After 11 years of bringing you local reporting, the team behind the Vancouver Observer has moved on to Canada's National Observer. You can follow Vancouver culture reporting over there from now on. Thank you for all your support over the years!

Bianca Pencz

Bianca is a journalist, artist, musician and writer raised in Greater Vancouver. Her biases include feminism, democratic socialism, existentialism and the strangest kind of rock‘n’roll, all of which she tries to resist. You can reach her further at her Wordpress, Twitter or by email.

In India, the crowds are getting louder

New Delhi rape crisis: "Hundreds of rapists are running scot-free, and the entire Delhi police is standing here to stop people like me?" a protester told The Times.

1989 Montreal Massacre was an anti-feminist attack, period.

The killer ordered the men in the room to leave before opening fire. What's wrong with calling out an anti-feminist attack for what it is?

Have yourself a gender-neutral Christmas

Girls with Nerf guns, boys with baby dolls: Sweden once again schools the world on gender equality.

Ann Romney's poignant desperation

Martyr complex?

Burlesque and feminism: It's complicated

I’ve always felt I would like burlesque, just like all the feminists I know. But, living in Vancouver, a city spellbound by burlesque’s razzle-dazzle, it didn’t take me long to discover that my...

Vancouver thrash-punks Joyce Collingwood gear towards a jump

My interview with Vancouver thrash-punks Joyce Collingwood didn’t start out the way you would expect. We didn’t start talking about the new material they’re recording — or about the departure of...

Daniel Tosh's sick rape jokes ooze misogyny, and rabid stupidity

The big problem with comedians like Daniel Tosh is that their jokes aren't really about rape. Rape is the joke.

Deconstructing Vancouver's Mode Moderne, one of Canada's hottest new bands

Yes, they will remind you of The Smiths. Yes, they sing about electrocution and tea. And yes, Mode Moderne is one of Canada's hottest new bands, at least according to CHARTattack—and probably...

Meet Vancouver's hottest hometown girl: Grimes, aka Claire Boucher

"Something very strange happened" to Grimes when she became an adolescent, Sandy Garossino, her mother recalls. “She changed into some kind of super-brain, exploring the internet all the time.”

Uncomfortable in our skin

In Eva Wiseman's recent Guardian article, Uncomfortable in our skin: the body-image report, she asks, "Why do we hate the way we look?" Many answers are explored in the rest of the article: The all-...