Pubs, Clubs, and Bars—Opening, Closing, and Revamping Kali Thurber, A&E Editor The last year has been a virtu- al nightmare for good Vancouver venues. It all start- ed on New Year's Eve with the closing of one of the greatest offbeat restaurant/bars that we had going for us. The Sugar Refinery shut down with a raging party (at which I witnessed my best friend steal the mike out of Carolyn Mark’s hand to sing a song of her own). That seemed to start a bit of a fad that many other great bars sadly fol- lowed. But it’s OK, things are gonna work out just fine, you'll see. The Cobalt closed a while back because they were suf- fering from pretty much every problem you could run into managing a hardcore bar—liquor license difficul- ties, poor public relations, and most of all, terrible, hor- rible plumbing. Now there’s good and bad news regarding the state of the punk scene. The good news is that wendythirteen, the previous co-owner and manager of The Cobalt, has moved on to The Astoria. The Astoria (now called The Asbalt—As- toria, Co-balt, get it?) is a dirty shithole down on East Hastings, which means that the spirit of The Cobalt will probably live on. wendythir- teen told me that she’s got the same booking agent, the same sound guy, and she’s the same old owner from what was pretty much the only place for punks to go. She also said that her ex is running the show at The Cobalt now, and according to her (and I wouldn't argue with a woman who classifies her venue as Vancouvers most hardcore bar) she did all the work before The Cobalt shut down, so there’s little hope for it now. However, the story at The Cobalt was a little different. I was told, “as far as the open- ing went, that was all hardcore and punk-ass, and the main shows will be the same...mostly.” It sounds like hip-hop will be a regular occurrence, and also the “underground scene”—what- ever that means. So basically, if you used to like The Cobalt; you now love The Asbalt, and if you like hip- hop, well Christ, you can go AGS §=did = Ener almost anywhere for that. There was also a rumour about The Piccadilly Pub closing down, and I even attended a Save The Pic Party a month ago, which basically consisted of a few 16-year- olds playing heavy metal while their girlfriends got drunk and puked in the bath- room. But the rumour was convoluted. The Pic did close down for a couple of weeks, but it was just for renova- tions, and they're back and going strong now. So you see, there are still places to go, and music to hear. Vancouver still has a lot going for it, and now the only trouble you'll have is scraping enough of your stu- dent loan up to go out at all. For that kind of advice, how- ever, youll have to go elsewhere. wendythirteen Poetrt Slam Kali Thurber, A&E Editor Slam poetry is a relatively new genre in the artistic world, so here’s a short bio of its birth and livelihood. Marc Smith, a construction worker and poet, found- ed slam poetry in 1986 at a Chicago jazz club called the Get Me High Lounge. By summer of that year he had instituted the basic rules of slam poetry, and started the first weekly slam competition, which has since spawned slams all over North America and Europe. I can hear you asking now, “but what exactly is slam poetry?” Well, according to the host at the biweekly Poetry Slam at Café Duex Soleil, “slam poetry is the punk-rock of poetry.” Which makes sense, because while punk was revolutionary in its birth, and gave anarchy a musical voice, I have to say that far too often it, well, sucks. Slam poetry is sort of the same in this respect. It’s poetry for the wannabe revolutionary, musical words for the tone- deaf, performance art for the clumsy. Of course, that’s my own biased opinion. A less rude, and probably more correct definition would be something like, slam poetry is the competitive art of performance poetry. Artists are encouraged to concentrate on the delivery of their words, rather than just the words them- selves. This is all well and good in theory, but something seems to have gone wrong along the way. If poets are pretentious than there isn’t even a word for slam poets (God, I hate when that happens). They're tortured in an unbearably self-deprecating way, and maintain a general principal of pushing their art into every day con- versations so there is literally no way to get away from them. One has to ask if it’s worth it to be considered an artist if in doing so you become a completely intolerable person to associate with. OK, now that I’ve gotten my obvious dis- taste for slam poetry out of the way, I can let you in on a little secret. There are some good slam poets. In fact, there are some downright bloody fabulous slam poets right here in our own little city. A few of them were even present for the slam that I attended on September 20th. CR Avery, a man born with suave sexiness and cowboy boots two sizes too small jammed onto his feet, showed up for the amateur set to give us bits and Sepuember = 24/200N pieces of something he’s still working on. In with the amateurs, Avery was astounding. He raps about politics and love in between bluesy harmonica solos. He doesn’t breathe life into his harmonica, as you might imagine, instead he sucks the life out of it with a fervor that (along with his small physique) implies starvation. Also a rather well known slammer, Fernando, performed in his usual humor- ously deadpan manner. Spelt, the fill-in host (it’s usually Graham Olds) introduced him by saying, “He’s been away for awhile. But that’s only because he was in a happy relationship.” And if you listen to his angry, woman-hating lyrics, you'll understand why being happy would be detrimental to his poetry. On this night he brought us a slam called “PMS Sympathy,” though with self-described empa- thetic lines like, “once a month my gums bleed,” the women in the crowd did- nt feel very sympathized with. And this brings us to a regular occurrence at Vancouver slams. Slam poetry is meant to encourage audience participation, so quite often during someone's performance the audience will begin a unanimous booing, cheering, or cackling. Fernando's piece, however, brought to life what has been termed the “feminist hiss.” The feminist hiss refers to the snakes in Medusa’s hair, and Fernando is the master at fostering this type of spite from the female audience members. Continued on page 16. OUnEPPPeSs | 5 a a) u