A day off in Vancouver

in Vancouver for work

(Original entry date from February 2017)

I lived here eight years ago but apparently that is long enough to forget where everything is. Including where I used to live and where I used to work. I thought I remembered the layout of downtown Vancouver, but my memories only came in snippets, and I found myself getting lost more often than I thought I would - standing on a street corner, utterly disoriented as to what direction was where. Sometimes I could glimpse the water....but the ocean surrounds downtown on three sides. Sometimes I would see the mountains. Where were those? For some reason, I can usually find my way around if I can see the sky. But the tall skyscrapers and condos loomed above me and I could not remember where I had come from.

But what I did remember was where my favourite food places were.

I hit up the food court at the H-Mart downtown Vancouver where I used eat all the time because I was a cheap student missing my mom's Korean food. I ordered the last chajangmyun that was available, basically Korean spaghetti if you substitute Italian tomato sauce for black bean sauce. The small child who wanted to order it after me was NOT happy.

but I was so happy with my chajangmyun

unhappy child with no chajangmyun

I also met up with some girl friends at Chewy's for some tasty tasty British Columbia oysters. Unfortunately, there's been a problem with BC oysters being tainted this year, so we ended up being served oysters from Prince Edward Island. They were still delicious but it was kind of funny.

Vancouver also seems to be all about arugula grilled cheese sandwiches, which I feel like is pretty symbolic about the kind of thing that Vancouver does to food.

On the one morning that it didn't rain, I went for a jog around Stanley Park, which was full of tourists, couples jogging with mathcing backpacks (soooo romantic :D !) and Korean families carrying large selfie sticks, all enjoying the sea air and ocean view and all serving as interesting obstacles on my running route.

 

Vancouver is also always a great opportunity to visit my mother's side of the family. My grandparents loaded me up with so much dried squid to bring to bring back home, I'm sure I looked like such an Asian stereotype, multiple plastic bags of dried squid on the SkyTrain.

my grandmother, always feeding

my cousin has gotten really tall

Most of my trip was spent working (as I was there on business), but during one of my breaks, I took a walk to the harbourfront, just for a chance to lay my eyes on the ocean and the mountains. Despite my family roots here, I never grew up here but I always miss the mountains and the oceans. No matter how long I've been away from this city, I never forget how much I love it.

selfies with my super cute cousin

winding down, tying up loose ends

well my summer in vancouver is drawing to a close. today is my last day at work (and i am late!) and right afterwards i'll be heading off to Salmon Arm with meg for the weekend to go to the Roots and Blues Festival, where i hope that Johnny Winter will hold on living long enough to play a sweet show. come on Johnny! Les Paul can wait!

last night i had a beautiful send-off from the various friends i've made in vancouver this summer, my roommates, coworkers, classmates, the musicians, the animators, and even a girl i've only been conversing with on the internet. we had it at my favourite vancouver bar, Cafe Deux Soleils, and Fraser let me play a set for the open mic. i played one of my oldest blues songs (Better Wash My Sheets) and my newest song about driving to Whistler. it was pretty fantastic, and makes me particularly sad about leaving this place.

okay, i better head off to work, so i don't get fired on my last day of work.

pansori

a while ago i picked up Min Jin Lee's novel Fast Food For Millionaires. essentially the book is about a twenty-something Korean-American who's supposed to go into law, but dreams about designing fashion instead. she has a major shopping problem and drinks lots of water to suppress her appetite, has a younger sister who is the perfect Korean daughter, secretly loves the Bible, and feels oddly alienated from the korean community, even if it seems to be somewhat of a self-imposed exile. you may see why i like this novel. i was reading it while walking home from work and suddenly found myself crying while standing on the Burrard Bridge. it was just the oddest thing. i felt as though this author had managed to take these feelings and unexpressed ideas that i've been struggling with all my life, and had fit it all into chapter one.

a few weeks ago, meg and i went to the Vancouver Folk Festival where i saw Mavis Staples performing. she told us stories about traveling through the States with her family as a performing group, touring from church to church. she told us about meeting Martin Luther King Jr and listening to his sermons. she blew us away with her gospel songs, and i thought about what it must be like to go to church and sing songs like this. it made me wish for a moment that i was black and that this kind of music was my heritage.

at work on friday i found myself humming the traditional Korean folk song Arirang, and wondering how koreans manage to make songs about wishing foot disease on your ex-love sound so poetic.

