(Update: I’ve added a video story, and slightly altered the wording of this post from it’s first version Monday.)

We’re glad we did hear that SOS.

SOS Fest rocked Whyte Avenue this weekend. 150+ bands and musicians…20+ venues…wow.

We were talking about it for three days at a special “on assignment” blog.

I really enjoyed Dead Ghosts, out of Vancouver. They were probably my favourite band of the festival. The Joe tried to tear Wunderbar apart with his set, as part of an Old Ugly showcase. Cadence Weapon blew the roof off the Pawn Shop. And The Sherry-Lee Wisor trio kicked things off for me, setting the bar quite high.

I also uploaded a lot of my photos to my Flickr account, and added them to the edmontonian Flickr pool.

Plus, a few of my interviews from the weekend are now playing at our YouTube channel. (The story on the festival – embedded above – is also at our YouTube now.)

There are more photos, videos, links, reviews, and thoughts at our SOS Fest blog.

We’ll always take your own stories, experiences, photos and videos.

Check Twitter for more comments and updates from people who went to the shows, and played, this weekend.

That's Gregg Beever buying a CD from SOS performer Carrie Hryniw. At Funky Pickle, of all places.

Some friends, and friends of friends, enjoy their wedding meal at Culina-Mill Creek. So don't worry, dress is usually a little more casual at the restaurant.

Taking the Latin word for kitchen and cooking, and combining it with some Ukrainian heritage, Brad Lazarenko christened his neighbourhood bistro “Culina,” six years ago.

Growing up in a Ukrainian home he knew the translation of the highbush cranberry plant was known as “kalyna” in his parents’ native tongue. That sealed the deal on the restaurant’s name.

“The name is very important,” Brad says. “I see a name [of other restaurants] and think ‘You’re not going to make it.’ I knew I didn’t want to be a ‘Brad’s Grill.’”

Culina-Mill Creek’s name is one of any number of things that make the establishment memorable.

For one, this cozy, 40-seat restaurant is impressive without being pretentious; it’s the sort of place you can wear a suit or dress one night, and return the next in your favourite jeans and feel just as comfortable.

“It’s my baby,” says the owner. “Well, my first baby.”

That correction comes as Lazarenko notes Culina isn’t merely the six-year-old venue off 99^th Street, in the Mill Creek neighbourhood (9914-89 Avenue). There’s also Culina-Highlands, in north-central Edmonton (operated by Lazarenko’s sister Cindy), Culina catering, and three wine bars know as Bibo (the first is one door over from Culina-Mill Creek; the other two are in British Columbia).

You need to try Culina's brunch. They're always busy for reason.

Culina-Mill Creek blends neighbourhood bistro with some of the finest fusion you’ll find on a menu. And it strikes that balance as best that could be done. “I always tell people it’s ethnic comfort food. That puts people at ease.”

Brad’s sister, Cindy Lazarenko, owner and chef over at Culina Highlands, agrees. “It’s all the foods that he loves, but it’s very comforting food.  It’s a lot of like starch, and meat, and vegetable side dish.”

Culina-Mill Creek serves lunch, dinner and very popular brunches.

“It’s food I like to eat myself,” says Brad. “Every dish is something I’ve eaten and wanted to recreate. I look at Culina as a compilation, a mix tape.”

When we meet, Lazarenko looks the part of relaxed business owner. He is wearing jeans, a shirt with the top button undone, and comes to the table with a slight tousle in his hair. The owner comes through, as he monitors the restaurant through the conversation, greets guests (including a business partner in from B.C.) and occasionally fiddles with his cell phone, ready to take on emergency needs of his businesses.

Culina-Mill Creek (as it’s now known with the expansion of the Culina brand) was the culmination of Lazarenko’s self-education in the kitchen and the restaurant business.

One of the places his family lived when he was a kid was right around the corner from where Culina-Mill Creek currently sits. Brad found himself in Kelowna by the end of high school though.

“That got me into the restaurant business,” he says of the move west. “I moved to Vancouver (shortly after) with Cindy, she got me a job at Mama Rosa’s.

