We had a great turnout for out first ever Speakeasy (a full house for a few hours!) and everyone had an awesome night. Who doesn’t love free entertainment –poetry, hip-hop, acoustic sets, commentary on relevant social issues– and local brews?

Thanks again to everyone who performed! We couldn’t have done it without your talent and participation.
And of course extreme props to our magnificent überculturalist Nicola, for taking on the better part of the organizing and administrative responsibilities for the event.

Make sure to stay tuned….perhaps, with the success we saw this time, we’ll be planning another one in the new year?

We are proud to announce that for the first time ever, we will be holding a Really Really Free Market two days in a row! So join us November 23rd and 24th on the 7th floor of the hall building for a literally priceless event.

As if that wasn’t enough, we’ll also be serving free coffee on both days, so make sure to bring your reusable coffee mugs. Should you forget your reusable mug, you can pick one up from the CSU on the same floor for $2.

Rules:
1. Anything you bring must be clean
2. Anything you bring must be useful to someone else
3. At all times, überculture reserves the right to be awesome

Remember, we don’t ask that you bring stuff in order to take stuff. We’re cool like that. So don’t be shy, come out and don’t buy.

Nothing is on sale, but everything must go.

One person's garbage... is another person's free stuff.

Where? Brutopia (1215 Crescent St)
When? November 25th, starting at 8:00 pm

CALL OUT FOR PERFORMERS!

If you would like to perform, please let us know! Send us an email at uberculture@csu.qc.ca with ‘SPEAKEASY’ in the subject line, and include information about what you would be performing and how long your act is.

Don’t forget to RSVP on the Facebook event page and invite all of your friends!

As well, check out all the other great events we are planning for Buy Nothing Week!

DEADLINE: NOON SHARP, NOVEMBER 24

Over the next two weeks, überculture is collecting digital, print, video and audio advertisements for NOTHING (the thing, the product, the idea, the movement). We want to harness all your creative goo in the lead-up to Buy Nothing Day, so take a stab at it. Create something as simple or complex as you like: we’ve left it wide open. Create ads for the things that simply can’t be bought. Brand the nothingness.

Every submission will be shown (in a super-exciting-but-top-secret public exhibit) with full attribution (or full anonymity, if you like) and uploaded to our website.

This project is open to the general public, and we encourage participation from non-collective members.

Digital submissions can be sent to uberculture@csu.qc.ca with SELL NOTHING in the title.

We’re also happy to come and get physical submissions: just email us (again, uberculture@csu.qc.ca) with PICK UP in the title.

Have a great weekend.

There’s been a huge backlash at Concordia over the recent Pepsi contract fiasco… Pepsi’s response seems to be to plaster the school with giant billboard ads.

No matter how much money a company that sells toxic, carbonated sugar water in environmentally destructive bottles gives away….they’re still a company selling toxic, carbonated sugar water in environmentally destructive bottles.

UPDATE (Nov. 5th): It’s been less than 24 hours since we made and uploaded the video, and the ad has come down! Here, have a look:

Pepsi Refresh ad no more!

Our sources secured footage of the chase in action. See the Benny Hill remix below:

On Wednesday, we started with an hour long protest outside the GM building on Concordia’s downtown campus. About 50 people attended, including such groups as Tapthirst, Sustainability Concordia, Free Education Montreal, uberculture and even some individual Concordia and McGill students. We then all went upstairs to the 9th floor, where the Hospitality Office is located and where the meeting was taking place. We made some noise for about 30 minutes,  then started taking sit in shifts in front of the doors while the others returned outside to continue the protest. CBC showed up at about 5pm, and shot some footage of the protest and sit-in for the evening news. After this,  we all went back upstairs. Members of the administration came out escorted by security and waited for the elevator while CBC and the students surrounded them. We had questions and wanted to voice our opinion on the issues of corporatization of Concordia, however they ignored us and would not talk.

The sit-in on the 9th floor of Concordia's GM building. (Image courtesy of @titocurtis via Twitter)

To watch the CBC new report go here and watch the Late Night CBC News From Montreal for the 27th; we show up at 4:20.

QPIRG Concordia help a Public Assembly yesterday, October 28th, on the bottled water/PepsiCo contract issues. Representatives from uberculture, Tapthirst, and Sustainability Concordia were all in attendance. Stay tuned for a post all about it!

