Start Time: Monday, September 10, 2007 at 12:00am – End Time: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 at 12:00am
September 10th, 2007 will be remembered as the biggest Free Hug day this world has ever seen.
Vancouver’s event will take place once again near the Art Gallery steps (facing West) on Robson. I already passed by one dude with a sign earlier while he was being filmed by Channel M. You have until Midnight to get your hug-on.
Friday night Sparta was in town opening up for Alice in Chains and Velvet Revolver. It was their first night joining the VR tour and their set was kick-ass, as usual. John and I were supposed to interview the band but after wasting 40 minutes dealing with rude and uncooperative security and venue personnel we knew things would be messed up.
I didn’t expect nor want any special treatment at all, aside from having access to Tony and Keeley as arranged by Sparta’s management. But really, what is it with arena security people in this town? They were snide and demeaning, basically ruining that part of our night and making it impossible to conduct our interview after detaining us for so long. Do John and I just look like total thugs or what?
FYI when you have an arranged interview with a band, the tour manager’s number in your cell phone, a VIP laminate & tickets you still cannot bring in a Canon Powershot camera. Well that was totally fine, no worries, the interview audio was the most important thing so I really didn’t need the camera although it was a bit of a bummer. But when I agreed (with no fuss at all) to leave it at Guest Services, I didn’t expect the reaction I received. The security guard turned to his buddy and said, “she can get it back after the show,” followed by a couple winks and some exchanged laughter. Not only was I already embarrassed enough, I was now the butt of their joke.
This is not the first time something like this has happened to us, all while being 100% cooperative and catering to every request no matter how unreasonable, undeserving or unethical said requests have been.
Despite all of this, it was still a pleasure to deal with Sparta’s management, and tour manager – they are always enthusiastic about our podcasting and promotion of the band and made every attempt to make our night enjoyable. In fact their manager literally went out of his way to rectify the situation, which unfortunately was to no avail by that time.
We still enjoyed our amazing seats compliments of Sparta and stayed in them until Alice in Chains was on stage. Hundreds of people seemed to leave when Velvet Revolver came on and by their drunken rants and shouting, apparently VR’s show was not the best and most would have been happy with Alice in Chains headlining. But that was just a small sampling of the audience, so if you were actually at the concert as well, leave me a comment/review.
All in all, the night wasn’t a total bust, we did have fun although I am pretty soured on attending any big venue shows for a very long time. Best of luck to Sparta who will be opening on the tour through October, and if you’re at any of the upcoming stops, show up early to catch this act, you won’t be disappointed.
I know pedestrians in the city can get a little crazy and if you’re a driver they’re your worst enemy on the road. Although when you’re out walking somewhere, the drivers are the bad guys. It goes both ways but that doesn’t mean rules of the road should be ignored. I don’t know how many times I’ve stood at a crosswalk and had 20 cars breeze right past me. Not only do they have to stop, not doing so can land them hefty fines.
On August 28, 2007, Officers from the Vancouver Police Department Traffic Unit will be conducting several crosswalk safety enforcements throughout the city. An officer wearing plainclothes will be posing as a pedestrian crossing at various crosswalks, while other officers nearby will be looking for drivers committing speeding, failure to yield and other violations. [VPD]
I’ve seen these types of stings before in Surrey and within only a few hours dozens of drivers were ticketed for failing to stop at crosswalks to let pedestrians pass. More importantly, if you’re driving along a 2 lane road and the person on the right or left stops for a crosswalk, make sure you’re paying attention and stop as well. I’ve also been in that situation where one lane will stop for you and the other doesn’t.
Pedestrian-controlled intersections are an entirely different breed and apparently unique to this area. I recently found a write up about them on a travel site:
The flashing green light is a “Pedestrian Crosswalk”. It stays flashing green so you can continue to drive through the crosswalk and do not need to stop, but once a pedestrian pushes the crosswalk button the green light turns solid red stopping the traffic letting the pedestrian cross. Do not stop your vehicle on a green light or you might get a rude awakening from behind by another car. [TravelEtiquette]
Special note here, if you are approaching a ‘flashing green light’ intersection from the sides, you probably still have a stop sign in front of you. If the light turns red for the oncoming traffic to your left and right, you still have to STOP at the stop sign, then proceed into the intersection when it’s safe to do so. Yes, I’m talking to all the drivers crossing Robson Street that completely ignore stop signs when approaching it from a side street and just zoom through intersections at full speed, without even a pause.
According to this site, it’s $167 for failing to stop at a crosswalk, so perhaps that will act as a deterrent, especially with children being back at school. It’s the same fine as if you fail to stop for a school bus or stop for a crossing guard. Regardless of road rage, walk rage, bike rage etc. crosswalks should be a safe place, and I’d much rather use one than risk jaywalking and pissing off motorists, getting a fine or getting hit.
Internet Explorer 6 is bad. It is not good. No, not at all. If you use Windows, please upgrade to the more secure ‘won’t melt your machine down’ Internet Explorer 7 (if you must use IE). Not only is it more secure, it actually displays pages the way they’re supposed to be seen. How do I know this? Well whenever I make changes to my company’s website I have to do some QA since 61% of our customers use IE6. I was just checking my stats for Miss604.com and noticed 21% of my visitors also use IE6 so I decided to use the best tool around to see what those visitors are viewing.
John sent me a link to the Net Renderer some time ago and it’s been an invaluable asset to my website coding and css tinkering ever since. What is allows you to do is view your website as it is seen by various versions of Internet Explorer browsers, from 5.5 up to 7 and ‘mixed’.
Unfortunately, my sidebar disappears under the main content column when viewed in IE6 so to those readers using that browser, I’m sorry, but also… please please upgrade your browser. Not just for the sake of viewing my site but you’re opening yourself up to a lot of vulnerabilities on the interweb by using an outdated browser i.e. bugs, viruses and unpretty colours. It’s so bad in fact that it’s been ranked one of the “25 Worst Tech Products of All Time” by PC World. “If bugs in IE were nickels, Microsoft would be rich as all heck.” [ComputerGripes]
What would I recommend then? Easy, Firefox. There are a few more options as well if you want to get fancy, such as Opera, Safari (for Apple users) and Flock. All in all, Firefox works well for me and all the add-ons and toolbars just make life a whole lot easier. Once you make the switch you’ll also see how ridiculously good looking sites on the weebernet will be. In the meantime, I’ll try my best to make this site work well with all browsers, especially for 21% of my valued readers. I’m just looking out for ya, that’s all.
But I will be at Holly McNarland‘s show tonight at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Tickets are $19.95 and there are still a few available if you’d like to check out my fave Canadian female singer/songwriter.
Update: Deb left a note in the comments about attending the show – some of her pics are featured below and she’s got a great write up of the concert over on her blog as well.
