No Sweat My Pet
I’ve got a theory that the kids who always wanted to play light as a feather, stiff as a bored all ended up being yoga teachers. Heather ended yesterday’s class at 108 Yoga with us in Corpse Pose. Speaking to us in a soothing voice she told us “you are now a corpse with have…
Yoga Solo
I lucked out today and was the only person to show up to Brenda Mailer’s class at Grow a Lotus Yoga Pad. This new studio is located in a small barn space tucked away in owner Leanne Whiting’s back yard at 5531 Leeds St in the North-North end. It was a bit hard to find,…
I’m In A Hurry (And Don’t Know Why)
Yesterday, I worked as a traffic control person as a favor for the manager. Normally, five days a week, I work cozily in an air-conditioned office at my desk typing away on a computer, so I am not well accustomed with the trials and tribulations that take place on a traffic control site. The temporary…
No Car = No Girlfriend
What is the deal with the women around here? I have been rejected numerous times just because I don’t have a set of wheels. How do I know this? She can’t get enough of me until she finds out I have to take the bus. Then she disappears. I treat a lady well, make her…
I want to punch some sense into you!!!
To the fucker who almost killed me!! FUCK YOU!!! It’s only by the grace of God that you didn’t cause a deadly pile up on the Hwy102 exit 4b at 4:20pm on Sunday. Are you that fucking stupid you don’t know you don’t stop your car on the highway? You couldn’t merge on …… so…
Little paws, big heart
To the lady at the Emergancy Animal hospital Saturday night. Words can not express how greatful we where when the staff informed us of your donation to our bill. We where all dealing with the heart ack of our pets in distress yet you where still able to open your heart and reach out to…
Music Scene?
I have to say that the music scene in this city is as bad as it has ever been. Terrible really. I am not interested in listening to some pretentious indy jam band do “originals” nor am I interested in going to downtown bars to hear another crappy cover band play Brown Eyed Girl or…
Thank you Mr. bus driver
I was in a big hurry to get somewhere last saturday and grabbed the first bus that came along spring garden going dt, the #80. When I got on I asked how close he will get to ocean towers. He said scotia square. When I was getting off at scotia square, he offered to drive…
NDP rejects recommendations for strengthening Nova Scotia’s freedom of information policies
The Liberals and PCs have “unequivocally” committed themselves to three specific recommendations for improving Nova Scotia’s freedom of information law and process, while the NDP has “rejected all three, arguing, against all the evidence, that there was no need for these reforms,” says the organization that made the recommendations. Last month, the Centre for Law…
another bus bitch
11:25 PM at Scotia Square. Your last run for the night. I was a few feet away from the doors when you started the engine and pulled away, I ran and yelled to get your attention. The bus slowed down just enough for me to bang on the door. Instead of being a nice person…
To the coast
Thank-you for bringing Dan to Halifax and giving us all a great night of hilarious sexual commentary, he’s really a great speaker and a smart guy – I’ve been reading his column in the coast for ten plus years and it was cool to watch him answering audience questions live. There were some serious moments,…
Doggy Kisses
To the woman who left her beautiful black lab outside of a cafe on Oxford Friday morning. Your fluffy friend made my morning walk perfect. —Dog lover
Seriously, HRM is going to leave the old curb on Queen across from the new library?
I noticed over the last few days that the entire street is ripped up in front of the new library, including, if I remember correctly, the curb in front of the DHX building. It looks as though the construction crew intends to leave piece of old curb on the opposite side of the street, where,…
how not to exercise your dog
to the person on their bike on windsor, riding really fast and pulling a dog on it’s leash and yelling at it to keep up, don’t do this. —i can see you
Sunday Sweatfest
Hot yoga. Holy hell. It turned me into a slug, a more flexible, totally drenched and exhausted slug. Bring a towel and a big bottle of water. This morning I attended Natalie’s noon-hour hot yoga class at Moksha’s downtown location at 1512 Dresden Rd. It was packed with over thirty fit and not fit sweaty…
Double Power, Double Trouble
On Friday, I attended the Double Power class led by Leslie and Tomomi at Therapeutic Approach Yoga Studio, located across from the Superstore on Quinpool. It kicked my butt. The tone was set as Tomomi walked in joking about multitasking while drinking coffee and water, total Double Power. The next hour would be focused on…
Get ready for City Harvest
The forecast says the sun will be a-shining tomorrow, not that rain would have stopped anyone from soaking up the action-packed Saturday we have ahead of us. It’s City Harvest, guys! And the list of things you have to do is a long one, so you better break out that palm pilot and get planning.…
Rescuers
On Sept 6 the grumpy gremlins attacked me at the Mumford Rd bus stop by the Walmart. I apologize this thank you has taken so long, however I shattered my elbow. I want to thank the young man who came to my rescue to try to help me. Also, the security guards from the Halifax…
