Dr. Disc 20 Wilson Street
Radius 151 James Street South
We’re getting revved up for our first event, The Playlist 1.0, a fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Hamilton. We’re three weeks away – who’s coming?! Get your tickets now at This Ain’t Hollywood and Dr. Disc. We’re so excited for it! Avishka and I have been busy scheduling Rendezvous with some of our featured acts (Canadian Winter, New Hands, The Ascot Royals, The Dinner Belles, and DJ sets by John Smith of Young Rival) and gearing up for what is sure to be a fun night.
For part of our promo, good friend to the Tour, Mark Furukawa, Dr. Disc himself, let us have the record store’s window display for a few weeks to decorate for the event. Mark gave us free reign with the window – it was time to get festive!
That morning, I grabbed some dollar store goodies – pink and white balloons and rainbow streamers, and set out downtown. I took a quick detour to Radius for a much-needed jolt of coffee and to finally check out the new coffee shop. I love the bright green entrance that showcases a lovely art piece by another friend to the Tour, Steph Seagram, and the interior of the café is beautifully decorated as well. It’s more towards the Starbucks style of coffee shop, with the servers in uniform aprons and even using the Tall, Grande, Venti size names. All of the treats look delicious! I was eyeing the flan, but I went for a bit more appropriate morning snack, a lemon poppyseed muffin and iced coffee. But who am I kidding, it’s me; it’s never too early for dessert. I can see why Radius is a new favourite café and lounge for people nearby. I like the James South and Augusta area and would like to investigate that neighbourhood some more.
Sidenote: I would highly recommend walking around with a balloon pump, string, balloons, and streamers. It makes you feel like you’re ready to thrown down and party at a moment’s notice, or even start your own impromptu flash mob. I quite enjoyed it.
Getting to Dr. Disc, I helped Mark take down the previous display, which was all about The Rest (and what a spectacular CD release week they just had!) and got to business planning out the display. I decided on a row of our bright pink and black posters (thanks again to Darlene MacNeil for the fabulous design) and as I was taping them up, Tim Potocic of Sonic Unyon strolled by the window and we waved hello. Later on, we saw a tweet from them including a picture of our window display, which we didn’t even see them take. Sneaky!
I just finished taping up the row of posters when Avi arrived to help with the balloons and streamers. The roll of streamer paper changed colour as the roll went on, and it worked out perfectly that the length of the window stretched through the colours pink, red, and yellow – all three colours are in the poster. Then we got to work blowing up the pink and white balloons, planning to alternate them above the row of posters.
As we were creating our display, our friend Krystal happened to stop by Dr. Disc to pick up some tickets to The Playlist 1.0! How serendipitous that we happened to be there, working away on the display. I believe she bought our first bunch of tickets. Tweet us @ihearthamilton when you get yours, and we’ll retweet!
Live tweeting our progress, a tweet came in from Dave Kuric at Mixed Media, who happened to have a pack of pink balloons and offered them to us. I ran down the street to grab them and found that they were just the perfect shade of pink we needed. They were a bit darker than the ones I had, so they really made our display pop (pun intended!) Thanks again, Dave!
On my way back to Dr. Disc, I had to stop by CBC Hamilton to say hello to Roger Gillespie, Conrad Collaco, and Adam Carter, who was also busy working away. I stayed for a chat with Roger and we talked about The Playlist 1.0 and the upcoming Art Crawl, and did a little brainstorming.
Back at Dr. Disc, as if we didn’t have enough run-ins with friends, who should stop in but Lou Molinaro of This Ain’t Hollywood to pick up some records. We’re thrilled to have booked one of Hamilton’s premiere venues for the event so it was great to see Lou and for him to see our display in progress.
And one more friend stopped by, artist Samille Janelle, creator of the artists’ zine PAGED, which is sold at Dr. Disc, among other stores. It was lovely to see yet another friendly face!
I couldn’t get over how the fun task turned into a day of interaction with the community. A day where we were promoting an event that, for us, encompasses the sense of community we’ve found in Hamilton, ended up doing just that, in itself!
– Kristin
