Latest news with #VWBus
Winnipeg Free Press
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
The monster lives
Four theatre grads from Calgary in an ogre-green Volkswagen Bus oozed into Winnipeg, intending to improvise a fairy tale in Old Market Square. It was 12 years BC — Before Cube. 'There was no Cube. It was a circle stage in the middle of a field there,' recalls Ryan Gladstone, who first visited the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival with Monster Theatre in July 2000. Supplied Monster Theatre drove to Winnipeg 25 years ago in a borrowed VW Bus. Supplied Monster Theatre drove to Winnipeg 25 years ago in a borrowed VW Bus. Monster didn't know what would come of Fairy Tale: A Choose Your Own Adventure Play. Dressed as goblins, sea creatures and big, bad wolves, journeying through mystical forests and vast deserts, Gladstone, Katherine Sanders, Jen Kelly and Charlotte Mitchell performed daily to sparse but enthusiastic crowds, earning so little from the 'pass the hat' system that they sustained themselves on chickpea curry from street vendors and two-dollar highballs from the King's Head Pub. The company left town satisfied, but disappointed to not score a review in the newspaper. But the day after the festival ended, as they gassed up the VW, they noticed a photo of Mitchell hamming it up on the front page of the Free Press, leaving 'children in stitches.' With that bit of validation, the bus headed west, but along the way, a rope came loose, sending their props flying: somewhere between Winnipeg and Saskatoon, a blue foam head the size of a refrigerator must have given a farmer quite the fright. 'We like to imagine that someone found it,' Gladstone says. Twenty-five years after its first breaths, Monster is still alive and well, with Gladstone and company bringing four productions to this year's fringe: the bar-down comedy Hockey Night at the Puck and Pickle; the drunken insurance-investigator tale of No Tweed Too Tight; Til Death: The Six Wives of Henry VIII, starring Tara Travis; and Riot, which features Gladstone and his brother Jeff as thespian nemeses in the story of two duelling productions of Macbeth taking place across the street from one another. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS It's alive: Monster Theatre company members (from left) Tara Travis, Jeff Gladstone, Ryan Gladstone and Jonathon Paterson are bringing four shows to this year's fringe. MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS It's alive: Monster Theatre company members (from left) Tara Travis, Jeff Gladstone, Ryan Gladstone and Jonathon Paterson are bringing four shows to this year's fringe. Some of the company's other previous shows in Winnipeg included last year's Erika the Red; Jesus Christ: The Lost Years (2006, 2018); The Canada Show (2001, 2006, 2017); and Juliet: A Revenge Comedy (2019, 2022), which earlier this year enjoyed an off-Broadway run at the Soho Playhouse. Formed after its founders graduated from the University of Calgary's BFA acting program, Monster's name was inspired by their teacher, Keith Johnstone, who explained the difference between monsters and demons while discussing Shakespeare's Iago. 'Demons are smooth and attractive on the outside, but have a cruel and twisted heart. But monsters are the opposite: strange and bizarre on the outside, but they always have a good heart,' Johnstone said. That became a guiding principle for the company, which found its niche in alternate mythologies and revisionist musicals about historical, literary and nationalistic symbols after a brief foray into the tamer world of kids fringe in the early 2000s. 'We sang a song called The Maginot Line, about the Nazis moving into France and stuff. No swears or anything,' Gladstone told the Free Press in 2009. 'Then we sang a version of It's a Small World in a minor key, like a creepy thing. We started going on about how the Disney Corporation has lawyers everywhere and they're watching your kids.' SUPPLIED Juliet: A Revenge Comedy was last here in 2022 Juliet: A Revenge Comedy was last here in 2022 Monster was more at home in the pub, as evidenced by the lasting appeal of Puck and Pickle. Every four years, the company rewrites the topical material to keep the show's 230 short scenes — all taking place during a televised hockey game — fresh. In 2013, ahead of the Sochi Olympics, Monster did Canada v. Russia; in 2017, the home team took on the U.S. 'We were going to do Sweden this year, but we decided, 'No, it's still America,'' says Gladstone, who stars alongside Jon Patterson. (Look out for references to Sam Bennett's rough-housing, an orange-haired president and Connor McDavid's buzzer-beating Four Nations Cup clincher). Gladstone, 48, who also teaches at Vancouver Film School, credits the Winnipeg fringe as a launching pad and testing ground for brand new and more experienced companies, with audiences who push creators to repeatedly up their game when they make a return visit. 'When you talk about living the dream, I think it's the ability to think of an idea for a show, to make it a reality and to bring it to audiences,' he says. 