The main objective of this website is to scout out and promote the things that make Vancouver such a sweet place to be. We do this with an emphasis on the city’s independent spirit to foster a sense of connectedness within and between our communities, and to introduce our readers to the people who grow and cook our food, play the raddest tunes in our better venues, create our most interesting art, and design everything from what we wear to the spaces we inhabit.

The Scout List is our carefully considered, first rate agenda of super awesome things that we’re either doing, wishing that we could do, or conspiring to do this week. From our calendar to yours…

ART

Antisocial fills their tiny gallery with the works of Calgary skateboarder and artist Sean Macalister. Always a good time at Antisocial. See you there.
Friday, March 18 | 8pm | Antisocial Skate Shop | Free

ECUAD is hosting the Design Preis Schweiz (Swiss Design Award) exhibition as it whips through Vancouver, so head down to Granville Island to catch the panel discussion of Swiss and Canadian designers on Thursday. Seats for the panel discussion are on a first come, first served basis and RSVP’s aren’t accepted.
Thursday, March 17 |  5- 6pm  | Emily Carr University of Art + Design | FREE

Seven 4th year Emily Carr students come together for a look at  Landscape. Specifically, they are interested in “mimetic response to landscape in pockets, landscape found in our pockets, pocket sized landscape, pockets of landscapes or landscape that could fit in our pocket.” Head down Friday night for an opening reception and an artist’s talk that may shed more light on what kind of landscape can be found in pockets.
Friday, March 18 |6:30-10:30pm |  Gam Gallery (110 E Hastings) | Free

This Friday night is a good night to head to the VAG as they’re putting on another FUSE night. This one is called Dark City and it will explore the darker side of “our city of glass” through works by some of Vancouver’s “most innovative artists”, including November Theatre, the 605 Collective, and others.
Friday, March 18 | 8pm-1am | VAG | 19.50

If you’re feeling crafty, Blim throws down with a book binding class on Saturday. “Learn how to use damaged book covers to rebind yourself an old timey journal or sketchbook. This beginners course introduces the basics of hand-sewn book binding with a focus on rebinding old and discarded book covers to create something new.”
Saturday, March 19 | Blim | 1 – 5 PM | $65

There’s a large-scale video projection exposition set to take place at W2 Storyeum on Friday night. The show is a collaboration between a whack of individual Vancouver artists, community artspace collectives, and local musical talent. Expect 30 projections, many interactive displays and plenty of installation art. More info here.
Friday, March 18 | 5pm-3am | W2 (151 W. Cordova)

Yet another good reason to make your way out to UBC this week: Wild Honey by Chekhov is playing at Frederick Wood Theatre. “Michael Frayn’s brilliant re-visioning of Anton Chekhov’s posthumously discovered play takes the sharp flavors of melodrama and farce, then shakes them into an intoxicating cocktail. The characters gather in the wake of a long, harsh Russian winter, which has given way to a ‘summer of wild honey’ and an atmosphere rife with sexual intrigue. “…an effervescent comedy of love, lust and locomotives.”. Chekhov, what a perfect sign of spring! Find out more here.
Nightly until March 26 | 7:30pm | $22

There is an emergency preparedness course going on at the Roundhouse next Tuesday night. It wouldn’t hurt to get sorted on the emergency preparedness front now would it?
March 22 | 7-8:30pm | Roundhouse Community Centre

Canadian poet and storyteller Lorna Crozier and historical novelist, short fiction writer and essayist Pauline Holdstock will be at VPL on Wednesday night.
Wednesday, March 23 | 7:30pm | VPL Central Branch, 350 W. Georgia

If you can make a run for it, consider the Pacific Rim Whale Festival in Tofino and Ucluelet this weekend. Any excuse to get out there is a good one!

