LOOKCITY: “Eugene Choo” On Main Street Expands With New “Annex” Shop Next Door

Great news for Vancouver fashion lovers! Eugene Choo has opened a new store – dubbed Eugene Choo Annex – right next to the original shop at 3697 Main. From our inbox:

The annex will feature a wider selection of shoes, bags and accessories than the original store, allowing [owner Kildare] Curtis to bring in smaller, harder to find shoe labels to compliment Eugene Choo’s growing stable of great quality shoes.

Look for new labels such as: A detacher, The Office of Angela Scott, Le Botte Gardiane and Armando Cabral alongside Belle by Sigerson Morrison, New Balance and Florsheim.

Even though he has more space to play with, Curtis wants to keep the selection tightly curated. “I really wanted to focus only on the shoes I know my customer will love. I don’t want them to have to wade through hundreds of shoe styles to find the one pair worth having. We wanted to take the guesswork out. Every pair of shoes are shoes that I, or a member of the staff, picked and would wear ourselves.”

Eugene Choo Annex carries shoes, bags and accessories for both men and women and is located at 3697 Main Street.

It’s not yet two days old, so go take a look, try on some shoes, and tell Kildare (interview) that we say hi.

Smoke Break #952: New Yorkers Remind Us To Say “Thank You Mom” This Mother’s Day

(via) As if we needed a reminder, but still…thank you, Mom, for “getting me out of trouble when I burned down that forest.” Pass it on…

HEADS UP: Sons & Lovers “Summer Reading Pop-Up Shop” At Revolver Coffee On May 20

Dig books? Of course you do, and the folks at Sons & Lovers Books are doing a pop-up sale at Revolver Coffee on Cambie next Sunday, May 20th from 1pm to 4pm (cash only). They’ll be decorating the coffee shop with a curated selection of 200+ titles, all of them used classics dripping with character and charisma. Expect plenty of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Wilde, Lawrence, Austen, Bronte, Eliot, Plath, Steinbeck and such. George and Robyn have great taste. See you there!

DINER: First Look At The Highly Anticipated Minami In Yaletown’s Old Goldfish Location

by Andrew Morrison | I snuck a peek inside Minami yesterday (the old Goldfish location at 1118 Mainland Street in Yaletown). The anticipated Japanese restaurant – a relative of popular Miku (owned by Seigo Nakamura) – still has three weeks left before it’s scheduled to open, but already it’s looking pretty swell. The deep brown stain from the original wood floors has been sanded away to leave a nice raw glow, and many of the rear dining room walls and both private rooms are in the midst of a decorative once-over by Hideki Kimura, the acclaimed mural painter from Japan (he’s leading a team of artists from neighbouring Raw Canvas). The firm behind the look is Vancouver’s own OMB (the same folks responsible for the clean lines of Obakki, and Oru), so the end result will likely be modern looker worthy of a good gawk.

As far as the food is concerned, I’m told that we can expect more aburi sushi and plenty of dishes that Miku fans will recognize, as well as a noticeable shift towards more “hot” items. The bar program has been designed by former Bartender of the Year Shaun Layton of L’Abattoir, with the sake element being looked after by Miki Ellis of Hapa Izakaya fame (a certified sake expert). Service will be led by former Sandbar GM Mike Deas-Dawlish and Miku veteran Patrick Rider. Mark your calendars. D-day is May 30th.

ALL ANTICIPATED RESTAURANTS

AWESOME THING WE DRANK #671: Summer “Junmai Sour” At Fat Dragon On The DTES

We’re in the office currently fantasizing about the “Junmai Sour”, an original sipper from barman Matt Martin at Powell St.’s new Fat Dragon Bar-B-Q. Think fruit tea-steeped sake and gin frothed with egg white and given licks of lemon, sugar, orange blossom and mint on ice. That’s a pretty exotic (not to mention ideal) amalgam to compliment weather like this, and so we fixate, trapped and longing…

Zulu Report: Everything That You Should Listen To This Week

Nic Bragg over at Kitsilano’s Zulu Records once again present his weekly Scout feature, the Zulu Report. Within, staff from the West 4th music store provide The Track, the song that is on heavy rotation that week; The Playlist, which is pretty self-explanatory; The Gig, the must see show of the week; and The Glance, which details the best gigs on the immediate horizon. From their ears to yours, enjoy…

