Lack of landscaping, Agricola Street liquor store
What’s wrong? Lack of landscaping, Agricola Street liquor store. Who’s responsible? Rick Perkins, NSLC spokesperson, 450-6752. REMARKS “It’s not our responsibility,” Perkins says of the landscaping, and points us to a Toronto corporation that manages the building. “God knows we spend enough on that building.” So the provincial representation in a struggling neighbourhood can’t spend…
Kate Watson’s top fringe picks
Choosing what to see at the Atlantic Fringe Festival is no easy task. Previous years have offered polished gems, diamonds in the rough and stones that should never have been unearthed. But since they’re all offered at practically dollar-store prices, you can’t go wrong. Here are a few of my top picks: Chug The Economy…
09.09.09
It’s the big Number Nine. And yes, it’s another Beatles review. The Beatles: Rock Band (Harmonix) is now available in stores, as well as the remastered editions of the band’s studio albums on CD, both individual albums and in two box sets. There are no digital downloads available yet, but MSNBC is speculating that there…
Ban Bums Now
Finally! CBC’s lead story last night was about the aggressive panhandlers on Halifax’s streets. I say ban EVERY LAST ONE OF THEM!!!! They not only hurt business, they make this city even more of a smelly pit than it is. If people want to help, set up donation boxes in the stores and donate the…
Sigh.
Dear university students: I thank you in advance for ruining my commute to and from work for the next 8 months. Love and kisses, Poib
Whut Up With Mono? – Spector’s in Jail!
Why should I pay over $300 for the MONO remixes of the Beatles’ albums when I can just reach over to my old Harmon Kardon receiver and push the “mono” button? Maybe we should just pan everything over to one “earbud” and put the $300 on paying down our personal deficits? It would leave one…
Greetings & Cellutations
It annoys me to find people answering their cell phones when being served in public areas, such as gas stations, restaurants, shopping centers, etc. Is the call really that important that you have to literally ignore the person taking care of you? How about tossing your money at them while you ramble on about how…
Fringe review: Feathers and Loam takes flight
Home or travel? Certainty or risk? These questions and others are posed and opposed in J.A. Wainwight’s Feathers and Loam, an extrapolation of the Icarus myth that sees the young dreamer surviving his plunge and debating his world view with a ploughman, his wife, a painter and his muse. While the ideas are interesting, I…
Vote for the winner of the Echo songwriting prize online
The SOCAN Echo songwriting prize has assembled a mini playlist of five songs they they have determined to be “some of the most innovative, creative and artistic songs created in the past year by independent songwriters in Canada.” Halifax hero Joel Plaskett made the list with “Through and Through and Through.” Have a listen at…
WTF HRM developers?
For the past 3-4 years I have been writing into newspapers, calling politicians, posting comments on forums and yes even creating useless bitches about the bullshit heritage groups holding back downtown development. Now that HRM city council has green lighted most of these pending developments I would like to see some fucking cranes on Halifax…
I’m Homesick.
I moved elsewhere in Canada, to a big city, convinced I wanted to be somewhere more “fast paced and cultured”. I complained at the size of Halifax, I complained about the public transit, I complained about the lack of EVERYTHING. Now…I miss everything about. I miss the smell of the ocean, I miss the old,…
Road ragers need to get off the road!
To the stupid road rager that forced the bus off the road on the corner of Barrington and Duke at rush hour: I don’t care who cut who off, YOU put everyone on the bus in danger by driving like a lunatic in order to make the bus pull over. You also almost ran over…
Exit Strategy
Hi Halifax Driver. Let me tell you about an exciting driving rule that will change your life and make you a better person. I know you don’t know this rule already. I know it’s not that you think you’re SO much more important than everyone else, and SO much more busy than everyone else that…
the man with the poem
thanks for giving me the poem on maynard street. i was a little scared when you approached, to be honest, and then you were really nice, and i felt like a jerk. Even though you didn’t write the wee ditty, i enjoyed it regardless. —owl friend
Why are cops exempt from hands-free cell phone law?
Why are cops exempt from hands-free cell phone law? Don’t tell me it’s because; ” they are operating an authorized emergency vehicle”. Multi-tasking police on a hand-held cell phone and using in-car police computers while driving through a busy intersection how safe is that? I can talk on a cell phone & drive with no…
Shine-A-RAMA is ILLEGAL!
Day after day people complain about the homeless asking for cash but they don’t stick – sticks in your windows asking for change! Or yell at the top of their lungs asking for change. They simply say “can I have a dollar” – But the University kids (mainly Dal students) spent this Tuesday running up…
What Happened to the Ducks???
