Vancouver Notables is the ongoing interview series where “No Fun City” shows off. More like burlesque than a talent show, Vancouver Notables wants you doing what you do best, but with sequins on your nipples. Tell us who you are, what you’re doing that’s of note and why, oh why, are you rocking that boat?  

Sad Mag cornered Dress for Success organizer Jackie Powell and asked her all sorts of questions about her work helping disadvantaged women get back on their feet.

Sad Mag: Who are you?
Jackie Powell: My name is Jackie Powell and I’m a relatively new addition to Vancouver. I moved to this fine city at the beginning of last year and fell in love with its beauty. I have been involved with community outreach programs for women and children for over 10 years now. This year I am proudly chairing the Dress for Success 5KM Power Walk that is happing on Saturday May 11th around Queen Elizabeth Park.

SM: What is Dress for Success and how did you get involved?
JP: It was an easy decision for me to get involved with DFS because they promote the economic independence of women in a sustainable way. They believe in treating the problem, not the symptoms, by setting women up with equal opportunities for employment. I think most Vancouverites know that we have a problem with the socio-economic distribution in this city and there are simply not enough programs to support the many people needing a break. Strong, self-sustaining women are key to the overall wellbeing of a city. Women typically reinvest a much higher portion of funds into their families and the community than men, and therefore speed up the process of overcoming poverty. The mission of DFS is to help disadvantaged women overcome their current hardships by providing professional attire, a network of support and the career development tools to help women thrive in work and in life. I am a strong believer in the power of women and I think our capabilities are limitless when given an equal playing field!

SM: You’ve been with DFS for how long?
JP: I’ve been volunteering with DFS for over a year now.

SM: If you could choose a dream route (any country, any season, any difficulty level) for the DFS power walk, where would it be?
JP: Well, my dream route for the Power Walk would end up being far longer than 5KM! It would start at ground zero in downtown Vancouver at our DFS office on Hastings Street. We would head out through the streets of our city reaching out a hand to any and all disadvantaged women along the way. Our walk would continue on past city limits and span the country. By the time we crossed the finish line in the east, we would have successfully helped every woman in Canada!

SM: People often accuse Vancouver of being “No Fun City.” Do you agree or disagree? What for you makes Vancouver unique?
JP: Although I understand the “No Fun” argument, I disagree. There is no question that this city thrives in the daytime with all of its outdoor beauty, then seems to slow to an agonizing halt once the sun goes down but I believe the fun is still out there… we just don’t know where to look. Vancouver is full of art and culture but it needs to be better represented and better accepted. I feel like there is a lack of acceptance when things are done differently. We have the population to support all types of people and artists but somehow there is a push for conformity that seems to happen here. If people stepped out of their boxes or for that matter out of their neighborhoods, they would find a buzzing city out there that is comparable to the New Yorks of the world!

SM: Favourite local Vancity spot?
JP: I have so many favorites but right now I would say the Calabash Bistro tops my list. Great Caribbean food and even better dancing!

SM: Where are you as you answer these questions?
JP: I’m sitting on my work patio overlooking the harbor and Lions Gate Bridge. Not a bad view!

SM: Last album you listened to?
JP: Frank Ocean

SM: What are you most excited about right now?
JP: Right now I am most excited about the DFS Power Walk next month. We have been in full-planning mode since January, so it is exciting to see it come into fruition! Our planning committee is full of energetic and determined women that want to help and inspire others so it has been a motivating event to plan. The race will start at the Oakridge Centre Mall at 9:00AM on Saturday May 11th and will go around beautiful Queen Elizabeth Park. There will be keynote speakers, yoga, prizes, auctions, and of course, empowering women empowering women, if you know what I mean!

Tonight! Wednesday April 3rd, the BC Youth Poetry Slam has their opening night Spoken Word Jamboree! Featuring acclaimed Ted-X featured poet and Sister Speaks featured poet, TRUTH IS.

Show starts at 7:30pm at the Roundhouse Community Centre

{181 Roundhouse Mews, just down the street from the Yaletown Canada Line stop. The Roundhouse also has wheelchair access for anyone needing assistance.}

Thursday and Friday evenings feature preliminary bouts for the high school teams involved. This is what they’ve been working for all year long! A chance to compete for the coveted Billy Sharkspeare championship trophy.

Friday night also has the 2nd annual Hullabaloo Indie Poet championship featuring 14 team reps competing to see who can bring the poetic noise the best.

