Interested in joining the Beyond Robson team? Today we're continuing our push to round out our editorial team - we're looking for writers for all our coverage areas including food, fashion, music, arts, film, the environment and general and random news about Vancouver. Keep reading for more details on current openings, what we offer and how to get in touch with us.

The end of the year is always a time for reflection and looking back at the year that was. Here at Beyond Robson we feel that 2007 could have been better. We feel that the site has let many of you - our dedicated and perhaps increasingly infrequent readers - down. We've struggled through technical issues like the comments not working and the inconsistency of the quality and frequency of our posts.

The goods news is that many of the technical challenges seem to be behind us and looking forward to 2008 we'll be making many improvements, including incorporating some of the more popular features from our sister site in Toronto.

We'll also be making some wholesale changes to our team of contributors. In fact, we're looking to almost completely revamp the team and, starting with this post, we are now officially beginning our search for editors, writers and other contributors who want to be part of the new and improved Beyond Robson.

Posting will be a little slow over the weekend as we make some changes to address site performance issues and our comment feature. Stay tuned for an update once we've got it all figured out. Thanks for your patience.

Photo by markhoekstra on Flickr

In celebration of International Jewish Book month the JCCGV is hosting their annual Jewish Book Festival. It begins this Saturday, November 24 and I have 10 tickets for Opening Night to give away!
The first 5 groups to reply and tell me how many years the festival has been running, in addition what event appears the most intriguing, will win a pair of tickets.

The Opening Night Gala features the brilliant and talented Howard Jacobson. Known for his literary humour, the British author arrives for an exclusive interview with CBC personality and writer, Eleanor Wachtel. This special event will be recorded live onstage for future broadcast on CBC Radio One's Writers and Company.

As we approach the next Sin City Fetish Night this coming Saturday Nov. 24th at Club 23 West Cordova, it is a good time to reminisce about prior events -- and catching up on stale posts. Days before our recent Halloween, this intrepid reporter did the rounds at all of the fetish boutiques in Vancouver to find many happy neophytes racking up their credit cards for the biggest naughtiest bash this city have seen: the Halloween Sin City Apocalypse Fetish Party on the 27th of October at Richards on Richards. The regular fetish crowd was surprisingly friendly and opened their play-space to the public-- those who wanted to flirt with the wild and naughty side for a night.

And FLIRT those neophytes did, with a succession of revelers in more and more outrageous costumes plus elaborate props than the regular rubber, whips chains and spikes. A strictly enforced dress-code has a few unsuspecting participants strip off their offending garments and do without. Everything was skin-tight, or just, well, SKIN, or as a wizened regular commented, with a naughty twist: IF IN DOUBT, LESS IS MORE.

The decor was aimed more for easy accessibility than maximizing cinematic ambiance. After all, why do you need props when the attendees themselves serve the function to titillate and visually captivate everyone else? Gyrating nude -- well, almost; there were wolf-boys, beauteous raven-haired succubae and vampiresses to take your breath away, and fetish doctors and nurses to resuscitate you. The ever-popular DJ Pandemonium supplied the raw pulsating music that flogs the air into a hedonistic bodice-ripping pitch, the dance floor would be proud to witness any rites of the bacchanal; well, for this newbie eye-witness at least. But I must say, as a Sin City virgin, I made out -- no pun intended-- like a naughty bandit: two gropes, three flirts, and all the while my being dressed as a chinoiserie Anne Ricesque Vampire, right down to the tail-coat-brocade-vest and frilly lace shirt.

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