Add Some 60’s to Your Shakespeare

I love Bard on the Beach. Take a summer evening, add a live performance and place it in lovely ocean-front Vanier Park… doesn’t get much better than that in Vancouver.

All you Shakespeare skeptics, nay-sayers or those curious: if ever there was an ideal time to check out Bard on the Beach, it would be now: seeing “The Merry Wives of Windsor” which is set in Windsor, Ontario in the 1960’s.

I’m not a serious Shakespeare fan, but a lover of all live performances in general.  I stick with the comedies mainly, as I find them, with all their slapstick, dash, and high spirited hi-jinx, to be easier to understand.

In previous years I’ve truly enjoyed a Midsummer Night’s Dream and A Comedy of Errors…but this year’s offering of The Merry Wives of Windsor stands out as one of the very most enjoyable.

The actors are brilliant, and funny and bring Shakespeare’s words to life so well.  The set is fun and engaging, but what really stands out is the weaving in of music and song.  I’m sure some of the appeal for me was that it is recognizable music, from my 1960’s life.  I could relate!

Smiling and giggling, frequently turning to look over at my big Sis (it’s our birthday tradition to go together), I was delighted and entertained. Completely.

Go. Try something new. Step out of the box and into the 60’s with Shakespeare. I guarantee you’ll love every minute of it.

Merry Wives, directed by Johanna Wright, runs now till September 24^th on the BMO Mainstage.

Photo from the website: www.bardonthebeach.org

 

 

Good News Shoes

I worked very hard this summer. I had two large project competitions going at the same time. Once the dust settled and they were submitted we then had to wait to hear….hear if we had won the project.

It was hectic at the time and I was putting in long days, seven days a week for months late this summer and fall. It’s always nice to have a “carrot”, a reward in mind. So one day I said: “If we win one of the jobs, I get a pair of Fluevogs.”

If you live in Vancouver you probably know what that means. John Fluevog is a master craftsman, creating gorgeous, playful, and artful handmade shoes and he has an international and celebrity cult following.

I remember in the 1970’s it was Fox and Fluevog for fantastical one of a kind shoes, but ten years later Peter Fox and John Fluevog went their separate ways. John Fluevog renamed the business and focused more on designing shoes. “The company was like a big art project where I could discover more about myself” he was quoted as saying. He continues to create magic making shoes and now decades later has a fabulous flagship store very near the original Fox and Fluevog location in Gastown, a heritage district of Vancouver..

If you know me, you probably know I love shoes. Yeah…I have….a lot… of shoes. Too many I’m sure. But I didn’t have a pair of black and ivory ones…till now.

Early in December my team found out we did win the big care facility project in Whitehorse, in the Yukon Territory. It represents a fair chunk of my project work for the upcoming year. I will be on the team that will take our design to completion over the next year and see that wonderful project become a reality.

And that meant I got to go shopping and buy my first pair of Fluevogs, because I felt I deserved a treat after that good news.

On the origin of this shoe style, with its contrasting heel and toe accents, known as a “spectator” shoe:

John Lobb, the famous English footwear maker, is said to have designed the first spectator shoe in 1868 as a cricket shoe. In the 1920s and 1930s in England, this style was considered too flamboyant for a gentleman, and was regarded as a tasteless style. As it was popular among lounge lizards and cads, who were sometimes associated with divorce cases, a nickname for the style was “co-respondent” shoe: a pun on the colour arrangement on the shoe, and the legal description of a third party associated with the guilty party in a case of adultery. My! What a racy little history note about a shoe!

I am waiting on the results of the other project competition. Wish us luck hearing more good news in January.

Long Live the Kingsway

Kingsway is one of the longest roads in Greater Vancouver. It stretches across and into three cities. In a region mainly comprised of a north/south – east/west grid, it is a unique diagonal slash through the lower mainland. An as-the-crow-flies line that’s drawn basically from my home in New Westminster almost all the way to my client’s office near Granville Island, just south of the downtown core of Vancouver.

And the reason I’m driving it, is because I’ve been spending a lot of time at my client’s office and I’ve been doing what typically resembles…..commuting.

