July Culture: What a Trip

Music

Green Day In 21st Century Breakdown, the latest release from Grammy Award-winning rockers Green Day, the band chronicles two young punk lovers and their struggle to make sense of a post-George W. Bush world. The troika of Billy Joe Armstrong, Mike Durant and Tré Cool are widely credited, along with fellow Californians The Offspring and Rancid, with reviving popular interest in punk after its 1970s heyday. Whether the band is still relevant – 22 years after its formation and with a fan base whose rebellious years are long gone – remains an open question. July 4, General Motors Place, www.ticketmaster​.ca

Festival

Caribbean Days With the pure and crystalline B.C. summer rising in our collective window, sunny getaways such as Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Aruba, however lovely, seem distant and unnecessary. If you fancy a taste of their culture, though, follow the hypnotic ponging of steel drums to Waterfront Park in North Vancouver for the annual Caribbean Days Festival. There will be parades, live music, street performers and, one suspects, more than a few helpings of jerk chicken. July 25 and 26. Waterfront Park, www.caribbeandays.ca

Art

Sentimental Journey “The journey,” besides being a New Agey catchphrase (and the name of a cultish healing group – Google it, if you dare), is also, for several local artists, a description of the ultimate creative adventure. Sentimental Journey, now on at the Contemporary Art Gallery, features seven up-and-comers (including Gareth Moore, whose work is pictured above) stitching together real and fictitious journeys, using photographs and paint to examine how our physical and emotional landscapes are historically constructed. June 18 to Aug. 16, Vancouver Contemporary Art Gallery, www.contemporaryartgallery.ca

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  • Vancouver, 
  • Alicia Costa