It’s a hole-in-the-wall restaurant found in the back alleys of Hongdae,  a district full of vinyl-spinning basement bars, shoe-packed boutiques, cook-at-your-table barbecue and hand-drip coffee. And yes, This is Chicken is definitely worth looking for.

A couple of years ago, you might have seen Ji W. Kim riding around Hongdae on a scooter delivering fried chicken. But he chose to start this place, a restaurant he can call his own, and with a grammatically unwieldy name to boot.

This is Chicken features a short menu, with Woody Chicken and Rude Chicken among its house specialties. There’s also beer on tap, to keep the customers spirited amid scratchy recordings of old reggae and ska music playing in the background. Named after the 2006 British skinhead movie This is England, this restaurant may seem like a Frankenstein of ideas stitched together– a Korean chicken restaurant, reggae, ska and British skinheads.  You might start to question your own sanity. What is going on here? What brings these random things together?

Simply put, Ji loves chicken. He’s fascinated by the culture portrayed in This is England, and he can’t get enough of reggae and ska. Rather than make a restaurant to suit other people’s tastes, he conceptualized one for the person he knows best: himself.

Will This is Chicken be a hit? Will customers connect with the owner’s eclectic and obscure vision? If you navigate through the back alleysof Hongdae and stumble upon this establishment, you’ll find Ji happily frying up chicken in the kitchen, listening to his favorite songs. Then you will realize that Ji has already achieved success in his own right– as he does what he loves best and plays by his own rules.

But you better order your chicken early, because This is Chicken is 86’d on all their stock almost every night.

“There are all kinds of wonderful women in this huge city that don’t have a creative voice but would want one. I hope that’s part of what I’m giving my students.”

That statement sums up the aspirations of Eshe, who is now at the forefront of South Korea’s belly dancing movement as the director of Dream Dance Studio in Seoul.

Although the art of belly dancing hails from the Middle East and Northern Africa, Eshe had discovered while she was living in Tokyo.  She was reading a magazine when she stumbled upon an ad for free belly dancing lessons, and that was enough to convince her.

“My teacher was a real character. She used to get on the floor and hiss like a snake. Her class was intense and it often put me outside of my comfort zone yet her moves were so full of grace and energy, like yoga but in undulating movements,” she recalls. ”Even though it was difficult to learn, the movements were simply beautiful… I wanted to improve and dance like my teacher.”

After three months of taking the class, Eshe got serious about pursuing a career in belly dancing.  So she traveled to Egypt and Turkey to study with renowned masters of the art.

A Canadian originally from the blue-collar town of Hamilton, Eshe teaches the Orientale, American Tribal Style, and Tribal Fusion forms of belly dance. Her wide range of international experience has helped strengthened her belief that belly dance is for women of all nationalities, regardless of age or body type. Along with the joy of discovering a new art form and enhancing her own sense of cultural awareness, she is glad that her lessons have helped many women boost their confidence as they interact with an interesting group of ladies from Korea and abroad.

According to Eshe, belly dancing is about telling a story, sharing a moment, reliving a memory or generating thoughts.   “Belly dance has been such a positive influence in my life,” says one of Eshe’s students. “It helped me appreciate and respect my body… It never fails to lift my mood,” she adds.

Eshe is making a living doing what she loves. Apart from running Dream Dance Studio, she is also busy serving as the director for two performance groups and showcasing her belly dancing talent across Japan, Turkey, Australia, Canada and Indonesia.

“I believe we all have art inside of us,” Eshe says. “Sometimes, we need a little help to coax it out, though.” These days, this belly dancing aficionado performs with a lot of underground indie bands. ”Music breathes life into dance and I’ve been lucky to work with so many amazing artists across different genres– I’ll dance to anything with a beat!”

Music is, and will always be, a universal catalyst for self-expression. The youth have gone beyond defining themselves through the music they listen to or create, and have chosen it as the turning point in their entrepreneurial journey. For Music Modsters armed with their enterprising ideas, the destination doesn’t matter so much – rather, it’s all about getting there.

Today’s Music Modsters are among the 14 kinds of youth entrepreneurs featured in Culture Vulture, our new quarterly trends series that offers a global snapshot of current and emerging cultural trends, bringing fresh insights from around the world to inspire and ignite new strategies for brands.

The first edition of Culture Vulture seeks to explore and understand the Entrepreneurial Spirit of Gen Y and how the youth’s innovative ideas can help stimulate game-changing strategies for brands that aspire to become more enterprising in their outlook.

Download our FREE Culture Vulture iPad app from iTunes for an overview on the global growth of entrepreneurship as well as the different behaviors that embody youth entrepreneurs worldwide, along with tips for nurturing “entrepreneurial” attitudes for brands.

Don’t have an iPad? Then download the interactive PDF . Also check out all of our 14 videos showcasing the different types of youth entrepreneurs around the world.

Interested to know more? Visit the Culture Vulture page or email culturevulture@mindshareworld.com.

I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve skipped over reviews of or articles about Shabazz Palaces in the last few months, and I actually caught some of their set at the Treasure Island music festival recently, but it wasn’t until I saw them included in nearly every Dusted reviewers’ best-of-2011 list that I finally decided to give their album a chance (not surprisingly, said album is quite good).