Mama Rosa’s would be the first restaurant job, and Brad talks about it with a hint of nostalgia in his voice.

Of “Mama” he recalls “She taught me how to taste food.”

He also had a chance, at the age of 18, to do just about everything in the restaurant, from the kitchen to the front of house.

After that stint in Vancouver his passion for food was ignited. He found his way back to Edmonton and a number of years at the precursor to Old Strathcona’s Packrat Louie: Boccalino’s, on Jasper. He learned even more about the business that would become his life from Boccalino’s owner Peter Johner.

“You’ve got to be a sponge,” Lazarenko says.” You need to see both the good and bad.”

In the kitchen, he feels like he’s just recently found confidence with Culina’s menu.

“I feel like I just finished university, like now I can apply my knowledge and go learn more. I want to go to Spain and Italy, get inspired. I think we now, just now, have a menu where I’ll look at the menu in 10 years and it will mostly be the same items. I want to be that Bistro Praha, Cafe Select, where you have mainstays people come back for.”

The self-taught chef says he’s about putting flavours together and balancing the dish. Presentation, colours and flair all come second to taste.

“Once people mash into it and taste it, they can have selective memory of how it looked when it arrived.”

He sticks to the basic flavours of salty, sweet, sour and bitter, making sure none overpowers the other when you sit down to eat at Culina.

“The four tastes, that’s how I train apprentices. I ask them ‘Why is there lemon in that,’ ‘Why are you doing that? If you don’t have the basic balance of the dish it won’t matter what else you had, which herbs.”

Lazarenko has an example, and as he talks about putting together food he’s animated, his arms motioning as if he’s putting together your next meal.

“Thai soup. They squeeze lime in at the end. That’s not to add lime flavour, it’s to balance the stock, it’s a fish stock and salty. The lime, you could do lemon, it cuts that saltiness.”

“A lot of people look at recipes and say ‘Oh, I don’t have that,’ but what is it? That’s your salt, so use another item that’s salty.

The amalgamation doesn’t end with the Culina menu.

It might not be Brad's idea, but it is a great addition to the table.

“Is putting water in wine bottles my genius?” he asks as he motions to such a bottle on a nearby table. “No, that’s Bin 941,” (in Vancouver).

“ Candle bags?” He excitedly picks up the one on our table.

“I was at a place in Cologne, Germany and said ‘That’s so fucking cool,’ I came back here and did it.”

“I was in New York, at Mario Batali’s wine bar, and said to our designer ‘This is what I want in our wine bar (in Nelson).”

Speaking of Bibo, there’s one just two doors over from Culina-Mill Creek (it was first known as Passa Tempo) and two in B.C.; in Nelson and Osoyoos.

In Nelson, the wine bar has become a full-menu restaurant.

“It’s a good problem to have, people want to come and want to eat. But we’re feeling the repercussions,” he says.”

“We didn’t plan for that; the kitchen wasn’t designed for it. There’s labour, food costs. We were shopping at the grocery store and should have had a supplier. It’ll correct itself.”

That confidence of correction may come from the fact Lazarenko hasn’t had to close a restaurant. He owns the five Culina group restaurants and catering business, and he’s part owner of Edmonton’s “Soul Soup.”

“I’d rather be doing $30,000 a month and making money than $100,000 and losing money.”

It seems unlikely, though, that Culina-Mill Creek will have to draw that distinction. Their culinary style is attracting no shortage of loyal customers. In fact, Edmontonians Heath Sperling and Mina Hideshima recently tied the knot at Culina Mill Creek.

The food at Culina never lasts long. You should try and savour it though.

“What originally drew us to Culina was their use of local producers and comforting food,” explains Hideshima. “We always love to go to the downtown farmer’s market so a restaurant that used some of those vendors was a big plus. “

Hideshima says she and Sperling originally intended on having a larger wedding, and approached Culina Catering to do the food.

“After trying their food and making the decision to get married a year early…we started to entertain the idea of having it at the restaurant.”

“[The] goal was for friends and family to gather around delicious food, relax and have a great time,” she says. “We planned the entire day around our meal including the ceremony site.”

