Word on the Street: Wild Sex

-

June 17, 2013

Study finds that men think about sex every seven seconds while having sex

(Sexy Times Monthly)

Man unable to return home from Thailand due to sex trafficking jam

(Red Light Observer)

Local sex shop sold out of sex

(YOUR REGION Today)

Kim Jong-Un to be voted ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ after annihilation of all other men

(North Korean Free Press)

African-American porn actor finally breaks “group beastiality cactus-fetish video” colour barrier

(Aristocrats Weekly)

French study links tattoos to sexual promiscuity

By

-

June 17, 2013

According to a new psychological study, men may have a tendency to take the term “tramp stamp” literally. In the grand tradition of sexual signalling (think cleavage, bare collarbones, short skirts, and the colour red), the French study done by psychologist Nicolas Guéguen found that the majority of men believe that women with tattoos are more sexually promiscuous.

In France, a select 12 per cent of women sport ink somewhere on their bodies, and previous studies have found that men and women place many unjustified attributes on tattooed women. In one, test subjects were asked to judge two different versions of a photo of a 24 year old woman, one where she had a black dragon tattoo on her upper left arm, and one where she didn’t. When she had the tattoo, she was judged to be less honest, generous, intelligent, and artistic than when her skin was bare.

Even though most studies of this kind found that men considered tattooed women less attractive, Guéguen found they were also more likely to try to sleep with them. The question then was, is that because they are more promiscuous? Or were men barking up the wrong tree? Guéguen headed to the beach to find out.

In the first part of his experiment, a female research assistant was asked to lie on her stomach on the beach while reading a book or magazine, an activity chosen because roughly 85 per cent of women who hang out at the beach solo do exactly that.

All the different female assistants in the study wore the exact same red bikini, but in some trials they also displayed a temporary tattoo of a butterfly on their back. The tattoo was roughly ten and a half by five centimeters in size, and was chosen because it was deemed a common design for women to get.

Once the target was set, a male observer who was in on the study timed how long it took from the moment the woman laid down to when a man made contact with her, either by saying “hello” or asking her a question. The study carried out this interaction 220 times total; 110 with the tattoo, and 110 without.

In the end, the women who wore the tattoos were solicited by men 23.67 per cent of the time, while their bare counterparts were only approached 10 per cent of the time. Men at the beach were also quicker to come up to a woman with a tattoo, taking an average of only 23.61 minutes, versus 34.78 minutes to approach an uninked woman.

The second part of the experiment also involved the woman laying down, but targeted finding out what the men on the beach thought of her. Once she was in place, the male researcher who was observing would go up to a man within ten meters of the woman and ask what he thought his chances of getting a date with her, and the probability of having sex with her on the first date. In that test, male beachgoers thought their chances of going on a date or having sex with the woman were significantly higher when she had the tattoo.

From these results, Guéguen concluded that women get tattooed as a way to enhance their sexual appeal to men, and to attract more suitors. In the same vein, men are drawn to women who show more sexual receptivity; in this case, in the form of a tattoo.

For Dr. Elise Chenier, an SFU history professor whose focus is gender and sexuality in the 20th century, the answer to these findings is simple: it’s about class. “Tattoos, especially for women, are associated with being lower class . . . and women that are working class, lower class, are assumed to have fewer moral scruples than middle class, respectable women,” she explained.

Chenier likened the popularity of tattoos for showing an anti-establishment attitude to the long hair and loose cotton of the 70s, or lipstick in the early 20th century, which was only worn by prostitutes at the time. “It was Elizabeth Arden who sold lipstick and rouge as a health product,” said Chenier. “It was only by marketing it as a health product that it lost its stigma as being something only sex workers used.”

She was also quick to point to the fact that while tattoos may be a rarity in France, they are much more prevalent in North America, and may not convey the same sexual signal here. “Tattoos are becoming more and more normalized, it’s no longer just sailors and prisoners. Especially in Vancouver, it’s a very very trendy thing to do,” she noted. “[The study] only tells us about France. I wonder if the findings would be different in Vancouver.”

SFU one of Canada’s top 100 employers?

