The First Crazy Weekend of Summer
Get ready for a busy weekend, Edmonton. (And the festivals are just getting started too.)
The 10th Royal Bison Craft Fair is at the Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre. This one’s gonna be good, with Culina serving up food, and more craftsters than you can shake a knitted-stick at.
Not too far from the Royal Bison, it’s the first East Whyte Street Party. The block party, including Eva Sweet Waffles!, is on 100 Street, between Whyte Avenue and 81st Ave. Businesses up and down Whyte (between 99 Street and the tracks) will have specials and deals for you too. We’ll see you there!
A few blocks away from that…the City of Edmonton is talking food and agriculture policy, outside of the Old Strathcona Farmers’ Market.
Sticking with the City…Saturday sees the 3rd annual ETS Community Fair at West Edmonton Mall. And Big Bin Events continue, so you can get rid of all of your old couches.
The Edmonton Energy are in action tonight, playing the USA All-Stars. (The Edmonton Energy are our IBL basketball team.)
In music…Hale Hale, Raptors, and Randy Graves are playing the Pawn Shop tonight with Andrew W.K. So you know it’ll be a party. Anvil is at the Starlite Room. Rusty Reed’s and the Sherbrooke Community League are putting on the “Blossom into the Blues” festival this weekend. Opera Nuova’s Vocal Arts Festival is on right now too. On Sunday…Timbre Timbre at the Avenue Theatre
On Saturday watch out for people running around Edmonton in the City Chase (kind of an Amazing Race style event) and then on Sunday, you’ll see folks running and biking in the Subway Coronation Triathlon – which brings with it road closures.
On the political side of things…the Alberta Party’s got Big Idea Night to kick-off its leadership convention this weekend…and there will be a rally at the Alberta Legislature Sunday, to pressure the provincial government into funding education and avoiding hundreds of teaching cuts this fall…
SEE Magazine might be disappearing, but Merge is back. They re-launch with a party tonight.
You can still catch new one-act plays from local playwrights at the Walterdale.
There are always movies to be watched.
On Sunday, buy some baked goods to help the Slave Lake fire victims. Never before has gorging yourself on brownies been so helpful.
You can wash down all those brownies and cupcakes with beers. Zombeers.
On Now: Alberta Bound Tattoo Arts Festival
Alberta Bound Tattoo Arts Festival is underway at the Shaw Conference Centre until Sunday (Photo by Terry Gent)
Tattoo culture from around the world has exploded into Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre, and there’s no exaggeration in the “around the world” part. I met artists tonight from Yamanashi, Japan; Ibiza and Madrid, Spain; Detroit, Michigan and Lockport, Illinois; and from cities all over Canada. They’ve come out in force for the Alberta Bound Tattoo & Arts Festival, which has taken over the Shaw for three colourful days.
Part trade show, part retail experience, and part giant artist-filled tattoo shop, the festival has just about everything you could want that relates to tattoos. Nearly every booth you walk past has at least one artist bent over a human canvas, but there are also clothing stores, curiosity shops, flash and tattoo supply stores, hand-made tattoo equipment, pin-up stickers, custom hot rods, personalized zombie portraits, and even a complimentary ink station, where the artists on scene can try out new colours and new brands that have been donated by the companies that make them.
Edmonton tattoo artists make a huge showing too, one that tattooed Edmontonians can be proud of. I honestly had no idea there were so many shops in our city, and that’s speaking as a tattooed person myself! Familiar names like Raptor, Urge, Strange City and Ritualistics are all there, but there are also newer shops and even established shops from other cities that have moved to Edmonton to set up business here, such as D&M from Fort McMurray.
Bear's Skin Art Booth (Photo by Terry Gent)
At the Bear’s Skin Art booth, five tattoo chairs sit under the largest banner at the festival, and all of them are occupied. Jordan, one of Bear’s staffers, tells us that right when the show opened at two o’clock, they booked solidly through until the end of the (more…)
