Live at Luzzara: One Last Time
So, if you have been around here for a while you know we enjoy a coffee or seven. And you probably know some of the best coffee and conversation in Edmonton is found at Luzzara Coffee Bar, on Whyte Avenue – specifically, East Whyte.
But owner Sarah (who until recently was the only employee) is closing up shop after the building’s owners decided to try and rent out the old Top Gear Scooters AND Luzzara space together. It’s going to be East Whyte’s loss. And, really, Twitter’s loss. Since anyone on Twitter knows it’s the place to grab a free cookie on Friday and meet folks offline.
We’re going to miss Luzzara. So, we’ll be there, live, from noon until 1pm. Chat with us live at Livestream or on Twitter. Then get down there for a great coffee before it’s gone for good (at 4pm).
Oh, and you can watch us live below.
Internet and Coffee Headlines
The mayor thinks Edmonton should contract out more of its snow removal. This, as the City ponders buying more equipment to deal with snow. Hey, it’s totally an option. But…when there’s a big storm, don’t we always hear about how many of the “on-call” contractors don’t show up right away? Whatever we do heading into the end of 2011, it’s got to be different. I think it’s time to suck up the pride and copy ideas from other cities.
The mayor also wants more river valley money.
There are a lot of stories on the Scona Road construction today, but the Journal’s captures the neighbourhood feelings best. That’s my opinion, but I think people in Old Strathcona are more upset about a third lane coming off the James McDonald Bridge (the merge lane will be extended right up to Saskatchhewan Drive) than they are about six months of construction.
Sure, people are upset about the total closure (except some local access) of Scona Road, but work needs to be done. No, it’s the lack of consultation about the extra lane of traffic that’s most upsetting – as I’ve heard around the community. It also says, to me, that every time we take a step forward with LRT expansion and bus route improvements we take a step back by adding lanes for personal vehicles.
Edmonton’s police disciplinary process might need a tweak or two. One officer’s been winding his way through for eight years, to finally have the charges dropped.
The Edmonton Public School Board is the first board in Alberta to draft a policy on discrimination over sexual orientation.
Leaky roof? Sounds like you need an entirely new house. Or something.
You want more Edmonton news? Sure you do. (more…)
Open mics
I’ve been meaning to mention this as a possible event for some time.
This city is crawling with open mic nights. Which are a great way to show off that amazing voice of yours, and your new songs.
It’s also a good way to find that next big voice, or artist, that’s going to appear on the Edmonton scene. You know you want to be the person who saw them when.
YEG Live and Vue Weekly have listings where you’ll find open mics, open stages, and open jams.
Whether it’s a coffee house, pub, Morango’s Tek Cafes (we’re big fans), acoustic, blues, or jazz, there’s an open mic night for you. The bonus advantage to checking out open mic night is that you won’t be paying exorbitant ticket prices and still might hear some fantastic music.
Live from Luzzara
Come on down to Luzzara and meet this blue fish. Yes, it's wearing a tiara.
You know, it’s been some time since we tried out the whole live on the Internet thing. You never know when we’ll actually need to use those “skills” for something important, so it’s time for some live Internetin’.
This morning I’m taking a page out of Sally’s book e-book and broadcasting live from a coffee shop while doing stuff. Lucky for me (and probably you) I’m at Luzzara, which is a great little shop on Whyte Avenue, with the always-bubbly, super coffee-knowledgeable Sarah Jackson. Luzzara’s a hub of east Whyte and you don’t know who will stop in…
Also, I’ll be putting together today’s Headlines while broadcasting, providing you with spectacular video of me typing and copying links. Yeah, I know what you like.
You should be able to watch the “show” at the top of this post in an embedded video player (try refreshing the page if it’s not there) or at our livestream.com page. Drop us a comment, tweet at us, or join the livestream chat and I’ll do my best to talk with you while this all goes down.
Gregg’s quiet coffee
By Gregg Beever
Coffee is a relatively new thing for me. I have always had an aversion to bitter tastes, and coffee is as bitter as liquids come – unless you’ve developed a taste for battery acid, a.k.a. Tim Horton’s coffee.
In the last year I have warmed up to the coffee bean and its deliverance of hyperactivity. On the weekends I regularly take an enjoyable stroll down to the newly renovated Wild Earth Bakery for a cup of mild roast.
Wild Earth coffee may consistently make my stomach go boom, boom, but I drink it anyway. I love having a tiny little coffee shop two blocks from my cosy residential dwelling, and I especially love the walk, as short as it is.
My apartment sits nestled in a urban forest of old growth. Long branches, thick with brilliant green leaves, sift sunlight down through to the sidewalk while summer birds sing to the melody of rustling deciduous.
It is quiet, and calming.
That is until I get to 99th Street where the din of steady traffic finds my ears begging for silence.
While celebrating this year’s Canada Day with my regular pilgrimage for coffee, I thought “wouldn’t it would be great if Edmonton took a holiday from traffic?” Just one day where everyone parked their cars and the only the dull hum of the ETS would fill the streets.
Let’s forget for a moment how logistically impossible that would be.