By

-

June 10, 2013

By Mohamed Sheriffdeen

The Burnaby campus has been the only post-secondary institution I’ve ever known since I started my undergraduate career. I slogged through my degree before enrolling in graduate school and joined the Teaching and Support Staff Union as a Teaching Assistant to pay the bills, all the while holding a positive image of the University. Then I began to pay attention, and that image fell apart.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that universities have become increasingly corporatized in behavior and organization. The facts are simple: public funding has been shrinking for some time, forcing universities to get more creative and take their cues from corporations as to how and where to raise and allocate funds. While it seems like a natural progression, the central conceit that governs universities versus corporations is indisputably at conflict — the latter driven by profit, and the former driven by idealism.

Universities have always occupied a lofty niche in society that has allowed them to weather ever changing sociopolitical and cultural landscapes. Schools ought to be non-profit organizations, run with the express intent of advancing human understanding, knowledge, the advocacy of intellect and the stimulation of thought.

Perhaps this is starry-eyed idealism, and all the intellect in the world doesn’t power projectors when bills come due. But the people now running the show at these institutions are from a corporate background, and their inexperience in understanding what actually defines a university is telling. SFU is not innocent of this cultural shift, and it signals a definitive disconnect in what we think universities are versus what they really are.

There is a general knee-jerk response to the word corporate; accusations of commodification of people, the environment, memes, social causes, and even disease (breast cancer being a particularly drawn-from well) — these dominate grassroots social movements and the media, especially in BC. But does it actually matter if the university as we know it is no longer a time honoured institution with only the most noble of goals? Don’t corporations, ultimately, produce valuable items? Being a corporation doesn’t necessarily mean that the company is a misleading, faceless Goliath with a hyperactive PR department . . . does it?

Take Mediacorp’s listing of the Top 100 Canadian Employers. SFU has enjoyed a catbird seat over the last decade, making the list for six straight years. It’s quite the feat, and if you pay any attention to SFU’s PR campaigns and job advertisements, it won’t escape your notice. But how accurate a representation is this listing of the university, or any of the other businesses selected?

Mediacorp’s scouting strategy is, at best, flawed. The process is driven by questionnaires filled out by each applicant’s HR Department, without input or feedback from actual employees; it’s akin to a child gleefully filling out their own report card. But, for the sake of this argument, let’s narrow our focus.

SFU has been ranked as “very good,” in employee engagement and “above average” with reference to communication. Mediacorp judges specifically highlighted annual performance reviews, as well as in-house satisfaction surveys and exit interviews conducted by SFU. They also state on their website that feedback is encouraged by in-house newsletters and an intranet site.

Surprisingly, in its last three years of rankings, the judges failed to note (or SFU failed to notify) that a number of unions working on campus remained without a contract. The Teaching and Support Staff Union concluded negotiations last December after two and a half years in limbo, only after the union enacted a work stoppage that threatened to delay delivery of final grades to students.

Even more severe, CUPE 3338 — encompassing clerical and library staff, lifeguards, programmers, buyers and store clerks, amongst others — have remained without a contract for three years now. SFU was found guilty of bargaining in bad faith in January of this year by a Labour Relations Board, a decision that the University appealed for over three months before the LRB upheld the original ruling in April.

In their most recent contract offer, the university offered a package which, including two years of the BC Government’s zero wage mandate for public workers, offered a retroactive increase of 0.5 per cent over each of the last two years of a four year contract; far below the current rate of inflation and, in essence, a pay cut. Contrasted with other BC universities, which have long since settled their labour issues, the offer was blasted as “insulting” by CUPE 3338 president Lynne Fowler. But isn’t this common knowledge? Apparently, not to Mediacorp.

SFU has also been feted for vacation pay that starts at three weeks, increases to four weeks after an employee’s first year, and may reach six weeks for long-standing employees (according to Mediacorp and SFU’s HR department). However, TSSU members are limited to two weeks of paid vacation at the beginning of employment, and longstanding members are not offered any escalators for time employed or performance.

