There’s a warm fuzzy feeling you get when you visit a restaurant with a caring chef who uses the very best ingredients, he or she takes the time to tell you what went into the cooking process, and they beautifully present a delicious meal. You can tell when someone takes pride in what they do and has a passion for it. I got that same feeling when John and I visited Ella Shoes and met co-owner Jenny Rodriguez last fall.
Jenny, who runs the business with her husband Jorge, personally walked me through the entire store to show me their styles — from sandals, boots and pillowy walking shoes to the most piercing stilettos — and she could tell me about every shoemaker, the type of material used, the process of how they were hand crafted, and which styles were even made from recycled material. The shoes I ended up purchasing also have a fully detailed sustainability report available online.
Jorge’s family has been in the shoe business for a long time, and he joined in at age 14. Originally from the Dominican Republic, his father manufactured of footwear and imported popular European brands, particularly from Spain. Jenny, originally from Cuba, met Jorge in the Dominican Republic. The couple married in 1996 and honeymooned in Canada, where they fell in love with the West Coast and emigrated in 2009 with their four children, calling Vancouver home. As they began looking at local business opportunities they saw a need for affordable fashion choices in quality footwear.
Ella Shoes first opened their flagship location on south Granville Street as well as a smaller store in Park Royal Mall in West Vancouver in 2010. Their downtown location opened in 2012 and in the summer of 2014 they opened a new location in Metropolis at Metrotown. You can visit them today at 640 Granville, between Georgia and Dunsmuir, or at Metrotown.
Ella Shoes has a simple goal: To operate beautiful boutiques that provide the very best in European footwear designs and first class service in store and online.
The El Naturalista shoes I picked up in the fall have turned out to be the most comfortable heels I’ve ever worn. They look good with jeans, with a dress, and my feet feel great even after I take them through the trails of Stanley Park for 3 hours. I love them so much that John even got me a gift card to Ella for my birthday last week.
Ella Shoes Giveaway
See the beauty and quality of Ella’s styles for yourself as Ella Shoes Canada has generously offered up a $300 gift code for one lucky Miss604 reader to purchase a pair of Ella Shoes online or in store. To top that, they are also letting you nominate a friend who will ALSO receive a $300 gift code. In total you can enter to win $600 in Ella Shoes for you and a friend to split! Here’s how you can enter to win:
- Leave a comment on this post naming a style/brand that Ella carries (1 entry)
- Share, like, or comment on this Facebook post naming who you nominate for the other half of the prize (1 entry)
- Share this image on Instagram tagging @EllaShoesCanada @Miss604 and #TellElla the friend you are nominating for the other half of the prize (1 entry)
- Post the following on Twitter (1 entry)
Follow Ella Shoes Canada on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook for more information about their shoes, styles, and locations.
I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Thursday, January 22, 2015.
A one time use $300 discount code will be provided to each winner (the Miss604 winner and their friend) and will be redeemable nation-wide at www.ellashoes.ca or in Vancouver store locations. The discount code will be redeemable for one pair of shoes valued at $300 or less and in-stock. If the total value of the goods is over $300, the discount of $300 applies to the total value of goods. The code is not redeemable for cash.
Update The winner is @Poetall on Instagram!
Dine Out Vancouver returns January 16 to February 1, 2015 with more than 70 food-themed events, 25 hotels offering special room rates and packages, a record-setting 277 restaurants dishing up prix fixe menus at $18, $28 and $38 price points. A big part of Dine Out Vancouver over the years has been its events and nothing gets Vancouverites quite as excited as food trucks and unique street eats.
Street Food City
Now in its fourth year, Street Food City will be a pod of food trucks and mobile vendors centered at the Vancouver Art Gallery from January 19th to January 25th, 2015. Showcasing more than 25 food trucks, Street Food City will be open to the public Monday to Thursday from 11:00am to 3:00pm and Friday to Sunday from 11:00am to 5:00pm.
There will be special Dine Out Vancouver creations and pricing along with tents, tables, seating, and a soundtrack provided by 96.9 JACK FM and LG 104.3 FM daily. Find all the trucks on the north side of the art gallery plaza. Entry is free.
Street Food City Participating Food Trucks
Aussie Pie Guy
JJ’s
Roaming Dragon
Blue Smoke BBQ
Jonnys Crème Brulee
Serious Sausage
Chili Tank
The Juice Truck
Soho Road
Community Pizza
The Kaboom Box
Super Thai
Culver City Salads
le tigre
Taser Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
|
Dougie Dog
Mangal Kiss
Varinicey Pakoras
Fat Duck Mobile Eatery
Mogu
Vij’s Railway Express
Feastro Bistro
Mom’s Grilled Cheese
Yolks Breakfast
Guanaco
Reef Runner
ZeBite
Holy Perogy
Reel Mac and Cheese |
Follow Street Food City on Twitter with the tag #StreetFoodCity and for the latest festival information follow Dine Out Vancouver on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, along with the tag #dovf.
This post has been contributed by Kathleen Stormont, Fundraising & Communications Specialist with the Stanley Park Ecology Society (“SPES”). I have been following SPES since I moved into the West End almost a decade ago and I have been a member for two years. I wanted to offer the team an opportunity to share their news, events, and work so I have created “SPES Saturday” where they contribute and share stories with my audience once a month.