Saturday night wraps up the festival with the team poetry slam finals plus a feature performance by 2009 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion, Amy Everhart. Advance tickets for this show and the others can be purchased before the day of. No online sales will be available the day of the show: for tickets and full event schedule, visit their website! 

Ohh baby, this mix knows exactly how you want it…in your ears! Enjoy these sexy sounds curated especially for you. Pervert.

Listen to Pam’s Do You Right Mix

A maven of music, a food snob and a stick­ler when it comes to good design, those of us who know Pam regard her as a pas­sion­ate per­son for all things cre­ative. Pam received her Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr Uni­ver­sity of Art& Design in 2006 and her diploma with hon­ours in Illus­tra­tion and Design from Capi­lano University’s IDEA Program.

Look out the window. Is it raining? Is it sunny? Can you see the smoke from the fiery embers that will be our summer? Until it’s a reality, listen to this mix and think of road trips, sunshine and that gross feeling of sand in your flip flops.

Listen to Pam’s “Summer Smoke” Mix

A maven of music, a food snob and a stick­ler when it comes to good design, those of us who know Pam regard her as a pas­sion­ate per­son for all things cre­ative. Pam received her Bach­e­lor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr Uni­ver­sity of Art& Design in 2006 and her diploma with hon­ours in Illus­tra­tion and Design from Capi­lano University’s IDEA Program.

In the lead-up to Sad Mag’s epic com­edy night, Laugh/Cry, on March 16th, which is TOMORROW (!), Sad Mag published a series of inter­views with some fine and funny people. Our comic line-up features some of Vancouver’s most notable, potable comedians. But when the interview pressure is on, who really delivered? Hereforto: the Best of the Best…

Best “Why I Became a Comic” Story… Alistair Cook!

Darren Li: Is it true you had a spon­sor and were plan­ning on becom­ing a pro­fes­sional snow­boarder, until you broke your leg? 

Alistair Cook: I was a young man in high school [and] I took drama instead of phys­i­cal edu­ca­tion when I was in reha­bil­i­ta­tion, and found that act­ing gave me an excit­ing adren­a­line rush equal to the rush I expe­ri­enced while snowboarding.

Best Inauguration into the print pages of Sad Mag… Tegan Verheul!

Carmen Faye Mathes: How were you involved in Sad Mag’s Glam­our Issue?

Tegan Verheul: I got to be in a real cool photo shoot with some of my favourite local come­di­ans and they made me look much pret­tier than I do in real life. You can’t tell, but I’m wear­ing a corset and it hurt so much that any time I laughed I also cried.

Best Quin­tes­sen­tial Van­cou­ver moment… Ivan Decker! (as told to Maegan Thomas)

I was walk­ing through Gas Town on the way to Water­front sta­tion. It was a cold rainy day in Novem­ber. Tourists were tak­ing pic­tures of the steam clock and the 12 o’clock cruise ship horn that sounds like the open­ing chords of “O Canada” could be heard over the hus­tle and bus­tle of home­less peo­ple ask­ing for money to look after the cars of peo­ple park­ing and cab dri­vers honk­ing at every­one and everything.

I had just pur­chased a 16 oz Amer­i­cano from an inde­pen­dent cof­fee shop and scoffed slightly as I walked by Star­bucks with my unmarked cup proudly dis­played in front of me. As I arrived at the steam clock I became annoyed by the amount of peo­ple block­ing the side­walk to pho­to­graph a rather unre­mark­able out­door grand­fa­ther clock. I decided to try to avoid the crowd by dart­ing in between a tree and a line of news­pa­per boxes fea­tur­ing var­i­ous pub­li­ca­tions con­tain­ing pop cul­ture non­sense and sudoku puzzles.

As I stepped on the metal grate that cov­ered the tree roots I real­ized very quickly that painted metal coated in rain water didn’t exactly have the trac­tion to sup­port my cur­rent speed and direc­tion. Before I could make any math­e­mat­i­cal adjust­ments to my travel how­ever, I hit the ground so hard that every­one around stopped what they were doing and looked just in time to see me throw my pre­ten­tious cof­fee across the street, nar­rowly miss­ing a bike courier. I quickly apol­o­gized to every­one and attempted to untan­gle my head­phones from my scarf as I hur­ried away to get on the sky train with­out pay­ing for a ticket.

It was embar­rass­ing at first but then I real­ized I’m prob­a­bly inter­net famous on some sort of Korean “Fail Blog” equiv­a­lent.

Most enviable future plans… Andy Kallstrom!

Carmen Faye Mathes: What are you most excited about right now?

Andy Kallstrom: Gen­er­ally: That guy who wants to send a retired cou­ple to Mars.