When contacted by The Peak for a response, Scott McLean of the Public Media and Relationships Office stated diplomatically that “the TSSU had an opportunity to address vacation pay during the last round of negotiations.” Scott Yano, involved in the TSSU’s contract committee during the negotiations, was nonplussed by the comment, alleging that “The TSSU had the opportunity and took it. Stunned silence was the only reply.” The TSSU was further, according to Yano, pressed to file a grievance to receive statutory holiday pay. When asked to respond to these allegations, McLean politely elected to decline.

Additionally, to avoid the issue of long-standing workers with seniority escalators, the University instituted a cap on the number of semesters during which an individual could receive a TA position, which results in graduate students who rely on such positions to pay for their schooling to find work off-campus, often delaying the completion of their degrees.

Given that the average time taken for a Ph.D. student to complete their thesis work varies between 5-7 years with no external conflicts, this is a significant issue for a number of students and an absolute non-starter for international students who are unable to work off-campus, requiring them to assume an even more crushing student debt load. However, this still does not address the issue of sessionals and continuing students who are, in essence, long-term workers with no potential seniority-based perks or security. Are these the actions of a Top 100 Employer? You decide.

I don’t want to indemnify SFU as some sort of uncaring corporate giant, but a disturbing trend has taken root at the core of the University. A focus on profit ahead of academia scuttles the very concept of a university, and challenges our expectations of what a school is. It ought to be a public service and the source of an individual alumni’s identity — a brand that they carry as a part of themselves for the rest of their professional careers.

A privatization of said brand does nothing to enhance one’s credentials, despite private and federal attempts to commodify the culture of schools. The core influencing public and university policy needs to be the cadre of academics and faculty, creating an environment conducive to learning and discovery, instead of endless labs dedicated to product testing and the fostering of a consumer culture.

Demand change. Because the status quo isn’t good enough.

Doors and arms wide open with the Women’s Centre collective

By

-

June 10, 2013

By Rachel Braeuer
Photos by Leah Bjornson

At the end of the Rotunda Hallway (or at the beginning, if you’re coming from residences and West Mall) lies the SFU Women’s Centre, a pro-feminist, sex-positive, pro-choice, trans and intersex inclusive, anti-racist space. It’s a second home to some, a place to microwave lunch for others, or somewhere verboten for others.

“I was definitely hesitant to come into the space, and mainly because I didn’t really know what existed beyond that door,” explained Biftu Yousuf, a fourth-year criminology student who is now a collective member and volunteer at the Centre.

Another volunteer, Stephanie Boulding, also remembers her hesitations: “I said ‘I don’t have time to do this!’ and then I started doing it, and it turned out I did — I made time.” While spelling her name for me, she signs it.

The Women’s Centre collective meets from 2:15 to 3:45 p.m. every Monday this semester in room TC 3013. “Collective makes the decisions — we’re a consensus-based decision making group,”said Negin Alavi, another collective member. Everything the Centre does is agreed upon by all collective members. If a consensus can’t be met, then it doesn’t happen.

Not surprisingly, when you think of the Women’s Centre, most people immediately think of Nadine Chambers, the Centre’s volunteer coordinator. “Nadine is the glue that puts our decisions into practice and reality,” Alavi explains.

Despite only having part-time hours with her official title and being a part-time student herself, Nadine is a constant around the Centre, so “people end up thinking she owns the space — she must have an incredibly amazing title, and profit immensely,” Alavi concludes.

When I ask about Nadine, the room lights up while she herself casually backs away. Later she reveals that she actually had another meeting to be in while she was there making sure everything was going great. The stories the collective members share with me second that this ever-busyness with her is a regular occurrence.

Yousuf, is a single mother, volunteers with three different organizations, is a full time student, works part-time, and trains for and runs marathons for charity; yet, despite her busy schedule, she explains how Nadine’s schedule still puts her to shame.

If you ask Nadine about her involvement with the Centre, she’ll be quick to tell you she just sees out the wishes of collective. She chalks up people seeing her as the flagstone of the Centre to her visibility, while flipping a stray dread over her shoulder.

Despite their efforts, many seem to misunderstand the role the Centre and its volunteers play on campus. “Some people, haven’t actually been in the Centre because [they’ve] got this ‘version of it’,” explains Boulding, who emphatically adds she wants to tell them “Come, join! Walk in! Just say hi!”

