Tag: drivefest

“There is no such thing as innapropriate weather, just innappropriate clothing”

The Commercial Drivefest is today, a car-free festival that runs from 1st Ave to Venables, with live music, DJ’s, street vendors, and performers taking over the streets, from approx noon to 6pm.

“Due to popular demand, the peculiar and magnificent Commercial Drive Festival is now evolving into Car-Free Commercial Drive Days — TWO of them! This represents a huge shift in civic consciousness…it will not be long before the ‘hood, the City, the entire planet recognizes the massive potential for global salvation and FREE FUN that Car-Free streets represent. Hallelujah.

Please help us reclaim the street, and start creating the urban paradise we know is possible.”

schedule of events

up too late at night, putting up the last drivefest photos


you have to be kidding
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

I’ve created a Flickr Pool, Drivefest, to collect all the photos of the Commercial Drive Car Free Day. Add yours and tell yours and pass it on!

I wanted a water sprinkler to run through today. I wanted to run water through the ink of my hair and to desperately feel like laughing. It’s hard to explain. I wanted to turn to someone and share a conspiratorial glance, rife with a desire to smile a thousand times. I miss the anonymous letters. They were the closest thing I had to anyone calling to see if I was okay, now that no-one cares if I dream about them anymore. (I haven’t received any since May). Precious and rarest of things, they remain mine and only mine.

This lovely Levi ad has been posted before, but now there’s a sweet parody by a UK tropical drink company called Lilt.

I suspect the game became tired. Instead of posting my thoughts here, my lovely impressions, I kept them close to me, wrapped in my writing book and tied with ribbon like I was an old-fashioned child. How so, then, a reward? Reine read them today in the park before we got up to play frisbee with Will. I read one aloud this evening to dear friends who were driving me home from morris dancing. They’re beginning to slide into the consciousness of the people around me. I read them like rosary beads, asking who’s trying to make me smile, like perhaps I’ll be allowed to slip stories into conversation again some day. Ravenous angels dancing on pins, that’s me. A tiny figure, sitting at the feet of who I used to be, looking up and disbelieving. If I am a city, these letters have been tagging my walls.

UBC engineering students have built a vehicle so efficient that it achieves 3,145 miles per US gallon (0.074 litres/100 km)

you’re crazy but you’re lazy, drivefest happens again

Sunday will be the next ANNUAL CAR-FREE COMMERCIAL DRIVE FESTIVAL.

The Drive will be closed to all motorized traffic from 1st Ave to Venables from 10am to 8pm, with free entertainment from noon to 6pm. (Yes, expect the Carnival band, though fantastically, artists are welcome to perform in the street all they want, with respect to the neighborhood and festival rules).

It’s a grass-roots event, entirely funded by local businesses, (word has it they turned down corporate sponsorship from Pepsi this year), and run by volunteers, with performance stages at either end and in the park, a roped off street hockey area, a contingent of crazy chopperfest types, (the Burrow-y people with the strange bicycles). Last year there was an approximate twenty-thousand people wandering about and enjoying all of it. (Which might explain why it was impossible to find anyone). According to their website, “new this year is the WORLD CUP ZONE in Victoria Park. In honour of the ongoing World Cup of Soccer, the Festival will celebrate this truly global sport and the Drive’s cultural heritage with a showcase of international entertainers as well as family activities hosted by the Vancouver Whitecaps.”

Last year‘s first-ever Car-Free Commercial Drive Festival was wonderful. Regrettably I missed most of it because I was too busy with other things, (Sunday Tea, The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party at Trout Lake), but even late, the street was a sea of clearly happy people. This year I’m going to devote my full Sunday to it and run around to see as much of it as I can, camera in hand.

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Monday, Korean Movie Mondays is showing Shadowless Sword this week, a Duelist-like, style over substance, sword-fighting film. As Duelist immediately catapulted itself into my top twenty within the first half hour, I highly recommend dropping by. Remember, if you’re reading this, you’re pretty much invited. Psychic lady building, 8 pm. If you don’t know where to go, just say.

hubris justified


I approve
Originally uploaded by Foxtongue.

Sunday was an insane day for people. At first it seemed as if in among the thousands of people thronging Commercial Drive for Drivefest, Dominique and I were not to meet anyone we knew. It was fascinating to walk among so many and not have our names called out once. We were beginning to feel odd, in fact, as we were almost at Venables before we discovered friends. I was bolstered, however, by the unexpected pleasure of encountering David Garfinkle at the Mad Hatters Tea Party. (Matthew and I had arrived in time for tear down, missing the show entirely, but with time enough to gather up Dominique, Rowan, and Anna.)

David is an old friend, originally an associate of my mothers, who I’ve known since I was ten or twelve. Later I met him again as one of Bill’s best friends, (he being the catalyst for my meeting Bill), and I suspect that he and I get along better than he and my mother. We lost touch when Bill and I had our common law divorce, as I have with a few people, so when we met at the park, (he played the King of Hearts), we immediately sat down with smiles that tried to touch our ears. I’ve got a number for him now and I’m going to call him after work tomorrow for tea. It will be a treat to catch up. The notes of the dial tone and number pad, they are music. They are rings in water to grasp onto and kick.

I met another member of the Tea Party later, a girl named Burrow, who by coincidence is staying with my friend Kyle. Incestuous City Syndrome hits again. We ended up at Kyle’s place, the two of us, and he and I stayed up attempting to watch the Dr. Who that James gave me until three:thirty in the morning. (They were too badly scratched, so we only made it through one episode. We gave up when Kyle was literally losing the gift of speech.)

I met Marc on the street as well, which was a Joy Incarnate TM moment. It’s unlikely that anyone who didn’t know me last winter could understand how giddy I am that I’ve collected again this member of the Lost People. I invited him to Korean movie night. In my life, Marc’s been missing for about a year. It took a lot of effort not to bury him in kisses. He’s brilliant. We would go for long walks and discuss too many movies. He was Placebo Cine, but some time last spring his e-mail address changed and he stopped answering midnight pebbles at his window. I’d assumed he’d moved, leaving me with his camping tent and favourite shirt. However, it seems that he hasn’t changed address, only rooms. Apparently it is no longer his window, but Paul’s. I am genius.