MUSIC

Destroyer plays the Commodore. How cool is that?
Thursday March 17 | 8pm | Commodore Ballroom

There’s a St. Patrick’s Day gig going down at WISE Hall on Thursday night. Pogues tribute band Shane’s Teeth hit the stage around 9pm. Details.
Thursday, March 17| Doors 8pm, show 9pm | $10

Mark Berube and the Patriotic Few hit the Cultch on Friday. Info.
Friday, March 18 | 8pm | Vancouver East Cultural Centre (1895 Venables) | $25

It’s Vinyl appreciation night at Zulu Records on Friday. Here’s the drill: you play the wax on Zulu’s old vintage systems, they pour the suds and everyone leaves happy! All in all a pretty sweet way to while away your Friday night.
Friday March 18 | 7-9pm | Zulu Records | Free

Local roots/folk band Headwater plays St. James Hall on Friday night. “Hearing Headwater is like listening to the West Coast of Canada in song. Freewheeling, fierce, sentimental and sexy”. It will be a toe-tappin good time.
March 18 | St. James Hall (3214 West 10th) | $24

L.A. psychedelic pop punk outfit Warpaint plays the Biltmore Saturday night. They’re hooked up with special guests PVT and Family Band for the early show. The skinny on Warpaint: “Their songs are full of intricate guitar lines, hypnotic vocals, and driving post-punk rhythms that all come together perfectly. Dazed and Confused mag called their sound “a collection of magical psychedelia drifting over sublime moments of raw melody courtesy of the three free ethereal vocalists.” Having opened for names like Yeasayer, Black Heart Procession, The Slits and Band of Horses, these girls mean business.
Saturday, March 19 | 8pm | Biltmore Cabaret | $14

An intimate concert of Beethoven’s Late Quartets at CBC Studio 1 next Thursday night.
Thursday March 24 | 5:45-6:45pm | CBC 700 Hamilton | Free

NATURE

The Natural Landscape of Vancouver. Join The Vancouver Historical Society to learn about the amazing original landscape of Vancouver that is almost entirely gone today. Jump in the time machine and discover an impressive variety of plants and animals, bird life and sea life no longer visible to us in present day Vancouver. Learn about the numerous creeks and swamps that once supported an old growth forest that grew some of the largest and tallest trees in the world.  Ge the full scoop here.
Thursday, March 24| 7:30 pm | Museum of Vancouver (1100 Chestnut)

Do you love walking or running through the wonder that is Stanley Park? Curious to know the basic ecological principles that make it all come together? Spend an afternoon hanging with science instructor Maria Morlin as she walks you through Stanley Park’s temperate rainforest ecology pointing out nurse stumps, lichen, moss, bugs, poop and new growth” Please note: Due to the popularity of these walks, please email: [email protected] or phone 604-257-8544 to reserve your place.  Find out more here.
Sunday, March 20 | 1:30-3:30 pm | Stanley Park Ecology Centre

There is something cool going on out at the Endowment Lands on Saturday night. It’s called Night Quest: “As twilight colours fade, shadows lengthen and darkness falls, gather around a fire to enjoy entertainment and experience the magic of the park and its nocturnal life.” Registration required. Call 604-224-5739. More here.
Saturday, March 19 | 7 – 10 pm | Pacific Spirit Regional Park | Free

There’s a talk about “Conserving Marine Mammals: Reconciling Science, Values, and Institutional Capacity” at SFU next week. Sounds riveting.
Tuesday, March 22 | 2:30pm | SFU Burnaby | Free

And get ready for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Thank god for the cherry blossom, that beautiful promise that this rain bullshit will soon give way to sunshine.

FILM

The cool kids at the UBC Film Society know how to make a Friday night fun. This Friday they’re inviting you to the Zoolander Beverage Garden. “Come down for some themed drinks, a walk off, maybe a freak gasoline fight, and the screening of Zoolander.” David Bowie has been invited and so have you!
Friday March 18 | 7pm | Norm Theatre UBC | $5

Spike n’ Mike’s Sick n’ Twisted Animation 2011 continues at the Rio this week, screening an insane three times a day.
Until March 24 | various times | Rio Theatre | $10

The Hollywood is screening Fair Game and Red.
March 18 -26 | 7:30, 9pm nightly as well as Sat/Sun 1:30 | $8

The Midnight Movie at the Rio this week is called Battle Royal and it sounds kinda freaky. See what I mean?
Friday, March 18| 4pm | Rio Theatre | $8

Days of Heaven is one of my all-time favourite flicks. It’s the penultimate work by one of the greatest filmmakers of all time and I’m thrilled to know it will be showing as part of the Day For Night movie series at the The Waldorf on Sunday (along with Man on a Wire).
Sunday, March 20 | Cabaret @ The Waldorf (1489 E Hastings) | By donation

