markets

Art Anchors the Eastside – Culture Crawl Weekend

~ Teresa ~ 7 Comments

The place where you live can be an anywhere or it can be somewhere very specific, especially in Canada and the United States. It’s very easy, even in cities, to replicate the experiences you can find across the continent; there are the same chain stores and restaurants in every city and town. Or, you can populate your mental map with places that are unique to your location. It’s the second map that makes someone a real resident, I think. Knowing where to find gluten-free ice cream sandwiches, a stationery store with its own letterpress, or a shop where you can learn how to tune up your bike yourself. Such places add up to home.

Every place also has its rites of passage. I know someone who started to identify as a Vancouverite long before she moved here, because she flew across the country each year to attend the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. She has the same stories as I do, of attending in years of torrential rain, heat waves or unseasonably cold weather at the Festival, along with stories of the amazing performances that happen there.

What’s interesting about all of this, for me, is that the same place is really many places. There are certainly several Vancouvers. Your Vancouver depends on who you are. It can include the Folk Festival or Under the Volcano, both, or neither. Whole neighbourhoods may not exist in Vancouver as you experience it. I used to work in a corporate office, where many of my co-workers drove in from places farther up the Fraser Valley. For them, it was as if the east side of the city didn’t exist. Which is a shame, because some of the best things about Vancouver occur east of Kitsilano and downtown.

The Eastside Culture Crawl is definitely part of my Vancouver. Thousands of people tour hundreds of artists’ studios that are thrown open to the public one weekend a year. This past weekend was Crawl weekend and the weather was milder and drier than it has been since I can remember. There’s been snow, sleet and rain in the past and it doesn’t stop people from climbing up makeshift warehouse stairways or into backyards and basements in search of art.



                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
I didn’t get very far off the beaten track this year, concentrating my one free afternoon along Venables, Clark and Parker. I saw some beautiful pottery at posAbilities on Venables, great jewellery at the Onion studios and then I wandered over to the Mergatroid Building and Parker Street studios.

Some of my favourites this year included:

Melk’s burned bamboo and etched steel pieces;
Arleigh Wood’s new series;
Su Foster’s delicate filigree work in her twistedandhammered line;
Flight Path’s leather accessories;
Russell Hackney’s amazing teapots;
Sonia Iwasiuk’s paintings;
and Silvia Dotto’s crows.

There’s much more, of course. Browse the website and you’ll get a virtual taste of the Crawl. What you’ll miss by doing that, and why you should make sure you attend next year, is the ambience of the Crawl, along with the opportunities to talk to artists and other Crawlers. It was worth going just to see the beautiful branches hanging from Melk’s ceiling and to have a conversation about photography with a jewellery-maker. Also, seeing so many works, in so many mediums, really helps to pin down what you’re looking for when you buy art.

The best part of attending the Crawl, for me, is the knowledge that I carry through the rest of the year – everywhere I walk in my neighbourhood, there is something being created.

A New Home for the Winter Farmers’ Market, with Digressions

~ Teresa ~ 4 Comments

This past Saturday, the Vancouver Farmers’ Market had their first winter market of the season. It was a bittersweet occasion for me, because until this year the winter market was almost literally a stone’s throw away from where I live. (If I had a better arm, it would have been.) But, the market had long outgrown its winter home at the WISE Hall and this year the city gave permission for the move to the parking lot at Nat Bailey Stadium.

I’ve told you the bitter, but there’s definitely some sweet. The winter market can now happen weekly and is much larger than it was in its old incarnation. Since the scattered summer markets are now closed for the season, there’s also an advantage in having it in a location that’s nearer the centre of the city. It’s reasonably accessible by transit and there are good cycling routes available, so it’s possible to avoid the congestion and competition for parking spots that driving there causes. Once again, the east side has served as an incubator for something that benefits the whole city. And local, organic food is definitely beneficial.



                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       

Though it seems like awareness of food miles and the benefits of eating locally has sprung up out of nowhere in the last few years, the Vancouver Farmers’ Market has been running for fifteen years now. The dominant culture can take quite a while to catch on to a good thing.