Ok, last year we were told we were not allowed to feed the ducks at the Public Gardens ($200 penalty I think), the reason being we were creating fat unhealthy ducks that pooped a lot in the pond (where’s the fine for people feeding fat kids MacDonalds burgers?). A LOT of people enjoyed getting out…
pleasant surprise in Pt Pleasant
I was walking down by the pagoda in Pt Pleasant the other day, and nailed to the guardrail was a “Love Horn”. Whoever made this must be half nuts, but I love it. Made my day, whoever you are!—all you need is love
Moving my foot into your ass
I recently required the services of a moving van to help me empty out my storage facility in Bayers Lake, and take it all down to the South Shore, so I could conveniently move all of my excess things into my Father’s garage and also attend a family get together. I searched on Kijiji and…
It’s funtastic!
At the corner of Agricola and West is a new source for brand-name products at discount prices. Funtastic Liquidation (2411 Agricola, 252-3844) has both men’s and women’s designer clothing, fresh off the boat from New York locations of Sears and Bloomingdales, at low, low prices. (We’re talking $4 t-shirts here.) Typically 60 to 80 percent…
Baan Thai reopens
Readers have been wondering, and we have the answer: The banners are up, the renos are almost done and by the time you read this, longtime former Dresden Row Thai restaurant Baan Thai should be open in its new location on Blowers Street, up above I Love Sushi.
Fringe Review: The infinitely likeable Infringe
I don’t know anything about dance, but I do know what I like, and I like—really, really like—Maritime Dance Performance Group’s Infringe. I like the way these dancers tell stories with every inch of their bodies. I like the unexpected mix of fierce and sweet. I like the eclectic choices in music. (My favourite is…
The Infinite summer’s not over at Spring Garden Library
Be honest: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is one of those books that people lie about reading, like James Joyce’s Ulysses. But Wallace, who suffered from clinical depression, also had many passionate fans who were devastated when the author committed suicide on September 15, 2008. In fact, many of them spent the summer as part…
Live twittering from City Council
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I bow down to the veteran artists
This is a mild bitch with a question at the end. Why is it hard for me to find an establishment that displays local artwork for sale? Have I just lost all touch with the Arts? I have a child/teen who has such an amazing eye for photography, it makes me shiver. The pics are…
Halifax Garbage Fairies
Thanks to all the people in the NOrth END who put out good working stuff for free to take. I have a complete kitchen of your garbage and I am raising my son and I didn’t have to spend any money on all that new stuff like blenders, kettles, dishes, all these little tools I…
SEXIST BEER ADS
This may come as a shock to beer companies but women (gasp!) drink beer too!!! Why then, are beer companies flogging their products with scantilly clad ‘beer babes’ who are clearly designed to appeal to hetero men or lesbians? Where are the scantlly clad young men for the women beer drinkers to ogle? Seriously! If…
Another skateboarding bitch
Printing this statement “skateboarding in town is actually on the decline right now, especially around the skatepark, due to the police enforcing the helmet law. “They’re handing out $140 fines to 14-year-old kids and taking away their skateboards,” says Arsenault. “Cops don’t want kids to exercise. Skateboarding sits lower than soccer or basketball on the…
Pavilion re-opens Sept 11 with a free BBQ and show
Mal KaziSnow and Blackbirds are as excited as I am to start wearing scarves again What did you spend your time doing this summer while the Pavilion was closed? Maybe you went to the lake, had some memorable picnics and went on bike rides. It’s time to push all that out of your mind, replace…
Fringe review: Not So Desperate Housewives
The ladies of Camel-Toe Lane are glittery and glamorous. They dress to show off their obvious assets, and they bedeck themselves in eye-popping jewels. They shimmy, shake and lip-sync their way through some oldies but goodies as well as some of today’s most popular songs, all of which are cleverly chosen to tell their various…
Fringe review: Serving up unforgettable theatre at the Sunnyside Cafe
Eva seems like someone you might know, or want to know. There’s nothing flashy about her. She’s an honest, hardworking waitress just trying to get by. Sure, she leans a little towards the obsessive-compulsive, but actress Sherry Smith makes her odd ways believable and even endearing. The world that playwright Pam Calabrese MacLean has created…
Tags
Hey Coast, This is completely unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but I thought I would point out that the purpose of having tags is to have a quick, easy go-to for finding material on general topics of interest. When you give each and every bitch its very own ridiculous set of tags in…
Turning Blue
Hey smoking A-holes, bus stops are public places too. Every day someone has to walk up behind me and light one up. Within two mouthfuls of your smoke I’m into an asthma induced coughing fit and turning blue. Me turning around and glarring at you (because I can’t talk by this point and tell what…
What is YOUR problem?
You’re my therapist. Look, I’m sorry I missed our appointment two weeks ago. But as I said, it was a misunderstanding. YOU’RE the one who is supposed to have it together, to be mature. When I emailed you back regarding the missed appointment, why didn’t you respond? It’s been almost two weeks since I wrote.…
Find an Alley!
To the 20-something guy on North Park Street, lying face down in a puddle of alcoholism: I get that it’s Saturday night, and that drinking is fun. But, if you feel the need to get so intoxicated that you pass out in public, at least do it under the concealment of some well placed garbage…
Go For Gold!
