retail

I am officially on vacation - and enjoying lots of offline family time. This year Santa brought my son a PlayStation 3 and we cleared out a spot in our little townhouse now known as "The PS3 Lounge."

People can wear their East Van pride with one of these t-shirts created by Alex Usow. Its design was based on a series of t-shirts that started with an original "John & Paul & Ringo & George" design.

Embracing the pre-teen boy experience has been pretty hilarious, if you look at them the right way. Don't see the "obnoxious" aspect. Try "mischievious" and "playful" and "full of energy." Think of wild kingdom and picture the younger, smaller, way more hyper version of the larger animal. Pre-teen chimpanzees or tigers.

Hair salons all over North America are shipping their clippings to a U.S. charity that is using it to absorb oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Kokopelli Hair & Body Lounge on Commercial Drive is one of them. The salon started doing this a month ago after stylist Katrina Molson learned about Matter of...

Rain did not stop the party today on Commercial Drive. It was the first Italian Day since 1982, and the streets were closed from Grandview to Venables, with music, vendors, food, beer gardens, and dancing on the road under umbrellas. The smell of garlic and Italian sausage was luring people into line-ups. So was...

Kirby Chang is fixing my computer because it has a super annoying virus / trojan. I’m pretty sure it’s called “Nuqel.E” and it came to me as a fake spyware program that looked like Windows. I call Kirby when I get a computer issue that goes beyond my patience and technical understanding. For at...

Technically, these two people are “competitors” but they are actually partners in working for fair trade and sustainable agriculture. Blake Hanacek is the founder of Agro Cafe and Emily Sproule is a sales and service manager for the Ethical Bean Coffee Company. Both local companies sell certified organic fair trade coffee, and support many...

My friend and neighbour Melanie McIntosh is president of Inspire Retail Solutions and she’s been passionate about the retail experience ever since her first job at 14 in a grocery store bakery. “The way merchandisers position racks, displays, lighting, product and colour influences how shoppers move through the store, and even what they touch,”...

It’s a good place to go for getting dressed up or dressed down. For the past 10 years, The Jean Queen has been offering “clothes you can afford” – as the original sign read in 2000 when owner Corina founded it on the corner of 4th and Commercial. I still remember the first time...