Next stop, Connect 2 Yoga
Grab your yoga passport and seek out serenity down the lane at the Yoga Shack, where you will find your own semi-private vacay, tucked behind the garden at 1043 Tower Road. Roll out your mat for Connect 2 Yoga, lead by Dawn Carson, it’s charming, engaging and peaceful. I kicked off Yoga Week last night…
Man in the Mirror
I love the way you look every morning after an 11km bike ride. Then even more when you get home all hot and sweaty. You have beautiful eye lashes and an addictive smile. I love your iTunes account and that App you always play. I really loved the all-you-can-eat mussels on Tuesday too. Your hair…
Come on already
You’re handsome, I’m beautiful. Let’s get together —Nerd lover
CHANGE, for a change
Why do people keep talking about needing to change and then fall into the same traps and routines that lead them to this point of realization in the first place? If you keep making the same mistakes, surrounding yourself with the same type of people in the same type of environment, I can assure you…
Very Happy Turtle
This morning as I tried to assemble a somewhat appropriate yoga outfit, deciding on bodysuit and Adidas shorts from grade 8, I wondered why someone who has never done yoga would agree to write about a 7 day yoga boot camp for the Coast’s Yoga Week blog. Hehe oops I headed to Happy Turtle Wellness…
Percussion discussion
Montreal’s Architek Percussion want to expand your idea of a drum solo. Combining a “like-mindedness toward chamber music” the avant-garde percussion quartet instantly hit their groove. “We each have our strengths and individual roles in the group but the reason we work well together is because we have common philosophies on making and sharing music,”…
Labour arbitration makes Egg Films scramble
“Why would anyone want to do business here?” asks Sarah Thomas. The co-owner of Egg Films is threatening to pack up and leave Nova Scotia after becoming the premiere recipient of Nova Scotia’s first contract arbitration. That law, passed in 2011 by the NDP, allows the NS Labour Board to impose a contract on newly…
Customer thinks I’m “Too Happy”
I work at a low paying customer service job. I serve coffee to people who are often grumpy, ungreatful, and sometimes just plain mean. I’ve learned to take it all in stride. Today, I learned from a coworker that we were “Too happy” while we made your sandwich. You were so offended by our good…
JazzEast’s 30k in 30 days halfway point
JazzEast’s 30k in 30 days Indiegogo campaign has an altruistic goal—to make the ever-popular evening Festival Tent Mainstage concerts during the Halifax Jazz Festival free to the public. “In 2012 we hosted two free evening concerts; in 2013 that number grew to three. Droves of people came out to these concerts. We don’t want to…
Pain Management
There is no doubt that the narcotic medications work on acute and chronic pain for patients who need them. Then the drugs started getting the limelight. People who were prescribed them and misused the drugs causing them to become “addicted” … or they were dispensed and the people sold them illegally on the street, or…
Guy on the #7 Monday night
I had just gotten on the bus, put $2.25 in the box, only to be informed the toll had just been raised another 25 cents.. I didnt have another cent on me. After asking the bus if anyone had a quarter, and getting blank stares all around, you asked if I had change for a…
Reserve and protect
An overstuffed calendar is never a terrible thing, but for food events in town, it can result in under-attended events. Over the next few months, you can gorge yourself on events. The Fall Wine Festival and last weekend’s Port of Wines Festival lead into this coming weekend’s Food Truck Rally, City Harvest, Devour: The Food…
After the moment passes
Q I am a straight male, 30, in a long-term monogamous relationship. I love my wife, we have good sex, and often. When we first got together, I had a mild foot fetish, and she has gorgeous pedis. We have done and still do foot play on occasion. But my fetish has grown stronger as…
Welcome To The Punch
A stylish, entertaining British thriller, hitting all the genre marks without going much beyond. Two big things it’s got going for it: The first is the look—director Creevy sexes up London at night for his tale of a cop (James McAvoy, somewhat miscast as dark and intense) desperate to stop a career criminal (the effortlessly…
The Bone Season
They’re calling her the next J.K. Rowling–and though that might be an overstatement (ditto to the Hunger Games comparisons) what Samantha Shannon crafts in her hugely hyped first book of a planned trilogy, The Bone Season, is a rich, immersive fantasy world with the language, culture and political issues to go with it. It’s 2059…
The Signature of All Things
It’s not easy to make botany exciting, but somehow Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) manages it. Her sprawling new novel follows the life and family history of the equal parts blessed and cursed Alma Whittaker in the 1800s. Blessed because she’s born to the richest family in Philadelphia, educated within an inch of her life…
The Far Woods
With delicate brush strokes and crooked-branch hand lettering, Sarah Burwash is creating a new Canadian folklore. In her beautiful first watercolour collection, The Far Woods, she draws upon the earth as muse, the collection largely a reflection of time the young artist spent in the Canadian northwest. Flesh and earth tones are accentuated by the…