To the girl with the solid gold glittery bike, lots of love to you. It’s nice to see a grown woman who isn’t afraid to cover her bike in sparkles, and embrace her inner child. You look so happy riding it! Shine on you crazy diamond!—Gary Glitter
Pick on a Bus Shelter Your Own Size
How much of my tax dollars are being spent refitting glass panes on shelters broken by thrill-seeking glass breakers? Same bus shelters in my neighborhood get vandalized at least once a week. I’ve been told by one person with HRM that the bus shelters get vandalized for a various of reasons across the HRM .…
Photography is not a crime!
This is to all of the people downtown that give me dirty looks or don’t return my smiles or just glare at me because I’m out taking photos with my SLR. Why do you have to be such unfriendly jerks? Why are people only rude when I have my camera out? A camera with a…
Horrible Customer Service
This bitch is to the hostess at a certain coffee shop, you do sell cappachino so why tell me you dont and dont make fun of me when I tell you I have a hearing loss and if you could speak up instead of whispering and then have the nerve to serve me hot coffee…
Dumb ass kids
Students are back. Whoopie!! Here’s a “tip” for you all. The bar staff can be your best friends or your worst enemies. We don’t work for minimum wage. If you don’t tip, you better be prepped to wait until we’re finished with people who do, AND be excessively fucking polite when you order. “Hey!”, “Me!”,…
Fringe review: Danger! Sharp Wit ahead
Here’s a confession: Until last night, I was a stand-up comedy virgin. So, having never been to a live stand-up show before, I didn’t know that my husband and I should NOT sit in the front row of the tiny Living Room Theatre for Welsh comic Noel James’ The Wit and Wordplay of Whales. I…
Fringe review: Vern & Gregory, guaranteed to make you laugh
The fringe festival can be pretty intense. A lot of shows explore heavy themes, and even though the pain of life is usually served up with a dose of humour, some nights I leave thinking, “So, life’s a bitch and then you die.” Which is what made Jamie Bradley and Scott Owen’s Vern & Gregory!…
Chapel Hill brings the celebs
[image-1] “I’m a cut, slice and dice person,” says Sylvia Noble. Nope, she’s not a serial killer, she’s a local form-fitter who’s worked in Hollywood, and she owns a clothing store at the corner of Spring Garden and Brunswick called Chapel Hill (5407 Spring Garden, 422-7150). Though the boutique is full of dresses and other…
Shameless moves
Formerly on Stairs Street in the Hydrostone, Shameless Body Jewels can now be found at 3032 Oxford Street near Young Street, and by phone at 444-3045. If you’re looking for a new septum ring, they now do piercings in-house.
Heroine reopens
Open only by appointment and special occasion over the summer, Heroine (5775 Charles, 420-0328) will be casting its doors open more regularly during the fall season, starting Friday, September 18. Advance word has indicated that folks can expect a showroom featuring sweater knits by Montreal’s ca va de soi to begin the season (September 18…
Fringe review: Few rough Edges
The song cycle Edges presents four young people on the brink of adulthood, all searching for a place in the world. They sing about familiar problems such as the fear of commitment and the need to belong while also standing out, as well as less run-of-the-mill plights like abusive relationships and parental abandonment. The songs…
Fringe review: Selena not up to snuff
I really enjoyed dancer Leslie Carvey’s tribute to the ground-breaking entertainer Josephine Baker at last year’s fringe, so I was excited to see her current work, Selena, Death after Life. Unfortunately, the production suffered from some pretty major technical difficulties including too-dark projections and unannounced extended intermission that left the audience wondering if they should…
Fringe review: Huge Sums of Money
Some people just radiate positivity, and out-of-work actor/arts administrator Adam Reid is one of those people. He’s got one of those Mary Tyler Moore “turn the world on with her smile” smiles and a can-do attitude that seem to indicate he’ll go far in life. But his short one-man show Huge Sums of Money tells…
Late Summer Winged Things
Ants. Now they have wings and think my car is a nice place to hang out. Flies. They’re fucking on my office wall and I’m not impressed! Now I know why God invented winter.—Bring On The Frost
arshole
Why am I always the one doing wrong? Its not possible for one person to lways be the problem in a relationship of 2 people!!! Get off your pedalstal and being yourself down to everyone elses level! You are too much like your crazy ass mother. You are not always right!!!!!!!—Me
Egg suckers
I work at a drugstore, and today, about 80 fucking people complained to me because we sold out of the eggs we had on sale and weren’t giving out rain checks. I’m sorry, but do I LOOK like I own the fucking store? I don’t make the rules, I just follow them. I understand that…
common courtesy
To the two people who went to see Halloween II drunk the other day and talked through the whole thing: you are pieces of shit. First of all, who goes to a movie drunk? Second, why in the world did you think that lighting up your lighter on and off for the last 40 minutes…
Ambulances
OMG I know ambulances have to be heard so you can get out of the way, but do they have to pierce your brain?? The next time one passes within 5 feet of my open car window I’m gunna need an ambulance!! —Chris and Pudgy
Premature men
What is it with all you guys who can’t last more than 30 seconds in the sack? The last 3 guys I took home (yes I am slut – so sue me) wouldn’t add to to a minute between them. —Horny Grrrl Denied
Frank, WTF?!