CITY

Heritage Vancouver gets ready to take you on a journey back in time to the Polynesian splendour of the Tiki Rooms at the Waldorf. Perhaps it’s not quite the exact same charm now that it’s been polished-up for general consumption, but the nostalgia of the 50’s is still hiding in the details. “Fashioned at the very beginning of the Tiki craze of the 1950’s, the Waldorf is one of the oldest surviving Tiki bars in North America, and one of the last original such establishments left outside of the Hawaiian Islands.”
Wednesday, March 23 |  6pm | The Waldorf Hotel (1489 E Hastings) | $25

Architecture curator, critic and consultant Trevor Boddy will take you on a tour of the WE: Vancouver show at the VAG on Tuesday. “Curator of such exhibitions as Vancouverism: Architecture Builds the City and Dialogue of Cities at the UBC Museum of Anthropology, Boddy provides a critical interpretation of Vancouver’s urban development and planning in relation to the exhibition.”
Tuesday, March 22 | 7pm VAG | 19.50

Woah, there’s a fascinating gig going down out at UBC on Saturday night: Meaning and Identity of the Destruction of Architecture: from the Parthenon to the World Trade Center. Jerrilynn Dodds (Dean, Sarah Lawrence College) takes a look at both infamous and surprising cases of the destruction of monuments in an attempt to grasp the multiple layers of meaning that cling to great works of architecture, how those meanings transform with time, and how they persist to this day. Sounds like a pretty good reason to trek it out to UBC if you ask me!
Saturday, March 19 | 8:15pm | Lecture Hall No. 2, Woodward Resources Centre, 2194 Health Sciences Mall, UBC | Free

Cool sounding lecture at Emily Carr Wednesday afternoon. It’s called “All the Things I’ve Screwed Up So Far”.
“Eric Karjaluoto is a founding partner of smashLAB, a Vancouver-based Digital Agency. He concentrates on helping groups communicate effectively through strategic design and brand strategy. Eric is a vocal proponent of pragmatic design and methodology on his blog ideasonideas, where he writes about design, brands, and experience. In 2007 he spearheaded Design Can Change to unite designers and address climate change—an effort recognized in TIME’s Design 100. Eric speaks regularly at industry events for groups including AIGA, SEGD, GDC, and Johnson & Johnson. He received his BFA from Emily Carr (’95)  and recently released his first book, Speak Human: Outmarket the Big Guys by Getting Personal.”
Doesn’t sound like he’s a big-time screw up, now does it?
Wednesday, March 23 | 12-1:15pm  | Emily Carr Lecture Theatre | Room 301

FOOD

If you’re out to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, why would you want to be anywhere other than the Heather? Set yourself up with a bowl of Irish stew and buttered soda bread followed by a Jameson Whiskey Trifle and wash it all the hell back with a bottle of Harp lager from Ireland. Read all about the juicy details here.
Thursday, March 17 | All Bleedin’ Day | The Irish Heather | $30

Pick up provisions for the week at the Farmer’s Market: fresh locally grown veggies and treats like carrot cake from Pure Bread (yes, it’s worth the wait) dried apples and fruit leather, fresh eggs and greens. Get over there and buy local.
Saturday, March 19 | Parking Lot – Nat Bailey | Free

VINTAGE

Oh, what’s one more Waldorf plug, right? Don’t miss The Chosen Ones on Saturday and Sunday this weekend. It’s a group vintage sale with selected vendors flogging their best.
March 19 + 20 | 11am – 6pm  | Waldorf Flippin Hotel (again) | No Cover

Browse the wares of 175 vendors offering everything from shabby chic to 50’s kitsch, collectibles at the 21st Century Flea Market. It’s spring people! Time to refresh.
March 20 | 10am-4pm | Croatian Cultural Centre (3250 Commercial) | $4

If you know of something cool going on in the city and you think we should consider adding it to our list, please send the details to michelle at scoutmagazine dot ca.

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Michelle Sproule grew up in Kitsilano and attended Bond University in Australia and the University of Victoria before receiving her graduate degree in Library Sciences from The University of Toronto. She lives in beautiful Strathcona and enjoys wandering aimlessly through the city’s shops and streets with her best friend – a beat up, sticky, grimy, and uncooperative camera.

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