15 Questions With Julie Hebb Of Main Street’s Forsya Boutique

Meet Julie Hebb, owner of Main Street’s awesome Forsya Boutique…

Scout Q&A

Three things about your neighbourhood that made you want to set up shop there: Main Street is great area to find unique items away from the mainstream, [also the] community based atmosphere [and the] the stretch of Main I’m on is very up and coming, full of artist studios and great local restaurants

What will Vancouverites find at Forsya? A friendly customer motivated shop that carries local and independent designers from across Canada.  Focusing on customer service we provide free alterations on everything in the store, even sale items! Interesting and unique items that can be custom fit to your needs. We also offer custom clothing and your own personal alterations.  We show local artists on the walls and are in the process of developing our own clothing line with the helpful suggestions of what the customer wants. Read more

10 Minutes With Local Musician Taylor Ashton Of “Fish & Bird”

Photo credit Sylvia McFadden

The Vancouver Folk Music Festival is right around the corner (July 16th-18) and Scout wanted to get a feel for some of the amazing talent would be hitting the stage this year. We spent some time hitting some of the talent’s myspace pages for the best in show and came up with a few favourites, like Fish & Bird. As their website says: “The music of Fish & Bird is rooted in an authentic love for folk music, but it’s a tough love that doesn’t stop them from showing the genre a little abuse.” Right on.

We tracked down Taylor Ashton (lead vocals, banjo) for this Q&A, the first of hopefully three in the run up to the Festival. Taylor has recently become a full-time traveling hobo but he did grow up in Vancouver and still ends up here quite a lot. You can catch his band at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival this coming weekend. Check the Folk Fest website for all the details. Read more

Five Minutes With Claire Madill Of Vancouver’s “Heyday Design”

Claire Madill graduated from Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design in 2007 with a Bachelor of Fine Art (Visual Art) and established a ceramics studio from which to launch heyday design soon after. Through her work, Claire explores the nostalgia we feel towards objects and questions what we consider valuable in a particular time and place. Discarded and forgotten vintage wares are translated into fine porcelain objects that you can use and wear, endorsing a new perspective on an object’s purpose and aesthetic. heyday design currently loves vintage Canadian canning jars and the patterns found on the bottom of vintage glass dishes to illustrate this.

Claire lives in Mount Pleasant, works in Strathcona and pretty much bikes everywhere. Claire will be at Gotcraft! on May 2.  Meet her and see her work after the jump… Read more

12 Minutes With Chambar & Cafe Medina Chef Nico Schuermans…

For our 65th interview on Scout, we sat down with Nico Schuermans, co-owner and chef at Chambar and Cafe Medina. Enjoy.

OTHER PERSONS OF INTEREST

10 Minutes With New “DB Bistro” Chef, Nathan Guggenheimer…

For our 64th interview on Scout, we chat with Nathan Guggenheimer, who was recently promoted from his sous chef position at Lumiere to the chef de cuisine job next door at DB Bistro. He is also the principal organiser (and namesake) of the restaurant industry’s annual Guggenheimer Dog Gobble, something of a shoe fetishist, and an all around quality guy.

SCOUT Q&A

First memory? Standing and crying outside of school on my very first day of kindergarten, refusing to go inside (my mom took me home).

First album that made you love music? Meatloaf ‘Bat of Hell’. Not the second one! That was crap.

The first three things you do every morning? Open my eyes, hit the snooze button, think about what I have to get done throughout the day.

Three things about your home base of Kitsilano that make you want to live there: It’s close to work, close to [Lumiere chef] Dale Mackay, and jogging on the beach.

The thing that excites you most about your new position at DB Bistro: Getting to work directly with Daniel.

The thing that you eat that is bad for you that you will never stop eating: The fat drippings that are left over in the pans from the meat section.

Default drink of choice when you walk into a bar or restaurant: one shot of Campari, two ice cubes, one splash of water. Read more

Indie Profile: Five Minutes With MGB Principal Michelle Biggar

Michelle Biggar is an Australian interior designer who has made her home in Vancouver. She is a principal at mcfarlane | green | biggar  ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN INC, better known as MGB. Gathering 11 years of international experience, Michelle has worked professionally in Australia, the UK and in Canada on a vast range of projects from multi-residential interiors to fashion retail, offices, and restaurants. Some of her recently completed Vancouver projects include Giovane café, bakery + deli and Oru restaurant (both in Vancouver’s new Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel), Obakki’s flagship store in Gastown and an office and gallery for Bob Rennie in Chinatown.  She believes in beautiful, timeless solutions born of intelligent design. Her aesthetic is clean, modern, and contemplative. Her calm and clement manner, while indispensable on multi-million dollar projects, comes in handy at home, where she is the proud mother of Max Lucy Biggar, born February 6th, 2009. Read more

Fifteen Minutes With Singer & Band Polymath Marissa Johnson

Photo by Andrew Dennison

Meet Marissa Johnson. She comes from a very musical family. Originally from Courtenay, where there obviously weren’t enough bands to keep her busy, Marissa moved to Vancouver in 2004. She plays and sings with four Vancouver based bands: Weathered Pines, No Kids, Bad News Babysitters and Dizzy Eyes. When she’s not working or at band practice, she can be found singing karaoke, listening to records, or watching episodes of Pee Wee’s Playhouse….

Weathered Pines’ debut album, entitled “The Sky Between the Buidings”, will be released on January 25th at the Biltmore Cabaret on Dejlig Records. And when we say ‘album’ we are talking old-school vinyl…not CD…but it does include an mp3 download of the entire album for us digital types. We caught up with Marissa in between band practice to ask her a few questions… Read more

Mystery: How Does A Man This Mellow Deal In Coffee All Day?

Each week, Scout poses 60 questions to a local who has made life in BC that much more interesting. They pick and choose. The minimum response is 20 answers (a Rorschach test, for sure). Barrett Jones answered all sixty. The mellow man tastes coffee for 49th Parallel Coffee Roasters, organizes people who want to open cafes, and stands fast as the gatekeeper who decides whether you give a shit or should be better served by a different roaster. Read more

14½ Minutes With Anne Pearson Of Main St’s Vancouver Special

If you’ve wandered by Main Street’s Vancouver Special you’ve likely found yourself lured inside pretty quickly. The ‘design concept store’ opened in April 2008 at East 20th Ave in the heart of Vancouver’s up and coming Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood. It’s aim is to promote the idea that good design can be accessible, affordable, and of high quality while bringing pleasure to daily life. The product mix is carefully curated and constantly evolving with offerings ranging from furniture, design objects and household accessories to a large selection of photography, design, and architecture books. The owner, Anne Pearson, holds an Honors B.A. in Art History and a Masters of Architecture degree from UBC. Prior to opening the store, she worked for an architecture firm in Vancouver. She has a passion for art, design and retail and has researched and traveled extensively to find innovative and unique local and international products and designers. Scout caught up with Anne recently and asked her a few questions… Read more

Eighteen Minutes With Dayton Boots CEO Stephen Encarnacao

Stephen Encarnacao has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Vancouver‘s Dayton Boots for the past 2 ½ years. Before taking the helm at Dayton, Mr. Encarnacao was Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer for Reebok International (during Reebok’s meteoric growth phase when Reebok grew from less than $50 Million in annual sales to nearly $1 Billion and usurping Nike’s position as the #1 Brand in the U.S Footwear Market). But even cooler than that is that he served as Senior Vice President Marketing at Converse and Chief Operating Officer at Puma USA. Impressive pedigree. But he’s here now, and here is what he has to say about life in Vancouver. Read more

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