Who do these guys think they are? They publish my name and occupation along with my address – including unit number – without my permission? What the hell is this shit?!?! So a new building was built and people live there now. Big deal. Where do they get off putting our names and personal information…
lunchtime
I just started as a lunch monitor at an elementary school. The kids I have are grade ones. I am shocked and disgusted at what some people pack these 6 year olds for lunch. Processed crap and chocolate bars. Seriously?? Half the kids only will eat the junk food and I can’t make sure 40…
Fringe review: Beyond the Road Less Gravelled
Ah, the staple of fringe festivals: the one-man show. A solo show gives audiences the chance to spend an hour or so with one character, learning the deep, dark secrets of a life. If done well, this can be entertaining and enlightening. But in the wrong hands, a one-man show is as much fun as…
Fringe review: The unexpected pleasure of CHUG
The pleasure of watching the dancers of SINS (Sometime in Nova Scotia) perform their contemporary dance piece CHUG amongst the patrons at the Economy Shoe Shop is doubled by watching the reactions of the audience. As the gracefully athletic trio sprawl across the bar or chase each other playfully around tables and up steps, people…
Fringe review: J-Tel Presents…a fun family show
I am a sucker for talented young people, and I have a thing for folk music, so the awkwardly titled J-Tel Presents…Canadian Folk Songs Super-Hits Sound Explosion seemed like it would be right up my alley. I was not disappointed! This show is a clever satire of both infomercials and the “raise a perfect child”…
Bud the spud shuts down for the season
Multiple Best of Halifax award-winning purveyors of fine PEI French fried potatoes, the popular chip truck Bud the Spud has called it a day for 2009. Through this summer it was usually found on the Grafton side of the Spring Garden library, and though in years past owners Bud and Nancy True might have pushed…
How to keep the public out of the public’s business, example #1,428
As usual, the city clerk’s office posted the agenda for Tuesday’s council meeting at 4pm on Friday. But of course Monday is a holiday, so we get this notice: Due to the Civic Holiday on Monday September 7th, reports for the September 8th Regional Council meeting will be available the morning of Tuesday September 8th.…
Jody Zinner is provincial winner of the BMO 1st Art! Competition
Jody Zinner, Circle of Hair, Ink on watercolo.ur paper 22 x 30 in; 55.8 x 76.2 cm Jody Zinner, a NSCAD grad and Khyber ICA interim director, was named the Nova Scotia winner of BMO 1st Art! Competition (other than Sobey’s, banks are the only ones doling out substantial arts cash these days). According to…
booooooooo
so this city wants to build a new WTCC and not give money to transition houses…..very interesting…..—saddened
Balls = Might?
Ok WTF is it, really, with people that compare having balls to being the elite alpha male? Like, ”That guy has HUGE balls for slaying that grizzly bear 4 times and then eating it” or, ”grow some balls and fight me, noob!” Really? Really really? It’s just like so stupid. I’m a girl, so should…
To my pharmacist:
My health insurance ran out, but you find ways to help and look out for me. Thank you! I think I’ll start taking that ‘Pharmacist Awareness Week’ a little more seriously, because you’re awesome! On the mend.
The Movies…
The butter for your popcorn tastes like shit now. I know it was always a suspicious lukewarm mystery solution, but at least it tasted alright. Now it tastes gross. It ruined my entire bag of pop corn. When they ask if you want butter on your popcorn say no. Why do they put the butter…
Almighty Crosswalk Forcefield
The white lines to not actually prevent cars from plowing into you…as a pedestrian I 100% of the time wait until I am certain the driver can see me crossing before I walk. Those that feel they can just push that light and walk and go out of their way to not look…feeling like “I…
Leotarded…
So the Coast has space for a 3″ by 3″ picture of an egg in the idiotic gomer times comic, but they don’t have enough space to fit all of the Savage Love article in. What’s the point of having a paper if you’re just going to direct people to the website? —Bastard Fish
Fringe review: Pain equals laughter
I have a theory that most truly funny people have suffered. Laughter—particularly the self-deprecating kind—makes a great mechanism for hiding pain. Charlie Rhindress as the titular character in Boo doesn’t pull his punches when it comes to either pain or humour. For 55 minutes, he stands on stage and bares his soul inch by inch,…
Fringe review: Dysfunctional families make for good theatre
The structure of playwright Lois Brown’s Sex, the Rules of is not simple. It follows a twisty path through truth and fantasy, and while this means it requires close attention from the audience, it also proves to be an excellent representation of the complexity of real life. The show is about a family that has…
Fringe review: Make a wish at 11:11
It’s a credit to the five talented performers in 11:11 that I didn’t have a clue as to their ages until I picked up the program after the show. My guess would have landed them in there mid-teens, while it seems they are actually in their early 20s. The reason that any of this matters…
Pricks in Cars (12″ of cell phone bitch – dance mix)
What is the difference between a luxury vehicle and a porcupine? Porcupines have their pricks on the outside 🙂 BMW joke and obviously not all people…but if you have paid over 50k for your car and do not have bluetooth I want to punch you in the face. Seriously…fuck me already…spend $250 and get the…
to all the doggies
i miss you guys…especially henley, elly, sheba, bilbo, luna, guiness, winston and all the other furbabies come by the new digs for some treats xooxoxoxxo —paingirl
bubble bitch
I can’t believe that anyone would bitch about the bubbles on Doyle St.. What is wrong with your life? What is wrong with the editors at The Coast for even printing such nonsense. I see the reactions of people, especially kids, and they are positively cheerful. There is so much shit going on and you…
No I won’t give you money!