I first heard someone talk about eating locally in the mid-eighties. He was one of the most interesting professors I ever had. His course was ostensibly about the geography of weather, but he made sure to give us some life lessons along the way. For instance, he talked to us about geographical and weather considerations for house-hunting, which I think of often when looking at the suburbs running up the North Shore Mountains. (Hint: it’s very bad to cut into a natural slope in a rainforest climate zone.) He’s also responsible for politicizing me around water rights, and by extension, all natural resources and genetic materials. It’s always amazed me how much taking that one course helped me to solidify my political and ethical ideas.

Eating locally was one of those ideas. In the class discussion, we focused on the farm stands that dotted the Fraser Valley, where I grew up. The farms behind those stands grew a variety of vegetables, with much less need of pesticides than industrial mono-culture farms. They could also grow more varieties than industrial farms, since transportation-hardiness and shelf life weren’t considerations for local sales. We learned that we were lucky to have so much access to good food. As the years went by and as development skyrocketed in the Valley, I wondered how long this access would last.

Enter the organic and local food movements.

Now, not only do we have a vibrant system of farmers’ markets across our region, but people are also looking for local, organic produce in grocery stores. I think this bodes well for our health and also for the health of our farmlands, which have been under threat of development even when they’re part of the Agricultural Land Reserve .



                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       
                       

Farm stands have even been experiencing something of a renaissance. When I’ve visited farm stands on the Sunshine Coast, I’ve felt like they are lovely, nostalgic throwbacks. Especially since some of them leave their produce unattended, with a price list and a strongbox for you to leave payment. With the rise of urban farming, though, the Farmers’ Market is no longer the only game in town. There’s even a small farm and stand in a vacant lot at Victoria and First.

Extremely local eating is becoming more and more organized here. Neighbours are co-ordinating garden plots together; urban farmers are leasing back (and front) yards; the Vancouver Fruit Tree Project harvests surplus and unwanted fruit; and chicken houses, aquaculture systems and apiaries are springing up around the city. I hope our food culture continues along this trajectory, because our future food security will depend upon it.

A Long Journey (with sugar at the end)

~ Teresa ~ Leave a comment

When I had my first car, a steel-blue Ford Granada, I used to spend a lot of time exploring the roads in the Fraser Valley. Instead of going straight home from University, I’d take random rights and lefts, just to see where they would take me. Almost always, I’d end up on one stretch or another of River Road, with the muddy Fraser appearing here and there past the trees. River Roads run up and down both sides of the Fraser and I’ve never decided whether I think that was practicality or uninventiveness on the part of all those municipalities.

I don’t drive that way anymore. I gave up my last car many years ago and have mostly relied on walking, cycling and transit ever since. A few years ago, we joined the local car co-op, which makes trips out to the Valley easier, along with bulk buying errands and weekends away. Even if I did own a car now, my environmental consciousness has developed enough that I couldn’t just drive for the sake of driving again. I also think that development has really changed the Valley and that if you did try to explore in this way, you’d be more likely to get stuck in a rabbit-warren subdivision or industrial park than you would be to reach the river.




                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                               
I was reminded of my old habit this past Saturday, when I decided to go to the Bakers’ Market for the first time. It’s located near Main Street and southeast Marine Drive, a very long bus ride from my neighbourhood. The area is industrial and I made my way through parking lots and across railway tracks to get there. It felt almost illicit, like trying to find a warehouse party.

The destination was definitely worth the journey, though. The Market takes place in a warehouse-like room at the back of a commercial park. Even so, they’ve made their space inviting and pretty once you get inside. I arrived at around 12:30 p.m., but many of the bakers had sold out by then. I could understand why. There were some hobbyists there, along with the professional bakers, but absolutely everything on display was beautiful. There were even vegan and gluten-free options available at some tables.



                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                               
                       

What struck me, aside from the beautiful baked goods everywhere, was how friendly and happy both the sellers and patrons were. Perhaps it was the (inevitable) sugar rush. I think, though, that it was more a matter of people sharing their exquisite artisanry with an appreciative audience.




                                               
                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                               
                       
                                               
                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                               
                       
I went home with ginger-marzipan cookies from Chef Kev, a mint chocolate vegan cupcake from Sweet Delights, an apple loaf from bäcker, tartlettes from sweetypie and some (unfortunately crushed) macarons from another vendor. I would have loved to bring home more. Next time, I’m going to go earlier. And although I appreciated my contemplative bus ride, I think I’ll book a co-op car.