There’s also something satisfying about getting a glimpse of each reviewer’s personal tastes, and realizing which artists are universally-loved on your own, rather than simply being presented with a definitive list of the ‘Top 50 Albums of 2011′ compiled via some arcane voting process.

Serious Businessis really anything but. The rap, electro, dance duo loves to make light of pop-culture references like MILF, croning “why buy the milk when you can get the cow for free”. Or when speaking about the olympic swimmer “if you look like Michael Phelps, it helps” one of the many boy on boy loving lyrics from their most popular single “Hot Damn” – watch the video below and I dare you not to dance.

The boys (Danny Diana-Peebles and Jason Mampel) just released their debut album, Kool, on Futro Records, and had a record release party to celebrate the momentous occasion. I was there with a camera and my dancin’ shoes and these two dudes did not let me down. Along with the great dance tracks was an eye full by by Alex Boyce who provides live video programming, not to mention two hot babes in the front dressed as secretaries that meant business, seriously.

The trippy, jammy, soulful pop (man, hope that sums it up!) band Yours consists of two dudes. Guitarist Matthan Minster and drummer Adam Trachsel. They formed right here in Portland in 2010.I was lucky enough to see that at Holocene last winter and I have to say they sound like much more than a duo. Calling themselves Psychedelic pop rock, they deliver hits reminiscent of Early Modest Mouse, and the like of the greats that made up mid 90′s indie rock. The stuff that came after Hardcore, post-hardcore, and Emo. You know, the stuff that put the Northwest music scene on the map for the second time in the decade coined “the information age”.

Dowload their stuff for free right here: Reverbnation

My autumn soundtrack has been an unsettling rotation of two new albums by veteran wizards of the bizarre and unusual: Tom Waits and David Lynch.

Waits is a veteran musician, with one of those miraculous decade spanning careers that still marches on with integrity and inventiveness. Lynch, master of the surreal and terrifying, released his debut solo record, though he’s been heavily involved in music for his film for years.

I’m a lifelong fan of Tom Waits, the older and weirder he gets, the more I love him. As the years pass his voice gets more gravely and the imagery in his songs veers even more towards the darker and ecstatically bizarre side of life. In short, he seems to be settling more and more into himself; whatever odd impulse he has, he puts it on a record. This doesn’t always mean I love every minute of every album he’s put out in the last few years, but I admire him for his irreverent attitude.

Bad As Me is raucaus at times (like on the title track), sweet at others (as in the lovely Put Me Back in the Crowd) and has it’s fair share of the weird-as-all-get-out pandemonium you expect in a Waits record.

David Lynch uses music in his films in the most arresting, unforgettable way. Like Isabella Rossellini singing “Blue Velvet” in the film of the same name, songs in Lynch films are an indelible part of the films themselves. I must admit, I was wary about a Lynch album, with Paris night clubs, coffee roasting, and all brands of other endeavors, I think we were all hoping he’d just go back to making movies. But he proved me wrong. Crazy Clown Time is vastly varied in tone sometimes dark and rhythmic, sometimes beautifully melodic. I love the first track with Karen O. on vocals, and it is charming and strange to hear Lynch himself sing, albeit through thick reverb and effects. The album is a pretty perfect companion to the quickly darkening days of winter.

You can upload playlists of tracks as ‘sets’, leave comments on other people’s music at precisely-timed intervals to specify which moment in the track inspired you and why. You can choose favorites. Your followers become your friends, although you don’t necessarily follow them back. You can share tracks privately with select individuals and groups.

Soundcloud is a great way for professional and budding musicians to connect with other like-minded individuals to get valuable feedback about their craft. It’s useful for networking. It’s addictive. And it’s fun.

Vincent Parker may well be the James Brown of Vancouver’s electronic dance music scene.

The hardest working man in Van city and with good reason, Vincent has been sculpting a distinct vein in dance floor destruction for the last few years to serious effect. When it comes to IDM, breakcore, techno, booty bass and noise, he slams up in the blender, spits em’ out and provides the most intense shot to your cerebral cortex since Richard D. James owned a tank and had dancing teddy bears on stage with him.

As far as live shows go, Vincent Parker is again, as close to James Brown as you’re gonna get in Vancouver. Literally a blur behind two laptops and two kaos pads, Vincent seems to drop at least ten pounds per live set. Out dancing your audience is a rare thing by Vincent seems to do it effortlessly, destroying the competition with ease. It’s an experience and with her seemingly prolific studio tendencies, you’re very likely to see new Vincent in the very near future.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will never be the kind of person who can listen to a song and instantly name the microphone used to record the kick drum. We all have our talents, and one of mine is knowing absolutely nothing about music production.

Which is why all-in-one mini-studios like Propellerhead’s Balance always catch my eye – when I have the time, I just want to record music as quickly and painlessly as possible, before I forget it and/or get bored. All these promises of user-friendly interfaces and magical distortion-erasing technology always seem (and usually are) too good to be true, and more often or not I spend more time setting everything up than I do recording music, but the Balance looks as though it might be capable of delivering.

Propellerhead are apparently new to producing music hardware, but they certainly deserve some trust for developing Reason, the only high-end music software I’ve ever been able to wrap my head around, and… just look at that thing! It’s like an Apple product’s evil twin – simple, clean, and solid-looking. The Balance won’t be available until September, but, provided I don’t have access to a recording studio (with a very patient producer) by then, I’ll certainly be looking to take it on a test run.