Christina Brown
Christina's stories
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Hanging out with The Ringleaders
It’s kinda fun to watch how we find occasions to hang out. Heather’s softball team “The Ringleaders” is a great example of creating as many excuses as possible to get together with friends.
Edible Landscapes: Lufa Farms on Urban Agriculture
The world's very first commercial rooftop farm sits atop an office building smack in the middle of downtown Montreal. Lufa Farms is a 31,000 square-foot greenhouse that grows over 40 varieties of produce year-round. But this is about a lot more than a farm in the sky, it's a potentially game-changing prototype for urban agriculture. The story has an alluring moral too: that urban farming is both possible and profitable. We chatted with Yourianne Plante, Communication Officer at Lufa Farms,...
Pretty Painted Utensil Project
Most of us have some wooden spoons lying in a drawer somewhere in the kitchen. So when we saw this simple DIY project online we couldn’t resist injecting fun into everyday objects and making them an accent piece both at the table and around the kitchen.
Tables from reclaimed materials.
A glance around our office space is all it takes to see that we are huge fans of repurposed materials. We are located in an area of Montreal that was once known as the Fur and Diamond District and while there are still some jewelry and fur companies in the building (we prefer not to discuss the latter, it upsets Toni Brown, our office pooch), most of the spaces have been converted to working loft spaces much like our own.
Make: A new series on The Rake
It’s pretty well documented that many of us are re-thinking our relationship with the things we buy these days. We’re more enthusiastic about purchasing local goods, we rather willingly pay a premium for organic and asking about the provenance of items has become common practice.
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Dawn Sessions: Cover of 'Your Ex-Lover Is Dead' by Stars
As soon as the sun meets the clouds, Montreal comes to life and the hustle and bustle doesn't end until the sunlight disappears into the horizon line once again.
Gimme Five!
We are super pleased to announce that you can now purchase a High Five Poster of your own! Inspired by our unabashed love of mutual congratulation and all ‘round nerdiness, we wanted to share a little of the joy with you.
Christina's Guide To The Big Apple [Updated!]
Manhattan is a million places in one. You can spend an afternoon on the Upper East Side, hitting up swank shops, doing the museum circuit, lunching amongst the ladies who, well, lunch and dreaming about what all those park-facing apartments look like on the inside. In that same day, you can find yourself trend spotting on the Lower East Side, trying to push past baby strollers on the Upper West, or watching fashion shoots in the streets of the Meatpacking District. When people ask me...
11 Questions with Jonathan Smith of Blue Legacy
When we look back at this era three themes will most certainly dominate our collective memory: the environment, the digital revolution and the global recession. Three issues so clear and omnipresent that one can't help but feel they are fundamentally connected and meant to teach us lessons about how we can be better.
The General Store is Open.
We’re happy to announce we have a snazzy new feature on The Rake, The General Store. We will be filling it up with free downloadable goodies like our ‘desktop desktop’ series inspired by some of the folks we love around the office and custom Google map guides to cities we dig that you can send to your phone or copy into your travel itinerary. We will also be creating original pieces that you can purchase like...
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A chat with Brian Takumi at Oakley HQ
We spent some time down at Oakley Headquarters in Orange County, California. While there, we sat down with Brian Takumi, Creative Director of Special Projects for Oakley. He's a pretty awesome dude so we thought we'd share some of the highlights from our chat.
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An Analog Concert
Here's a little video we prepared of us singing along to Edmund's rendition of MGMT's 'Kids' at CloudKitchen!
CloudKitchen 2010
Here is our 2010 Community Edition of CloudKitchen, our food-infused fun fest brought to life in a cookbook and party how-to guide. Enjoy!
10 questions with Toni Brown.
Okay, I know what you are all thinking: crazy dog lady gone crazy publicly and in print. Maybe. But maybe not. I know we interview really fascinating people in The Rake (documentary filmmakers, explorers, innovative entrepreneurs, journalists and on…) but sometimes I look at my dog and think there’s a lot of wisdom in that furry little head and some of the things I imagine she’s thinking we could stand to learn a lot from. Trust me, you’ll have a hard time disagreeing with much of what...
Why we do CloudKitchen
We are knee deep in this year’s edition of CloudKitchen and couldn’t be more excited about it. Last year we threw ourselves into the unknown with this wee project that turned into a lasting celebration of our values and a way to give back to the clients, friends and collaborators we love. To be honest, we thought about doing something different this year, in the name of innovation, but the idea of not doing it felt weird. So we leapt back in and the enthusiasm around the office is palpable.
A conversation with Benjamin Gott – Founder of Boxed Water is Better
Interview by Justin Li Benjamin Gott is a busy, creative guy. Online, he’s the founder of blogs The Brilliance – which happens to be on Kanye West’s blog roll – and Snak Snak . Offline, he’s just launched clothing label, Benjamin Edgar or Whatever , and founder of Boxed Water is Better – a better, bottled water brand. You’ve perhaps come across it if you’ve ever stayed the night at The Standard hotel in LA, Hollywood or Miami, or perused the pages of Fast Company, I.D. Magazine or...
10 Questions with Marie-Eve Best of Lake Jane
Little Ms. Best’s last name is no accident. You can’t help but be impressed by her smarts, great taste and beauty but what really gets you is her self-effacing humour, her love of a dirty joke, her tremendous enthusiasm around fatty foods (or any food for that matter!) and general ‘I’m up for a good time, anytime’ take on life. I knew the moment I met her, she was going to be one of those people ‘I knew when’ and two years later, I believe in her more than ever. Today, she works at...
Montréal. À la Émilie.
Like any great city, Montreal is many things to many people. And depending where your likes lie and lifestyle is at, there are versions of the city that represent you best. In that spirit, we’ve asked Emilie, a member of our social media team, to curate the city based on her unique tastes.
10 questions with Martine Groulx of Camaromance
This isn’t one of those ‘oh look, more Montreal music talent!!’ pieces. I am a fan of Camaromance . A fan fan. The Parade has been a constant companion for me for the past 3 months, my go-to, I relate to your lyrics, you make me happy when I want to feel happy, make me weepy when I feel like I need a good cry, come join me and my friends at this dinner party, let’s go for a nice long walk in the park with my dog, kind of album. Martine’s 1-2 punch is a voice I can only describe...
10 questions with filmmaker Mila Aung-Thwin.
Mila Aung-Thwin is the co-founder of Eye Steel Film , a Montreal-based documentary film production company. He has produced some of the best documentaries of our time including Up the Yangtze and Last Train Home and recently produced a short fiction Mohktar that premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. He is currently collaborating with us on the RBC Blue Water Project documentary series and we think he’s an awesome dude. He is, in his own way, making our world a...