i swear i'm going somewhere with all this, eventually.

i spent the weekend with my aunt and her family in mission. a lot of time spent at church. number of times i was asked what grade i'm in: 3 (my usual answer was either a polite nod or a less-polite "grade twenty"). i guess my little boy haircut is making me look like, well, a little boy. i met a man who told me he knew my father when they were teenagers. he told me that my father used to swear a lot, use a lot of "D-words" and "G-words" (i smiled politely).

friday night, there was a choir touring from Korea that was performing at the church. i think that's when i realized that this was our tradition, our version Mavis Staples gospel blues. the music was absolutely beautiful. they sang korean variations on Nearer on my God to Thee, an old traditional Korean folk song, an English vocal jazz number, and (my favourite) a version of Arirang. it brought real tears to my eyes. you know, one of my biggest passions in life is for music, and from time to time i am reminded that my love of music was jump-started by my time growing up in the korean church. listening to my father conduct Handel's Messiah every year since i was a little girl, singing "I Got Peace Like a River" in Sunday School, stealing a guitar from the storage room to teach myself chords so i can play along in the worship services of the youth group where i learned to play in a band for the first time. it sounds cheesy and nerdy but that's where my roots were, no matter how far away i've grown from it. it was a pretty touching moment.

BC makes me look like a cartoon character

looking at meg's pictures from our long weekend trip have led me to conclude that i am rapidly turning into a cartoon character.

this week's theme: stuff on the walls

meg is visiting, which means that i've been eating out a lot lately and meeting folks. the other day, we went to the eatery, a north american-style sushi place that seems to have Astro Boy as their mascot. it's a pretty zany place, with toys and figurines and paintings and paraphernalia all over the walls and ceilings, kind of like the way you might see at a diner. at first i was skeptical because people know my opinion on non-asian asian restaurants, but i have to admit that i was pretty impressed by the very long and very creative menu. meg and laura sang the glories of the electric banana sushi, made of yes eel and banana. we also ordered saketinis, which is also as western as it gets with asian ingredients. still pretty delicious.

last night we dined with one of those guys that sells clothing at the nude beach. Graham is pretty awesome.

i'm heading off to Mission this weekend to spend some much needed time with my relatives. it'll be nice to see them. and then there's sunday. should i go see Smokey Robinson, and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings at the Burnaby Roots and Blues Festival? i feel like i kind of have to make this happen.

these chords aren't so amazing to sober people

i am going to Seattle this weekend for my education in American indie music at the Capitol Hill Block Party, sort of the gay/grunge district (so Seattle). SONIC YOUTH. i am fully aware that Sonic Youth is playing in Vancouver the next night, but i am much much much more into going to a massive block party with the yankees. also, i hate the concept of V-fest.

*****

today choo and i took our guitars down to Cafe Deux Soleils in the hopes of playing at the Open Mic, but the place was packed and we didn't get spots. unfazed, we wandered down Commercial Drive until we found some folks jamming in the park, clarinet, mandolin, fiddle, trumpet...we'd stumbled upon the vancouver Flash Mob Collective. we sat down with our guitars and joined in, as various street folks wandered by, and had a pretty pleasant time, until a fight broke out between two druggies over who stole whose drugs. ugh.

explosions in the sky

last night, Choo and i checked out the opening night of the "Celebration of Light" fireworks competition going on here in vancouver. there's a similar thing in ottawa, except that i have to drive over half an hour to another province to see it. here in vancouver, i just walk to the end of the street, hang out at the beach playing guitars with Choo, and then the explosions in the sky come to us. it was pretty impressive. we didn't have a radio to sync music with the fireworks, but i was still thrilled. the show lasted a pretty long time too, much longer than the Canada Day ones in Ottawa, i feel. all bright lights....felt like drugs. i have a lot of good memories of fireworks. the fourth of july when my band played a show on top of the brad's roof in the kensington market, and the kids shot off fireworks into the toronto cityline. the time we set off dozens of explosions in the sky for eccles' birthday at his cottage, playing Explosions in the Sky in the backgruond, and the grass caught on fire, melting the plastic fence. that was the first time i had met Majewski.

seemed like the whole town had come out to catch the free show. there were teenagers passing beer cans back and forth under the volleyball nets, and entire Indian families sitting in the sand. cops everywhere. getting out of the beach after the show was pretty hectic. choo and i agreed we'll have to catch the next one.

