Welcome!
Sarah Berman is a multimedia journalist currently based in Vancouver, BC. This site features a collection of published works that have appeared in the Vancouver Sun, Toronto Star, Adbusters Magazine, Discorder Magazine, the Tyee, Spin Earth, OpenFile, the Dominion, Megaphone Magazine, The Block Magazine, BBN3 and CHEK TV.
Vancouver’s underground music lab
In the labyrinth of jam spaces and studios known as the Secret Location, it seems a noisy cross-genre experiment is born every minute. Buzzing with activity on a recent Saturday afternoon in Vancouver, nearly 100 local bands set aside their hangovers to come down and get photographed for the upcoming Music Waste festival.
Coast Modern
If you’ve ever caught yourself flipping through reruns of MTV Cribs wishing authors and designers got the same treatment, Coast Modern is likely a refreshing way to spend an hour of your life.
Ban billboards, fund journalism!
Scanning Monday’s headlines, you may have spotted Postmedia’s announcement that it will cancel its wire service and cut 25 jobs. The news comes less than a month after the Vancouver Sun and Ottawa Citizen introduced online paywalls to combat a steep decline in print ad revenue.
We’ve known the financial picture for Canadian journalism has been in decline for a while. But one quick-and-dirty answer that has yet to be considered in Canada comes courtesy of a documentary called This Space Available, which is showing in Toronto for the first time today.
Independent theatres weather the liquor license storm
Following months of struggle with British Columbia’s Liquor Control and Licensing Branch, the Rio Theatre in East Vancouver will gradually return to the mixed programming it cultivated before 2012. For most of this year, the Rio operated under an imposed liquor licensing condition that prevented the venue from showing films.
Although the single-screen venue expects to make a full recovery, owner Corinne Lea says her company is not out of the woods yet. “Because our finances got depleted so badly, our biggest challenge is just digging ourselves out of the hole,” Lea says. “Now we’re creeping back.”
True Blood’s ‘Pam’ shows fangirl fangs
It’s one thing to earn millions of views, but the success of HBO’s True Blood is better measured by the lively, semi-religious devotion of its fans.
Not satisfied with watching the vampire drama alone, true “fangbangers” orchestrate screening parties, make webisodes of their favourite characters, write fan fiction or dissect series creator Alan Ball’s “anti-brunette agenda” online.
REVIEW: Oneohtrix Point Never live at W2
Trippiness is a strange musical currency; value is so often predicated on the mind-altering substances consumed by its listeners. Having arrived stone sober at W2 to see Oneohtrix Point Never (Brooklyn-based Daniel Lopatin), this reviewer admits she was only adequately captivated by the synaptic soundscapes on offer Wednesday night. But as someone’s grandma might say: better to be challenged than bored.
Is Vancouver’s public consultation process broken?
In the heat of debate over the Rize development in Mount Pleasant, residents began to question the entire public consultation process. “It is not the developers that are the enemy,” Annabel Vaughan told the council chambers on Tuesday, February 28. “The enemy is the flawed process that the City uses for rezoning large development sites.”
Standing before the developer, city council and a long list of concerned speakers, Vaughan said surrounding residents and businesses should have been more meaningfully consulted before the design process even began. “The current public process brings out the worst in everyone,” she observed. “Developers and architects design projects in isolation and then land ‘spaceships’ into neighbourhoods.”
Artist prOphecy sun keeps a recording studio in her pocket
You might think it takes a lot of equipment to record and edit vocals, instrumental tracks, field recordings and music videos for half a dozen different bands. But for one Vancouver performance artist with a penchant for singing on her bike, all it takes is an iPhone.
Prophecy Sun is a singer, dancer and creator whose curiosity keeps her moving. “For me it comes down to accessibility,” she says of her pocket-sized piece of gear. “First and foremost, it’s so immediate. I don’t have to worry about getting someone else involved, I can just press record and start doing it.”
Iconic films find new dimension
Before audiences step into the theatre, they’ll already know the ending of Titanic 3D. (Spoiler alert: it sinks in all three dimensions.) But one unsettling question mark looms above the blockbuster’s re-release: can James Cameron credibly convert a 2-D classic into the eye-popping 3-D of Avatar?
Homeless count sweeps Vancouver
For a third year in a row, Vancouver’s spring homeless count wrapped up late last night. Volunteers scoured alleyways, parks, shelters and hospitals to gather information about the city’s shifting homeless population.
“We ask where they stayed last night, what their age is, whether they’re with a spouse or child or other relative,” says Judy Graves, co-ordinator of Vancouver’s tenant-assistance program. Graves oversaw Metro Vancouver’s first homeless count in 2002. She says details like income, gender, physical disabilities and illnesses are also collected.
extra credit: grimes interview
