Andrew W.K. and Evaporator photos up (but not here)

As per my previous post on the Andrew W.K. and Evaporator concert Tuesday night, photos are now up here on uptownsound.ca.

B.C. says, no parking

Anybody who has set foot in Waterton Lakes National Park knows how special that little patch of land in Alberta’s southwestern corner is. Turns out,  environmentalists say there’s an equally impressive patch in nearby British Columbia. But that patch – the Flathead River valley – is unprotected and possibly the site of a to-be-constructed coal mine. So environmental groups are petitioning the UN to declare Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park – a UNESCO heritage site that includes both Waterton Lakes and Glacier National Park, in Montana – a heritage site in danger.

You can read the full story here. Oh, and I wrote it. I would have liked to speak to someone from the British Columbia government. Indeed, I would still like to. But my phone records will show plenty of outgoing calls to various government offices and no incoming calls.

Not a concert… not necessarily a celebration either

I feel fortunate to have escaped with my camera, my health and my dignity intact after taking photos of Tuesday’s Andrew W.K. concert at the Biltmore Cabaret for uptownsound.

The photos should be up soon, as should a review by my colleague, Quentin.

Some observations, though.

First, you can actually get into bars with a piece of identification from Guam. Makes you wonder why teenagers try to forge B.C. drivers licenses when they could make up Id’s for places like, say, Micronesia or Palau.

Second, getting people to stand up at a concert is easy. Getting them to sit down on a dance floor during a rock concert is infinitely harder, but that’s something Nardwuar, of Muchmusic fame, was able to accomplish with his band the Evaporators. Pretty cool. And makes for easy photos.

Andrew W.K. prefaced his show by saying “this isn’t a concert, It’s a celebration.” Well, it wasn’t much of a concert. Not much of a celebration either. More just a gongshow with half the audience ending up on stage and crashing around speakers, monitors and other seemingly valuable pieces of equipment. If you think it’s hard shooting a concert in your normal bar, where there is no convenient barrier between a slightly-elevated band and a raucous crowd, imagine the difficulty when the crowd joins the sole performer on stage. Fortunately, they all fell down in a heap. Again, go to uptownsound.ca.

Eventually, the concert ended with Andrew W.K. telling the crowd that sound equipment had been damaged and he couldn’t keep playing. Interesting to say the least.

Investigate this!

Looking into documents that contain embarrasing information can be a thrill. Until one realizes just how much work is to be done. That’s where the Guardian is using its readers in an innovative way to employ free labour.  On its website anybody can pitch in and help sort through 700,000 documents on the UK’s MP expense scandal, where MPs billed taxpayers for everything from their husband’s porn rentals to a duck island at their house.

Vancouver Vs. Warsaw: trains, planes and automobiles edition

It’s hard for me to imagine a city that is harder to get around than Vancouver. Partly this is because I haven’t lived in too many cities and partly it is because some 19th century dolt didn’t foresee the rise of the automobile and the growth of the city and decided to build the city’s core on a hard-to-reach peninsula. If Surrey were the core it would be much easier to get around. But then you’d have to go to Surrey.

Whatever the case, as a trip to Stanley Park yesterday showed, Vancouver traffic is hell. It’s bus system is decent but curbside parking means the buses are slower than a kid who’s been dropped on his head one time too many. They also don’t have the same variety of routes as, say, Warsaw, where nary a street is untouched by the city’s bus system.

Vancouver’s Skytrain system has more stations than Warsaw, but the trains are positively puny by comparison, indicative of a smaller number of users. Unfortunately, the aforementioned geography of Vancouver means that the most used stations are packed at the end of the lines. Ideally, of course, you would like the centre of the line to be the city centre, as in Warsaw.

Of course, Vancouver will soon complete its Canada Line, which will extend Skytrain service to Richmond and the airport. Contrast this with Warsaw, where commuter’s to the city’s Prague district on the other side of the Vistula river cannot take the metro. Drivers must instead navigate clogged bridges (like in Vancouver). Mass transit commuters can take (relatively fast) trams or buses.

To reach Warsaw’s outer limits from the city centre, one should expect to spend about 45 minutes in the metro and/or on the bus. To cross the city north-south would take (I’m really guessing) about 90 minutes. East-west I really have no idea but on a bus, I would guess about 100 minutes.

In Vancouver, to get anywhere from downtown will take you about an hour, if not more. From downtown to Port Coquitlam last week at about 3 p.m. it took about 80 minutes. It usually takes me about 40 minutes on metro and bus to get to my home in Central Vancouver.

An unlimited monthly transit pass in Warsaw costs about 75 zloty (about $30). In Vancouver, a one-zone, limited pass costs about $75 (about $75).