end of summer reflections

My stint in Vancouver is beginning to come to an end, and there were times when I thought I would be glad to finally leave, but as moving day looms closer, I can’t help but shaking the feeling that I am not finished with Vancouver yet, and I am sad to be leaving the West Coast. There is so much more that I wanted to see, and I’ve started compiling a list for the next time in the uncertain future that I come back. I never made it out to Olympia, home of some of my rock idols, nor Whistler (somehow!), nor the famous Okanagan wineries. I want to go to the Centre of the Universe near Kamloops, as well as the Top of the World, also near Kamloops. I’ve never been to Banff. Two bands that I like (Portico and the Rural Alberta Advantage) have written songs about Frank, Alberta. Some day I’d like to make it out to the Dawson City Music Festival. And then there’s the whole state of California, which I have not returned to in some twenty years.

I also want to go to the Lululemon warehouse outlet store off Commercial Drive.

Vancouver Quirks #3

there are no mosquitoes here, so there are no screens on our windows. however, an ecosystem still exists, and so there ARE other bugs, like wasps, and there is nothing keeping those from flying into my room through the window.

the Rural Alberta Advantage

last night Choo and i saw a Toronto band singing about Alberta, performing in Vancouver. i've been a fan of the Rural Alberta Advantage for a while, but even i was surprised at the turnout for the Sunday night show. the Media Club was packed, totally full, and even Gene Simmons was there. you could tell that Nils was absolutely floored at the massive crowd, and the fact that everyone in the audience was singing along to all the songs. despite looking a bit overwhelmed, they put on an excellent show. Paul Banwatt is an insane drummer with an intensity in his drumming face that would slay a thousand swooning lovesick ladies. the audience dragged them out for two more encores, and they ended the night by bringing their instruments to the middle of the floor and singing a final good night song, acoustic, with the crowd gathered around them. a great show. it made me miss Toronto and the old band.



Hermetics opened for them. they are rapidly becoming my new favourite Vancouver band. It is impressive how a two-man band can be so rocking...and cute at the same time. they just need to put out an album soon.

-Gloria

axis of conversation

i had another one of those nights where i went to see a band i never heard of with people i didn't really know...and was pleasantly surprised. i caught the Calgary band Axis of Conversation at my favourite venue Cafe Deux Soleils, and they were like nothing i have ever heard before. featuring a string section and some really fancy gadgets on top of the traditional rock band arrangement, they had a really eclectic style, a mix of Radioheady-rock/pop, Godspeed You Black Emporer sonic freakouts, breakbeats, rap verses, neatly arranged background vocals, and a few dance numbers as well. i really can't describe it.

four things i really like about the band:

1. where a normal band would carry around one synthesizer that makes many sounds, they seemed to carry the real deal. instead of using the strings patch on your casio, they had a cello and a violin. instead of using the vibes function, they had a real xylophone. and some pretty cool loop pedals and machines i can't even understand. also, the lead singer's one-year-old son's toy keyboard, about eight inches long.

2. the guitarist plays right handed guitars left-handed. not even re-stringing it. he just flips it over and plays everything upside down. this makes the normal chord you get on the downstroke inverted, a really interesting sound and style...

3. serious representation from Mother Asia. seeing an asian kid in an indie band is rare as a blue moon. seeing more than the one token asian person in the same band...is something i have never seen in the toronto music scene. this band had three asian bros, that's half, all extremely awesome. the white people of the band were pretty cool too.

4. a very pregnant violinist. i hope some day i will tour across the continent carrying a baby in my womb. that baby will come out either really cool or really deaf.

on another note, i am meeting an awful lot of people from calgary here.

home and native land: wreck beach

I have to admit I wasn’t expecting much of my Canada Day in Vancouver. I come from Ottawa, that sleepy town that roars awake only twice a year: St. Patrick’s Day and Canada Day. The streets downtown are closed off from cars so young (drunk) people can fill up the streets with raucous lively partying. There are street performers and vendors everywhere. You wake up at 8AM with a breakfast beer and keep ploughing right through the day. You fight the 8PM hangover; you calm down a random friend freaking out from the fireworks because they took too many drugs; you lose your boyfriend in the crowd and figure you’ll catch up with him at the next party. You sit on the Hill with contraband booze and sing along to blue rodeo even though you hate blue rodeo. You find yourself in the supply closet of a hotel with your high school friends, and none of you can explain how you got there. YOU DO NOT RELIEVE YOURSELF ON THE WAR MEMORIAL.

