Letters to the Editor
So, this morning I returned to my car, about 45 minutes delayed and knowing I was over my 2-hour limit. Imagine my astonishment when I saw that the fine on my ticket was $50, or $80 if not paid in 60 days. I called the city thinking there was an error only to find out…
Game on
Halifax 2014 and the bid for the Common-wealth Games is a worthwhile cause, with tangible benefits like economic spin-off and infrastructure to help get your obese kids away from their computers and Cheetos. So why is it met with such resistance? If Halifax wants to be taken seriously as a major city, it needs to…
Liner nots
To the editor, Most people take pride in saying that they live in Halifax. People from small towns flock to Halifax to experience city life and the many opportunities here. Halifax is known for being a friendly, welcoming city. I have lived in Halifax for many years. I have moved away a few times and…
Havana smoke
Dear Lezlie Lowe, I just wanted to comment on your column on the upcoming smoking ban (“Last gasps,” November 16). I enjoy Tom’s Little Havana, as you do. I love the staff, the atmosphere and the great music (they play the best music in town, I think). I guess you could say I smoke—when my…
Cameras, shameras
To the editor, I came home a week ago Friday night to a real shock. My roommate was on my couch with broken ribs and a swollen lip. Why? Because he was swarmed by 30 people in our courtyard. In our courtyard! Where there are surveillance cameras, bright lights, security guards and hundreds of patios…
Blah blah the good old days blah whippersnappers blah blah kids today blah
I’ve always had this problem with buying bitchy electronics that never work exactly as they are supposed to. Though it’s annoying at first, once I’ve got all the quirks figured out it’s kind of cool because my little mass-produced whateverthehell isn’t exactly the same as that guy’s similar mass-produced whateverthehell. So I’ve got this ipod…
Give a goat
Some suggestions of how to spend your Chrismas money this year and years to come. The idea of giving a goat really pleases me:http://www.oxfamunwrapped.ca/
This band deserves a million dollars
Autumn Storm is going to tear you a new one, and you’re going to like it. They are Haligonian high school students, and if you had their chops when you were in high school, you wouldn’t be sitting around twiddling your thumbs right now. Sorry to be so harsh, I am just really taken with…
Dancing vs. Ice Cream
The kids were safe at last night’s giant non-school high school dance – and the teachers at the schools that banned dances are safe, too. They won’t have to worry about being blinded by all that crazy close dancing, and they don’t have to try to stop it. When I was student teacher, I had…
Film
We’ve talked about Thom Fitzgerald’s 3 Needles a few times over the past year—when it screened at TIFF in 2005, when it screened at the Atlantic Film Festival in 2005, when co-star Lucy Liu had that art show here, when it had an expensive charity screening a couple months back—and yet the film still has…
Hit me with your best SHOT
What fans of local synth rockers HOTSHOTROBOT will never hear is the initial direction of the band’s first EP, Everyone Die. The project, initially titled Eat My Heart, was born of a different genre altogether. “Everyone Die was decided upon when all of our songs were power-metal originally,” says vocalist and keyboardist Jen Clarke. “But…
Simply stated
Statement, a furniture store in the north end, has moved down a few blocks to a new location at 2534 Agricola. “We operated at our old location on the same street for three years, but we just sort of outgrew the place,” says the owner, Ray Frizzell. “It’s nice to stay on Agricola Street, too,…
Daniel, our (award winning) brother
Major congratulations are in order for one of Halifax’s favourite adopted sons, Daniel MacIvor, who won a Governor General’s Literary Award on Tuesday. MacIvor was recognized in the drama category for his work entitled, I Still Love You, a collection of plays that MacIvor wrote between 1991 and 2006. The Cape Breton-born playwright has been…
Love of the game
Lukas Pearse’s hands were bound. Worse yet, a sheet had been draped over him, covering both him and his double bass. Nearby stood a woman, also hand-bound. Duct tape sealed her lips beneath a baggy hood pulled over her head. Not long ago, this discombobulating scene confronted a hip crowd comprised of visual artists, NSCAD…
The bigger picture
Surveillance cameras won’t reduce violent crime in Halifax because they do nothing to solve the deeper problems of poverty, racism and youth alienation. But we shouldn’t be surprised that Halifax police are testing them anyway. We live in a society addicted to quick techno-fixes, even if there’s little evidence that they work. The human rights…
Lacrossing over
His passion for the sport has turned Dan Finck into something of a lacrosse nomad. At the age of 26, the Halifax native has spent almost half his life away from home, playing lacrosse. He first left home to finish high school in the Boston area at a private school where he could play at…
Rodney MacDonald fights to stay on message
Rodney MacDonald looks more like the guy who’s just realized he’s landed smack in the can’t-get-out-of-the-way path of a runaway freight train than the dignified, in-control premier of Nova Scotia. His latest “important good news” press conference is barely five minutes old and, already, reporters have hijacked his sound-bite message track. That upbeat message was…
Casino Royale
If you view the James Bond franchise as a train derailed, Casino Royale not only gets back on track, it then jumps over a canyon. Granted, it’s not all an impressive journey—the first hour stutters around before finding its course—but in allowing Bond a natural depth, the action takes on a needed urgency. Pierce Brosnan…
Sign here
Search Halifax on one of several online petition sites operating today and some interesting windows into the state of the city’s soul and its democracy emerge. One asks for signatures to help “Bring Dances Back to Halifax, 2006/07.” Last month, St. Patrick’s High School on Quinpool Road, for example, banned school dances, citing teachers’ stress…
GN’R photos
by CHR!S SM!TH
Award whining
The formidable, in size and in talent, cast of For Your Consideration is stretched 10 people wide across a Toronto hotel room. It is headed, as it should be, by Christopher Guest and his co-conspirator/writer Eugene Levy, followed by Catherine O’Hara, Simpsons regular Harry Shearer, Michael McKean, Parker Posey, Jane Lynch, Jennifer Coolidge (AKA Stifler’s…
SAVAGE LOVE
Dan Savage brings back the freaks. Finally.
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Get ready, get set, play, Libra, says Rob Brezsny.
The shadow of power
Run the 100-metres in under 10 seconds while breathing sulphur dioxide, and watch out for splotches of oil lying about the track. That’s pretty much what the people who want to bring the 2014 Commonwealth Games to Halifax are asking of the world’s elite athletes. The bid committee proposes to host the games at Shannon…
New and Quinproved
I don’t revisit restaurants for review purposes unless something changes after the first critique that warrants another look. When I first popped into Quincy’s around this time last year, it did not fare well. In Quincy’s case, a spruced-up decor, a new head chef and a new menu make a compelling case for another round.…
