Hump!
Pride Week is done in Ottawa. It was a definitely a crazy and unforgettable week full of parties, art shows and of course, the parade… I’ll have more to show later but for now, here’s a gallery of photos shot at Hump, a weekly queer dance party at Mercury Lounge in Ottawa.
Now that it’s all over, here’s an important lesson I learned today:
You never think it’ll ever happen to you but really, it can happen to anyone… Oops.
Excited about new coffee bar in Toronto
It seems that everyone I know is pretty into coffee. I’m not really big on it but I’m not here to talk about coffee. I’m talking about how cool it is to see people taking risks to do something they love. So, if you’re in Toronto, look up Sam James + coffee on Google. You’ll quickly learn the story of one of Toronto’s latest “celebrity baristas” (a concept that I bet would be totally lost on even the most discriminate Ottawa coffee drinker). Only three years after starting this career, he’s taking a brave leap and opening up his own shop in Toronto soon at 297 Harbord Street. What’s it called? Sam James Coffee Bar. Awesome. Bring yer own cup to save a quarter. Also awesome.
I took Sam’s photo in 2007 at the first Canadian Regional Barista Championship he entered, about six months after he started working as a barista. After sitting through most of the day-long contest, Sam was finally up I found that, even as a rookie, compared to his overconfident and/or underexperienced competitors, he had a sort of cool yet modest finesse to him. There was a lot of pressure but he kept it together and even cracked a few jokes during his “performance”.
Sam didn’t win the competition in 2007 but I hear he’s gone on to win a bunch more. Check him out on the internets.
Here’s Sam in 2007. As seen in the reflection, his Montréal Expos cap-wearing coach, Nick Brown, carefully watches his protégé get to work. A few more on Flickr.
Calgarian Wolpertinger: Crappy Taxidermy Win!
A photo I took of the fantastic rabbit-creature blessed with fangs, antlers and wings, aka wolpertinger, I found at Eternal Image Tattoo in Calgary two years ago got published on the latest blog people love, CRAPPYTAXIDERMY.COM. Clearly, this is a major accomplishment most photographers can only dream of!
Have a look at this hideously beautiful beast…
In other news, I am thinking of organizing a swap meet. Anyone in Ottawa think this is a good idea?
Joker of the Scene & A Trak & video
1/2 JOTS x Ryan Stec x CineCitta x Le champion du monde x 2/3 Stylusts
=
This video. Basically, I was running around taking photos and then sequencing them with a live stop-motion animation tool called ToonLoop which then broadcast the images on a collection of LCD panels. The original video had no audio so I added one of the latest Jokers of the Scene remixes to liven it up a bit. The song is around 8-minutes long and sounds very evil and absolutely nothing like the original song (which sounds like it was written by Freddy Mercury & Michael Jackson’s hypothetical baby, writing the theme for a television series aimed at gay children – amazing). The actual video image loops at about 90-seconds. Watch/listen, however long you want!
Ryan had three projectors connected to project single images over three screens. I was working with Vancouver VJ CineCitta who has been embedded-in-Ottawa as a Graffiti Research Lab operative taking sanctuary in the ArtEngine lab, cooking up crazy like the mobile graffiti iPhone app he’s working on.
Here are the photos from that night. Some of them didn’t make it into the video…
As a bonus, here are some photos from A Trak’s stop into Ottawa.
Final bonus…Here is the song used in the video
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Mika – We Are Golden (Jokers Of The Scene ‘Are Not Who You Think They Are’ Remix)
July Tour Recap
Recently, I went on a 20-day tour with a band I mention on here perhaps more often than I should. We left Ottawa on Canada Day (July 1, Yanks!) and left Winsdor back to Ottawa at 3:30am on July 20 morning. Even as a passenger, this was the most painful 8-hour drive ever.
Besides driving, there isn’t much to do on tour except watch bands and eat so here are some highlights.
Best eats of tour:
The Naam (Vancouver)
Pizza Luce (Minneapolis)
Mondragon (Winnipeg)
French Meadow Bakery & Café (Minneapolis)
Budgie’s Burritos (Vancouver)
Best bands of tour:
KENmode
Battlefields
Hewhocorrupts
KENmode (again)
Frontier
Portraits of Past
Crossing into the USA was nuts. Long story short, despite having visas and the necessary papers (uh, you know, uh, papers, business papers…), the whole ordeal took about 12 hours and a pair of two-hour searches to get six Canadians into the United States. Yikes.
We stopped in Grand Forks, ND for a bit and after spending some time in a cafe, I crossed a river by foot to East Grand Forks (Minesota!) to see The Hangover at a theatre with a snackbar that looked like a log cabin. Crossing the bridge, I’m pretty sure I witnessed a police boat searching for a dead body too. Thanks also to the girl with the green hair at the organic coop for hanging out and feeding us.
Here are a few photos. See more by clicking the banner at the bottom…
Camping near Swastika, Ontario.
Swastikas on top of The Royal Albert in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Driving in Saskatchewan.
Mike and Tweedy got thirsty. The only swimming of tour.
We thought this house was vacant so we parked in its backyard.
We were wrong.
Kamloops was awesome (no it wasn’t…but this dude was)
F(r)actions of Buried Inside enjoy Beyoncé
Click for more photos:
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