Category Archives: Vancouver

a learning experience

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What yesterday taught me:

  • After ten at night, downtown in the boondocks is filled with attractive, well-dressed young couples strolling and chatting to one another and greeting friends.
  • After ten at night, downtown in Vancouver is filled with staggering drunks, beggars, dopey hipsters wearing secondhand clothing they haven’t even brushed the dead owner’s dandruff off, and those so outrageously obnoxious that their own mothers out in said boondocks threw them out of their basement apartments and told them to go “get some fresh air.” This is much like the tourist effect, to whit: the reason most tourists are so obnoxious is that they are not traveling because they wish to, but rather because they have been thrown out by their homes.
  • When I have that nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something in my apartment, that thing invariably turns out to be the keys to the place where I’m headed.
  • When I forget the keys to the boondock-ridden locale where I am supposed to be house-sitting, it will be on a night when I decide to take the Skytrain to the very farthest station in said boondock and walk to the house via the “scenic route” which, of course, takes place in the foothills of the Coastal Mountain range.
  • I must be getting fitter because, although the walk wiped me out, I no longer smell like wet pennies when I sweat, so this is an improvement.
  • Conrad Black has two sons, in addition to the daughter who’s been doing the “faithful supporter” thing at the trial. Funny, I read his whole autobiography and he didn’t mention them. Nor getting married, if memory serves. What a family guy!
  •  Those graveyards that have the small, flat stones set flush into the ground? When you pass them at speed on the Skytrain on a dark and stormy night, they sparkle. Almost worth forgoing the weeping angels. Somewhere in Boondock, Ontario, my mother is sparkling. Unless it snowed; then she’s twinkling.
  • It is indeed possible to live off nothing but meat, cheese, caffeine and scotch for a week, but when you do
  • you will crave, I mean actively crave, multivitamins.

That concludes tonight’s lesson.

The News

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Missing Women memorial

There’s only one story in the world today, as far as my people are concerned.

Go to Hazel‘s to hear it.

I will tell you how I come into it later.

‘WILL THEY REMEMBER ME WHEN I’M GONE?’

MISSING

By Susan Musgrave

Missing’s a word that can’t begin to describe

the way I miss you more each day;

You left to chase the wind on high

and the rain rained down to stay.

Will they remember me when I’m gone, you said,

when I’ve kissed goodbye to pain;

Or will their lives just carry on

in the small hours of the rain.

You may be lost in the eyes of the world,

but how can I set you free;

When there’s a whole empty world in my aching heart,

you’re the missing part of me.

Ruby Anne Hardy, Jacqueline McDonell, Jennie Lynn Furminger,

Sarah de Vries

Heather Bottomley, Andrea Joesbury, Marcella Creison, Dawn Teresa Crey

Elaine Allenbach, Debra Lynne Jones, Angela Arseneault, Lillian O’Dare

Mona Wilson, Michelle Gurney, Cindy Beck, Laura Mah

Sheryl Donahue, Wendy Allen, Julie Young, Teresa Triff

CHORUS

How far from home is “missing”?

In our prayers you’re close beside us every

day;

When you left to chase the wind so high,

the rain moved in to stay.

Will they remember me when I’m gone,

you said,

when I’ve kissed goodbye to pain;

Or will their lives just carry on

in the small hours of the rain.

You may be an orphan in the eyes of the

world,

can we ever love anyone enough?

You’ll always have a home in our loving

hearts,

You’re the missing part of us.

Sheila Egan, Rebecca Guno, Angela Jardine, Brenda Ann Wolfe

Georgina Papin, Sherry Irving, Helen Hallmark, Tanya Holyk

Leigh Miner, Inga Hall, Patricia Johnson, Yvonne Boen, Tiffany Drew

Julie Young, Janet Henry, Dorothy Anne Spence, Ingrid Soet, Elaine Dumba, Sherry Lynn Rail

Jacqueline Murdock, Olivia Gale Williams, Catherine Gonzalez, Heather Chinnock

CHORUS

How far from home is “missing”?

In our prayers you’re close beside us every

day;

When you left to chase the wind so high,

the rain moved in to stay.

Will they remember me when I’m gone,

you said, when I’ve kissed goodbye to pain;

Or will their lives just carry on

in the small hours of the rain.

How can we believe in a merciful world

that could never believe in you enough?

Take what strength you need from our

fearless hearts,

You’re the missing part of us.

Taressa Williams, Diana Melnick, Kathleen

Dale Wattley, Catherine Maureen Knight

Wendy Crawford, Elsie Sebastien, Marnie Lee Frey, Stephanie Lane

Frances Young, Nancy Clark, Cindy Feliks, Dianne Rock

Kerry Lynn Koski, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Borhaven, Maria Laliberte

Yvonne Abigosis, Verna Littlechief, Dawn Lynn Cooper, Linda Louise Grant

CHORUS

Missing means you’re gone, I can’t find you;

My dear one, I’ll never hold you again.

You left to chase the wind too high

and the rain can’t wash my tears away.

Will they remember me when I’m gone,

you said,

when I’ve kissed goodbye to pain;

Or will their lives just carry on

in the small hours of the rain.

You may have disappeared in the eyes of the

world,

but when I close my eyes I’ll always see

your name, they way you smile, inside my

wishful heart,

The missing part of me.