Alavi agrees and explains how she wishes people understood how important a role male allies play in the Centre. She also wants “people who don’t identify as feminist, but who are interested in learning more, to come here. And I want them to know they won’t be judged . . . we’d be happy to clarify and give more information.”

For Yousuf, it was the first time she came into the office that sealed the deal. “[Nadine and I] sat right there” — she points to the small love seat in front of Nadine’s desk — “and I was like, ‘wow, this is the beginning,’ and it just went from there and it’s been amazing since then.”

If, after reading this article, you’re still afraid to walk through the doors and find out what the Centre is all about, know this: at an appreciation event collective members, volunteers and local community activists got together at Tamam, a local Palestinian restaurant.

The laughter of the group was so loud, the area the group was in had to be closed off from the rest of the patrons. A good third of my interview is just laughter, and the rest is peppered with sarcasm and witticisms.

“This one time, Bill Murray came to the Centre . . .” is only one of many stories they shared with me.

Learning outcomes may pave the way to the NCAA

By

-

June 10, 2013

By Rachel Braeuer
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee

Unless you’re on Senate, chances are you haven’t heard about learning outcomes, the latest way SFU is assuring students it can improve our educational experience. It’s interesting that this new assessment model has been kept so relatively hush-hush, since a learning outcome is essentially a secondary assessment tool on top of regular marking schemes professors and TAs will be adjudicating students’ performances with.

What is a Learning Outcome?

According to the Report on Learning Outcomes and Assessment Working Group last updated on December 2012, a learning outcome is “an area of knowledge, practical skill, area of professional development, attitude, higher-order thinking skill, etc., that an instructor expects students to develop, learn, or master during a course or program” that can be measured by “quantitative or qualitative assessment models.” I’m not entirely sure how one qualitatively assesses attitude, but let’s just say it’s my good luck I’ll be crossing the stage on Thursday.

The same document indicates that this model is being adopted because of growing concerns around the return on investment (ROI) of any given degree. “The challenge for many is how to best invest limited resources in developing one’s skill sets for a successful and rewarding career within the parameters of a selective marketplace that demands highly specific qualifications and abilities.”

It indicates that these changes are a direct result of a Task Force on Teaching and Learning that started in 2008 and ended in 2010, which found that the University should focus more on student experience generally. There’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting to focus on the student experience, but is applying a secondary assessment model really a way to positively affect student experiences?

Charles Bingham, a tenured professor in the Faculty of Education who worked for years with learning outcomes as a high school teacher, thinks “learning outcomes are the ‘highschoolification’ of university.” BC elementary, middle and high schools have had Prescribed Learning Outcomes in place for decades. If you’re wondering how these affected your initial educational career, think back to standardized provincial tests, with their decrees that “this section will demonstrate a student’s reading comprehension skills” (and our abilities to fill in circles with only pencil).

The reason we have standardized, provincial testing is because of learning outcomes. The province made these necessary as a way to accurately measure the progress of all students. Arguably, since their adoption, Dogwood Diplomas didn’t increase in ROI. If anything, the value of a high school diploma has fallen in the last few years, so why would learning outcomes at a tertiary educational level add ROI to our degrees?

WQB Requirements and ROI

Many students don’t remember a time before WQB requirements. I, on the other hand, was part of the very first year of the new program. It was brought in to make students more well rounded, and therefore more appealing to employers. After all, what good is an English student who can’t add or subtract in base seven?

Unlike Learning Outcomes, WQB meant we had to take extra courses. Our predecessors didn’t have to take an intro to poetry class, or some other W-designated course to get their degree in engineering science. When I was a first-year, older students would rue not taking their first-year requirements earlier, as they were now stuck with a bunch of biology majors who didn’t care about the Victorian bildungsroman, they just needed a credit.

Then departments started making special WQB courses so that students could fulfill their requirements, like “The Physics of Sound” (aka waveforms and behaviours for art student idiots, PHYS 192), “Metrics and Prosody” (aka counting beats per line of poetry, ENGL 212).

Am I or my peers any more well rounded, therefore hireable, than those who came before us? Declining youth employment rates and a burgeoning generation of boomerang kids suggest otherwise. Adding more diverse courses and increasing the workload didn’t help add ROI to our degrees, so why would adding a second level of assessment?