Braids
These Calgarians have found Montreal a more nurturing artistic base for experimenting with words and electronics. Raphaelle Standell-Preston is the impish angelic voice negotiating soundscapes her bandmates concoct. “He’s so carefree. Why can I not be?” she sings in “Girl,” as if disoriented in a setting that would wash past the listener if she weren’t…
Pat LePoidevin
He has the kind of voice that is a little unsettling; going-for-broke vocals that seem like they should crack but never do, no matter what he’s singing about it all feels a little melancholy, a little heartbreaking. In American Fiction LePoidevin, a dual citizen, gets in touch with his US family history by weaving fictional…
Refuge
Six actors stand on the catwalk above the stage against a backdrop of boney, wintery trees. They’re suffused in a cold blue light. Eerie, prickly music ebbs and flows around them. One sighs. Another yelps. One breaks into a keening wail. So begins Mary Vingoe’s Refuge, the story of an Eritrean soldier named Ayinom who…
Gravity
It’s terror at 1.34 million feet in the deeply astonishing Gravity. At the tail-end of a routine spacewalk, astronauts Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are beset upon by shards of satellite shrapnel that separate them from NASA and make any chance of survival a virtual impossibility. Clooney’s mainly along for his charm, but it’s Bullock…
Walrus get psyched
Psychedelic pop emerged as a musical genre in the mid-1960s from a culture of drug use and mind expansion. Trying to replicate in music what drugs did to the mind, bands like The Byrds and The Grateful Dead used fuzz guitar and reverb effects to refashion the tired pop song into something more relevant. More…
Parkland
The boring devil is in the details for the historical drama Parkland. John F. Kennedy is a young, charismatic American president on a routine trip to Texas in 1963. The fate of that journey (spoilers: it doesn’t go well) are told through the ancillary characters least important to history in this Peter Landesman film. James…
Freak Heat Waves freak out
It’s been nearly a year since Victoria’s Freak Heat Waves has graced our fair city. Last October, the band played a sold-out show during Halifax Pop Explosion in the Bus Stop Theatre. Clad in chameleonic black clothing and lit solely by a strobe light, the trio mesmerized its audience with a striking combination of sonic…
Jessy Lanza
In the realm of ethereal feminine vocals over rumbly, sparkly machines, Canada is giving Scandinavia a good run. Similar in genre to Grimes, Austra and Braids, yet distinctive in her goal is Hamilton’s Jessy Lanza, getting a big assist from Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys. Synthesizers were strange, then dominant, oppressive even in the 1980s.…
Back in the USS
Have you ever been to a party that’s like “Fight Club standing on its feet clapping along to Ellen DeGeneres as she passes through her audience with an acoustic guitar, two microphones and a set of turntables”? I haven’t either, but on Friday Night, Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker (USS) promises to bring just that to the…
Said the Whale
On the new album Hawaii, Said the Whale is getting in touch with its inner Beach Boys. Song after song shimmers with that post-summer glow and 1960s spirit with a little synth edge. Working again with long-time producer Tom Dobrzanski (Hey Ocean!, We Are The City) it’s not all sunshine and rainbows–”I Love You” has…
Free Will Astrology
HAPPY BIRTHDAY LIBRA! (September 23-October 22) I periodically hike alone into the serene hills north of San Francisco and perform a set of my songs for the birds, insects, squirrels and trees. Recently I discovered that British comedian Milton Jones tried a similar experiment. He did his stand-up act for a herd of cows on…
The politics of BULLSHIT
The next premier of Nova Scotia will be…a white man. He’ll take a centrist approach to all issues, developed after extensive consultation with focus groups and party pollsters. The next premier will continue Nova Scotia’s long history of millions of dollars in subsidies and tax rebates for corporations from away. He’ll be good friends with…
Gravity digs for the truth
The opening shot of Gravity, the real-time space disaster drama directed by Alfonso Cuarón, is a 17-minute single-take marvel. Cuarón does this better than anyone, if anyone else even tries. (Go back and watch the multiple incredibly detailed one-take setpieces that comprise his 2006 stunner Children of Men.) The difference with Gravity is that he…
Ommmmmg, it’s yoga week!
Some like it hot Hot yoga is so hot right now. But the trend factor isn’t why you should turn up your practice. With options in Bikram Yoga, Moksha Yoga (Halifax and Bedford) and Shanti Hot Yoga (Dartmouth and Bedford), we’re cranking the thermostat, and not just because summer’s too short (fair point, though). “It…
Louisiana Bayou fires up on Salter Street
Cabaret royalty Mike Schmid is venturing into the restaurant biz. The owner of the Halifamous Reflections Cabaret, (5184 Sackville Street) and his partner Kathy Hatfield, are opening Louisiana Bayou Cajun Grill & Little New Orleans Bar at 5171 Salter Street (a location that’s seen a long string of openings and closings, most recently Kababji Lebanese…