THE TRACK

AESOP ROCK Zero Dark Thirty

Sonically this latest Aesop offering is really, really interesting. Ian Mattihas Bavitz (a.k.a. Aesop Rock) has always kept the lyrical side of his game super fresh but we at Zulu are absolutely blown away by the potent combo of beats, samples and overall production verve that accompanies his lyrical fury! Check this “Roving packs of elusive young, become choke-lore writers over boosted drums, in the terrifying face of a future tongue”… major throw down to those at his heels. Vancouver’s hip hop scene is super tight and has deep ties to the Rhymesayers crew, so we can only hope that when Rock takes to the road in support of July’s Skelethon from Fifth Element that he hooks it up at Fortune! Tight sounds. Read more

VANCOUVER AT WORK #9: Inside The “Heth PR” Office On West Cordova Off Cambie St.

Reader “S.H.V.” | Director | Heth PR | West Cordova, Gastown | 4:15pm

With Vancouver At Work, we invite Scout readers to send in photos of their work spaces, be they home offices, corporate cubicles, artist studios, fishing boats, bars or kitchen lines. It’s a lot like our View From Your Window feature, only you tell us your initials, your title at work, your place of work (optional), the neighbourhood, and the time the photo was taken with “Vancouver At Work” in the subject line. Photos and info should be sent to scoutmagazine [at] gmail [dot com], and need to be as high res as the sender can manage. Cell phone shots will do if they are no smaller than 588px wide. Now get snapping!

MORE VANCOUVER AT WORK

Seen In Vancouver #365: “Before I Die” Art Installation Lands In A Chinatown Alleyway

We did a “Vancouver Would Be Cooler If…” post about the original “Before I Die” project in New Orleans by artist Candy Chang in March of last year. It seems we’re a little cooler now, courtesy of local aesthete Dana Ramler. Her effort just went up on the southern end of the alley between Keefer and East Georgia (across the street from The Brixton Cafe), and it hasn’t taken long for every line to be filled. Take a look and bring a hope or two. Personally, before I die, I want a dog. Just sayin’.

EVERYTHING SEEN IN VANCOUVER

Foreign Intelligence Briefing #401: Maurice Sendak, We’ll Eat You Up! We Love You So!

Sad news this morning. Maurice Sendak, author of Where The Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen, has died at the age of 83.

Despite its wild popularity, Mr. Sendak’s work was not always well received. Some early reviews of “Where the Wild Things Are” expressed puzzlement and outright unease. Writing in Ladies’ Home Journal, the psychologist Bruno Bettelheim took Mr. Sendak to task for punishing Max:

“The basic anxiety of the child is desertion,” Mr. Bettelheim wrote. “To be sent to bed alone is one desertion, and without food is the second desertion.” (Mr. Bettelheim admitted that he had not actually read the book.)

“In the Night Kitchen,” which depicts its young hero, Mickey, in the nude, prompted many school librarians to bowdlerize the book by drawing a diaper over Mickey’s nether region.

But these were minority responses. Mr. Sendak’s other awards include the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award and, in 1996, the National Medal of the Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton. Twenty-two of his titles have been named New York Times best illustrated books of the year.

His childrens books had already long ago joined the pantheon of greats. Now, so does he. There, we imagine him befriending Shakespeare, poking fun at Herodotus, causing shit with Hemingway, Seuss and Thompson, and randomly yelling “Let the wild rumpus start!”

Seen In Vancouver #364: Heeled “Shoefiti” Bomb Above Main St. Between Union & Prior

Evidence of “Shoefiti” – the act of tying a pair of shoes’ laces together and throwing them like a bolas up and around a telephone wire so that they hang down as decoration – is everywhere in Vancouver. More often than not, the ones we see are just the result of a new pair of shoes. But sometimes they’re used as markers. They could advertise the presence of a drug dealer, or a memorial, or a skatespot, or countless other things. You may have even heard tell of entire graduating classes throwing shoes up en masse around their campuses, or construction workers tossing them up to mark a completed project, or of soldiers painting their combat boots yellow and hanging them outside their respective bases whenever they come home from tours of duty, but the point of the “bomb” on the West side of Main between Prior & Union is lost on us. It’s just a few blocks away from our office, but we’ve only just noticed it. All of the shoes are high heels, which makes it – as far as we know – one of a kind in this town. Is it new or old? Is it an expression of memorial for missing women, the late night consequence of a ladies night that got out of control, or a meaningless pile-on? We’ve asked around and found no reference to it on the web, so we have no proper clue. Spill the beans if you know the score…

EVERYTHING SEEN IN VANCOUVER

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