Love the way we bitch
This week’s bitch: Service check
LETTERHEAD
Straight at Bruce Wark and Michael Fleury
Dwell on this
Mammoth how-to-live mag Dwell (“At Home in the Modern World”) celebrates its 5th anniversary, and has dropped a Halifax plug amongst its celebratory issue. A look at “Modern Across America in Print” includes Plain Modern, Malcolm Quantrill’s book about local architecture wunderkind Brian MacKay-Lyons (full disclosure: we once lived in an early BM-L design in…
I see London, I see Francey
I see London, I see Francey In terms of starting a music career, David Francey is a late bloomer. His debut, Torn Screen Door, was released in 1999 when the roots artist was 45 years old. “I wrote for myself and was happy doing so. It was my wife, Beth Girdler, who convinced me to…
Changes brewing
Changes brewing Garrison Brewing Company is relocating from its current home at 6300 Lady Hammond down to the “historic Pier 21 area as we speak,” says owner Brian Titus. The brewery is moving into the former home of the Port Police, just north of the immigration annex and parallel to the sea wall. Titus is…
Road to nowhere
Even though HRM has been one big, amalgamated SuperCity for going on 10 years now, transportation is still a bit of a fractured affair. You’ve got HRM Council responsible for transit services, bikeways and most of the urban and suburban roads in the region. Then you’ve got the provincial department of transportation responsible for roads…
Messageboards: not so reliable?
To the editor, I would just like to point out that Michael Fleury, in his article “Dial tones” published in the September 29 issue of The Coast, neglects to tell readers about Information Radio 97.9 FM, which is Halifax’s official emergency broadcast system. On July 5, 2005, regional council unanimously passed the agreement, otherwise known…
Preventative measures
To the editor, Hi! I am a semi-regular reader of The Coast and I must say the editorial article in last week’s edition was FABULOUS! It is so refreshing to read an article that mirrors my own opinion of cancer—that it is indeed becoming an epidemic and that the government seems hell-bent on concentrating on…
Preventative measures
To the editor, I must say that last week’s “An ounce of prevention” editorial made for excellent reading. Yes, the ongoing push to raise funds to find a cure for cancer has westerners perpetually frothing at the mouth for another band-aid solution, and understandably so given the current cancer diagnosis and death rates in North…
Preventative measures
Dear Bruce Wark, I must disagree with your negative portrayal of the Terry Fox Run and of cancer research in general (“An ounce of prevention” September 29). For your information, cancer treatment has improved greatly as a result of research. Survival rates are much higher for many cancer types, and treatments are often less invasive.…
Sister act
It’s 24 degrees and sunny and Kate McGarrigle —one-half of the Canadian folk duo known as Kate and Anna McGarrigle—is looking through the stash of albums in her Montreal home, trying to find Richard Verreau’s Chantons Noel. Her favourite Christmas song is on it—or the first favourite that comes to mind, anyway—and she can’t remember…
Serenity
Serenity risks being slighted as a big-screen TV episode. It’s a continuation of 2002 space-western series Firefly, which was shelved early in its run by the Fox network. Firefly gained a cult following on DVD, and the film attempts to give those fans some closure. Serenity is consistent with the series tone, but it’s a…
Flavour force
A few short years ago, we didn’t have any Thai restaurants, now we have a trio of them—oh, how our taste buds have grown. Talay Thai is the newest restaurant to Thai one on, down the south end of Barrington Street in the former Clay Cafe digs. Not that the interior would give any hints…
Not-so-instant star
Stephens Gerard Malone’s first novel, Miss Elva, sat in a trunk for 10 years after he wrote it, before it was published this year by Random House. Actually, that’s not strictly true. His first first novel was called Endless Bay. He wrote it in 1994 and published it under a pseudonym. It’s not what you’re…
Tiny Town adventures
Matthew Reichertz sits squeezed behind a table in a windowed nook, a sandwich and salad in front of him. A tiny lamp lights the surface of the rickety table. Gottingen Street foot and car traffic flows by in the angled panes of glass behind him. He looks a little hemmed in, a contrast to the…
Toxic art
I love New Orleans. But after anchoring myself there for half my life, I still don’t understand it all that well. If this city has a soul, I think I’ve only caught fleeting glimpses of it. One of these glimpses occurred in 1993, when I had the chance to interview musician Danny Barker. He was…
Savage Love Web Extra
SASA wasn’t assaulted or raped. Adults are responsible for the boundaries of their consent and SASA put very few limits upon what he was willing to do. My spidey sense was tingling at the thought of entering, not once, but twice, an unfamiliar, darkened apartment that belonged to persons unknown. (Yikes! Run!) Once inside, SASA…
Thumbsucker blues
Mike Mills is 39 years old. At 18 he moved cross-county, from Santa Barbara, California to New York City, New York, where he attended The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He was a bad student, but he could draw. Art school led to an internship with influential design company M &…
Eyes on the prize
“Our lives have become very long,” says a man named Karma. He’s Tibetan, a dweller on the high plains some 15,000 feet above sea level, and he, with two of his cousins, has gone blind. Four percent of the Tibetan population over age 40 has cataracts due to high levels of ultraviolet radiation that prematurely…
Hamm and cheese
First we had Bacon, Tory premier Roger that is. Then we had Hamm, as in Tory premier John. Who will be the next Tory Sausage? Expect the media to be abuzz with speculation in the coming months. Most political news these days is all about top dogs, er, I mean, top wieners. Last week for…
Radio ga-ga
I have this song in my head, an old song by Queen. “Radio Ga-ga.” My partner’s been singing it a lot lately, and so have I. “Radio, what’s new? Radio, someone still loves you.” That’s what we’ll have to find out, now that there’s a deal, now that the lockout is (almost) officially over. You’ll…
Eternal sunshine
A fortune from a Chinese cookie was glued with some sort of goo to Michael Weir’s computer and centred just above the screen. The red ink text was sandwiched between two happy faces. It said: You are heading for a land of sunshine. Michael Weir died on Thursday, September 22. He was at home in…
The stuff of legend
It surprises me that exactly two weeks before Thanksgiving, the Turducken King has two hours to spare to sit down and talk. Shouldn’t he be busy stuffing chickens into ducks into turkeys, making sure that there are turduckens aplenty for his hungry subjects to enjoy on Thanksgiving weekend? The King has a philosophical answer. “Thanksgiving…
Fowl ball
Thanksgiving and turkey go together like Easter and chocolate bunnies: somehow, it just doesn’t seem right to have one without the other. As times have changed, though, so have our options. Just as the selection for Easter chocolate now ranges from bunnies to dinosaurs, race cars and kitty cats, the range of options for your…
