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.
There is no city I would rather be come summer than Vancouver.
Once June hits and the sunshine spreads its rays of vitamin D over downtown, the West End, SoMa, Kits, East Van, Gastown and Coal Harbour, a happiness vibrates through the step of every Vancouverite, who -- instead of dragging themselves through gloomy rain to the office -- literally bounce to there instead.
But beside the hot beaches, patios, tanned legs and lined-up fro yo joints are the score and scores of festivals -- oh yes, summertime is festival season, indeed.
There's the
Greek Festival (it's a tragedy to leave without having eaten souvlaki from one of the vendors), the Caribbean Festival, the Children's Festival, the Alice in Wonderland Festival and the Jazz Festival, the latter of which I took in with a few friends this past Saturday at a packed David Lam Park in Yaletown (and all for free, too, if you don't count beer garden and ice cream purchases).
This year, the afternoon artist roster was impressive, with a scat-style group from Scandinavia (
Christy Doran's New Bag), a latin-flavoured band that also danced in sync while singing (
Wil Campa Y Su Gran Union) and a phenomenal Indian-Celtic quartet that managed to beautifully harmonize music from two very, very different countries (
Dehli 2 Dublin). The amount of those both young and old dancing to during the last performances was mind-blowing.
During the entire day there was not a trace of blues in the least.
I have to admit, though, with a jalapeno hot dog in one hand and cup of fresh lemonade in the other, there wasn't much room to practice my jazz hands.