EPIC Vancouver Sustainable Expo

EPIC is a green living consumer expo. This year it was held at the Vancouver Convention center in downtown, a beautiful venue easily capable of such an event.


I was fortunate enough to get a pass to the event to explore it and learn as much as I could, and I did just that.

First off, I learned that parts of Vancouver and Burnaby have a mulch pickup program, similar to garbage and recycling, that they are piloting in a few neighborhoods to see how well it is liked. This means that we can divert a lot of household waste from the city landfills to compost heaps that can then quickly be turned into extremely fertile soil. I learn’t this from the people at the Bag To Earth booth. They were creating bags that were 100% made from recycled material and 100% biodegradable.

I had a great talk with the folks at Whole Foods who gave me a pep talk on the importance for bees to be around in order for pollination to  occur. They reminded me that this requires plants, and gave me a coupon to go get a free 4″ plant from Whole Foods.

I also had a talk a girl representing I Heart Van Art, a new local project aimed at creating a space for vendors and performers to show off their stuff.

The convention center was filled with very local things like homemade jellies, lotions, clothes, and many other neat green ideas that I hope some of these pictures can give some insight into.

I really enjoyed the fish they had up everywhere. They were pretty cool. Great job by the artist, whoever it was.

Also, I went on the night George Stroumboulopoulos was interviewed. I think a lot of people went at the same time as it was pretty packed.

Listening to George, who also hosts the Strombo Show, which you may also know as The Hour, made me realize how much I respect him, and appreciate the change and ideas that he brings to Canadians through his influence.

To read more about the event, head over to Chronicles of Times, where the do a full report on the show.

All photos courtesy of Ned Tobin, you can view the full set on Flickr.

Baby Darling Dollface Honey by Band of Skulls

I had the pleasure of experiencing this dynamic trio, Band of Skulls at the Venue in late April, and what a show it was. This album is all that in a pre-packaged little gem of wonder for me to carry with me everywhere.

Baby Darling Dollface Honey is what new rock has turned into for me. The album epitomizes what its all about. Killer crunching guitar riffs that explode at times, but seek the most soothing lines at others filling up the spaces with rhythm that one wishes they could dream up, or is it that we dream up as it plays, its hard to tell.

The first few songs push you into a three piece galaxy that you’d think was experimental orchestrations with distortion pedals so fat the couldn’t make it through the studio doors so they had to be blasted from outdoors. Russel Marsden is really an amazing guitarist, and seeing him live really proved to me that he loves to play guitar, and has talent more than enough to make it sing.

Then as Fires and Honest come to the speakers, it slows down into melodic numbers that make me want to swirl around my room dancing like I was lost in heaven. I love Emma Richardson singing on Honest, its one of my favorite songs out there.

Soon though, it clicks back into tracks like Hollywood bowl that make you understand that this band is for real, a rock band, with all the love that goes on in it.

Get this album, its a doozie.