NCAA

Back in 2009, SFU was just a “membership candidate” in its first year with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) — like a pledge at the coolest American fraternity. This was and is still a big deal for the university, as it guarantees our athletes more visibility and scholarships and more funding for the school generally. It was is also the same year our application to the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) was accepted.

Never heard of the NWCCU? They’re an American accreditation body approved by the NCAA that oversees colleges and universities in Alaska, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, and Utah, as well as Capilano University in North Vancouver, and now SFU. In order for SFU to become a member of the NCAA, we had to go through the process of becoming accredited by an approved accreditation body, hence the NWCCU.

SFU is already accredited by one local organization that isn’t NCAA-approved. Its seal can be found on the SFU homepage right beside the NCAA logo. Soon, assuming we complete the necessary steps to becoming accredited, a third seal will be added.

One of the 20 things the NWCCU looks for in its institutions is student achievement, which they measure through identified and published “expected learning outcomes for each of its degree and certificate programs of 30 semester or 45 quarter credits or more.” Just as a reminder: the results of the TFTL that suggested student experience needed to be focused on, the supposed rationale behind implementing learning outcomes, weren’t published until 2010, a year after we applied to the NWCCU.

If you look at the Capilano University website, you’ll see “student learning outcomes” listed for every program. Under the English Associate Degree program, one of the learning outcomes listed is that “students will be able to draw upon knowledge, judgment, and imagination in work and life.” Unless TAs start taking tutorials to coffee shops to play Cranium, I’m not sure how one could measure, qualitatively or quantitatively, a student’s ability to draw upon their imagination in life.

Learning Outcomes and You (and Your Instructors)

Right now, it’s unclear how learning outcomes will alter student experience at SFU. One iteration of the plan released by the office of Jon Driver, the VP Academic, stated that learning outcomes would be faculty specific, while another suggested creating a set for every course offered. An April 25 memorandum to Senate discusses establishing learning goals (which are not the same things as learning outcomes) for academic units and programs.

Realistically, it’s the instructors that will be affected by this the most, in the sense that they will be the ones responsible for filling out the forms and / or doing the actual assessments. While the same report indicates the resources available to professors during this initial stage, it’s unclear who will be completing the assessments in the long run, or what resources will be made available to them.

Given that the TSSU only recently came to a collective agreement with the University, learning outcomes and the additional work they warrant seems like it could be a major source of contention in the near future. As well, this could change how professors and TAs teach. “If you have a professor who is towing the line . . . you may find that person is teaching to the learning outcome rather than giving students a chance to go deeply into the subject matter,” asserts Dr. Bingham.

One area that has the most to lose with the implementation of learning outcomes is experiential learning, especially Co-op. “There’s no way I could write a learning outcome for what my student is going to do at her internship,” Dr. Bingham states outright. Some may suggest simply writing learning outcomes broadly, but “If you write them broadly, they mean nothing.” In the case of experiential learning, learning outcomes are “somewhere between restrictive and vacuous.”

It’s reasons such as this that have Matthew Kruger-Ross, a doctoral student in Curriculum Theory and Implementation: Philosophy of Education program, wishing professors would take more of an active rather than passive role. “It would be interesting to see the faculty say ‘Okay, we’re going to do this, however, we’re doing it our way. We’re going to reappropriate learning outcomes.’ That feels better to me than ‘no.’” He’s worked with learning outcomes for many years and says that when then these kinds of programmes are rigidly followed, “it doesn’t take you to a very happy place.”

Moving Forward

As an editor, I’ve received four unsolicited articles about experiential learning, either through Co-op, directed studies or another format, meaning four students felt so strongly about it that they wrote and fired off a full article. Unless GAP is on campus, getting unsolicited articles on the same topic doesn’t happen very often.

If the rationale behind learning outcomes is an emphasis on the student experience and in having marketable skills post-graduation, the logical solution would be to focus on experiential learning, through Co-ops or otherwise, which allows students to learn and achieve real-world experience, not assessing learning outcomes for the same courses a department has always had.