'I found an old journal from 2001 with a list of shows I'd love to do some day.' There are still some ideas without a checkmark beside them — monsters yet to be unleashed. A theatre troupe whose members came up together through the Manitoba Theatre for Young People is running it back where it all started for this year's fringe. After last year's cloning comedy House of Gold earned a spot on the short list for the Harry S. Rintoul Award for best new Manitoba play, Brighter Dark Theatre will stage its latest twisty offering at MTYP's mainstage (Venue 21), where just over a decade ago they bonded during young-company productions of Legally Blonde and The Pirates of Penzance. Starring Thomas McLeod, Dane Bjornson and Alanna MacPherson, with their former teacher Teresa Thomson directing, Third Party is 'MTYP all the way down,' says McLeod, who wrote the script. But the story isn't exactly child's play. Inspired in part from a real-life vehicular collision experienced by the playwright, Third Party stars Bjornson as 'a himbo, alpha-male finance guy' who crashes the car belonging to his wily girl-boss partner (MacPherson, MTYP's Blue Beads and Blueberries), triggering a phone call with hard-boiled insurance adjuster Marty Fink (McLeod), who makes it his mission to poke holes in an already leaky relationship. 'He approaches his job like a Poirot, Columbo or Benoit Blanc,' says McLeod, who works by day as a legal writer and has a degree in English literature. Third Party is 'really influenced by Winnipeg's reputation for being car-dependent,' McLeod says. Brighter Dark's isn't the only production with a noirish hue: new local company Mad Tom Theatre's The Show Must Go On (Venue 3) follows a high school theatre group whose production of Macbeth is bedevilled by an incompetent detective and a cunning saboteur. From Australia, Racing Sloth Productions is stopping in with 2 Magic Rubies, 1 Private Eye: A Dirk Darrow Investigation, with magician Tim Motley (last year's Barry Potter) bringing his psychic detective back to the fringe with a tale based on a story by Dashiell Hammett. Sundays Kevin Rollason's Sunday newsletter honouring and remembering lives well-lived in Manitoba. Ben WaldmanReporter Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University's (now Toronto Metropolitan University's) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben. Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press's tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press's history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates. Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider becoming a subscriber. Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support.
The Independent
09-07-2025
- Automotive
- The Independent
No chargers, no plan — and miles of wilderness ahead: Road-tripping in an electric van
From a young age, I knew what my favourite car was: the VW Bus. I loved the look, loved the simplicity, loved the promise of freedom it represented. Years later, though not so old I'd no longer consider myself youthful, it was electric cars that piqued my interest. I loved the tech, loved the performance, loved the sense of driving something future-facing. So imagine my delight when Volkswagen's all-electric ID. Buzz hit the roads; a long-wheelbase, seven-seater reimagining of the classic Type 2. The stage was set for a trip I'd been wanting to try for years: camping in an all-electric vehicle on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula. The Peninsula is true slice of American wilderness — nearly one million acres of protected parkland, from misty Pacific coastline to the snow-dusted mountain passes of Olympic National Park and Forest. But in this terrain, how would a first-generation electric remake of an icon hold up? Planning the unplanned I'll admit: I'm not much of a planner. Booking the start and end of a trip is usually as far as I go. But if you're heading off-grid in an electric car… that ain't gonna fly. Even as EV infrastructure improves, range planning is still a necessary step. A bit of time on ZapMap and Electrify America quickly taught me this region doesn't exactly overflow with chargers. Eek. The idea was to spend at least half the trip using dispersed campsites — unofficial spots with no amenities, just somewhere quiet to park up. If you know where to look, they're all over. I use a great app called The Dyrt, which lists both official and wild camping spots across the US. Combining charger locations and sites I wanted to visit, I sketched out a rough route: Start in the north, with a charging stop in Port Angeles, then a couple of nights in the Sol Duc rainforest On to Fort Flagler, with a top-up charge again in Port Angeles Down to the southeast corner and up into the mountains around Mt Elinor and Mt Washington Then a long, hopeful crawl to a charger about 60 miles away in Olympia With just enough of a plan in place, I set off from Seattle. Hitting the road Driving through Washington is a joy. The SR16 crossing the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, the winding US101 along Lake Crescent — spectacular. First stop for me? Walmart in Port Angeles. Not glamorous, but practical. Electrify America has a charger right there, so I could top up to 100 per cent (not usually recommended, but fine in this case) while loading up on groceries. No downtime. Then, with more than 250 miles in the metaphorical tank, I hit the road. And here's the thing. *Whispers* I don't have any tales of disaster or breakdowns. No moments of range panic or stranded-on-the-side-of-a-mountain drama. Over five days in the wild, the Buzz was an absolute champ. From rainforest to coast to alpine climbs, it handled everything I threw at it. Charging between locations? Easy and quick. Totally manageable within the natural breaks you'd take anyway for grocery stops or trips into towns en route. The bit I'd worried about most, heading up into the mountains around Lake Cushman, turned out to be a breeze. The Buzz just… did it. Climbed with confidence, descended without fuss. Regenerative braking meant I clawed back power on the way down, using only a little more than I would have on a flat road. A van with star quality There's one thing the Buzz does that no minivan I've ever driven can match: it turns heads. This car is a celebrity. People