Earlier this month I wrote a roundup post featuring various outdoor movie nights around the Lower Mainland. The other day I also discovered a unique open air film event happening in Gastown. I was able to interview the folks at Cineworks and Urban Republic who will be bringing the drive-in movie experience to Water Street.
You can read more about this on my E!Online post. The Drive-In begins September 3rd and will run weekly until the 17th at the Easy Park on Water street and will celebrate films made in BC. There is no admission cost but if you bring your vehicle the evening parking rate applies ($5). The audience is also encouraged to bring their own chairs as only 100 will be supplied.
Last week I was interviewed by Leah and Jay of Vancouver video house, Giant Ant Media. We got to talking about some of their upcoming projects, the largest will include a trip to Tanzania.
This will be a part of Urban Project, which is “a non-profit society dedicated to promoting employment, education and safer living opportunities for disadvantaged youth in urban locations throughout the world.” [Urban Project].
Their specific goal will be to work on Bongo, a film and 12 part web series about hip hop culture on the streets of Dar es Salaam.
In order to raise funds for this venture, Giant Ant held a kick off fundraiser, and you can “Be a Producer” by donating to the project on their site.
(View a promo for Bongo on You Tube)
The next fundraising event for the project will take place September 10th at the Anza Club, where James Lamb will be playing, along with Miami Device and Brie Neilson.
I put the call out on Twitter a while back for some interesting stories or people involved with entertainment and red carpets in Vancouver. Lorraine, that I profiled yesterday, suggested I speak with Raj from Urban Mixer – a social community empire for young professionals in Western Canada.
Raj Taneja worked his way up from being “that computer guy” in the office to running his own company across the globe in cities like Kiev and Bogota, to Hong Kong and Tokyo. After career moves and changes brought him back to Vancouver and from 2001 onward made all the right moves to acquire a unique party company. Think of “a house party with house party rules… only in a new restaurant. Invite people you would only trust coming to your home,” said Raj about the exclusive nature of his first local venture to be involved with called Social Empire.
After building up an empire of his own, Raj now operates Urban Mixer, “a social events aggregator in Vancouver, Calgary and Seattle.”
Urban Mixer is a social organization. Its mission is threefold: 1) Plan engaging, interactive events that people enjoy. 2) Provide a fun, friendly environment for young urban professionals to meet. 3) Disseminate information about events occurring in the city. [Urban Mixer – FAQ]
It was originally formed in 2003 and since then Raj has been able to change things up and drive enormous amounts of traffic to his site. “UM is open for anyone wanting to be social in the city. It’s roots are in being a singles club but that changed in 2006,” Raj noted. “Now the membership is ‘Social Singles’ and ‘Dynamic Duos’.”
He was able to take the exclusivity of the Social Empire and transform UM into a user-friendly website and a powerful resource for those wanting to get out and be social throughout the Pacific Northwest.
“The main idea is to meet fun people and make new friends. If you’re bright, interesting, friendly and like to have fun, you’ll fit right in!” [Urban Mixer].
You can browse all upcoming events in the Urban Mixer Newsletter, or click here for the week of August 18th.
My Blogger Profile series has celebrated its anniversary, sharing link love and promoting some of the great online writers of our region for over a year now.
Lorraine Murphy, probably better known as Raincoaster (her internet-famous handle) is more than just a blogger in this town, she’s a prolific queen of social media knowledge sharing and pro-blogging.
Who are you? Or “WHAT are you?” Other than the tentacles, I’m a pretty normal blogger, but then again, I live on the Downtown Eastside and it takes a lot to startle people here.
Where do you blog? raincoaster.com is my personal site, and my most popular. It’s where I dump all the entertaining weirdness I’ve collected throughout the day. I have runningthroughrain.wordpress.com as well, which I use to get the word out about my blogging classes, and blog at the FearlessCity.ca site on issues of interest to my neighbors on the Downtown Eastside. I also have the ShebeenClub.com blog for announcements relating to my literary group of editors, writers, publishers and booksellers. I’d like to get more information for it, but that’s very time-consuming.
I also do corporate blogging by contract. One of the blogs I’ve been involved with is Secusolutions.
I also get paid to read gossip blogs and linkblog on ayyyy.com (my sister is so jealous!), and have started lolebrity.net since, even after the lolfad dies, everyone will still like making fun of celebrities. It’s three months old and doing very well. And (god help us all) I’m mommyblogging at TeenyManolo.com, which is not exactly your mother’s mommyblog. I love working for The Manolo; we don’t know his real name, we don’t know where he lives; it’s like being a Charlie’s Angel!
Are you originally from Vancouver? I am firmly of the belief that no-one is originally from Vancouver. I have met only two people in my entire life who were born here; the rest who make that claim turn out to have been born in Squamish or White Rock or some other godforsaken place. I was born in France and did the grand tour of Europe as a baby (gee, thanks, parents! you couldn’t have held off on that?) but went from Paris to Winnipeg at the age of eleven months. I’m still not over the culture shock.
I came to Vancouver in 19-mumble-mumble to go to UBC. Now I love it here. If I had a gun to deal with the noisy 5am seagulls, this city would be about perfect for me.
Why do you blog? and what’s your unique angle? Tentacles. I’m all about the tentacles. It can be a stretch, working it into a parenting blog, but somehow I manage.[TeenyManolo]
What is the BEST part of blogging The best part is the lone wolf aspect, although I must say my co-bloggers in the Manolosphere are a great help and fun to work with. Still, there’s nothing like getting up and sitting in your PJs catching up on Gawker and the rest with a license to snark at will. Who’d have thought there’d be money in it?
Do you write for yourself, your readers, for Google, for a living? I write for Posterity and Posterity, I fear, will be terribly disappointed with me.
Sometimes I linkbait, sometimes I clickbait just for recreational purposes (I’m #5 on Google for “Beaver Shots!” Mother would be so proud) but since Technorati went insane around December of last year I no longer do anything specifically to increase my standings in the blog rankings. I leave that stuff up to WordPress and God’s holy crapshoot. Continue reading this post ⟩⟩
Last week I was one of the lucky judges in the Vancouver regional Grey Goose Vodka Arbiter of Cool competition.
The winner has been announced and so Kerren Bottay of The Mountain Club will be joining those from Montreal, Toronto and Calgary back here in Vancouver at the end of September for the national championship.
In case you were wondering, here is the recipe for Kerren’s drink, the goggle tan:
2 sprigs of fresh cilantro
45 mL GREY GOOSE© Vodka
15 mL Giffard Ginger of the Indies Liqueur
25 mL Aloe Vera juice
10 mL fresh pressed lime juice
Garnish: Half rim of ground cayenne pepper, and a Thai chili