Anyway, my roommate had warned me that Canada Day is not quite that wild here in Vancouver, so I thought maybe I was going to take it easy. Maybe go to the beach, see an evening show. As it turned out, the girl that is couchsurfing at our place was going to Wreck Beach with her friends for the day, so I invited myself along.

When I was seventeen years old, setting off to explore Vancouver by myself, my father warned me to avoid Wreck Beach, so of course I have been curious about the place ever since. I didn’t quite know what to expect. Certainly it was a trek just getting there; you have to commute all the way to the UBC campus, and then hike on foot through the forest down the bluffs for a while until the thick rainforest suddenly opens up wide to an ocean, beach, and a lot of naked men.

Wreck Beach, according to Wikipedia, is one of the largest, most popular nudist beaches in North America. It is the Vancouver that everyone thinks of when they think of Vancouver aka “Vansterdam”, land of the hippies. A naked old man that introduced himself to me as “I’m not gay, but I am European” told me that Vancouver is a big la-la land where everyone is on drugs and lives in their own world. Well, I spend enough time in the business district downtown and in Kitsilano to know that’s not quite true, but someone living at Wreck Beach could certainly get that impression.

do you remember the San Franscisco beach party scene in the Princess Diaries? A bunch of young people hanging out with their friends, shooting the breeze, carrying boards under their arms, playing guitars, looking cool? yeah, it's a bit like that, only everyone is naked.

Besides the scores of naked people of all ages comfortably hanging out, there is the open air black market that is quite characteristic of Wreck Beach. This ranges from pot cookies to scarves to beach-mixed margaritas to contraband American cigarettes.

I sat myself down right by a rainbow umbrella where a muslim woman wearing a hijab was tanning her bare bottom. I introduced myself to my couchsurfer’s friends, naked young guys playing guitars and a game of Go. I declined the chocolate covered mushrooms offered to me by a nice man wearing nothing but a backpack, finding that Wreck Beach was enough of a hallucination without psychotic drugs. But I did buy myself a yummy veggie hot dog from a brave man that was barbecuing naked.

The waves were fierce that day, so I didn’t wade in the water past my ankles. I was pretty content to lie in the sun, with the rare chance to tan parts of my body that don’t normally see sun.

Someone gave some kind of a signal, and suddenly everyone was rustling. Cops. They come around every once in a while for random raids. Everyone was hiding their drugs and booze, so I hid my bottle of ginger ale in my purse, only to remember that it’s not actually illegal to drink ginger ale in public.

after the cops left, looking awkwardly overdressed in their full uniforms, the party picked up again. Down the way, some folks had lugged along to the beach a full drum set, amps and guitars, and were started up a rousing chorus of Bachman Turner Overdrive, with crowds gathering around and singing along. Little kids ran around in the buff squealing. Our friends set off in inflatable rafts into the waters, led by Conrad, who had painted his face like a tiger, determined to make it down to Jericho Beach. The not-gay European man was right: this was a bizarre la la land, a land that normal social conventions forgot. but everyone was just having a good time.

in love with the sun

i said before that the ultimate Vancouver experience is watching musicians perform in a converted yoga studio loft in the Downtown Eastside near East Hastings. but the penultimate Vancouver experience is probably watching musicians like Rose Melberg performing at a sushi restaurant in the DTES near East Hastings. there's something so definitive about combining beautiful soul-washing lilting vocals with california rolls and the concern at the back of your head that you might get mugged by a cokehead on your walk home through one of the country's worst poverty/drug/crime/prostitution-stricken areas.

i discovered rose melberg at the secret loft show during the Music Waste Festival. if ears can do a double take, that's what mine did when i heard her sing and play the guitar, with Mint Records' Kellarissa backing up on vocals. There are a few bands out there that I've listened to and felt musical love at first "sight" - Sandro Perri, Cowboy Junkies, Sonic Youth, Radiohead, Great Lake Swimmers, Godspeed You Black Emporer, Red House Painters - and it is a feeling that's hard to explain. the music just feels so right, as though the artist happened to know exactly what your personal aesthetic tastes are and catered to it. you could resist it but you're still drawn to it. you don't have to try to understand the music, like i do with some of the weirder Vancouver music out there...your appreciation just floats naturally.

