On June 21st, Sloth Records played host to the Sled Island/C1RCA Poster Show. This annual event has been taking place for 5 years and showcases an unique collection of posters for the Sled Island headliners, all of which were created by some seriously talented local artists.

If you missed the event, but would like to grab a poster for one of your favorite bands, fear not! They will on display at Sloth Records until June 25th. They will also be on sale for $20 each at the featured bands shows during the festival.

Sled Island is an annual four-day independent music and arts festival in Calgary, AB. This year’s festival runs from June 22-25, 2011 and will bring together over 200 artists and bands in more than 25 venues throughout the city. To check out the line up and find out more, click here.

The City of Calgary and its partners have started a pilot project to help support late-night transportation in the Centre City.  The Late Night Ride Home taxi stands will start Thursday, December 16, 2010 and run from 10:00pm to 3:00am on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.   It’s often a challenge to catch a cab to get home after a night out, especially during the busy holiday season.  Hopefully it will be easier now.

Please visit the Centre City Talks blog for more information and locations.

This year, the Calgary Downtown Association summer teams are helping out at the DI serving lunch every other week.  Before volunteering for the first time, the Off the Wall and HOST teams were given a tour of the centre.

The Calgary Drop-In & Rehab Centre (DI for short) provides care and shelter while working to prevent homelessness by providing opportunities and support to help people rebuild their lives.

The DI originated in 1961, starting as a joint initiative of the Roman Catholic Diocese and the Calgary Interfaith Community Action Committee.  The groups split in 1977, and the Calgary Drop-In and Rehab Centre Society was formed.  The current home DI building (423 – 4th Ave SE) opened in 2001.

There are many services offered in this 6 storey building.  The DI can accommodate 1,250 people a night,  which includes both emergency and transitional beds.

Throughout the day three meals and two snacks are served.  Around 3,500 meals are served each day, with meal service available all 365 days of the year.

Housed in the old DI centre, located next door, is the Clothing Centre where clients can go to get up to 5 items of clothing per visit for free.  Washers and dryers for clients are available in the new building.

On top of offering basic care, the DI has many other services to help their clients.  Through the program art.works, clients are given the supplies and guidance to express themselves through art.  The Wild Rose Studio,  a working studio located in the building, showcases art created by clients on the walls.  Located on the same floor of the studio is a music room, filled with donated instruments.

The Wild Rose Studio, in partnership with This is My City, will be selling hand decorated cowboy hats during the First Flip Stampede breakfast on July 8 from 8:00 am to 10:30 am on Stephen Avenue Walk.

Located off-site, the DI has a woodwork shop where clients can learn skills to find jobs and become self-sufficient.  The shop is just one of the ways the DI helps clients to find employment.  Also run through the DI is a three-week program, called the Career Training Initiative.  Both the CTI and woodwork shop aim to provide individuals with skills necessary to hold long-term employment.

There is a large number of services offered within the 107,000 sq. ft building.  Walking through the building shows how the DI not only works  to help individuals in need immediately, but also offers them support so they can become self-sufficient in the long run.

Have a desire to eat local, but don’t have the time to stop at a farmer’s market on your way home from work?

Starting today, Thursday, June 24, the Downtown Green Market will be the solution to your dilemma.  Located on Stephen Avenue Walk between Centre St and 1st St SE (outside the Telus Convention Centre) the Downtown Green Market will offer up local baking, produce, organic products and handmade goodies.

The market will up and running every Thursday from 10am-2pm, giving you plenty of opportunity to stop by and pick up ingredients for dinner on your way home – or even just grab a bite for lunch!  On top of food vendors, there will be people selling clothing, jewellery, artwork and many other treasures.

There is a team working to combat graffiti in Calgary’s inner city.

The Off the Wall team is a partnership between the City of Calgary’s Clean to the Core initiative, and five BRZs (Business Revitalization Zones) – Calgary Downtown Association, Uptown 17, 4th Street, Victoria Crossing and Kensington.

