About May Globus
Vancouver City Editor May Globus is obsessed with the sartorial and all that surrounds it: art, design, culture, music and film. Oh, and she really likes writing about it, too. A left coast girl at heart, her Sweetspot finds just might show why the westside really is the best side.
Leave it to
Livestock's Garry Bone, Red Bull and Adidas to throw a killer street party.
On the weekend, the Canadian emporium of cool sneakers shut down Abbott Street between Cordova and Water (right in front of their Gastown shop) to treat Vancouverites to DJs (like Fashen, Flipout, My!Gay!Husband! and Age), skateboard ramps, capoeira (with some very cute kids showing off their martial arts skills), B-Boy and B-Girl contests on a wooden-linoleum floor set up on the pavement, prizes, free beer gardens, food by Guu and good people-watching from noon until night.
All this was in the name of ending Summer '09 with a bang -- and, of course, in the name of charity.
Livestock enlisted the help of Adidas to run its 2nd annual Sneaker Drive at LiveBlock 2009, encouraging street revelers to part ways with new and used sneaks, heels, flip flops and boots to donate to the
LifeSkills Centre and the
Portland Hotel Society, both of which will distribute the shoes to Downtown Eastside folk in need.
There was plenty to see on Sunday, and what I saw were plenty of plaid shirts, Wayfarers, topknots on girls, denim cutoffs (on guys and girls!), flatbill caps, straw hats, American Apparel, SLR cameras and boys on boards. It was an entertaining, aesthetic smorgasbord of scenesters, skaters, hip hop-heads, fashion folk and a smattering of kids running in between mini ramps teeming with skateboard pros pulling ollies and DJ decks pulsating with tracks to make you bust a move.
It was the perfect ending to a perfect Vancouver summer.
And let's just say last Sunday I'd been around this block a few times.