anyway, that makes me sound awful creepy, but rose was playing again at the Safe Amplication Site Society fundraiser, this non-profit group that's dedicated to creating friendly, affordable, all-age, drug and alcohol free musical spaces in Vancouver. since i'm all about teetolling and going to bed before midnight, i'm all for it, so i went to the fundraiser. this was held at Hoko's Sushi Bar on Powell. the sushi chef is a big silent Asian man who is also the sound guy. he plays Nickleback between sets. the sound equipment is a karaoke machine. an eight year old boy buses the tables in joyful disregard of child labour laws. the food is delicious.

other bands played too, including the Sunshines and also Kidnap Kids, who were absolutely adorable, if somewhat unrehearsed. like Ghost Bees chewing bubblegum, amazingly catchy melodies, brilliant lyrics, and boundless raw energy. plus a line like "let's all get with the greater good, let's all have a makeout party" is a slogan you can tattoo on your arm.

also worth mentioning is the Miami Device/Show Gears/Star Captains show at the Media Club on Saturday night. This was part of the Vancouver International Jazz Festival which, by the way, is huge here, with hundreds of performers and over forty venues. rob and i were looking for any live show to go to, and so when we checked out Miami Device's MySpace, we knew we had to go to the Media Club. Rob's been really into the Dap Tones record label lately, and i've been in love with the Afrobeats, electro-jazzy sound ever since my band opened for NOMO at the El Mocambo, so this show was perfect for us.

Star Captains had a great Herbie Hancock style of jazz sound to it, very tight and skilled, especially the keyboard player. genius licks and thoroughly enjoyable, finishing their set with the best jazzy cover of Michael Jackson's Billy Jean i've ever heard, leaving the stage with the audience singing. Show Gears was next; i feel like i can't fairly comment on their act because i am allergic to reggae music, but even depite that i found myself really liking some of their songs (the ones that were the least reggae sounding).

Miami Device was sheer brilliance. they had a considerably large brass section which not only fit on stage but were quite coordinated. they had the whole audience dancing on the floor. two very sexy guitar players, one craaazy keyboardist, and this guy who plays this...thing, it's pretty awesome, but i will always remember him as the guy that is in this Five Alarm Funk flyer:



rob and i were totally lucky to accidentally stumble upon this show. all three acts were Vancouver locals, which just goes to show that people who say Vancouver's music scene is dead are people who don't look (or listen) very hard.

you thought the restaurant reviews were over but they're not

lately rob and i have been doing a lot of asian food. monday night, after building up a healthy appetite walking the entire Seawall, we poked our heads into the Barefoot Kitchen, this wonderful restaurant that brings totally new meaning to the word "asian fusion". first of all, it's run by actual asians, real live japanese people, so it's not just a bunch of trendy hipsters serving what their view of the exotic Orient is with bamboo chopsticks on square plates and too much soya sauce. also, it's beyond asian fusion: it's that awesome yoshoku style, which means that it's all kinds of food with a Japanese perspective. sort of like what my mother might come up with at home, because my sister likes Western food and my dad likes Korean food, so like meatloaf with bean sprouts and kimchi and an anchovy stew, or something.

for example: i had the hamburg steak topped with cheese and teriyaki sauce, with sides of cream corn soup, kimchi, and rice. oh yes, and french fries. rob had the donkatsu (breaded pork chop) with a garlic sauce, miso soup, potato salad, and rice. we also ordered the most delicious sushi rolls we've had in a long time. taken with a Japanese beer that wasn't Asahi or Sapporo, and for me, a cocktail that consisted of Korean liquor + lemon + soda. absolutely delicious. most importantly, pretty damn cheap too, because it's all considered to be fast food.

plus, in terms of non-food elements, the authenticity was made all the more charming by adding the lack of english speaking on the part of the waitresses and the magazine racks of Japanese edition Elle, and also the super cheesy totally Astrud Gilberto tunes making the whole place seem like you're in a Japanese supermarket. totally awesome. makes me want to go to Japan, if they don't hate Koreans.



