After a rainy summer of group shows and emerging artists, galleries are starting to ramp up their fall exhibits and there is some good stuff on the radar, but the art that has me the most inspired is an installation by Nicole Dextras under the Burrard Street bridge. Called "BELONGING: sous le pont", it is an evolving project incorporating nature (camellia's from Dextras' garden, shelters woven from blackberry branches and found materials.

The site is an old one with a long history, although not necessary art-related. It was a native fishing village before the land was bought by CPR and now it is a sort of no-man's land, hidden away under a busy causeway and between the frequented sites of Vanier Park and Granville Island. Dextras reports that is it often used as shelter for homeless people. When I was running through there in the Spring, it was an empty space, but now it seems it is filled with wonderful, thoughtful pieces, and I can't wait to get back there to see them. A sofa planted with flowers was apparently created "to see if i could grow and nurture something under the bridge" and various shelters made from willow and blackberry branches provide a link between home and nature.

A little while ago, I asked Sean Heather if he would do a CityPhile profile for us, because as the proprietor of Gastown gastropub The Irish Heather and secret Scotch house, The Shebeen, he has indirectly been the source of much inspiration, fun, education and comfort for me and my friends and I wanted to get a feeling for the force behind it all. Not to mention his thoughts on my new favorite neighbourhood - Gastown.

I hope you will enjoy the interview that follows. Just this morning, however, I learned from Urban Diner that the whole operation is picking up and moving across the street. So now of course, I have many more questions for him, but he is a master of his environment and mostly I just can't wait to see what he comes up with.

What inspired you to open your first restaurant - a gastropub - The Irish Heather?

I am a work-a-holic, and there came a time in my life when I asked myself the question..." is it better to work like a dog for myself or for somebody else?" That is why I opened my first restaurant, as to why it was an Irish gastropub? I felt that at the time there wasn't a true Irish establishment in the city and having traveled the world and experienced fantastic, authentic Irish Pubs in places like Prague & Budapest, I felt that this was a niche that I could fill.

With all the Vancouver tech-heads de-fragging after BarCamp, it leaves some room for a different kind of creativity - enter ArtCamp. Started last year after being inspired by the productivity and energy of BarCamp's un-conferences, ArtCamp will be a one-day gathering of various creative types to talk about everything from DIY endeavors to Community mods. In their own words, it "is a hybrid conference/workshop/etc event in which participants come together to show work, demo artworks, projects, research or technology, learn new hands-on practices, and talk about ideas...As an unconference, it's about using principles of self-organization to bring people together, and to create an emergent format where people may talk, meet, show work, present ideas, receive input, and generally discuss, view, and advance ideas, research and projects." Awesome.

We all know women are all about the chocolate and men are all about the sex, but now we have the science to prove it. Apparently the masterminds at Aero have commissioned a poll that will prove, once and for all, just how great the divide between the sexes really is.

The "Guys Just Don't Get It Survey" asked Canadians about a range of preferences and traits - shoes, multi-tasking, shopping, packing and more - but the the point that sticks (and the point that the PR people at the chocolate company are clearly trying to get across) is that "women love chocolate, men prefer sex". According to the survey, 46% - almost half the women polled - said that there were times they could just not live without chocolate.

A few weeks after dining with my writing class at Nu, I'm still convinced that rather than a restaurant/lounge, it is the setting for the undersea lair in some yet unwritten Bond film. The scene is set when you enter the tiny room and look out past the polished copper, neon green lighting and sea-green disks repeating themselves in retro-glamorous fashion right up to the edge of the sea - which thanks to the circular shape of the restaurant jutting out over False Creek, is lapping up to the edge of every window. But the key evidence for the undersea lair theory lies in Nu's clever camouflage. It's just impossible to find. I run past it probably 3 times a week and (OK, I've seen the signs, I knew it was somewhere around there) never noticed it.

It's hard not to notice all the hype surrounding it, however, and judging by the number of free tables on a weeknight (a scant few), those looking for it can find it well enough.

So.Cial At Le Magasin is a new culinary venture in a 1911 Gastown heritage building that has filled most of the unused space in a mall. There is a restaurant dining room that I've peered into numerous times and deemed not for me. The old-world-hotelish feeling about the lushly upholstered chairs and the white tablecloths is too uncomfortable for my tastes, no matter how good their brunch menu looks. There is also an Oyster Bar downstairs that looks promising, and now, just freshly opened last week, is a Custom Butchershop and Deli. I went down there on opening day to see what a high-end butchershop in a neighbourhood with no food stores looks like.

Not surprisingly, considering the gorgeous space they're occupying, it looks good.