It was a choice that was applauded by guests.

“They loved the food so much that when one table got a second serving of bourbon glazed bison short ribs they cheered so loudly the rest of the guests thought it was meant for us to kiss,” Hideshima laughs.

And Culina-Mill Creek’s success is being echoed by the chain’s other Edmonton location.

Across town, Lazarenko’s sister, Cindy, runs Culina-Highlands, recently named one of Canada’s ten best new restaurants by Air Canada’s in-flight magazine.

Cindy had been one half of Bacon, a popular local eatery. She bought out her partner and re-opened the restaurant as another arm of the Culina brand in October 2008. Unlike Culina-Mill Creek, in the Highlands they focus on Ukrainian food.

It’s a large part of the Lazarenko’s background, says Cindy, and one area of cuisine Brad doesn’t do at the original Culina.

“I said we do everything, but we don’t really do Ukrainian food, and that’s kind of how it started,” she explains. “It just felt like absolutely the right thing.”

With Culina’s imprint firmly planted on Edmonton, Cindy is likely bracing for new-found popularity with the in-flight magazine story, and Brad may find his next steps take him back to B.C. on a more permanent basis.

“I just met a nice woman in Nelson. I might move there to be with her. I’m also thinking about teaching a kids’ cooking class.”

——

For more information on the Culina family of restaurants, go to their website. You can also see what the Culina gang is up to at their new blog.

Find out what soup’s on by following Soul Soup on Twitter.

The timing of this story couldn’t be better/worse with news of a new sexual assault in the university-U south area. Police aren’t saying the new assault IS connected but they also note that they can’t rule things out just yet. Either way, it’s troubling for that section of the city and, really, for everyone. Police are on the hunt for clues and tips.

One of the Garneau Sisterhood posters near the U of A.

After the school year began I noticed new posters going up around the U of A area. They were from the Garneau Sisterhood, which sprang up last year, when the Garneau rapist was part of police and community vernacular. As they identify themselves, they are “feisty concerned citizens in the Garneau area and the larger Edmonton community who are organizing and mobilizing to catch the most recent serial rapist in the neighbourhood, challenge the culture of violence and reclaim safe spaces for women in their communities.”

I e-mailed the Sisterhood to find out more about their visible re-emergence. I thought the new posters had something to do with the beginning of a new school year, and the influx of students who wouldn’t have heard (or be hearing, due to our news cycles of breaking news) about the Garneau rapes.

The Sisterhood wrote: “In terms of the new posters, they were mostly in response to discussions we had around the results of what happened in Millwoods (another series of sexual assaults). In that sense, they were not to do with the beginning of a new school year, but the decision to put them up in the university area was with the idea that it might introduce a large group of people to the GS.”

The crimes in Mill Woods had kept the Sisterhood busy trying to continue wide, public, dialogue about sex crimes, police and media responses to such, and what people could do.

“In terms of what sparked the poster campaign, the process was basically this: we heard about the Millwoods rapes when the police released the info. We were reminded of what happened to Jane Doe in Toronto – repeat sexual assaults that followed a pattern, the police having some information about the offender and the pattern, the police not sharing that information with the public, and finally, someone else getting raped,” the Sisterhood said.

“When we talked about it as a group we had a lot of different and complicated ideas about what we would have liked to see the police do differently, but couldn’t come to a consensus on one final solution. Part of it was that we didn’t have enough information in order to say something concrete about what we would want the police to do. We felt like there really needs to be room for discussion and criticism about police and media responses to stuff like this. Finally, we felt like a big gap exists between what the police know and what the community knows, and we were hoping that some questions/discussions could bridge that a bit. That is why we decided to ask the public (the real experts) about their opinions, experiences, and needs.”

The new posters have included questions, and the collective is getting responses. That troubles them.

“…unsettling in terms of how many people have experiences with sexual assault. We’re running the campaign a bit longer to see what people have to say and then want to create something (a zine, for instance) out of people’s answers to make them available to the community and police.”