the next night Rob and i tried out the Noodle Box down the street from my place. i love noodles from any culture, so i thought this place couldn't disappoint me, but sadly it did. it wasn't bad. every dish seemed to have all the elements i wanted (noodles + nuts + tofu + mysterious kooky ingredient), but for some reason it just didn't have that kick. i'm not saying that i didn't love the convenient takeout boxes, and i'm not saying it's because the entire kitchen staff was a bunch of trendy white hipsters that asked me if i was sure that i wanted my sauce spice level to be medium, because like, medium can be pretty spicy (what part of my kimchi devouring face looks like i'm scared of spice??). it was missing that cosy touch at a good Asian restaurant has. my Indonesian noodles was drowned in coconut milk as though there had been a forestfire in my noodles and the firefighters ran out of water to flood it out. it was a tad bit spicy, not too spicy, but not the tasty kind of spicy. also...i'll say it...not a single Asian patron eating in there, except me. what does that say? and $13 for takeout noodles just can't compete with the cheap deal Chinese takeout places next door which have tastier dishes, even if they don't have the funky decorations on the wall or the hip fonts on their signs. but not every Asian place can be a Barefoot Kitchen.

still, the big asian winner is still the H-Mart cafeteria. maybe it's because i'm korean, but there really isn't anything that makes a homesick gal feel like she's back at home than a crowded food court with yummy $5 chajangmyun, surrounded by old korean ladies yelling at each other in the kitchen and awful sappy korean pop music pumping out of the sound system.

doing yoga at a rock show in a yoga studio at a rock festival

gonna have to do that thing where i'm copying and pasting from my journal again...sorry about the lazyness...

all week they've been advertising this Ghost Bees / Timber Timbre show but not disclosing the location other than the fact that it was going to be at a "secret loft". i've been trying to figure out where the hell it was going to be but i finally put the pieces together, thanks to the guys at zulu records, to find the address, and all i got was the address. vancouver sure likes to keep its underground music scene, well, underground.

when i got there, i found myself right in the heart of the infamous Downtown Eastside, by East Hastings. as in the crime+prostitution+poverty central, the basis for the Godspeed You Black Emporer song about the end of the world, the home of the open air drug market and Canada's only heroin injection site. actually, as it turned out, i've been hanging out in the DTES a lot for a while now, only i didn't clue in that it was *the* DTES...i just thought i was on the outskirts of Gastown. Vancouver is so bizarre in the way that the city's richest and poorest all hang out in the EXACT SAME PLACES.

anyway, the secret loft turned out to be a converted yoga studio, which is so vancouver, and one of the coolest shows i've been to in a long time. you had to just count the numbers on the door till you hit the address you were given, walk to the unmarked door and with blind faith, just go through and there people were. no liquor license obviously, so people were selling beer out of coolers and smoking during the sets. i proceeded to watch the most amazing sets ever, each one completely different from the previous. it was intimate like a house show, and ghost bees ended up doing a shared set with timber timbre, with them taking turns playing their songs and filling in on backup for each other. it was haunting. it was beautiful. i lay down in the middle of the "living room" and was overwhelmed at how perfect it sounded. all day i was feeling homesick for ontario, and wondering if i want to spend more years living here, but tonight might have settled that for me.

if only the nighttime public transportation system wasn't so bloody awful.

HEAT WAVE....vancouver style.

everyone here is freaking out by the record high temperatures in the city. yesterday, it reached OVER THIRTY DEGREES. i'm totally amused. it's no use trying to explain that i come from a city that ranges from -40 degrees in the winter to plus 40 degrees in the summer. the main big deal is that air conditioning is that a regular accessory in every building here, so the buses get kind of smelly. still, it just makes it all the more awesome to wander down to the beach at 7:30 in the evening and still get a tan. thank god i live in a beach community on the west coast - nobody blinks an eye when i walk around without a shirton.

i have been on a hunt for reworked vintage clothing stores in vancouver. i hit up Main Street last night, and Gastown today. many, many, many awesome designer boutiques. this is ultimately going to be very bad for my wallet. still, nothing as awesome as Preloved yet, although shop owners have been savvy enough to recognize my Preloved outfits. later i will put up some photos to show my latest purchases.

becoming a beach bum

at some point I made it a mission to discover a new beach every weekend. God knows there are plenty here in the 'Couv.