This is a strange thing for a gal who’s had a home office for 23 years. For 23 years I’ve said “I don’t do rush hour!” meaning I usually schedule my meetings between 10am to 2pm, when I have the choice, which is usually always. But, the lure of a fabulous collaboration on a couple high profile projects, otherwise beyond my reach as a small firm, meant….commuting.

Since there is an accident/hold up/obstruction/catastrophe almost every day on the freeway, and another round-about route involves bridges (scary commuter wild cards), I asked for some advice from my friend who also lives in New Westminster and commutes to an office just down the road from my client. She said “Take Kingsway. It’s always moving fairly well, steady and reliable.” She was right, it’s been decent. But this….commuting thing isn’t the focus of my story. Kingsway is!

Kingsway follows an old wagon road that was built by the Royal Engineers in the mid-late 1800’s, to connect troops from Gastown with the former capital of B.C., New Westminster. Later it became Vancouver Road, and in 1913, improved and paved, it became Kingsway. It was part of the Trans Canada Highway, until our current freeway was opened in 1964.

Because of its length, it’s difficult to characterize; it’s like one of those ‘round-the-world menus where you sample many dishes from different countries. It’s lined with diverse family operated shops, restaurants, beauty salons, cafes. Ethnic communities and districts range from Korean, Chinese, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese, South Asian and Filipino, to Caribbean and Russian.

There are enchanting and fascinating signs: a coffee shop called Room for Cream, another – Milk and Sugar Café. Another quaint coffee shop, Our Town has a vintage signage font straight out of 1940. You and Me Coffee in a Tim Burton-esque font, sadly, looks like it just closed.

Heartbreaker Salon is such a cool name, as is East Vanity Parlour, but I don’t get Hercules Hair and Beauty. Secret Beauty Supply has a huge awning – I find that funny (it would be difficult to keep that secret!)…

Sal y Limon, (Salt & Lime) looks like a Mexican restaurant I’d like to try – its sign and logo so upbeat and modern. Pink Peppercorn Seafood House has a perky name. Easy Spy Surveillance equipment is pretty self-explanatory – as are the numerous Medical Marijuana stores that have recently opened.

There are dollar stores, bridal salons, hardware and appliance stores, paint stores, furniture stores….even a balloon studio. I could shop for everything I ever needed on one long drive in, stopping here and there all the way. And if you’re a size 9, then the Work Boot Store has samples at clearance prices!

Classic landmarks include Famous Foods, that had organic and natural health foods for sale before anyone knew what the word organic meant; Purdy’s chocolate factory, a local institution; and the 2400 Motel bungalows, built in 1946 in the burgeoning heyday of the automobile, a relatively untouched and classic piece of history and a visual reminder of the critical shifts in transportation that have occurred in the last 50 some odd years. It’s a 15 kilometer ribbon of ever changing periods and eras, styles and characters, and ethnic offerings: some rough and tumble, some refined.

It’s an amusing, interesting ride.

(photo: 1910 Kingsway near Fraser, Photographer: Stuart Thomson, VPL # 18240)

Beautiful Breakfast

My son ran in the Vancouver Sun Run this last Sunday and needed a good breakfast. It ended up being coconut/banana multigrain pancakes with yogurt.  Yum.

I’ve been experimenting with food photography and Instagram, so I whisked the few leftover pancakes onto mom’s gorgeous old Noritake China and plucked some bluebells from the garden.

This is a new medium for me. It’s a lot of fun to create, to paint, with food and fabric and bits from the garden or the pantry.  I’m loving this new-found form of expression. This practice reminds me that there is beauty in every day and every moment.  And celebrates it.

Ravishing

Had the pleasure of catching a fabulous exhibit at the Museum of Vancouver the other weekend. It was called “From Rationing to Ravishing” and exhibited women’s fashions from the 1930’s onward, through war time, and the impact that the war had on clothing styles and designs (think scarcity of materials as well as a paradigm shift regarding luxury and extravagance).  There were many lovely examples by haute couture designers from both North America and Europe.

   

It was sublime….and more so because I went with a lovely friend who works in costume design for television. We were throwing around terms about sewing and fabrics that may have had others scratching their heads, but we understood each other beautifully and had a blast reveling in the gorgeous examples, fabrics, colours.

What a wonderful day!

(one of my fav’s, a Balenciaga coat…)