42 Ks in 42 Days
I hope you don’t mind if I squeeze two runs into one blog, but I can assure that neither were interesting enough to merit their own column. It’s not that they were terrible outings, it’s just that nothing noteworthy happened. That’s the trouble with finding a comfort zone; runs become routine, and the highs and…
Got bilked?
Dear Milk, It’s over, and I think you know why. I can no longer deal with your high double standards. I admit I haven’t been an angel myself. I know you saw me with calcium pills in August. What can I say, milk? With you I felt empty, like I was lacking something in my…
Love the way we…praise?
To the editor, I agree wholeheartedly with “Props for Props” (“Letterhead,” October 5). I was thinking the very same thing last week while reading people complaining about bitching. I agree that “Love the Way We Bitch” is a necessity, however, it may be nice to have an opposite column as well. It could actually be…
Covering stories
To the editor, After reading Bruce Wark’s recent “Upfront” column (“The storyteller,” October 5) paying tribute to the life of filmmaker Shelagh MacKenzie, I thought, why is she not on the cover of this current issue of The Coast rather than Trailer Park Boys director Mike Clattenburg? Is this not a continuation of our desire…
Shop talkback
To the editor, I want to get a few things off my chest before Black Sunday, that being the first Sunday that the retail world gets to “choose” to be open. Why did I vote not to have Sunday shopping? I did it because I thought that my vote was special. Well, I guess I’m…
Shop talkback
To the editor, I have been reading up about and talking to the people who are now going to work on Sunday. And their fears are what mine were when I was working for a local retail store in 2004. I proudly voted “no” to Sunday shopping. And guess what? We “no” voters won. Or…
Getting trashed
To Lezlie Lowe, Great article! I moved from a small town to the big city and I live in an apartment building that does not require the tenants to separate their organics. I was shocked, so I called HRM on the matter. Town houses have to separate their waste, but buildings with more than six…
Getting trashed
To Lezlie Lowe, Thank you for your column about our city’s trash problem. When I first moved here eight years ago from Ontario, I couldn’t believe how much litter there was in Halifax. It hasn’t gotten any better. When my daughter and I go for walks we carry a plastic bag (recycled of course!) to…
Getting trashed
To the editor, I completely agree with Lezlie Lowe’s statement in last week’s paper (“Indecent disposal,” October 5) that the real motivator the city needs to use to make people recycle/ compost is money, not shame (because most people don’t have much of either). I am originally from PEI, where waste management is ingrained into…
42 Ks in 42 Days
I am having a hell of a time keeping up with these damn blogs. Today I had a full day of work, an early evening run, and a show to attend, and in between all of that I have to recap Sunday’s adventures. Sometimes I think keeping this journal together is a bigger challenge than…
42 Ks in 42 Days
Just in case you all think I am slacking with the updates, let me defend myself – Hampton isn’t exactly a Wifi hotspot. My last report was wired to the world wide web from a parking lot in East Saint John, and since then I haven’t been anywhere near the internet. Hopefully the ample photos…
Letters to the Editor
I been reading up and talking to the people who are now going to work on Sunday. And their fears are what mine were when I was working for a local retail store in ’04. I proudily voted no to Sunday shopping. And guess what we won… Or so we thought, well it shows if…
Letters to the Editor
My mother, only 74, dying of cancer for the last year and half , voiced how broken-hearted she was everyday about the cruelty of society. She was so disheartened by the the Iraq war, global warming, the darfur crisis, teenage swarmings, the dishonesty of governments,the indifference young people showed to their elders, etc.It was like…
42 Ks in 42 Days
So it’s noon on Saturday and I am sitting at my friend Chris Fudge’s house, watching cartoons and typing away on my laptop. Chris’ son Tolan is transfixed by the dancing vegetables on the screen, which will hopefully give me enough time to type up a quick blog. I doubt he’ll find Mircosoft Word very…
A Starbucks is born
From the front page of the Herald’s business section today: “Starbucks plans to open lots of coffee shops worldwide.” Yes gentle citizen, it turns out there’s this business with a wacky name that serves a type of heated brown beverage—some drinkers call it “coffee”—and this company has aspirations (doubtless delusional) of expanding beyond its home…
42 Ks in 42 Days
Some days I shouldn’t even get out of bed. Today was one of those days. Last night’s storm kept me up all night, and I could barely move when my alarm went off this morning. Luckily I have a lot of overtime to spare at work, so I called in and begged for a few…
Letters to the Editor
I agree wholeheartedly with Props for Props. I was thinking the very same thing last week while reading people complain about bitching. I agree that ‘Love the Way we Bitch’ is a necessity…however it may be nice to have an opposite column as well…could be heartwarming, though not as controversial as ‘bitch’. By MProp
42Ks in 42 Days
So I am currently sitting at home, eating copious amount of chocolate covered peanuts while listening to Faith No More’s classic album (well, classic if you’re a Faith No More fan) Angel Dust. I know that I shouldn’t be eating junk food, but I needed a snack, and peanuts sounded much healthier than all-dressed chips,…
A yuk or two
The old cliche “laughter is the best medicine” goes far in a town like this one, but there’s been no place to go get those laughs for about 20 years. Though both Picnicface and Comedy Dawgs, among others, have made valiant efforts to provide the city with regular does of stand-up comedy, they’ve had to…
BA is the new BA
In the latest installment of his adventures in exasperation, self-defeatist satirist BA Johnston throws his arms in the air and tells the world to let him know when the world is less image-based. The new album, titled Call Me When Old and Fat is the New Young and Sexy, will be debuted in Halifax on…
How do you like your coffee, er, shoes?