Think about it, one day out the year when the city’s white noise is replaced by the soft sounds of feet traveling the sidewalks; children laughing and playing in the vacant streets; and conversations of your neighbors enjoying a peaceful day in Canada’s sunniest city.
Imagine Whyte Ave. littered east to west in musicians and street performers setting up shop in the middle of the road, or an impromptu game of ball hockey being playing on the High Level Bridge.
What if, for just one day, you could challenge your friends to a foot race down the length of Calgary trail? Or set up the world’s most painful slip and slide down Bellamy Hill? Wouldn’t that be amazing?
Until that day I’ll just have to enjoy my short walks for coffee where, for a moment, everything is beautifully silent.
Gregg Beever writes amazingly sarcastic movie previews for us, among other things. We had no idea he was so introspective.
May 19 Edmonton Headlines
I wonder if there's any vacancy at the Mayfair for the long weekend.
GOOD MORNING, EDMONTON.
Yikes. I am way too coffee-jittery today. But I still want another coffee…
Don’t look at me like that! I can have as many cafe lattes as I want.
Wow, I’m really tap, tap, tapping on the keyboard while waiting for tabs to load. And I’m kinda shaky. I guess it just means I should drink coffee on a more regular basis, none of this skipping a day or two stuff.
If I can find a balance, and avoid the crash, it will all be for the best. I’ll need the energy to get through the day AND tonight’s zoning meeting over at MacEwan University.
Not that I need caffeine to make it through a good zoning discussion…
from the Edmonton Journal:
St. Albert LRT route unveiled (Cue the fanfare.)
McKinney Park in limbo (What do we do?)
North West Upgrading selected for Redwater bitumen refinery
Busier year ahead for Edmonton homebuilders
Alberta bike race ‘not impossible’ (Should we have a Tour of Alberta?)
Edmonton mobile tea house creates own town square
from the Edmonton Sun:
Edmonton spending 160K on singing recycling bin program (It’s nice to know how much it costs, but I get the feeling by including that in the headline you want us to be upset. If I did the math right, the “singing” is only about $4,000 of that tab.)
Stuttering treatment works (The U of A leading the way.)
Opening up about Inflammatory Bowel Diseases
from Metro Edmonton:
Shakespeare festival a ‘no holds bard’ event
Countrywide drive stops by with 3,000 pairs of undies
from 630CHED/iNews880:
Ideas for CCA welcome (What do you want to see at the City Centre Airport?)
Edmonton breaks record (It was HOT.)
from CBC Edmonton:
Alberta to hire 1,800 nurses by December (So we do have a nursing shortage. Did? Don’t?)
Alberta underestimating long-term care shortage: NDP
Alberta fire forces evacuation alert for 72 homes (But there’s good news!)
from CTV Edmonton:
St. Albert city council votes to scale back proposed Habitat for Humanity build
Low lake water levels reported in six Alberta parks
Alright, I’ll see you guys later. Oh no…now even NASA is against the oilsands. This comes as we hear Alberta could be the U.S.’s best friend, in oil.
To Morango’s We Go!
FACT: At all times, Samsonow is on the prowl for Edmonton things that you might be interested in.
FACT: On Saturday, he & I made a field trip to Forest Heights (in honor of tax season).
FACT: We made a terrible miscalculation in transit routes and wound up walking for like 45 minutes to get to our destination.
DOUBLE-FACT: Google Maps transit information and @etsinfo are the greatest team ever. @etsinfo being a Twitter account you simply tweet your bus stop number to for the next 4 buses to pass. For. The. Win.
This is all relevant because it was this random trip to Forest Heights, and our subsequent attempts to find a way home that didn’t require walking as much, that led us to Morango’s tek-Cafes.
Yep, even though there’s only one, the name is plural. This is something I respect, because it says that Morango (whoever that is) thinks BIG. 
Morango’s is in this weird strip mall, next to a dentist and a tanning salon, and my guess is that it may have, at one time, been a Smitty’s or something. The seating is plentiful, the staff is friendly, the place is huge. It’s an Internet cafe, with video gaming, that hosts open mic nights and serves waffles. And I should probably just stop writing now, because my guess is that you aren’t reading this anymore – you’ve immediately leapt to your feet to go get some waffles.
Basically, it’s the best place in the world and you should stop whatever you’re doing right now and go to there. The coffee (which we actually ordered this fine day) was pretty good too.
My pervert cam pictures don’t do Morango’s justice.
If you look behind the plants on the left you can sort of spot an aquarium. Which is totally worth noting.
Breakfast with Friends and Neighbours
Continuing our long and storied tradition of eating breakfast at places around Edmonton and writing about it, I present to you our take on Whyte Avenue stalwart “Friends and Neighbours Cafe.” (10834 82 Avenue)
This is the kind of place where you can get yourself some decent eggs and bacon, and coffee. Plus, the place is kind of small and jammed with tables so it’s totally good for eavesdropping.
Not that I encourage that kind of thing.
What a nice, cozy little place.