were constantly stopping me to ask about it, snap photos, or yell compliments from across parking lots. One woman even shouted 'Oh that is so cute!' out of her car window… while driving. So yes, it's fun to drive. But how does it hold up as a camper? This is definitely a 'car first, camper second' situation. You don't get any pre-installed mod-cons like blinds or swivel seats. But the back seats do fold completely flat, and there is a lot of space. With the second and third row folded down, there's an 8-inch gap between them. My carry-on suitcase slotted in perfectly to bridge it. Add a couple of sleeping pads and I had a very comfy bed. I'm 6'1' (no I really am, I promise!) and could stretch out fully. The Buzz also ships with two small VW-branded trays in the boot. They're designed for groceries but worked brilliantly as camping storage: clothes in one, stove and kit in the other. Having everything unpacked into something 'domestic' made car camping feel far more homely. Range reality Driving sensibly, I saw up to 3.4 miles per kWh on flat roads, dropping to around 2.7 on steep climbs. That's impressive, especially when you get some of that energy back on the way down again. The range held up so well that I didn't think twice about using any of the seven USB-C ports to charge my devices. I ran the heater on a chilly evening without stress. I even treated myself to a seat massage after a long hike. Is this… glamping? While the Buzz's range did impress me, it's worth noting that charging on the road isn't cheap, at least not with public rapid chargers. Over the course of the week, I spent around $75 topping up, despite covering relatively modest distances. That's considerably more than it would've cost to fill up a petrol car for the same mileage. If you're planning a similar trip, it's something to budget for. So, camping in an electric car? Not only is it doable, it's delightful. The fact that the Buzz is electric made very little difference to my experience. I never felt limited. I tackled dirt roads, off-grid sites, and mountain switchbacks just as I would have in any petrol-powered van. They say never meet your heroes. But I did, and the 10-year-old who once prized a Matchbox model of the VW Type 2 would be very, very proud.
CBS News
04-07-2025
- Automotive
- CBS News
Volkswagen to restore "magic bus" that survived Palisades Fire
Volkswagen of America is restoring the VW bus that miraculously survived the Palisades Fire in January and will hopefully get it back on the road by the end of the year. The long blue bus became a symbol of resilience during the wildfire after a photo of it seemingly unscathed while everything around it burned spread through social media. Gunnar Wynarski is part of the Volkswagen team restoring the bus after the image caught the attention of the automaker's staff in Oxnard. He said the classic bus was in worse condition than everyone thought when he finally got to see it up close. "The car looked pretty cool from the driver's side, which was shown in the picture," Wynarski said. "Unfortunately, you couldn't tell the damage, like melted plastic, paint chipping away on the side that was close to the fire. You also have a busted front window, the paint on the roof is really burned off until the bare metal. Inside of the car, you still have all the ashes. It still smells like a fire." Volkswagen tracked down the owner, Megan Weinraub, and promised they would restore it to its pre-fire condition if they could. While Weinraub calls her 1977 microbus "Azul," it became known as the "Magic bus" on social media. "I was lucky and grateful to have the opportunity for them to restore it because I wouldn't have been able to restore it myself," she said. The team plans to take the bus apart, strip it down and put it back together with a fresh coat of paint. "All the devastation, all the fire, all the damage, so many things got lost, that are gone forever," Wynarski said. "It was really nice to see this car and it felt it gives some kind of hope." Weinraub said she believes her bus became a symbol of hope during a difficult time and can't wait to get Azul back on the road. "I'm excited to have it back," she said. "Where I live now, there are so many VW buses. It will be cool to drive it around town."
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
2025 Volkswagen ID. Buzz Revives the Bus
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." The VW Bus, in its many forms, has become one of the most recognizable vehicles in the company's history. Sure, it might be second to the VW Beetle, but even that might be a close race. While the bus has been out of production for decades for use in the US market, the folks at VW showed off a battery-electric concept in 2016 dubbed BUDD-e. Of course, wiser heads prevailed, and the concept van was updated and given a new name in 2017: ID. Buzz. It would be a while before the ID. Buzz hit US shores, but a successor to the VW Bus is finally showing up on the streets. The '25 VW ID. Buzz rides on the brand's MEB platform and packs a 91-kWh battery pack under its floor. That battery feeds a 282-hp rear motor or a 335-hp dual-motor powertrain. On this episode of Quick Spin, Autoweek's Mark Vaughn hops behind the wheel of the 2025 VW ID. Buzz and puts it through its paces. Vaughn takes you on a guided tour of the ID. Buzz to highlight some of his favorite features. Later, Vaughn takes you along for a live drive review. Adding to these segments, Vaughn chats with host Wesley Wren about the '25 ID. Buzz, minivans as a whole, and more. Closing the show, the pair breaks down what makes the 2025 VW ID. Buzz special. Tune in below, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever podcasts are played.