Wearing bright blue t-shirts, the OTW team removes tags, stickers and posters on the street level, and paints over graffiti on public and private buildings.  They report any graffiti they are unable to remove to the City of Calgary.

Part of their job is to educate businesses in the BRZs about the effects of graffiti; if they find graffiti on a private building, they will ask the owner for permission to remove it.  By removing graffiti, OTW keeps these areas clean, while discouraging future graffiti crimes.

The team started cleaning up graffiti in mid-May and will continue until the end of August.

If you’ve been downtown since the middle of May, you might have spotted some distinctly dressed individuals walking around.  Just before the long weekend, Downtown Calgary’s Hospitality Outreach Safety Team hit the streets.  They are easy to spot in their red HOST shirts and the symbol of Western hospitality, their white cowboy hats.

Though commonly mistaken for Stampede employees, the HOSTs are actually downtown ambassadors for both locals and tourists.  These walking information booths are ready to help anyone with questions. They travel in pairs, looking for people needing assistance.

In their backpacks are a selection of brochures and maps about both downtown and other Calgary attractions.  They will happily point you in the right direction, whether you’re roaming the sidewalks or the +15s.

HOSTs are knowledgeable about what’s going on downtown.  They can tell you about upcoming festivals, make restaurant recommendations, or point out the closest coffee shop.  They are trained in basic first aid and look to tackle safety issues that may arise.

The HOSTs will be out and about until the end of August, so feel free to stop, say hi and ask questions if you spot one out this summer.

I’m stepping a bit out of my theater scene for a second here to pass on a heads up. @MrCoBalt on twitter reported on Friday that he had found a Debit Card Skimmer on the ATM at the TD Canada Trust in Brentwood. The device was removed and the Calgary Police Service was notified. Today, he goes back into the same branch and there’s ANOTHER Debit Card Skimmer there.

Debit Card Skimmers have been around for a while, and Calgary has not been safe from them. But with such a brazen repeat attack, it might be worthwhile to talk a bit about them so that we all act a bit more vigilant when using the ATM machine.

What is an ATM card skimmer? It’s a little device that is designed to look like it’s the card slot. It’s job is to record the data on the magnetic strip. It may also have a camera pointed at the PIN pad to record you inputting your PIN number. When they can not build that into the unit, a camera will be placed in something else, a mirror that sits on top of the mirror where the bank’s camera is placed, a false front that looks like the ATM’s logo, or even the little box that holds envelopes for deposit cheques. Some skimmers are accompanied by fake PIN pads that sit on top of the real ones and just record all button presses.

Some of these devices are even reporting the data wirelessly, so the crooks never have to reclaim the devices. Once the data is collected, well, take a guess at what happens.

So, what do you do?

No matter what debit machine you are using do a little bit of physical investigation of the machine. Tug on the machine face surrounding the card slot. Give every edge around the card slot a good tug and look for other things that seem out of place. EVERY DEBIT MACHINE. Card skimmers are now sold on the Internet by make and model, that’s how prevalent this is getting. Even drive through ATMs, even the ATMs inside bank branches.

Keep an eye on your bank statements as well.

Be safe guys.

Some examples :

http://i.gizmodo.com/5201176/a-man-finds-an-actual-card-skimmer-in-the-wild-in-the-flesh
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/02/atm-skimmers-part-ii/
http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/01/would-you-have-spotted-the-fraud/
http://www.google.ca/search?q=atm+card+skimmers

Downtown Calgary works closely with the Chinese community in the downtown area.  Recently they have contacted us to help save one of their seniors programs Living Well that was jointly run by the Calgary Chinese Elderly Citizens’ Association and Alberta Health Services, which will be terminated effective June 30th. This program covered courses for Diabetes, high blood pressure, kidney disease, osteoporosis , healthy living and patient counseling services to name a few.    By bringing the seniors to a  central location, accessibility is easy as they are served well by using transit.  It also facilitates a one-stop shop for socializing and shopping at the Chinese markets.  Having seniors gather downtown adds to making downtown as a vibrant community and a great place to live, work and play.