Realistically, though, the timeline of events seems to indicate that learning outcomes have more (let’s be real, everything) to do with our NCAA membership. This isn’t to say that that is bad by any means — the funding and notoriety that follow membership is hardly a negative thing. However, it does connect learning outcomes to a larger theme our school has been dogged with lately: bad faith.

“Do [we] want NCAA to be driving the fact that this is where we’re headed?” asks Kruger-Ross. “If we do, that’s fine, but we should be pretty explicit in what we’re doing.” The issue here isn’t that SFU is trying to implement a new system. It isn’t the first nor should it be the last time SFU changes the way it assess student achievement.

Let’s face it, our system of gradients of pass vs. fail isn’t much better than a learning outcomes approach. Rather, the issue lies in a purportedly “world class university” trying to pass off the prerequisites for an athletics association membership as beneficial to students’ future. The membership should warrant the efforts involved in getting accredited. Why, then, the bait and switch?

Album Reviews: Camera Obscura, Baths, and a throwback to The Velvet Underground

By

-

June 10, 2013

By Max Hill

Camera Obscura — Desire Lines

On their fifth release as a group, Camera Obscura have their shy, nostalgic twee pop aesthetic down to a science: each one of their records have seen the group capitalizing on their ‘better to have loved and lost’ balladry and tender guitar work, all brought home by Tracyanne Campbell’s clear-cut, subtly Scottish vocals.

Where some bands seek to chart new territory with each release, Camera Obscura are content to hone their craft. Borrowing from twee titans Belle & Sebastian and Heavenly and spinning lyrical webs of literary lovers and youthful rebellion, the Glaswegian group seem to improve with each release.

Desire Lines continues this trend, improving on 2009’s My Maudlin Career with catchier hooks, sweeter swan songs and stronger wordplay than ever before.

Album highlights “Cri Du Coeur” and “Desire Lines” are among the band’s strongest tear-jerkers: both hinge on Campbell’s impassioned delivery and charming but not contrived lyrics. On the other end of the spectrum, the summery guitar licks of “Everyday Weekday” and horn-bolstered chorus of “Do It Again” could challenge the band’s most muscular pop hooks.

To be fair, Desire Lines does have a learning curve: early tracks “This Is Love (Feels Alright)” and “Troublemaker” are among the most lethargic on the album, and on initial listen had me worried that the album might break the band’s decade-long winning streak. Fear not, prospective listeners: after a slow start, the album finds its legs with the lovely synth-led “William’s Heart.” It’s all uphill from there.

Though the group’s best songs appear elsewhere, their elegant approach to songwriting has never been more consistent or focused. Camera Obscura are firing on all cylinders, and Desire Lines sounds like nothing less than the work of a band at the top of their game.

Baths — Obsidian

Obsidian is the second album by Will Wiesenfeld as Baths, but for those who’ve come to know the artist from his 2010 debut Cerulean, it’s barely recognizable. The album’s opaque cover artwork seems to both betray and espouse the music within: Obsidian is at once a much more accessible and much darker record than its predecessor.

Where Cerulean was a glitchy, experimental album with a happy-go-lucky tone, Obsidian is a collection of pop songs about death, meaningless sex and apathy.

Recuperating from a battle with E. coli which stifled his songwriting abilities, Wiesenfeld channeled all his frustration into his lyrics, which are disturbing to say the least. The album opens with a vocoder drone over a whispered stanza: “Birth was like a fat black tongue / Dripping tar and dung and dye / Slowly into my shivering eyes.”

Later, on album highlight “No Eyes,” Wiesenfeld waxes poetic over emotionless and non-quite-consensual sex. Not exactly congruent with the accessible, The Postal Service style electro-pop the album borrows so heavily from.

But somehow, Wiesenfeld’s disarming honesty and unsettling imagery complement the album’s uncommonly beautiful electronics perfectly. “Incompatible”’s failing relationship fable is framed behind a gorgeous aural landscape, and Wiesenfeld’s tender vocals are all the more affecting when he sings: “You don’t do anything with your life / Fascinating, terrible, your stupid idling mind / I could prod your hurt all night.”