To the guy who stands at the Sportsplex bus terminal and asks for bus change : We know you go to NSCC! We know you have a a bus pass! AND we know you don’t need our money! So stop fucking asking us for change for the bus and stop bugging people who just want…
It’s not HAMMERTIME you scum bags
To the assholes who just moved into my apartment floor yesterday… Thanks alot for waking me up at 7:00 AM by hammering against the other side of my bedroom wall, cause I’m sure there was nothing better you could be doing in your apartment at that time of day. —FTC
A guide to Halifax’s second-hand bookstores
Back Pages 1526 Queen Street, 423-4750 A wee bookstore on busy Queen Street, its little storefront hides a large selection of non-fiction and fiction titles. The owner was away on vacation for a good chunk of August, but the nice lady at the counter said the shop carries, in addition to its history and literature,…
How to not get stuck in Halifax
Ah, newbies. Welcome to the city. I was like you once. A born-and-bred Toronto girl, I moved to Halifax to take an eight-month post-graduate degree at the University of King’s College. “No worries!” I told my big city friends. “I’ll check out what’s happening out east, and I’ll be back in no time!” Four years…
Be a cult movie conoisseur
We’ve all heard about Lebowski Fest, the annual pilgrimage for fans of The Big Lebowski, and heard tales of midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and, more recently, the phenomenon of Tommy Wiseau’s The Room and the detailed forms of audience participation it requires. The world of cult films has always placed certain…
Irony vs sincerity: say what you mean
Laptops, DVRs, iPhones, digital cameras, Facebook, Twitter, Google, iTunes: they’ve come to define us, and they’ve come to ruin us. For all of the technology, the constant dick-swinging of newer/faster/cooler and the sheer amount of tools we have to communicate, communication itself has devolved into the worst misinterpretation of carpe diem: all of this now…
Meeting people is easy
The student population in this city is more than half the size of the entire population on the peninsula, making casual run-ins a way of life. So whether you’re crushing on that cute boy in your Dinosaurs and Their World class or swooning over the server at a nearby cafe, the following hotspots will help…
A world of hurt: Hangover cures from around the planet
Prairie oyster This North American cure is made of tomato juice, Worcester sauce, black pepper and Tabasco sauce, topped with a raw egg yolk. As with real oysters, just swallow—don’t look or chew. Tripe soup A common cure in Romania, Turkey and Mexico, tripe (AKA cow’s stomach) soup is made by boiling the edible offal…
Where the eastern goths are
A strange scene is unfolding in a small dark room adjacent to a downtown Chinese buffet: Fortune tellers, clowns, scantily clad zombie girls, mimes and the devil himself dance happily together and swig cheap beer. Fluorescent lights reflect off skin wrapped in tight latex and leather, while eardrums absorb trance, EBM, goth-rock and industrial music.…
Halloween II’s killing machine
It’s possible to see the movie Rob Zombie wanted to make in Halloween II, but much harder to see the point. It’s Zombie’s prerogative to not want this sequel to amount to “fun” horror. But repeatedly, we’re seeing through Michael Myers’ perspective, observing victims’ prolonged suffering. That’s how Halloween II ends up fetishizing cruelty. The…
Food for thinking
With an absurd amount of places to dine out in Halifax, the best spot of all to eat is actually right in your kitchen. But with assignments, social life and dating, it’s all too easy to get fast or processed foods instead. It isn’t easy balancing a student’s hectic lifestyle with their body’s needs and…
Local poetry: For letter or for verse
When it comes to poetry, Halifax slams. And poetry is cool. Really. Don’t think so? Got the structured verse of a long dead white guy rattling your cranium? Been rejected by a now out-of-print literary journal? Whatever might have scared you off poetry, you’re in Halifax now. Halifax is one poetic town. Poetry rings through…
Hidden Halifax
Almon Billiards and Social Club 6050 Almon Street, 454-7665 Turn down an alley on Almon Street and with any luck you’ll run into the right kind of outlaws and scofflaws. “Either you know where it is or you don’t,” remarks Dick, an Almon Billards’s bartender, with raised-eyebrow sarcasm on how to find the club. Behind…
Dartmouth daytripper
As San Francisco has Oakland and New York has Jersey, Halifax has my dear Dartmouth. I opted to settle there when I moved back from Toronto a month ago. Plenty of Haligonians think Dartmouth is just a place to drive through on the way to the airport, but here are a few of the reasons…
Alpha Dogg
If you happen to walk past the Metro Centre and have a Woodstock seizure at the scent emerging, don’t fret, the hippies didn’t win. It’s merely Snoop Dogg taking his patented mid-set chronic break. Tickets are $44.50 to $54.50 (gin and juice sold separately). Many are unaware that Snoop Dogg’s real name is Cordazar Calvin…