Shebeen Club Radio!

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cross-posted to The Shebeen Club

Cry of the Phoenix, yo

Whoa, check it out: yet another medium (oh, look it up if you’re so pedantic!) falls to the raincoaster Operation Global Media Domination behemoth. We be all up in yo airwaves now! Preeeee-senting the inaugural broadcast of Shebeen Club Radio, recorded live (and subsequently edited to death) November 20th, 2007. This is a recording of our book launch for Shebeen Club regular Colleen O’Connor‘s book Cry of the Phoenix. Pour yourself something companionable and heckle along! It’ll be almost like being there, just without the trays of appetizers or the screams from Blood Alley!

Podcast recorded and edited by Dale McGladdery

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Stumblin’ in

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And then there are the things you stumble across when you’re walking down the street, minding, very much, your own business, and which do not seem, at the time, to be the kind of thing you should be overhearing, nor even, it must be admitted, the kind of thing that should be said in the first place; but then, you don’t know if the speaker is in the first place or, come to that, the place of last resort. And so…

 

What do you say when you come around a corner and literally bump into a hooker working said corner, and it’s someone you went to school with? “Gee, I’d-a thought the firedancing skillz would have kept you at the novelty escort level”???

 

And what do you say when you show up at the spa for your pampering session and the receptionist is someone you worked years ago with who’s got a brand-new set of apparently quite expensive bazongas? “You’re looking…fuller”???

And, of course, if it’s someone randomly wandering down Robson Street, chatting into a cellphone, with whom one has no previous acquaintance, one simply pretends one didn’t hear it, yet takes notes, as all good Canadians do…

“Anything. Get me anything. Anything but sleep, because I’ve had enough of that…”

 

or the storefront in Smith’s Falls, Ontario: Bridal Affairs. I mean, I just don’t wanna know. It’s like asking for trouble.

 

I mentioned to my friend MistressCowfish that I recognized most of the dogs on the Downtown Eastside, but hardly any of the people, to which she responded with what can only be described as a bark of laughter in the Sirius Black mode, and the retort: “of course! It’s perfectly polite to stare at a dog!” Quite so.

When I went to Indonesia I learned to say hello to the people, who were friendly, and ignore the dogs, which were touchy and feral. On the Downtown EastSide, it’s the other way around.

Boot to the Head

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OK Boot CorralSo, I’ve told you about the time my mother tried to sell me to a Saudi prince. And I’ve told you about the time I ended up shopping with a CIA agent and buying a vampire carved from human bone from the oldest nun in the Spice Islands. And I’ve told you about the time I had coffee with a serial killer. And dinner with the guy who was stalking me. And the red truck at sunset on the dock at Not-Ucluelet.

Yeah, that’s pretty much all of my A-list material. Since I gave the room-and-boarder collie back to her owner, things have been much quieter around home, as I don’t get out so much. Not much happens in my apartment, alas.

Ah.
I didn’t tell you about the car chase. Car chase #1: there have been a number of them in the ‘hood recently.

Car Chase #1 started somewhere out east of here, towards the suburban wilds (tames) of Burnaby. A car, probably stolen, definitely caught the attention of certain officers of the VPD, probably for activities of a nefarious nature if not for simply the state of having been stolen. The details are lost to history. And said nefariating sedan (it’s always an oversized Yank sedan, in these car chases. Nobody ever leads the cops on a high-speed chase in a Pacer or a VW van or a puce Vespa) led the cops upon your basic high speed chase through the Downtown EastSide, whipping through the dark star of Railtown and up to the Main Street Viaduct, down at the foot of Vancouver, indeed, the boot heel, Stanley Park being the seasonally-appropriate squared pirate toe, and beyond, up Alexander at, have I mentioned, high speeds, speeds which made negotiating the, it must be admitted, rather broad, bendy, unchallenging corner at Maple Tree Square an apparent impossibility.
Never steal more car than you can handle.

Hydroplaning on the picturesquely rain-slick cobblestones, said sedan skidded straight into Ye Olde Westerne Boote Shoppe, the OK Boot Corral, narrowly missing the larger than life-size statue of Gassy Jack, presiding spirit of the place who, it appears, is the patron saint (if not the god) of avoiding being hit by a careening Caddy. Being of width as well as length and speed, the Cadillac took out the entire narrow storefront when it nosedived into the shop with admirable precision, crushing wooden cowboy and all (we are quite egalitarian up in Canuckistan, y’all, and our storefronts feature at least as many wooden Cowboys as Indians) and completely sparing Six Acres restaurant and drinketeria next door, sheltered as it was behind the beneficent ass of the aforementioned Gassy Jack.

All I cared about was, it missed the Irish Heather. My local is safe!

Seeing no immediate method of egress which didn’t include walking right past the cops who’d pulled up immediately behind him, and apparently not feeling quite up for that, the Caddypilot considered his options, which included taking the back door into the barred and gated Gaoler’s Mews (not frivolously named; they used to hold the public hangings here, and the bars are still on the window of the Irish Heather from back when it was the jail; as one of the bartenders said, “I always knew I’d end up in jail, but at least you can get beer in this one”) and decided that indiscretion was the better part of valour.

He hid under the counter.

All of which is to say: slightly damaged Western boots are probably on sale in Gastown this week.