As stated in a recent letter:

Statistics show that in the year 2009, there were 959 people receiving the services, among which 444 people received counseling and 90 people participated in the exercises, and the number of courses held totaled 37.  This well demonstrated that both parties’ cooperation had been very successful, and that’s why both parties renewed the contract for another two years in the beginning of this year.  Now, Alberta Health Services suddenly terminates the contract unilaterally without prior consultation.  Our association feels very surprised and regrettable.  Our understanding is that Alberta Health Services plans to group the services under several medical facilities in order to cut its resources.  The present services in Chinatown will be moved to 4715 – 8 Ave SE East Calgary Health Centre (near the Lucky Supermarket) for further operation.  The location there is not as easily accessible as Chinatown.  Thus, the impact to users of the services is really great.

Because Chinatown is a community in which Chinese seniors gather, and thus the relatively higher proportion of chronic disease patients, so the living well program has been bringing greater effects in protecting seniors’ health.  Alberta Health Services’ decision makes people baffled.  Apart from continuing to negotiate with Alberta Health Services, our association held a signatures campaign in Chinatown requesting Alberta Health Services to change its decision which is in defiance of public interests.

Our association therefore appeals to all of our friends who support keeping the program to continue to sign their names to reflect the convergent public opinion, until the goal is achieved.

To show your support,  please contact the  Calgary Chinese Elderly Citizens’ Association-

Address: 111 Riverfront Avenue SW, Calgary, AB T2P 4Y8;

Email: cceca@cceca.ca

Phone: (403) 269-6122

Finally an incentive to head downtown for lunch during the week.

IMPARK is now offering a special lunch rush 3 hour flat rate parking structure at select lots in the downtown core.    Come downtown and park between 11am and 2pm Monday to Friday for only $5.00.    Come down for lunch, stay for a bit of shopping!!

The parking lots participating in this special pricing are:

• Lot 1, Westin Hotel, 320 – 4th Ave SW
• Lot 31, 201-4 Ave S.W.
• Lot 177, Eau Claire Market, 200 Barclay Parade SW
• Lot 179, Eau Claire Market, 342 – 2nd Ave SW
• Lot 197, Spaghetti Factory, 326 – 3rd Ave SW
• Lot 214, Riverfront Eau Claire, 114 – 2nd Street SW

Location-based games are becoming more and more popular as smartphones with GPS get in more and more people’s pockets. Foursquare (written about by Wil Knoll very recently) is one of these location based games. Another is geocaching.

Geocaching started in May of 2000 around the time the locks came off of handheld GPS units and their accuracy became increased. Today the accuracy (and relatively low cost) of a handheld GPS unit makes it so this game can be played by almost anyone. You don’t even need to have a smartphone to play this game, it can be played with any handheld GPS device.

Geocaching is a combination of hide and seek and treasure hunting. To get started you go to the website geocaching.com (or download the iPhone app if you have one) and create an account (it’s free!). Then choose the location where you’d like to find a geocache and you’re off! You will get a list of all of the caches close by, as well as how far away they are. Alternatively, you can check out the Google map that has them listed on it. Find the caches you want, write down the coordinates and clues, then go on your treasure hunt.

So, you want to go for a nice walk? Want to learn some cool history and find some new places to visit? Then come downtown and check out the caches. There’s some traditional caches which are physical objects to find, as well as a couple history caches which just involve taking a picture of the right location. There are both easy and challenging caches downtown, so whatever your skill level there will be something there for you. Hopefully everybody will give it a shot and join in the fun game of geocaching.

And if you do, let me know how it went, whether you’re a seasoned veteran or if it was your first time out.