#98 - Alex Dhavernas (Live from Frank & Oak)

This week, we had a special live podcast event at Frank & Oak, a boutique clothing store in Westboro. This is the first of two interviews this week, with this one featuring Alex Dhavernas from Ministry of Coffee. We talked about the caffeine bean in great detail, the camaraderie of coffee shops in Ottawa, and the importance of fair trade.

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Links:
Ministry of Coffee

Glebe Residents Apply for Permit to Build Noise-Reducing Walls around Lansdowne

By: Mike Holuj

This week, a permit to build noise-reducing walls around Lansdowne was filed by Glebe resident Colin Frost, backed by a petition with more than 5,000 signatures. Frost, the originator of the petition, was annoyed by all the noise coming from the surrounding area, specifically the Lansdowne area near which he lives.

“My neighbours and I submit thousands of noise complaints every year to the city and nothing gets done. We tried being polite, but no progress was made so the neighbourhood decided to start making some noise of our own,” says Frost. “We gathered enough signatures, I believe 5,000 qualifies as ‘enough’, and I submitted a building permit request to the city to create noise-reducing walls around Lansdowne.”

Their problem is gaining some traction with local start-ups as well. Sound Off, an Ottawa start-up that creates noise cancelling walls has offered their services to many residents in the Glebe neighbourhood.

“We actually started our business because of the noise problem in that neighbourhood,” says Artur Bukowski, founder and CEO of Sound Off. “My friends and I were living there while attending Carleton University to study engineering and we had a hard time focussing on our studies during literally any event going on at Lansdowne, or any event happening anywhere within a seven block radius of the Glebe,” explained Bukowski. “Something about the acoustics of the area amplifies noise. We decided to create Sound Off to solve this problem.”

Sound Off uses solar powered noise-cancelling walls, which feature a thin membrane to capture sound, some complicated electronics to invert it, and then another thin membrane to play the sound out of the other end. The end result is reduced noise, working in the same way as noise cancelling headphones, which is what inspired Bukowski in the first place. “Since marketing specifically in the Glebe, we’ve become millionaires.”

Colin Frost has considered partnering with Sound Off to build the walls, but only if the permit gets approved.

Local Cult Celebrates Construction Season, Worships Sinkhole

By: Mike Holuj

The Hole Family, a local cult that celebrates Ottawa’s construction season, is calling out to all of its members to prepare for the upcoming work. The Ritual of the Falling Sinkhole is set for April 29th. It is a celebration of the sinkhole that took place by University of Ottawa on Waller Street in 2014.

The group is lead by cult leader Burt Washington, a retired construction worker who sustained an injury during the Waller Sinkhole incident. While Washington was not on site at the time of the sinkhole, he claims to have sustained “almost first degree burns” due to a faulty Tim Horton's lid that day. He also noted that construction lasted unusually long that year. The two events happening at the same time inspired him to devote his life to sinkholes .

“I thought, maybe the sinkhole was the reason construction lasted so long. The boys were working until late October, some of them mid-November. I decided to bring The Hole Family together to worship and appreciate the sinkhole as a good omen for construction workers,” said Washington. “If there’s a sinkhole this year, we’ll have an extra long season, probably eight or nine months. If there’s no sinkhole, it just means six more months of construction.”

The participants in the ritual encircle the perimeter of the location of the sinkhole on Waller Street, sporting traditional garb: yellow hard hats and reflective vests. The ritual begins with the ringing of a bell twelve times to signify the opening of the twelve-meter-wide sinkhole. It is then followed by a moment of silence, almost 120 seconds. The timing is specific, as it commemorates the twelve meters of the hole, and the almost ten months that construction season was open for in 2014. After the moment of silence, the circle disperses into groups of six, still around the sinkhole. One member in the group recites the press release from the day of the sinkhole, and then asks for a long construction season while the others stand and watch. The closing of the ritual is signified by ringing of the bell another twelve times, and then all members of the cult take the rest of the day off.