Sex trade should be legalized and regulated
My initial reaction to charitydawnosauras’s comment on sex workers (Letters, August 27, re: “Sex work in the shadows,” August 20), was that maybe it was satirical. On reflection, though, I have to conclude that she really did mean it when she said “the punishment for picking up prostitutes should be much, much harsher.” Did she…
Important Phone Numbers
Acadian Bus Lines 800-567-5151 Alcoholics Anonymous 461-1119 Bin doctor 462-7468 Clean Nova Scotia 420-3474 The Coast 422-6278 Crime Stoppers 800-222-8477 Dalhousie Student Union 494-1106 Ecology Action Centre 429-2202 Environment Canada Weather 426-9090 Gambling Problem Help Line 888-347-8888 Food Bank Metro 457-1900 Halifax Regional Library reference desk, Spring Garden branch 490-5710 Halifax Stanfield International Airport 873-4422…
Northern lights
King-in-exile of the local music scene, Sloan was the highest-profile band to come out of the mid-’90s Halifax music explosion. Though they’re longtime Toronto scenesters—it even says as much on their website—Sloan often sang of its hometown experience, as on a few key tracks from the 1999 release Between the Bridges. The bridges in question…
Middle Aged “Twits”
I’m not surprised that the fastest-growing group of “Twits” are middle-aged, moderately successful urbanites. This group of over-40s has come late into the whole social networking thing, and embraced the simple one-liner broadcast style of Twitter: “Hey, this is great, I can fiddle with my expensive new phone during meetings (booooring), in front of cocktail…
The Hangover Guide
One sunny November morning in fourth year I woke up and I could see. For the first time since elementary school I could make out details on the far walls of my room. Before I could begin to understand or enjoy this newfound gift of sight, my brain was clamped in a hot vice and…
Become a Haligonian picture puzzle
View Halifax Scavenger map in a larger map Hints Map: Get ye to the highlighted patches of blue; therein will be pointing to a clue for you! 1.This is the start of something, but it’s long gone. 2. If you ask at night, the caged mariner will lead you to Peter Kelly. 3. After six…
Youth in Halifax aren’t getting the respect they deserve
The news about Peter Duffy’s new gig (Reality Bites, page 5) just proves that our leadership has its head stuck somewhere far less pleasant than the sand. I respect that work experience comes with a certain amount of wisdom, which serves anyone well in a new job. Fine. But new ideas and new perspectives are…
I love this karaoke town
Like everything else in life, a good bar crowd has several sub-categories. You have the determined drunks, the social smokers, the bored-as-shit designated-driver significant others, the pickup artists and the large dudes who speak exclusively in outdoor voices. There is a special subsection of this party category that is often overlooked, however: the karaoke singers.…
Fitness fundamentals
Amongst the many mandatory fees students pay at university, athletic fees are but one. And most students don’t even use the facilities. Yet this perk should be a big part of every student’s life. If the idea of improving your self-confidence, getting stronger, increasing endurance, looking more toned or getting ripped sounds appealing, then you…
NSCAD fashions a couture vert
In late April, as the wind blew cold rain in swirls and angular patterns across Granville Mall, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design professor Gary Markle playfully stalked the runway at NSCAD’s Wearable Art Show. He wore nothing but boxers, mukluks and a mask (complete with bunny ears) made out of old shoes, an…
What you missed this summer
DARRELL DEXTER On June 9 the NDP won its first majority in Nova Scotia ever and RodMac was sent packing. While we’ve considered this to be good news, a Deloitte consultants’ report is suggesting that the province will be in the hole to the tune of $1.3 billion in three years. What to do, what…
Pimp my dorm room
Pictured above is a typical Dalhousie Howe Hall single dorm room. Empty, it’s perfect for minimalist psychopaths. But you deserve a room with personality that won’t scare the neighbours. So how and where do you start? We asked Suzanne Saul, co-owner of Attica Furnishings (1566 Barrington Street, 423-2557), to give us a few design guidelines,…
How to keep Summer going a little longer
Your summer spirit is not always what makes you shotgun that extra Wildcat, or stay out an hour later when you’re working at 7am (though they are related). Your summer spirit is really the fire in you, the guts of that beast that loves fun more than food and sun more than sleep. Considering Haligonians…
NSCAD: where art and music converge
The Khyber ICA is steaming hot, packed with bands and fans for the Totally Wicked Music Festival, a one-night music event where bands come together for one night and play one song each. The first Totally Wicked Music Festival happened 10 years prior—an idea born on the NSCAD campus after an Anna Leonowens exhibition opening,…
Screw You Drycleaner!