Per­son­ally: There’s a good chance I’m mov­ing to Eng­land soon.

Best use of organic consumables in a comic role… Rachel Burns!

Jackie Hoffart: If the com­edy of Rachel Burns was a bas­ket at whole foods, what would be inside?

Rachel Burns: I’d say there would be some com­fort foods – maybe a chick­pea curry; some­thing that will make you feel secure and also full but not stuffed. Def­i­nitely an item with incon­gru­ent pack­ag­ing, like tofu with a pen­guin on the out­side. A dented egg­plant that you kind of feel sorry for, but not enough to send it back. Some­thing you’ll never actu­ally use but you bought impul­sively, like a giant bag of organic pine nuts. Dried beans that you’ll never get around to soaking—even though you promised your natur­opath you would do it, over and over again.

Best rendition of an audience seduction… Cameron MacLeod!

Maegan Thomas: What’s Cam MacLeod expe­ri­ence?

Cameron MacLeod: At the return of the HERO show I opened the show by seduc­ing the audi­ence with Roses, cheese­burg­ers and shots of Blue Alize to the song “Thinkin bout you” by Frank Ocean. That’s about as close to the Cam MacLeod expe­ri­ence as you can get.

…and finally, dare we do it? Funniest response?! Let’s ask the audience: Who do you think deserves to take the cake?

Bad news, folks. While I’ve been trying to beat the system of institutionalized yoga in Vancouver and eat my weight in 5-year old cheddar, eleventh-grader Celine Chan has been launching The Greater Vancouver Art Contest, a completely student-run and organized contest for students all across Greater Vancouver. Addressing the need for more local art contests for youth, Chen invites art students from Grade 8-12 to participate and to expose their talent to the rest of the community. “Our vision,” says Chen, “is to transform the public’s perception of art, but most importantly, give the youth of Greater Vancouver an opportunity to express their creativity.”

Sad Mag: Who are you?
Celine Chen: I am a Grade 11 student at Mulgrave School in West Vancouver. I am a passionate art student, who loves exploring new frontiers with what I can create. I also love to spend my time looking other artists’ works on the Internet.

SM: How are you getting involved in the art scene in Vancouver?
CC: Well, founding this art contest is definitely my biggest involvement in the art scene. I want the art contest to become a catalyst for artistic growth in Greater Vancouver.

SM: What was the first artistic endeavor that you felt proud of?
CC: At our school, we have an annual Spring Gala. Each class from the Junior School (Gr. K-6) would create an art piece that would be sold in the Gala. During recess one day in Grade 3, I drew an abstract picture based on geometric shapes and showed it to my teacher. Later on, my teacher decided that this design would be the one our class would create as our Gala piece!

SM: What do you think the art scene in Vancouver is lacking?
CC: Vancouver is lacking a place for young artists to share their work. 

SM: Favourite Vancouver artist(s)?
CC: I have recently discovered the works of Jeanne Krabbendam and I love the way she works with mixed media.

SM: Favourite artistic medium?
CC: I’ve just started experimenting with more advanced mediums this year. Other than acrylics and oil paint, I like clay and digital art. The picture of me with the brightly coloured canvas is my latest piece. It is made of origami paper and glue. The piece is called “Full Bloom” and is inspired by the theme of repetition. For many people, repetition means monotonous, boring routines. Instead, I wanted to change their perspective and show the hidden beauty and intricacy in repeating simple elements.

In the second photo, the piece is called “One Thousand Hands,” and made out of plaster of paris, plaster bandages, and wood. I aspired to encompass both themes of ‘play’ and ‘minimalism’ in this work as well as explore the evolution of hand actions in Chinese culture. As a silent form of communication, hand gestures can hold more meaning, value, and significance than words themselves.

SM: Best Vancouver venue for seeing art?
CC: I see a lot of nice art all over the streets of Vancouver.

SM: Where are you as you answer these questions?
CC: The comfort of my own home.

SM: Last album you listened to?
CC: Believe Acoustic by Justin Bieber Great music taste, I know.

SM: What are you most excited about right now?
CC: To see the contest submissions of all the talented youth in Greater Vancouver and the MeToWe trip to Kenya this summer with my school!

The Greater Vancouver Art Contest is open to youth from grades 8-12 in the Lower Mainland. There are two categories: Junior (gr. 8-10) and Senior (gr. 11-12). The online showcase will be from May 1st to May 7th. The winners will be announced on May 6th.  

Prizes include more than $1500 of art goodies and an opportunity to display your work in the Art Starts Gallery!

Check contest website for more details