The decor is all over the map, with green vinyl booths, tables in the middle of the place, some east-Asian panache here and there. (A note to bathroom people, they are tiny bathrooms.)
That far east influence finds its way onto the menu too. There are some fish-egg combos which I have managed to stay away from as well.
But breakfast regulars like bacon and eggs, omelets, eggs benny and french toast are all here.
Sally is the French Toast Queen, and I usually go for eggs and bacon (or some kind of breakfast burrito), but this time around I ordered first and astounded all when I ordered french toast.
The tension was palpable as everyone waited to see if Sally would stick with her usual order.
She did.
Man cannot live on french toast alone, he needs bacon. And coffee. And orange juice.
The french toast was good times. There were no leftover egg-bits hanging on, the portions were a good size and everything went down well, when covered in maple syrup.
If you find yourself driving by Route 99 thinking “It looks pretty busy, I don’t know if I’ll get in,” why not zip around the corner and head down to 108-109 Street for a nice meal with your Friends and Neighbours?
3.8 Power Rangers out of 5
p.s. Friends and Neighbours appears to either be expanding into the old Nokomis location, or adding some kind of pastry/dessert shop. Stay tuned on that one!
104 Street rocks my socks
Old buildings to the left of me, new ones to the right...
Sometimes, living near Whyte Avenue, I forget there are other pedestrian-friendly areas of the city that are totally sweet. It can happen in a city that so often reminds me that I shouldn’t venture more than 20 steps without something on four wheels carrying me around.
But 104 Street, between 100 and 104 Avenues, might be one of the best spots to enjoy a high-density, walkable urban area.
Thinking about it, I don’t know why the City of Edmonton doesn’t just make 104 Street pedestrian-only (say, the same blocks that are closed north-south during the market). Businesses and condos already have entrances in the back lanes, and people in the area have to adjust for Saturdays through the summer. I’d settle for pedestrian-only in daylight hours, but all week. (Points to e-mail my city councillors with, I guess.)
Great, fairly traded, coffee and yummy cookie.
Enjoying a fine latte at Credo Coffee, I had time to think about what this street is becoming. Of course, summer Saturdays, 104 Street is shut-down to traffic of the vehicular kind from Jasper to 103 Avenue for the City Market. You can’t get much more pedestrian-friendly.
The market’s not new, and while Sobey’s Urban Fresh has added a livability to the area, we’re now seeing a small business boom as work on new condos nears completion. The street is also retaining some of the older brick buildings, which is always great to see.
You’ve got one of my favourite stores, and one that speaks to a sustainable city; Carbon. It’s got plenty of stuff for around the home (and for every room) which makes it both a destination and a neighbourhood store.
You can't shop much more green than this.
There’s the Blue Plate Diner, always a great choice for local and delicious food. You’ve got tapas (Tzin), wine (deVine) and furniture and home decor at 29 Armstrong, all of which make the street a stop for those looking to shop.
Some of them cater to an evening out or a great brunch and other shops are for people living in the neighbourhood. There’s a tailor and hair dresser, which could be destination stores but mostly speak to living close by.
With an LRT stop right underneath Jasper and 104 it’s clearly an area that’s going to appeal to those looking to ditch the car a little more often, or completely.
104 Street might not qualify as a hidden gem but it’s worth a reminder to check out this strip, especially on a Saturday when closed to traffic. It’s nice to know that even in the city of cars we have places that cater to the walking public.
Could we go all pedestrian all the time?
Cheap coffee
Why are you still here? Go get discount coffee!
No, Second Cup is not a local business per se.
But you’re local. And you like coffee.
And I bet you like coffee that’s half-price.
So head over to the Second Cup at 10620 82 Avenue and buy yourself a latte for the price of a cup of regular joe. (It’s about a 50% discount.) You’ll have a little extra change in your pocket and an extra spring in your step from the caffeine.
The deal appears to be just at this location of Second Cup. So…get a move on.
No festival too small
Shopping: Turkish style
The colours and culture of Turkey were on display this weekend.
While on my usual trek to the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market Saturday I stumbled into one of Edmonton’s smaller festivals.
The Edmonton Turkish Festival took over Dr. Wilbert McIntyre Park for the weekend.
Like any good festival celebrating ethnic or geographic heritage, there was food, music, dance, crafts, jewelry and other goods to introduce everyday Edmontonians to Turkish culture.
You got to take the cup and saucer home!
While enjoying my kebab and my Turkish coffee* (I would have chosen a fruit-less and slightly more manly tiny cup had I known you got to take it home) I wondered if Edmonton even had a large Turkish population.
Uh…we do not. According to the 2006 Census just 1,250 people describe themselves as being Edmontonians of Turkish descent. So good for those guys for throwing together a yearly festival!
We’ve got lots of parks, a short summer worth jamming festivals into and lots of proud Edmontonians willing to share their history and delicacies (I’m looking at you, tiny coffee) with us. Just enjoy.
I hope the Edmonton Turkish Festival is back next year. I want a complete set of tiny coffee cups.
Collect the whole set.
*the Turkish Coffee was strong, sweet and just delicious