A new clothing and sneaker boutique, KRISP, will be opening its doors this month at 5189 Sackville, across from Reflections. Beau Cleeton, the store’s president and a graduate of NSCAD, says the store will offer “high-end street wear—stuff designed by different graphic designers and graffiti artists. The sneaker section of it will be all limited-edition…
Plebispite
On Wednesday afternoon the Nova Scotia Supreme Court provided the dynamite, and Rodney MacDonald blew up the dam. The leaky provincial ban on Sunday shopping was effectively abolished on Wednesday when the Nova Scotia Supreme Court ruled in favour of Sobeys and Atlantic Superstore, who were legally challenging what they considered an unfair restriction on…
Props for props
To the editor, I was originally going to write to complain about the violent reactions to a “Love the Way We Bitch” online post and to say that it’s a “bitch” column, not a love-in. But I realized that what The Coast really needs is not a bitch session at all, but rather a place…
Barking mad
Dear Lezlie Lowe, I read your column in last week’s issue of The Coast and was struck by the familiarity of your situation regarding the auto body shop you describe. I sympathize with you regarding the lack of cooperation you have received from the authorities, because that has been close to my experience as well.…
Barking mad
Dear Lezlie Lowe, I read “Gone to the dogs” (September 28) and realized that the auto body shop you were talking about is the same one that I bitch about every day biking home from work. I come up the street from Gottingen and that corner is dangerous for me because I can’t see any…
Trailer Park Boys: The Movie
It’s hard to notice amid Trailer Park Boys’ prominence, but Mike Clattenburg’s series never took the easy route. At the end of the 1990s, trailer trash culture had reached a gross trend in hipster fashion, movies and magazines—spoiled white kids condescending to lifestyles they’d never come in contact with. Trailer Park Boys’ success came despite…
FREE WILL ASTROLOGY
Cultivate your compassionate rage, Capricorn, says Rob Brezsny.
SAVAGE LOVE
Dan Savage has never gone to the dogs.
Is Hollywood ready for Mike Clattenburg?
Trailer Park Boys is a certified phenomenon. From a low-budget film that premiered at the Atlantic Film Festival in 1999 to a Showcase cable TV series featuring now-iconic characters, there’s something about Trailer Park Boys that gets people laughing, whether they live in trailers or towers. The show is so ubiquitous, it’s hard to imagine…
Needles’ point
The world is Thom Fitzgerald’s work-place. He’s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to promote his feature 3 Needles at the city’s film festival, his fourth film to show at the event. The story of 3 Needles spans the globe, presenting three transformative moments of HIV infecting people living in remote China, rural South Africa and…
The storyteller
Tears stream down an old man’s face as he remembers Africville. “It was a heaven, a home, a real home,” he says of the tiny black community on the Bedford Basin that was bulldozed by the city in the 1960s. “I’ve been around this world twice. I never met a place like Africville. Never.” That…
Not addressed
For weeks, Diana Viet had watched the pile of garbage between her North Street home and the two-unit apartment next door gradually building up. Black bag after black bag of garbage, pieces of cardboard, bundles of newspaper, and even an old mattress was slowly filling the narrow space between the two buildings, all of it…
Indecent disposal
If you don’t want to think about your neighbours policing how you always toss last month’s issue of Hustler into the trash instead of a separate recycling bag, you might have a little problem on your hands. A Halifax Regional Council committee is considering mandatory clear-plastic garbage bags to humiliate errant recyclers and non-composters. The…
High time
It was a slip that started it all. A moment of carelessness that, had the planets been aligned differently, may have had few consequences beyond bruises and a couple days of walking around with a limp. But it was not Wayne Lalonde’s lucky day, and when he fell down a flight of stairs while moving…
Vintensity
“There’s a very good reason there aren’t any orange juice critics out there,” says Natalie MacLean with a laugh. “Wine appeals to people on several levels: intellectually; at a sensory level; and then there’s the buzz. That very real, hedonistic pleasure that we get from drinking wine. You don’t get that from OJ.” MacLean is…
Moneen talks
No one wants to write about the happy band. The one that seems to get along, has enthusiasm for touring and the unshaken hope for the future success of their music. Where’s the scandal? The road weariness? The ego-battles? That’s the stuff that makes for a really gripping story. This doesn’t appear to be the…
Hoodwinked
The cogswell street home of Z103’s studios is buzzing with activity prior to the arrival of the participants of today’s meet-and-greet. The walls are lined with promo posters. A DJ spins R&B tracks in the corner. Plates of chips are stacked and distributed throughout the room. Coming and going at a frenzied pace are a…