Now, if you read the Edmonton Journal story on the sexual assault that just happened in Belgravia, you’d have noticed a professor criticizing the police warning to not answer your door if there’s a stranger. That’s the kind of criticism the Sisterhood has talked about: the fact that telling people to hide in their homes and be wary is “blaming the victim.”

That’s not all the Garneau group wants to see change.

“Media representations and reports of rape concern us for a number of reasons.  First, the media tends to portray sexual assault as a rare and shocking occurrence when, in reality, it is frighteningly common. Second, the media portrays sexual assault as ‘bad sex’ rather than an act of violence. For example, in the Roman Polanski case, we see articles saying that he ‘had sex with’ a 13-year-old.  He didn’t ‘have sex’ with her – he sexually assaulted her.”

The Sisterhood expands on that point. “Instead of ‘kissing,’ when it’s sexual assault, it’s someone forcing his/her tongue down someone else’s throat; instead of oral sex, it’s forced oral-genital contact, etc… Finally, we feel that the media usually reinforces the idea that the police are the main experts in dealing with sexual assault.  We saw this as a problem especially in the case of the Garneau assaults when they advised women to ‘lock their doors and windows, not go out late at night, etc…’ putting the responsibility on women themselves to not get raped.”

“In our opinion, there are numerous expert positions, such as front line workers at sexual assault centres, counselors, professors, people who have experienced sexual assault, who recognize the danger in these kinds of ‘tips’ and it is important to hear their voices as well. It would also be helpful if the media reported information on sexual assault such as: the majority of sexual assaults are perpetrated by people you know; 1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men have experienced sexual assault (or will). Both the media and police are so influential in public perception, and in order to combat common rape myths and misconceptions it would be great if they could consistently provide educational and supportive messages rather than reinforcing rape culture.  We believe that changing rape culture is possible, and we all have a responsibility in making it happen!”

The Garneau Sisterhood is an ever-changing group of people looking to “challenge the culture of sexual violence.” In that way they don’t see the Sisterhood as a stand-alone group.

“It can be anyone who does this,” they say.

“Sure, there is a group of people who meet to respond to e-mails and get certain group actions done, but the GS is more of an outlet for different voices that are not often heard in the public spaces around sexual violence issues. To make it easier for people to get involved with this conversation, we are working on making our original posters available on our website so that people can poster in their own areas. After all, the Garneau Sisterhood is all of us!”

We’ve briefly mentioned the CJSR FunDrive in the previous weeks, but now we’re getting all up in your grill about it.

Yes, CJSR is 25 years old and the only way it’s going to keep on living to see more birthdays is with a little help from its friends. You, and everyone in Edmonton, would be the friends. And you know that you can host a show on CJSR, right?  Well, you do now.

We swung through community radio HQ Wednesday, as the FunDrive and fun were kicking off. There were cupcakes then, but they are probably all eaten by now.

Check the video for more info about the whole shebang, including good times at the big closing party at The Artery.

By the way, CJSR isn’t the only Edmonton radio station that looks to listeners for support. CKUA is Alberta-wide and listener-supported. They have their own donation drives through the year. It’s amazing that so much local and indie-radio can exist.

Oh, and here’s something not in the story, CJSR is hosting a record swap this weekend. I’ll admit to being enough of a music nerd to own records and an actual record player.

Make those phones ring for radio!

Ladies and gents, meet the lovely Brenda Kerber. She is a cool, dynamic, very informed lady who has loads of interesting things to say on topics that would make the majority of us blush.

As owner and operator of the Traveling Tickle Trunk, an adult toy shop located on Whyte Ave (9923 82 Ave.), Brenda has somehow managed to give us a better option than either the faux-romantic-cheesiness of a “Love Stop” or the gross-now-I-need-to-shower-ness of a “Centerfolds” (sorry, Centerfolds, but we both know it’s true).

The Tickle Trunk is cute, friendly and lady-run; they also have a bang-up internet business, and their storefront also does double time as a both a retailer and a community hub, where the Tickle Trunk teaches all kinds of interesting workshops about sexual health. Go Brenda!

(Editor’s Note: we’re all grownups here, but save this item for home viewing, as it isn’t safe for work.)