Border City Brawlers Fresh Meet Recruitment Day

Well hot off the heels of the Border City Brawlers March Break Family Skate comes another event that the group is having in the form of a call for all ladies that want to try something different. The Brawlers are holding a recruitment/open house for prospective roller girls wishing to experience the excitement and camaraderie that is women’s Roller Derby. Very different than the scripted wrestling style of entertainment popular back in the 70’s modern roller derby is organized and sanctioned by the Women’s Flat Track Derby Association and is a legitimate sport. Popularized by the recent feature film “Whipit” Roller derby is a fast, furious contact sport that is growing. This Sunday March 27th from the 7PM – 10PM the Windsor Armouries will be the site of their fresh Meet Recruitment Day. They are looking for energetic women 18 and over that are willing to rough it up a bit and have fun. They are looking for referees as well (men and women). Skaters will need a helmet, wrist guards, elbow and knee pads and a mouth guard. The club has limited skate rentals available and will provide an introduction on everything from skating technique and derby rules to strategy and safety. Organizer Holly Brush (aka Lady Tron) hopes to gather enough participants to add to the already sizeable group and form multiple teams for a Windsor league.
“We have women from all walks of life here, nurses, social workers, teachers, former figure skaters, they all have a common goal and that is to have fun and compete.” Says Brush.
So dust off those skates (no rollerblades please) and come out and find out what its all about. You’ll have fun mixing it up with a great group of girls and probably make some new friends in the process.

by Tim FairhurstBiz X Magazine

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Skating into March Break with the Border City Brawlers

With March break here, many people will be looking for things to do in and around the city and county. The Border City Brawlers is Windsor’s up and coming women’s Roller Derby organization and will be holding a free family skating event at the Windsor Armouries on Friday March 18th. Benefiting the Hiatus House of Windsor the event will feature an afternoon session from 1PM to 3PM and evening skate from 6PM to 8PM.
Hiatus House is an emergency shelter for abused women and their children from Windsor and Essex County and offers a residence program, counselling and crisis intervention services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The group is asking the public to bring non-perishable food items for donation to Hiatus House to be collected at the event. Free hot chocolate, coffee and snacks will be served and a limited number of adult sized skates will be available for rental. Inline skates are welcome but skaters are strongly encouraged to wear a helmet.
So this March Break don’t hibernate! Come and skate with some of the girls from the Border City Brawlers and support the Hiatus House at this family friendly event.
I’ll have more on the Brawlers, their upcoming recruitment day and the exciting sport of Roller Derby in an upcoming blog post so check back soon. In the meantime, get your wheels on and skate!

by Tim FairhurstBiz X Magazine

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A New Game in Town?

Professional football is coming to Windsor this spring. No, not that football, but what the rest of the world calls football, or soccer as we know it. On Tues evening there was a gathering of local media and the Windsor soccer community at Mezzo Ristorante on Erie Street to hear the announcement of Windsor’s newest professional sports team. The Windsor Stars is the brainchild of local restaurateur Filip Rocca and is the latest entry in the CSL (Canadian Soccer League). Rocca introduced not one but two coaches for his newly acquired franchise. Steve Vagnini and Jeff Hodgson both have impressive resumes in the sport and will handle the sideline duties managing the club. Three players were signed as well at the event and introduced to the local media. Anthony Santilli, Emilio Giorgi and Danny Dragoi donned blue jerseys with the Stars logo and posed for photos. The Stars are currently looking for more players to round out the team and are holding open tryouts this weekend at the Novelletto Centre. With teams competing from Montreal, Toronto, London and now Windsor, the competition and level of play promises to be top calibre and will give local soccer supporters something to cheer for. The venue is still being finalized but the University of Windsor, Windsor Stadium and McHugh Park near the WFCU Centre are all being considered. So keep this on your sports radar in the coming weeks and come and check it out.

by Tim FairhurstBiz X Magazine

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Power to the People!