On thursday I went for drinks at the Soho Bar & Grill, an ordinary bar (excellent butter chicken wraps) with an extraordinary view of English Bay. With the palm trees and hundreds of beautiful bronzed bodies lounging in the sun, it looked just like California, those San Francisco beach party scenes in The Princess Diaries. Is it sad that my ideas about the West Coast seem to be mainly predicated on a high school fantasy chic flick starring Anne Hathaway? Anyway, I returned to English Bay the next day with Amanda and Sloth and the place was jumping full of like-minded loungers, thick pot smoke, boys performing their various mating dances via football juggling and exposed ugly dragon tattoos... and miles of sandy beach at low tide. It was crowded, but lovely.

Today, to stay in keeping with the linguistically-themed beaches, I decided to check out Spanish Bay, solely because my father told me to. My father never told me that it was a hike to get there, though, through pebble trails in the woods on a steep incline and past the impossibly huge and luxurious mansions that look like they are out of some fairy tale, with the tall gates, fancy fountains, exotic flower gardens, and security cameras everywhere. it felt like my journey to Spanish Banks took so long but once i got there, passed the thick tree line that jealously guards the place, i was taken in by the view, the shoreline seemingly stretching on forever.

the low tide allowed young boys to take their boards and skim through the muddy streams that the tide left behind. Vancouver has dozens of sports i'd never heard of before coming here.

i spread my towel on a spot near the dune grass and let my worries be blown away in the breeze like the sand. i thought about how every member of my family in the previous generation had fallen in love with their life partners here in Vancouver, and it's not hard to see how. it is such a city of healing.

this is the beginning

i try not to cheat too often, but i'm tired tonight so i'm just copying and pasting from my journal:

"i'd gone to a TV on the Radio concert at the Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park and the whole show was over by 9:30PM. i haven't been feeling well all day so i didn't want to go, but i went anyway because i didn't want to let Ed down. i'm glad i did go though. we had fun, and i was reminded of how i want to spend my whole summer outside.

i've only begun to explore Stanley Park, even though i've been going there all my life. i was glad i changed out of my suit into street clothes, because i don't know what would look more awkward than wearing a suit in one of the world's most beautiful urban parks. well, i suppose that asian man hanging around in a suit with a tie around his head probably looked more awkward than i'll ever be, but you get all sorts of folks around here.

i watched a bald eagle swoop down on a crow in the park. sometimes i feel like i'm caught in some magical land. there are seventeen bald eagle nests in the park. my neighbours have palm trees on their lawn. i eat dinner on the beach and always see a face i know, from a distant memory. everyone is thin and beautiful. girlfriends that i lost to arranged marriages in my teen years pop up. i take a bus and somehow end up in a paradise cove where i can paddle myself out on a surfboard and feel the salt sea spray in my face. i frequently have moments where i feel like time stays still. and everywhere i go there are these blue, blue, blue mountains. one day i'm going to wake up and find that this whole summer has been a dream.

also, i have acne for the first time since i was thirteen years old. not so fantastic. toronto gave me asthma, vancouver gave me acne."

memorize the city

amanda once said to me, "working in another city must be like a vacation! everything is so new!"

well, not really. with my fever, sore throat, runny nose and dull headache, i'm very conscious of the fact that i'm supposed to work tomorrow, and i get no sick days. cold or no cold though, i maintain that this weekend was gorgeous.

vancouver is a city of sun-worshippers, which is why i fit in, so i got up early on saturday, determined to make the most of my day outdoors. option 1: watching my roommates play volleyball at "Fake Beach". The place was actually called Urban Beach, not Fake Beach, but given the fact that it was literally a pile of sand that they moved into the middle of a parking lot, at any rate it was no Stanley Park. whatever you decide to call it, it didn't matter in the end because i was never able to find it. apparently they had moved this pile of sand from the last time Google Earth mapped the city.

lost in a pecular industrial park (smack dab in the middle of downtown with not a soul in sight...), i called amanda to bail me out. she is much more of a sloth-worshipper than a sun-worshipper so she was still in bed by 2PM, but was up for an adventure, provided i give her time to shower.

we decided to head for Deep Cove deep in the heart of the wilderness, at least it was in my view because it was far, far, far away from the skytrain...in North Vancouver, which i have discovered, is actually a seperate city of its own, kind of like Ottawa and Gatineau. except, unlike Gatineau, instead of being filled with sleazy sex stores and drunk fourteen year old girls in miniskirts, North Van seems like a pretty respectable place with some hip stores, restaurants, a decent downtown area, and a million oceanview condos. guess they cleaned up their North Van girls in white pants (to see what i'm talking about, use the control F function for "white pants" in this Douglas Coupland novel). to get there we rode the BOATBUS which i know is called the Seabus, but to be exact (and i am a fan of being exact when describing modes of transportation such as the bus train) it is a bus that is a boat that plunges across the stormy waters past the giant cruise ships full of fat people to connect with the North Van shores. and people like amanda ride it as a regular part of their commute! how amazing!