So, how about instead of stapling a weight loss pamphlet to my drycleaning you actually do your job and dryclean my clothes! I have never seen such a HORRIBLE job in my life! With that shoddy work, maybe you should be more focused on keeping your customers instead of telling them to lose weight, but…
I like it here!
what the fuck is it with everyone hating on Halifax??—whatever
mattress salespeople are the scum of earth
Mattress shopping, grrr…. Why does it have to be so f-ing hard? Companies change the mattress names every couple of months, so I can’t find reviews for the mattress I’m considering. All the stores carry the same mattresses, but with different names and fabrics, so I can’t compare prices. The labels are deliberately lacking in…
Water Commission: booooo!
Why in the name of Christ has it taken 125+ years to upgrade the Freshwater Brook Sewer? Have useless jackoffs been running this show the whole time, handing it down from asshole to asshole? Why is construction almost a year behind schedule? They tell us “significant safety/construction issues” have caused the delays. What a vague,…
Bike Stealer on Lawrence
To the Wednesday morning bike stealer on Lawrence Street. You disappoint me as a human being. If you put it back where you found it, I promise l’ll put away my voodoo doll.—Bikeless
thanks for mocking that creep…
To those girls drinking on that veranda on Quinpool that warm night… For yelling: “Hey! Get back in your big truck, ya big buck” at the guy who was screaming in my car window. I cut him off with a poorly timed right turn onto Quinpool — he lost his mind, jumped out of his…
Why can’t we just sleep?
To the company who owns the crane in the Trillium property lot beside Park Vic: There is a billboard sized illuminated sign on the top of your crane that only comes on after dark. I feel as though there are a few reasons this billboard sized illuminated sign should cease to illuminate at night: 1…
Dinah Thorpe
Toronto’s Dinah Thorpe understands the line between fact and fiction. Her double disc Truths and Other Stories straddles this divide. Produced, mixed and mastered by the artist, Thorpe layers her ethereal vocals over club-worthy beats. (Imagine Dido if she were a dyke.) Academically minded, much of Thorpe’s material dives into queer theory and gender politics.…
Ears ring for Cobra Jets
After a few line-up changes, Friday night at Gus’ with The Motorleague, The Cobra Jets, The Cuban Assassins and The Baketones promises to be a rip-snorting, ribcage-juddering rock ‘n’ roll party that will leave you with ringing ears and dry heaves. That’s the ambition of Frederiction’s Cobra Jets, anyhow. “Our sound has been described as…
Best. Halifax. Concerts. Ever.
Sonic Youth Thursday, August 9th, 1984 Nova Scotia College of Art and Design Cafeteria One of the most talked-about shows of the last 25 years. Unfortunately, that talk is about how everyone missed it. Advertised as “killer rock + roll from NYC,” the poster, featuring a photo from Evil Dead, is one of the most…
Andy Rourke takes a spin
If you trust the words of Morrissey, his old bandmates have been sitting on their collective thumbs over the past decade. In an interview with Uncut a few years ago, Mozzer bristled: “I feel as if I’ve worked very hard since the demise of The Smiths and the others haven’t.” Of course, the statement isn’t…
All you can eat buffet makeover
“So, do you want to go classy or dirty?” These were the words that started our buffet journey. (Actually, they were “We need a student related food story by Monday.”) The assignment: create food porn from the endless troughs of buffets and make the cheap and plain into something fancy—high dining for the sub-$20 crowd.…
York Redoubt on fire
York Redoubt has a self-deprecating streak, but the band doesn’t need it. Over sushi on Quinpool, the band gripes at length about how terribly they played at a PEI show the previous night, and refers to the content of their tape released this spring as “crappy York Redoubt.” All this bad press from a young…
Shandi Mitchell breaks ground
Buses roll by frequently. Dog-walkers stroll past, some stopping to chat with coffee-drinkers sitting in a line of chairs and tables. Cyclists pull up and lock their bikes. It’s an everyday scene, an intersection of activity that Shandi Mitchell might well describe. A screenwriter and filmmaker by trade, her first novel, Under This Unbroken Sky,…
The Muppet Show: Meet The Muppets (Boom! Studios)
Boom! Studios, a smaller big comic book publisher, launched their new Boom! Kids line earlier this year, which features comics based on the Disney-owned properties Pixar and The Muppets. Time will tell if this arrangement lasts now that Disney owns Marvel. Hopefully nothing will happen that affects the Muppet Show comics that cartoonist Roger Langridge…
Franchise reaches its Final Destination
The Final Destination can only rank as a complete imaginative failure. Selling bland fatalism to kids, it’s the work of crooks. The original movie had the best premise of any slasher film: Making the killer death itself, while teenagers question the uncertainty of their own mortality. Rather than expand the mythos, the sequels (and this…
Camelia Frieberg’s cross-pollination project