Despite many fears and concerns, the internet can be a powerful tool for people to enact change within their community. Recent events in Egypt had people messaging and tweeting information and updates to relatives friends and supporters during the uprising to oust the dictatorship there. Information is power and the internet provides a forum in which the public can share ideas, initiatives and gather support for their cause.
Here in Canada there is a similar drive underway to send the government a message. No, there is no ouster planned, but the very way we use the internet is being challenged by the large telcom companies. Internet companies are in the process of instituting usage based billing or charging you by the byte similar to the way data is charged for smart phones. The explosion of streaming media content available online as well as services such as Netflix which can be viewed through the computer, Wii and Playstation consoles is in direct competition with these big telcom companies satellite and cable television services. This a blatant attempt to gouge consumers and control the internet. Protectionism at its finest Canadian style. Yours truly had his bandwidth allowance cut by over 60% recently despite a $5 hike in the monthly bill! Smaller ISP’s which purchase their bandwidth from the big guys are being forced into the same deal leaving the consumer with no where to go. This will only serve to stifle Canada’s digital competitiveness and put a strain on small businesses and families.
Here’s where you can do something about it though. Public outcry had the government recently re-thinking their decision to allow the CRTC to allow this. Several online petitions have cropped up to allow the peoples voice to heard on this issue. http://www.stopthemeter.ca/ has more information on this important issue as well as a petition that you can sign that will be sent to Konrad Van Finckenstein of the CRTC.
This is your chance to have your voice heard – act now!!

by Tim FairhurstBiz X Magazine

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Online Buyers Beware

I almost made a purchase online last week. I say “almost” because I stopped the order short before releasing payment from my Paypal account. Although I try to source purchases locally there are many things that are either more convenient to purchase online, much less expensive or just plain unavailable. In this case it was a sports jersey that I saw through a Facebook ad. The price was half of what I had seen this shirt for on the official team site and it advertised free shipping to boot. The website looked professional with secure encryption and they had a multitude of products for sale at great prices. My question about the product was even answered promptly by a fellow named “Jason” from their customer service department. I browsed the site for a while before making my selection and customized my order with my favourite players number on the back. A couple of clicks and my order was placed, all I had to do was check my email and login to Paypal to complete the payment. This is where it started to look fishy as ultimately I was instructed to release funds in U.S. dollars to “Pang Loo”. Now this in itself would not be so suspect if his contact info was a generic web based email address. At this point I started to question the authenticity of the product as well given the inconsistencies I was seeing. Sending someone
In the end, I did not buy the jersey and hopefully saved myself some aggravation (and possibly 48 dollars!). Maybe I would have received a great deal if I had gone through with the purchase but visions of trying to track down Mr. Loo with desperate unanswered emails to nowhere seemed all too possible. Granted Paypal does provide some recourse for fraudulent transactions but I had no interest in going there. Although I purchase a few things online this experience just confirmed what we should all practice when doing business, online or in person. Buyer Beware.

by Tim FairhurstBiz X Magazine

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See You at the Movies?

Last years filming in downtown Detroit of the latest instalment of the Transformers movie franchise may be the start of something big for not only Detroit but Windsor as well. The respective cities skylines, Ambassador bridge and wide variety of backdrops make for an attractive place to shoot movie and television productions. With a proposal to build a movie studio in Essex county being worked on right now as well could this area become Hollywood North? The success of the Windsor International Film Festival has established an interest amongst Winsdorites as movie buffs. Big budget movies being filmed in our own backyard? It is rumoured that parts of the next Batman flick are going to be shot in Detroit. Would you spend the time to be an extra in a film?

by Tim FairhurstBiz X Magazine

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New Years Day Fizzle?

Well, New Years has come and gone again for another year. Windsor and Essex County residents celebrated in style, partying at bars, restaurants, clubs and halls. The family event held at Lanspeary Park featured free skating, music and fireworks and was met with great success. Hats off to AM800 for sponsoring the event and to Arms and Heidi for a fantastic job in hosting. The placement of New Years eve on a Friday meant that New Years Day would be on a Saturday. Party on right? Well it seemed that everyone must have still been in recovery mode because the downtown area was eerily empty for a weekend evening. It seems that going out on New Years Day night was not in a lot of people’s plans. I did talk to some folks that were attending the Maroon 5 concert at Caesars but for the most part it was a pretty quiet day. What was your favourite thing to do on New Years Day?

by Tim FairhurstBiz X Magazine

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