibit begins with “Untitled Landscape” from Edith A. Smite, a student in the late 1880s and former…
Symmetrical ceramics
Eliza Au and Ying-Yech Chuang’s Variations of Symmetry is a whimsical exploration of the natural world through ceramic art. Their work is intricate, colourful and eclectic. Au’s work is focused on shapes and repetition. Her three-dimensional work and uses multiple materials. “Brocade,” made of stonewall, “The Frailty of Belief” made of cast glass and “Duel,”…
More Morris East
Morris East is heading north. Wayyy north. The popular downtown restaurant will be opening its second location at Nine Mile Circle on the Larry Uteck Boulevard in August. Restaurant owner Jennie Dobbs, who grew up in Bedford, is looking forward to bringing Morris East to one of the fastest growing areas of the province. “We…
Osheaga roll call
Hey, it’s Ashley here! I’m going to Osheaga, a three-day music and arts festival at Parc Jean-Drapeau in Montreal from August 2-4. I’ll be there cheering on our own Rich Aucoin and checking out so many other cool bands while I’m there (while blogging all about it!). Who should I see? Who should I miss?…
