Off The Rack: Fight Facadism!

Vancouver Review (Summer)

Three cheers for the second helping of the reanimated VR, which boasts a fresh boatload of interesting local cultural commentary. In a smart, well-argued tirade, Gudrun Will laments the rise of "facadism", a pseudo-school of development that preserves heritage structures in glorious 2D. It's a sham! It's a front! (Nah, just a quickly exhausted pun.) As one observer explains, Vancouver's casual embrace of preserving only landmark buildings' edifices is closer to taxidermy than heritage conservation. Elsewhere, there's an attempt to wrestle the juicy bits from Max Wyman's arts and culture treatise, The Defiant Imagination. Tyee regular Shannon Rupp ponders the afterlife of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Brian Fawcett takes the stuffing out of "creative non-fiction." Finally, Mark Mushet makes a spirited jab at Adbusters in a call for real-world media literacy: "Rather than reading a righteous 'Journal for the Mental Environment,' we should be fostering more wary eyes and minds at knee height." This VR is already one of the punchiest arts reads you can get on this coast. Vancouverreview.com.

Ripe (#9)

It's said often enough that B.C. is rife with independent creative talent; just as often, the ensuing shrugs can be deafening. Enter Ripe Magazine on hero detail. For three years now, the online magazine has been profiling the work of photographers and writers saddled with that opprobrious label, the "emerging" artist. (Aside: Off the Rack used to work a gig where all the talent was emerging and indie-riffic--most definitely his own included--so you may detect a faint whiff of ennui here.) As it turns out, Ripe is unblushing and justified in its little-guy advocacy, since much of the photography is eye-catching stuff. Particularly striking in this issue is the Doris Cheung featurette, which includes a mini-gallery and interview. (Watch for the talented Cheung's tactful description of Vancouver's identity crisis.) By contrast, the prose sections read like so much filler, which feels oddly appropriate when browsing the site. This is not quite a slight: after all, who visits Radio 3 for the writing? Ripe has been going strong online, and will now commence a foray into print this fall. Ripemagazine.com

Ion (June/July)

Despite a whole new editorial crew, Ion's "special" music issue doesn't read much differently than its past few, but it does hit the requisite high notes with local coverage of usual suspects AC Newman, Stink Mitt and The Organ. Dig this: "Creativity is often the spawn of a dark agent, an internal force that defers our pleasure and harmony until our ideas are released into the chosen medium." Well, well. Barstool wisdom from a random scat enthusiast?--No, that's just the opening line from a profile of "the dark", a stencil-wielding graffito on the make. Local fashionistas El Kartel and Pyrrha get their inches here, too.  Ionmagazine.ca.

Jeff MacIntyre(http://www.jeffmacintyre.com/) is a Vancouver-based freelance writer.