“One thing that is so incredibly exhilarating about film,” says filmmaker, producer and Pollination Project co-founder Camelia Frieberg, “is the process by which it comes together. Talk about cross-pollination—you’ve got the music, the visuals, the writer, the actors bringing their craft—all those things have to come together and collaborate. Sure, you have one unifying vision,…
NSPIRG’s Re-orientation plan
Traditionally, universities welcome new students with a week’s worth of orientation tedium—think tours of the campus, barbeque on the quad with 3,000 other awkward frosh, boring welcoming speeches by academic pooh-bahs. A sleepy student is a prepared student, is the idea. But the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group is breaking that mold with its…
Student and campus bar round up
The Grawood and the T-Room Both watering holes are Dalhousie hangouts, and both accept non-Dal students who have a valid student ID and proof of age. The Grawood sports a restaurant, but the T-Room doesn't (you can bring in snacks if you’re hungry). Renowned T-Room trivia starts September 11—I hear there are chocolate bars and…
Boo’s journey from Facebook to stage
Ask actor-writer Charlie Rhindress about the meaning of the title of Boo, his solo show at the Atlantic Fringe Festival, and he’ll give you multiple answers. “Actually Boo was my nickname growing up, as in ‘Boo-boo,'” he says, explaining with good-natured candour that he was an unexpected pregnancy for his young mother. “And it’s also…
Let’s push for lower tuition rates
Nova Scotia has had no shortage of snake-oil get-rich-quick schemes. Consider the allegedly humungous natural gas deposits off our shores, which were supposed to turn us into Alberta East—the actual reserves are so puny that production will dry up in a few years. Some consultants made some dough, I guess. Otherwise, meh. Or, for a…
Duffy haunts City Hall
Before he retired earlier this year, Chronicle-Herald columnist Peter Duffy was internationally renowned for such groundbreaking journalism as his first-person account of being anally raped by a ghost, a single-entendre report on the opening of the Dartmouth Hooters and a softball interview with white supremacist Jared Taylor. This week that expertise is being taken to…
Not-so Good Dick
Indie movie Good Dick (set in a video store? Check! Super-edgy title? Meh. Dick and Pecker did it adjective-free) starts by exploring a question most current/former video-store employees can relate to: what’s the best way to interact with porn-renters? Do you avoid eye contact? Amp up the politeness? Or, like Good Dick’s hero (Jason Ritter),…
Province still dedicated to highway construction
The provincial government last week approved starting appropriation proceedings to acquire 38 hectares near Timberlea, land needed to build Highway 113, a controversial proposal to connect existing Highways 102 and 103 with a new 10-kilometre long, four-lane divided highway laid through a fragile wilderness area west of Halifax (see map above). Additionally, an environmental assessment…
Trouble the Water
I watched the Hurricane Katrina documentary Trouble the Water the night of Hurricane Bill. On screen, water engulfed houses and stop signs; I gathered flashlights, feeling like a wimp. The doc follows Kimberly Roberts, a street hustler/aspiring rapper left stranded in New Orleans as Katrina hits. Roberts picks up a camera. Through her footage and…
Wale, (feat. Jazmine Sullivan)
With producers Cool & Dre, DC rapper Wale delivers another track sounding like the front door of a house party getting kicked in. Wale shares this floor-shaker with Jazmine Sullivan, who helps hype it twofold. An end-of-summer party jam for y’all. Found at a zSHARE near you. –Ryan Hemsworth
Equal opportunity pain
Q I love my boyfriend of three years, but I fucked up. We’ve had our ups and downs—he broke up with me for two months last summer because he said he was “young and needs to feel free”—but we’ve always worked through things. He is super-supportive of me, and we’ve both really grown together as…
Cousins
Aaron Mangle has been playing solo under the name A Helpful Diagram for a couple years, but this summer he picked up a band and became Cousins. While the scrappy, low-fi aesthetic of A Helpful Diagram had its charms, Mangle’s songs develop into something more when fleshed out with a full band, foggy indie-rock with…
Arctic Monkeys
I wish I hadn’t read that Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) produced this album. It’s all I can hear. Every little hook, the guitar tone, even the nonchalance of the singing. Homme might as well have moved to Sheffield long enough to adopt the accent and started a new band. Actually…what has Queens…
Black Diamond Bay
When a friend first played me The Dears in the summer of 2000, I liked them but wanted everything to sound more like Radiohead’s OK Computer. This is the album I should have had that summer, which is not to say it’s dated, but rather a little bit Dears, a little bit haunting, a little…
Under This Unbroken Sky, Shandi Mitchell (Viking Canada)
In Depression-era northern Alberta, Theo Mykolayenko returns to the family homestead an almost-broken man. He was imprisoned for breaking bureaucratic regulations regarding his own wheat. (He’d similarly suffered under the Ukraine’s Stalinist regime.) Shandi Mitchell, a screenwriter and producer (see story on page 32), describes Theo’s slow movements, the family’s uneasy readjustment, with trimmed, precise…
