The Greedy Eagle Casino Grand Opening by IndigFlygirl
We at the ol’ raincoaster blog salute our First Nations brothers and sisters of the West Village Band of Zuccotti Indians as they proudly reclaim their ancestral territory.
And promptly put a casino on it.
“Hit me!”
“No, that comes later.”
This may be the funniest, least PC thing I’ve ever posted. Should be good for at least one flamewar with some White Liberal Guilt-Having Vegan. Hey, don’t blame me, blame the 1491′s! Blaming the Natives: we should have perfected it by now!
This was two house-sits ago, out in what I called Buttfuck Nowhere, which it is if you don’t have a car, and I don’t. Also known as New Newfoundland, for the influx of Newfies: such an influx that the local grocery store carries big white plastic pails of “beef navels”. Those are actual beef navels, not some kind of seagoing bovine, because it’s a popular food in Newfoundland, or so I surmise from the fact that the bucket has a map of such on the label. I found a recipe for beef navel pastrami, but otherwise I’m not sure what you do with them.
While I was out there, housesitting at a far too nice place on a perfectly ordinary road surrounded by condos, Walmarts, and Tim Hortonses in all directions, I decided to take the garbage out. In the middle of the night. Well, normally who cares, right? Only on my way back from the dumpster I saw something move under a car, something doggish-size, and being from Vancouver and used to raccoon and skunks and coyotes and such, I just made growling “giddoudahear” kind of noises and something shot off into the brush.
A lynx.
I knew a woman from William’s Lake who used to go out hunting grizzly bears in the woods, just her and her two bear dogs (the kind they tell the white people are extinct, but aren’t). The only thing in the wilderness that scared her was the lynx: apparently they’re just as crazy and aggressive as wolverines, and will attack pretty much anything.
So yeah. Even taking out the garbage can be a bit of an adventure up here.
"The only cures I have for the ills of life are to move constantly north and to sleep. But you run out of north and you wake up." ~ Bukowski— Bukowski Quotes (@bukquotes) August 19, 2011
Big words, coming from a man who lived in Los Angeles most of his adult life.
So yesterday I decided I’d been good (god knows why I decided that, but I can be somewhat arbitrary at times) and deserved a treat, and so I took myself to the local filling station, an agreeably-but-not-intimidatingly casual place named after a species of plant which did not, in fact, exist on the premises.
Unless it was hiding, and after what happened, who could blame it?
The waitress was attentive, and sweet, and barely old enough to be out that late on a school night. She asked me what I would like to drink, and I thought about what not-too-exotic-but-still-tasty items might be available in the subarctic regions and said, “Do you have Johnny Walker Black?”
She looked at me with alarm.
“Rum?” she asked.
“…Scotch,” I replied, probably just as startled as she had been. She’d apparently never heard of this exotic tipple. I might as well have asked for a Connecticut Bullfrog, Andover style.
She toddled off to whisper to the bartender. No doubt she thought it was something that was kept under the bar, in case of the po-po.
She came back smiling, and saying Yes, Yes, we have this ‘Johnny Walker Black’ stuff! or words to that effect. So I ordered a double.
“With Pepsi?”
And so concludes our Slice of Life in the Knife for this evening. The following I post here because it is perhaps the finest ten minutes of a bartending god as you will ever witness in your entire life, unless you buy the film The Sin of Harold Diddlebock and watch the whole thing repeatedly, as is your right. Or would be, if you hadn’t downloaded the damn thing from Bittorrent, eh?
Sigh. So this weekend the sun came out in Vancouver, it was Pride, Illuminares, and the Symphony of Fire. Yeah, I know you’re not supposed to gripe, but well, goddam. The only thing I was gonna do up here this weekend was check out the “cariboo-hair tufting workshop” and the damn festival got rained out.
Symphony of Fire boater by Jonah Lewis
Sigh. I miss the days when Illuminares was at Trout Lake, and was awesome. This year it was in Coal Harbour, and was, apparently, somewhat less awesome for that reason.
Farther from the hippies=less awesome, duh!
I heart East Van too!
But it must be said, the view from Kits and downtown is pretty impressive, especially during fireworks.
Symphony of Fire 2010
And then there are the more flamboyant events, like, say PRIDE:
I think you can try the two wheeler next year; you
and I love the way families come out to support the parade and even rapacious corporations get into the spirit. Or maybe not so rapacious: that’s not so much in the parade as in the back at the Pumpjack.
I
and, back in The Hood, the Powell Street Festival. This is the one that started off the Homesick Sulks for me, bigtime. Probably because it doesn’t look like any damn thing to any damn one who doesn’t know that this used to be called Needle Park, and was so called for very good reason. I’m glad I lived there long enough to witness the change.
Vancouverites may begin arguing about “gentrification” now, but they should be careful if they do it from rent-controlled glass houses in Chinatown./in-joke