Fast-forward to 2007: North has decided to ask for submissions to create an anthology of stories related to this machine.  From January 15 to April 30, North received almost 700 submissions, which he (along with co-conspirators Matthew Bennardo and David Malki) sorted, eventually choosing their favourites to create his anthology.  The final line-up of this anthology, titled “Machine of Death: A Collection of Stories About People Who Know How They Will Die,” would include such authors as Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, Randall Munroe, and others, along with the editors themselves.

Fast-forward again to 2010: after being rejected by some major publishing companies on the basis that “anthologies don’t sell… unless you have some big names attached to it,” North and co. decide to sell it through Amazon without any major sponsorship.  They then asked their webcomic readers to buy the book on October 26, in an effort to have it reach the #1 position in Amazon’s best sellers list.

They accomplished their goal.  Not only that, but the book rose from 24th position at 7:30 AM, to 5th position at 10:00 AM, and finally to 1st position at 1:00 PM.  Within a few hours, a book that was rejected by several major publishing companies wound up on the top of the bestsellers list without the help of an advertising campaign.  To put that in more numerical terms, the book had more than a 685,000% increase in sales in less than six hours!

As a result of this tremendous achievement, “the machine of death inbox has emails from the giant bookstores, from audiobook companies, from people interested in bringing the book to other languages, and even an email from the New York Times.”

According to the Machine of Death website: “Each contributor to the book has the right to purchase copies of the book at wholesale and will be free to resell the book however they like and keep their profits.

“On November 2, 2010, the manuscript will also be placed online, in PDF form, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 license. That means people will be able to read, copy, and distribute all the stories for free, which will expose more readers to the material, thus building awareness and driving physical sales. There is also an audiobook version in the works, which will be placed for free on Podiobooks.com.”

This all just goes to show you that you don’t need big sponsorship deals to get noticed.  All you need are a good idea and people to spread your message!

That is all.

Vincent G Hubert

Here are the facts:

• Every single day, approximately 5800 single-use water bottles are thrown out on Concordia’s campus. Not only is this enough to fill a small apartment, but only 10% of these are put in recycling bins.

Dasani is one of the many brands of bottled water that sell you the same tap water that comes out of your kitchen sink.

• Bottled water usage also promotes the privatization of something that should be considered a human and ecological right. (Speaking of which, you can read about and sign the petition to add water as a human right to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights here).
• About 25% of bottled water is tap water anyway, which means that once it is packaged, it is sold at 2000x the price of the water you get at home!

In addition to this, it is also harmful to the environment…

• In an era when the world is dealing with the impacts of climate change, the bottled water industry requires massive amounts of fossil fuels to manufacture.
  Production of the polyethylene terphtalate (PET) plastic bottles, derived from crude oil,emits toxins into the atmosphere, contributing to air pollution.
• Twice as much water is used in the production than what is sold in the bottle – so whenyou consume one bottle of water you are really consuming three times that amount.

To top it all off, it’s bad for your health!

• The Natural Resources Defence Council conducted a four-year review of the bottled water industry and the safety standards that govern it. About 22 percent of the brands of bottled water tested contained, in at least one sample, chemical contaminants at levels above strict state health limits. Among these contaminants were arsenic, chloroform and nitrates.

Passers-by were given facts about Concordia's consumption and its negative effects, as well as information about Bottled Water Free Day.

Our mission for the day was to tell as many students as possible about how they can help to ban bottled water on campus, and to educate about sustainable alternatives — like getting a reusable bottle that you can fill an infinite number of times from the tap!

This represents one hour's worth of bottled water consumption at Concordia.

The pile of approximately 300 water bottles that were dumped on Norman Bethune square represented the number of water bottles consumed each and every hour at Concordia. The big pile caught a lot of people’s attention, and we were able to have some really great conversations with students and citizens alike about the need for change on the bottled water issue within Concordia and Montreal in general.

Our crew were talking to passers-by until 1pm, when classes and various other commitments caused the display to come to an end.

Want to make a difference?!

Bottled Water Free Day takes place on March 10, 2011. Take action against the bottled water industry and help your campus to reclaim public water! Bring back the tap!

Story & Photography by April Underwood