dijon

calvin goes to
miss christine’s kitchen

Why did you choose to come to Miss Christine’s Kitchen?

I like sharing this restaurant with other people. I’ve been here a lot. My mom discovered this place and sent me here to grab some food. We were lucky and came at the right time, around 4:30-5 and so everything was stocked on the menu. We went through, chose five or six items and took it over to my parent’s house. We looked at the food, it looked amazing and then we were all so happy about the food, taking bites of each other’s dishes … it was so amazing that we were immediately like, ‘we’re coming back tomorrow.’ We kept coming back every weekend, and sometimes we didn’t get what we wanted - if you call later in the day things can be sold out. So we started coming up with strategies, like figure out your order before this time, call at this time, this person is going to pick it up.. So yeah we’re addicted to eating here. 

I actually have a funny story about coming to pick up food from Miss Christine’s with my mom. We came at the right time, but it was still pretty busy so we made our order and it was going to take 20 minutes to cook. We weren’t sure what to do with the 20 minutes so Miss Christine was like ‘you can wait over on the other side’ - which is Teaser’s, the strip club. It was not what I wanted to do, but my girlfriend, Rachel was like ‘yeah, let’s go.’ Miss Christine opened the back door, pushed us forward and was like, “this is normal, this is where I put all of my clients.” There’s probably like three other people already sitting, so all eyes were on us. I was just like praying that there were no acts happening at that time, but sure enough, there was.

We awkwardly took a spot in the back and I was turned to the side the whole time. The server came up and asked if we wanted anything and I wanted to say no, but we ended up getting water. The dancer was asking us questions and I just could not. My mom was glued to her cellphone, and I asked her if she wanted to leave but she’s like, “I’m ok, we can at least wait until our water is finished.” This was the end of her set as well, so she was just wearing a pink thong and super high shoes. We didn’t talk about it afterwards. My brother lives in Arizona and this is the type of stuff he loves, so I ended up telling him and he balled out laughing. My mom is just not the type of person to go somewhere like that.

What kind of food did you grow up eating?

This kind of food, actually. I grew up with my mom and dad but they worked a lot when I was younger so I spent a lot of time at my grandmothers, and she made food exactly like this. She’s also very British, she grew up in Britain and then came over to Winnipeg later in her life. So we did classic stuff like tea time, when we had breakfast we had large breakfasts with tea and orange juice, the classics. She was a phenomenal cook and wanted to make British/Jamaican style food all the time. It was really nice coming here and seeing a lot of the food that I grew up on, and it tastes just as good. 

Did you start out photography with disposable cameras like the rest of us?

No, funny enough, when I first picked up a film camera it was my dad’s old one. I paid to get it fixed and I bought film. I was working at Camp Stephens at the time so I took it with me and took a bunch of pictures throughout the week and they all came out blank. It was because I didn’t understand exposure amongst other things, but it was super discouraging. I found an old digital camera that I had, so I set it to auto, put the flash on and started taking party photos and documenting life, taking it on trips. I was slowly getting more comfortable with cameras but really where I started to get more interested in it was when I got into art school. I wasn’t very good at drawing or painting but I knew a lot about digital art. I wanted to find a medium where I could express myself better and create better tools, so I got into photography because I wanted to document and try to make artwork in some form of fashion.

The two points in my life where I started to elaborate on photography was first, with Synonym and Chloe Chafe - we go way back. She started experimenting with art shows and was asking me to come. Eventually I started taking pictures of all the shows. Then second, when I met Rachel, she was really into fashion and editorial stuff. I still have the first photos that we did together when we went to China Town. They are not good photos. But we took creative photos and after all of that I started studying more, started experimenting with film, polaroid and digital and started incorporating photography with digital art. One thing I love to do is scan photos other people had done, scan photos that I had done, and I would put them in photoshop and collage them and then split the tones. I’d convert them into a screen printing and screen print them back together and that was a process I’d do for a year or two. I really liked working with digital and artwork to make something a little more experimental. I just love the idea of something that is tangible and exists in the real world, and once you scan it, it becomes pixels and zeros and ones and you can sort those things and create an interesting mix and bring it back to the real world with screen prints.

Tell us about your parent’s anniversary photo, we love it!

It was my parent’s anniversary, 25 years. Our family comes from slavery so back in the day - at least on the island - when you were getting married you couldn’t have a traditional wedding ceremony, so instead of that you’d ‘jump the broom.’ They wanted to continue that in their wedding, so when they got married they jumped the broom. They had the same broom from their wedding, and for their 25th anniversary wanted wanted to recreate the photo. It was a lot more challenging than we realized because my mom’s hair was moving up and down when she was jumping, and she was also in heels which were hurting her feet and they were hilariously jumping out of sync. I had to think of a clever way to do this because we wanted it to look exactly the same. What we did instead is my dad was on the ground and my mom had one foot up and one down, and I had her hop. They were so happy with it. My mom posted it to Facebook and asked me to post it to Instagram. When we went over there I knew my mom was going to brag about how many likes she got on her photo. I think she had 300 likes and 72 comments or something, she’s really popular on there. I didn’t anticipate the response I got on my Instagram photo, it really blew up as well. I didn’t want to break her heart but I was like ‘… four hundred and something…’ She’s super competitive with me, we both have iPhone watches and she’ll let me know when she finishes her workout before I do. She’ll send me a text with a Bitmoji of her ‘winning.’

What was your high school look?

Not great. It took me a while to find my style. I liked being comfortable, I wore a lot of band t-shirts. My two loves at the time were that I played ultimate frisbee and road trips to see bands. My friends and I would go to Minneapolis and see like, LCD Soundsystem and Hot Chip, so I just wore a lot of merch. 

What’s your favourite thing that you own?

I’m not super materialistic and I try not to be too emotionally attached to my things. My camera is definitely something I use the most and put a lot of emotional energy into, but I’ve had my camera stolen before. I was never like, ‘I  wish I could have that specific camera back.’ I just moved quickly, went through insurance and got something different, it didn’t matter to me. I don’t have that many things I’m attached to but I try not to. With tech, things are replaceable. 

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?

I’ve had a couple. I think it’s the call centre I worked at, it was awful but you got paid decently. Your job is to answer the phone and sell people whatever they called you for. That concept is easy but it is awful dealing with people on the phone for hours on end. The only time I liked doing it was when I did a nightshift from 11pm to 8am. No one calls during that time so I brought my xbox and my coworker and I moved the TV from the rec room to the staff room. We played video games all night and then took turns taking naps until 6am when the calls came flooding in. You get paid an extra premium for the night shifts.