Putting the Chill Back in Winter
A lunchroom fridge offers native bees an edge in Stanley Park
A native orchard mason bee pollinates an
apple blossom. Photo by Red58bill, Wikimedia.org
Lunchtime at Stanley Park Ecology Society (“SPES”) can be a tricky affair. A moment of inattention and someone’s grabbing a yogurt container full of mason bees from the fridge, or mixing up their sandwich sprouts with the wild flower seeds germinating in the crisper. With a little forewarning, though, SPES staffers willingly navigate around these fridge obstacles, cognizant of the important conservation role their fridge plays in Stanley Park.
Unlike Vancouver’s increasingly variable winter temperatures, a fridge’s interior provides a consistent chill that’s perfect for animals and plants adapted to cold winters. The larvae of mason bees, for instance, rely on an even cold temperature to keep them “asleep” in cocoons over winter – emerging only with the warmth of spring and blooming flowers. A sudden onset of warm winter temperatures, though, can stimulate the bees to emerge too early when their flowery food source isn’t yet available; a return to regular winter temperatures can also threaten the newly hatched bees’ survival.
SPES works to support these important pollinators by providing them with mason bee “condos” or blocks of tubes in which the solitary bees live. In late fall, SPES volunteers clean out the bee condos, wash any parasitic mites off the bee cocoons, and store the cocoons in the safety of our fridge until spring.
(Left) An orchard mason bee rests on its “condo”. Photo by Michael Schmidt. (Right) A SPES volunteer removes mason bee cocoons from the bee “condo” in late fall. Photo by SPES.
Like many bee species around the world, our blue orchard mason bees (Osmia lignaria) are threatened by loss of habitat, pesticide use, and pollen mites. Although we are hosting only a small number of mason bees (about 300), the benefits may be significant: six mason bees will pollinate one fruit tree compared to 10,000 honey bees!
In Stanley Park, the bees work hard to pollinate early spring flowers like our native salmonberries. A single mason bee will visit between 1,600 to 2,400 blossoms daily, and pollinate over 90% of them. SPES’ biggest mason bee collection lives outside our offices on the porch of the Stanley Park Dining Pavilion.
You can visit other mason bee condos in the Stanley Park Rose Garden and in our Native Plant Demonstration Garden.
Keeping mason bees in your own garden is an easy way to promote pollination and support this important pollinator. Learn about mason bees and their care online – and remember to label that yogurt container in your fridge.
Every January and October, like clockwork, a blanket of fog moves in. It bubbles up from Burrard Inlet and the Fraser River, shrouds office towers, and we get what social media users dub #Fogcouver. City lights are dulled by the enveloping cloud while streets become eerily quiet and photographers capture beautiful and haunting scenes.
Vancouver Fog Photos January 2015
Related: Vancouver Fog Videos.
I have curated the Miss604 Flickr Pool for the last seven years and I believe that no other animal has piqued the interest of local photographers quite like Yoda the Pug, aka The Red Baron. However upon looking around the corners of the internet to find out more about Yoda, I discovered that his pet parent, Mad Dog — who made his signature sidecar — was even more of a legend.
Mad Dog, referred to as the “Heritage Punk of Vancouver”, was featured earlier this year in a web series about The Real People of Vancouver. This multi-part documentary aims to showcase people who inspire, intrigue, who stand out from the crowd, and who the creators of the series believe should have their stories told.
I started watching a 25 minute clip and within the first 30 seconds Bev Davies began introducing Mad Dog. Davies, a legendary punk rock photographer, is one of my local idols.
Mad Dog’s is a fascinating story about the city’s gritty past, its punk history, and his one-of-a-kind art.
Every neighbourhood has “that guy”. The kind of crazy looking eccentric you see playing a keyboard with a peg leg or some woman in a cape who sells the most amazing jewelry known to man kind for chump change. In my neighbourhood, Mount Pleasant, just south of Downtown Vancouver, that guy is a bleached-out old punk dude named Mad Dog.
I didn’t know much about Mad Dog when I first saw him around. All I knew was that he rode a old, suped-up motorbike with a side car that held his tiny pug who wore goggles and a black vest. Then Mad Dog came into my work place and noticed my Germs circle tattoo. “You’re a little punk!” he yelled at me. “That band was great.” I was immediately intrigued. Asking around, I found out that Mad Dog was not only an artist who did everything from rebuilding old bikes to revamping baby dolls into Chucky-like sculptures to creating miniature replicas of now-destroyed hotels and clubs in our city, he also used to front one of Vancouver’s early ’80s hardcore punk bands, Slaughter Squad. For a tall can and some smokes, Mad Dog let me come over to his place and listen to his stories of what it was like to be a broke, starving, junkie punk in the days of D.O.A., shooting galleries, soup-kitchen handouts and moneyless freedom.
[Source: Michelle Ford for VICE]
Photo credit:
on Flickr
Other Real People of Vancouver that have been featured in these documentaries include Ken Foster, #Streetscript, and Mabel Todd. As for Yoda, we don’t learn too much about this adventurous canine but if you spot him around town, you’ll know a bit more about the person riding the bicycle next to him.