As horrible as it sounds, E. coli might have been the best thing that could have happened to Wiesenfeld’s musical career. His brush with death has driven him towards thematic ground that few performers today are willing to explore.

His music has also undergone a parallel, but antithetical evolution: an unruly combination between sonic beauty and lexical gloominess makes Obsidian one of the most fascinating and courageous albums released so far this year.

The Velvet Underground — The Velvet Underground & Nico

Lou Reed was a former electroshock patient and occasional drug dealer who played guitar the way Ornette Coleman played saxophone. John Cale was a classically trained violist with an ear for the avant-garde. Sterling Morrison was a guitarist and reluctant bassist with a rock-and-roll spirit. Maureen Tucker was a keypunch operator who played along to the drums on her Bo Diddley records after work.

When Andy Warhol first heard these four play together as The Velvet Underground at the Cafe Bizarre in New York, he knew he had found the house band he was looking for.

He adopted them, had them play at his now-legendary studio The Factory, and his celebrity status gave them the creative freedom they needed to create one of the most audacious, unconventional albums of all time.

The Velvet Underground & Nico is an album about drug use, BDSM, prostitution and race, played by a band with no FM radio aspirations. The music is loud and unconventional, bathed in reverb and tape hiss, and it sounds like a live recording. Though Warhol is credited as producer, the real praise belongs to John Cale and engineer Norman Dolph, whose mixes range from the tense and claustrophobic to the lush and elaborate.

Warhol’s biggest contribution to the album was persuading The Velvets to allow German-born fashion model-turned-singer, Nico, to join the group. Her rich, enunciated vocals give gravitas to songs like “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “Femme Fatale,” inspired by Reed’s experiences with Warhol’s flamboyantly Bohemian social circle.

The album’s standout track however, is its seven-minute centerpiece “Heroin,” which is still one of the most compelling and moving songs ever written about drug use. Tucker’s drumbeat and Reed and Morrison’s twin guitars wax and wane to mirror the experience of a heroin high. Other songs like the viola-led “Venus in Furs” and barrelhouse-piano “I’m Waiting For the Man” are among the best the band ever wrote.

Although it took decades for The Velvet Underground & Nico to earn its deserved “essential” status, the album’s daring subject matter and experimental soundscapes still have the power to thrill new listeners. Few albums have had this much influence on music, and for good reason.

Peak Week June 10 – 15

By

-

June 10, 2013

By Daryn Wright

Eats

Tavola restaurant, a cozy little Italian joint, has its home in the West End on Robson St, and it’s got to have one of the most welcoming patios in town. The restaurant receives a 4.5 out of 5 star rating on Yelp, and part of this can be attributed to their reasonably priced yet high quality dishes. Tucked on the quieter end of Robson underneath a few overhanging trees, the restaurant is often bustling with guests enjoying a bottle of wine. The dishes are simple, sticking to the basics, and this is precisely why they succeed. Try a classic, like the gnocchi with brown sage butter, and pine nuts.

Beats

Color Magazine presents Hotel Takeover, a ramp party at The Burrard Hotel on June 15. What is a ramp party you ask? Well let me tell you! The Jamcouver 2013 skate teams will be announced, and there will be an actual skateboard ramp with “special features” to boot. The evening will consist of live music, artist rooms, food, drinks, and visuals. Expect performances by Humans, as well as DJ Genie, My!Gay!Husband!, Cherchez la Femme, Dale Evans, and Mandy-Lyn. If you get there before 9 p.m., you’ll catch the garage party and record release. Tickets are $35 for the entire evening.

Theats

The Cinematheque is holding its 5th annual Open House on June 15, at 12 p.m. There will be tours and activities, followed by free, all-ages screenings at 2 p.m. They’ll be showing Charlie Chaplin’s Easy Street with a live piano accompaniment by Sara Davis Buechner, as well as a showing of Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last! Guests will have the opportunity to attend guided tours through the projection booth, the Film Reference Library, and the West Coast Film Archives. The afternoon will also hold a film poster auction, a silent-film activity, and a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like contest. Plus, everyone gets a complimentary bag of popcorn!