it took hours, it seemed, to make the trek to Deep Cove, but it was certainly worth it, especially since we were smart enough to bring Sloth along, who had worked there last year as a kayak instructor. this meant that we could borrow surfboards and paddle ourselves out into the salty waters to explore. it was incredible, to feel the sun beat down on my back, taste the salt sea spray, and feel the water beneath my feet. kind of like jesus! i kid. by some gracious miracle i didn't fall off the board, either.

Sloth's connections also meant that we could borrow (hijack? boatjack?) a motorboat from a friend who lived down the way, so we could zip across the bay and have our minds boggled by the enormous multi-million dollar waterfront country homes, built into the sides of the mountains and spilling out into the docks. As Sloth steered the boat over the waves (we had this hypothesis that motorboats can't be tipped...), he told us stories the summer he spent here: trekking out to remote islands to camp overnight, finding baby seals, kayaking down the stretch in the middle of the night all the way to Indian Arm where the water runs fresh from the mountains, only to realize they would have to kayak back to the dock with nothing but the stars in the dark sky to guide them.

the majestic view of the mountains surrounding the bay reminded me of my business trip last summer to Missinaibi Lake in northern ontario, where it didn't matter how much humans tried to carve a clearing into the forests and mark their existences into the sides of the mountains. as far as your eye could see, the green wilderness stretches on and on and you are reminded that you, yourself, are small.

we had lunch (dinner?) in the tiny stretch of cafes near the docks, where we were introduced to the wonders of Honey's Doughnuts. everything is indeed delicious, and these potato-dough based pastries were certainly no exception. yum yum. if only their prices were as awesome. sigh. tourist gouging can be a fun sport, i suppose, now that we're not allowed to bait the bears.

needless to say, my summer is going well. all of my time not at work is spent by the ocean. i'm starting to kind of feel like i'm on those tv shows where the kids spend their days bumming around the west coast beaches, only i'm not beautiful stupid and spoiled, and my drama here has been kept to a bare minimum (unless you include me leaving my mark on Preston Manning's car...shhhh...). it's probably that smug hubristic thought that caused me to be punished with this awful cold. today, after waking up sick, i lounged on Kits beach. i figured if i'm going be feverish and bedridden, i might as well be feverish and bedridden on the beach.

waazubee; the new bohemian

friday night, i was invited out to a birthday dinner at a restaurant called Waazubee on Commercial Drive. i know that i've been raving about every restaurant in vancouver lately, and how they are "so vancouver". but seriously though, when you get bison meat lightly doused in miso sauce on a bed of bismati rice...where else but in vancouver? my meal featured tender lamb on foccacia sprinkled with blue cheese and carmelized onions AND THE BEST FRIGGIN GARLIC MAYO FRIES I'VE EXPERIENCED since i upgraded from McDonalds to Harvey's. not too pricey either, at least not Toronto King Street pretentiously pricey.

last night, i was going to go clubbing in Surrey with my coworker Patty, but we opted instead to stay in kitsilano for a couple of drinks. we headed for the New Bohemian, which pretty much was like clubbing, in the sense that you were in a dark room full of young beautiful twenty-somethings with a deejay playing loud electronic music, but instead of dancing, you lounged in these large, luxurious cushioned booths while eating and eating and eating. Dr. Strangelove was playing in a loop on a projector on the wall. we ordered wine (i ordered some local BC pinot grigio and wasn't disappointed), seafood cakes, soup, and a cheeseplate which came with the juiciest fruit i've ever seen a trendy restaurant manage to serve. this was probably a lot closer to Toronto's King West joints, but the food was at least quite decent and not too too overpriced.

unlike Toronto though, this was not the first stop of our night but rather the terminus. for some reason, Vancouver sleeps early, maybe so we can can get up early and enjoy the sunshine and the mountains and oceans to the fullest. at any rate, i've never stayed out past midnight in this city. guess i'll have to go clubbing another time...and try not to get shot.