Verdict: Warsaw, but mostly due to Vancouver’s unfortunate (albeit, beautiful) geography.

More on Iran

While my previous post on Twitter and Iran stands, I have ditched following Twitter first hand. I’m still tracking the New York Times’ Lede Blog and am also now following Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, which functions as something between the Lede Blog and Twitter. It posts a daily recap of the events as recounted on Twitter, functioning as something of a Twit-editor.

These are great news sources for people with internet access at work. For others, it seems traditional news media are probably more helpful.

——

The impact of Twitter itself might be less than some of stated, Nicholas Thompson argues.

But Thompson doesn’t take his point (that Twitter is acting more of an international news disseminator) to its logical conclusion; that is, at a time of great upheaval Twitter allows unprecedented journalistic access to even a closed country. Even if Iranian protesters are not communicating that much among themselves via Twitter (on a per capita basis, at least), the reports that are coming from Twitter are the backbone of news sources that fellow Iranians will rely on to understand what is happening in their country.

This, to me, seems very important.

Tarifa, tarrifs and sea sickness

We stayed the night in Tarifa because it was where the ferry dropped us off.

The ferry. Oh, right.

The train from Rabat left the station late and arrived in Tangiers 25 minutes late. That left us, oh, about 10 minutes to get from the train station to the ferry terminal, which we knew was in the general direction of the sea, and that was about that.

We didn’t have too much choice among taxis so we took the first who showed up and, after he admitted another ferry-goer, sped us off towards the terminal. Everything actually went smoothly (at least before we boarded). Hopped out of the taxi, ran to an ATM, took out money, ran back to the ticket booth/shack/cargo container, then up, through what passed for security and customs and onto the large ferry.

The supposed-to-be 450minute trip cost us about one Euro for every minute, or one Euro for every person puking during the ensuing ride. Huge waves caused the fast ferry (they may have bought it from B.C.) to turn, heave and groan under the stress. The sound of crashing glasses and bottles started coming from the on-board bar.

It was  bad, and only got worse once we approached the port as our forward momentum slowed and the motion of the ocean heaved us horizontally up and down.

We finally arrived 25 minutes late, which is to day, 20 minutes after many of the passengers had ejected their lunches into little plastic baggies.

Tarifa was nice, though. Beautiful beaches.

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Iran and Twitter

You can follow events in Iran two very good places;

The New York Times does a good job of aggragating information, citing it, verifying it, and getting it out quick on their blog. If you want to know what’s going on, this is the place to get it.

If you want to feel and live what’s going on, you can read first hand, real-time comments on the action on Twitter. It’s quite spectacular, although I’m not sure how, as more people begin commenting and overwhelming first hand reports, time will shape the reportage.

A garbage can and a box

The bus was empty, so she had no problem hoisting a large, grey and round, three-foot deep, 80-gallon garbage can to the back row of seats. In the garbage can was a box wrapped in a black garbage bag.

After she sat down – in the left-most of the five back-row seats – she removed the box, put it on the ground in front of her, then sat the garbage can on top of the box.

“You never know when you’ll need a garbage can,” she said to the shaggy man in the middle of the back row.

She had on a grey tank top and wore jean shorts. Her legs were filthy but her speech coherent and her general aura that of confidence and, if not joy, then at least satisfaction. She rode the bus for a dozen or so stops, from West Hastings, up past the community centre, onto Main Street and towards Broadway. There, she maneuvered her box and garbage can – seperately – through the now-crowded bus to the back doors.

Vancouver versus Warsaw

I know what you’re thinking. Like millions around the world, you’re wondering whether you want to live in Vancouver or Warsaw. I know, it’s a difficult choice, but with some help, maybe you’ll get through.

Like I posted earlier, every person is liable to like, or dislike, a city based on their own preferences and hobbies. But I’ll take a stab at it.

First up, and because I don’t have much time to write right now, the sun and the sky:

The weather, from my own limited experience, is a draw. Warsaw can be warm in the summer, as can Vancouver. Given that I’ve never experienced a Warsaw summer, I don’t think I can compare the two sunny seasons. But I have seen both cities in the winter and neither one is particularly attractive. Both are rainy, grey and dreary. Warsaw gets a little more snow, which can be good or bad, but Vancouver gets a lot more rain, which is definitely bad. On the other hand, Warsaw is quite a bit further north, which means that even when you can see the sun, it dips before the flat horizon before 4 p.m. in winter.

I was going to give Vancouver the point because you can easily retreat into the interior of B.C. to soak up sun or snow. But then I realized that while Poland itself may not be as climatically diverse as B.C., the good transportation links that link Warsaw with, say, Milan, even the field once again.

So a draw it is.