Elites

Centre A introduces its new gallery space in Chinatown with the current exhibition by Khan Lee, titled hearts and arrows. According to the Korean-born, Vancouver-based artist, the title of the exhibit refers to the labour involved in an artist’s creation, and the intricate faceting of cut diamonds. Lee’s video work depicts the entire process of a man making an ice carving, recording the convergence of time and space, as he follows the artist’s daily routines and frustrations. The exhibit will be running until July 27.

Treats

The West End Farmers Market, the Trout Lake Farmers Market, and the Kitsilano Farmers Market have all been open for a couple of weeks now, and this Saturday, June 15, the Kerrisdale Village Farmers Market will also open its stands. There are tons of different types of vendors, including farm vendors, ranging from Fort Langley Garlic to Jane’s Honey Bees. There are also prepared food vendors, including Dundarave Olive Company and Earnest Ice Cream. You will also find some craft vendors, as well as miscellaneous service vendors offering services ranging from bike repairs to massage therapy. Check out the closest market to you, or venture into the city for some market hopping.

Yeti Yogurt is an elusive treat on a hot day

By

-

June 10, 2013

There’s a new reason to stay on the mountain this summer, and it involves froyo

By Rachel Braeuer
Photos by Vaikunthe Banerjee

If the only reason you can stand to be in Metrotown is for the soft serve frozen yogurt, be prepared to spend more time on the hill this summer. Yeti Yogurt just opened its premier Canadian location at Cornerstone, and it blows its competitors out of the water.

The Washington-based and family-owned yogurt chain, opened its doors on campus in mid-May and is set to open a second location in North Vancouver shortly. The choice to open on Burnaby Mountain first came down to luck, according to Shafiq Jiwani, the location’s manager and an SFU alum. He hadn’t liked what his realtor had shown him but had heard there was some development happening on the mountain, saw the space, and the rest is history.

Becoming part of the community is a focus for Yeti Yogurt and Jiwani, whose staff of 14 consists entirely of SFU students. Jiwani wants Yeti to be a place where people can come, relax, and just hang out.

Yeti Yogurt boasts a range of flavours that rotate seasonally. That’s where the comparison ends. The dairy products used are all local to Vancouver, something important to Jiwani. Rather than pay a 250 per cent tariff on American sourced dairy products like other purveyors of frozen treats, Yeti yogurt found a local company whose product matched their standards and is growth hormone-free.

Yeti has at least 16 flavours available at all times, which include low-fat, non-fat, lactose free, and vegan (soft serve sorbet, which I didn’t even know was a thing) options, with any potential allergens conveniently listed beside the flavour’s pull-handle. While an emphasis is placed on incorporating local raw materials, real and fresh ingredients are equally paramount. Flavours are made from actual fruit extract, and options like red velvet cake have actual elements of their namesake in them, besides the colour red.

Did I mention it was self-serve? Don’t get too excited, though: you have to pay by weight. They also have mochi in different flavours and those weird “berry” pearl things everyone seems to like so much, as well as all of the toppings you’d expect and then some. Cinnamon toast crunch? Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups? Sweetened condensed milk? Yes, please.

When I went, I loaded up with as many flavours as I could, which were still good even after they all melted together into brown soup. I thought my favourite was going to be the Greek plain and strawberry because it was the smoothest in texture (probably because of the fat content, but whatever), but the Washington Green Apple flavour was the dark horse that won this race.

It’s vegan (it’s actually sorbet, not frozen yogurt), and it’s amazing: just the right balance of tangy and sweet without any of the crystallization you might expect from a fruit flavour. It was so creamy I thought for sure it was yogurt until I checked the website to make sure I had gotten the name correct.

The banana flavour — which too often tastes like the Penicillin we had crammed down our throats after getting another public swimming pool-induced ear infection as children — is a subtle and grown-up flavour which pairs ridiculously well with the Himalayan Chocolate flavour you have the option of twisting it with.

If you’re on campus and you’re starving and want something cool, I can’t recommend this place enough. While I was there, a machine tech confided in me that of all the companies whose equipment he repaired, Yeti’s Yogurt was by far the best. I have to agree — you can’t really go wrong with cold sweet things, but even I was surprised by how right this was.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee

By

-

June 10, 2013