From Chowman on the Urban Diner Waiterforum. This will give you a bit of perspective on where I live and how immigrants adapt with creativity to our patented Canadian winters.
My favourite restaurant ice-clearing moment was at lunch today on Main Street. A cook was on his knees with a cleaver, hacking at the ice on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. After each series of several hacks, a staff member would step forward with a shovel. I love teamwork.
This tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the Canadian national character, particularly when you realize it was written and drawn by a Canadian (shout out to John K, homeboy!). We are obviously not entirely sane, nor healthy.
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Technorati me!
from the archive, but it could have been written tonight for that matter.
As I slump here in front of my blue, glowing screen, coughing like Tuberculosis Mary, occasionally wiping mysterious dots of liquid off the monitor (even though they sure are purty with the little rainbows around the edges) and with, apparently, no lining left in my throat at all, I remember the good old days.Like last month.When I could still get outside and go for a skate. Sometimes I encounter something that gives me faith in civilization, and the Vancouver Seawall is one of those things. Other times I stare out at crowds and think just look at them all walking on their hind legs like that but that’s a story for another day. Like I said, the Seawall I like. Especially now that I can get to it within five minutes, three if the lights are right.One of the best things about living on the Downtown EastSide is the fine sense of proportion developed by the cops. It’s technically illegal to rollerblade down a major road, or ANY sidewalk, let alone skate down Main Street itself right past the Cop Shop and Court House with an off-leash collie trucking along the sidewalk, pacing you. Once I was spotted by a total keener of a cop who gave me a disgusted look and signaled me over to the sidewalk, no doubt to give me a thick sheaf of tickets, so I thought, as I often do, let’s see if showing off will do us any good. I skated slowly over and as I did I said to the dog, “Lady, left side,” and the dog obediently went to the left side of the sidewalk. I said, “Lady, right side,” and the dog obediently got up and went to the right side of the sidewalk. I said, “Lady, middle,” and the dog went to the middle of the sidewalk and stood there looking up at the cop with her big innocent brown eyes. I refer to the collie, you understand. The cop gave me an even more disgusted look and waved us away. Face it, your run of the mill Border Collie is probably smarter than Jamie Graham. Not to mention they have bigger fish to fry in this neighborhood.From my house you can get to Waterfront Road easily, and follow that under Canada Place till it joins up with the new part of the Seawall, between there and Stanley Park. There’s half a dead rat on the road right beside Crab Park, but it’s flat enough you can skate right over it. Or you can go the other way, onto the old Indy track and join up with the Seawall at Science World; that’s nice, because then you can go the south route to Granville Island or head to Stanley Park again from the other side, only instead of passing through pancaked, dried rats you get to go through Yaletown. I for one always enjoy the sight of mountain bikes that cost more than a year’s housing and get a cheap laugh out of Porche SUV’s, especially when used to ferry a 95 pound woman. Some jokes stay funny, you know what I’m telling you?
Once, I was skating through Yaletown by the playing fields, skiing a little bit on the downhills and getting a great bang out of the experience now that I was pretty good, feeling all Malibu Barbie in my pink flowered Pucci-style Victoria’s Secret Miracle Bikini, and I passed a couple of guys skating the other way. They turned and stared. One said to the other, “Now you see why this is better than ice skating?”
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from the Archive, and you should read THIS first. I mean, you can go ahead and read this one first instead, but that’s probably only your best option if you enjoy being confused and experiencing the futility of busted and ersatz suspense. In which case you should be reading Ionesco and leaving me the hell alone.
I have cracked the mystery of Screamer, Screamer 2.0, Yeller and Whoo!It’s all the fault of indie music. That rock an’ roll gits the blood ta boilin’ and the youngun’s git up ta all kinda mischief.Pat’s Pub in the Patricia Hotel now features the few local bands who do not actually suck. They’ve even made it into the Georgia Straight, twice. That’s lovely. Vancouver needs good local music groups. Vancouver does not need groups of incoherent yet voluble and active drunks spilling out onto the street at 2am. Face it, if they’re loud enough that the locals in this locale are complaining, they’re just too damn loud.
Patricia, sweetie darling, could you maybe get them a room or something? You always prided yourself on being the only respectable hotel on the Downtown EastSide, so why not live up to that? How about having your bouncers follow them and smack them around a little bit when they start with the Whoo, Scream, Scream, and Yell? Is that too much to ask? Wait, let me help you…
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from the Archive
The first few nights I thought he was trying to flag a cab. Then I thought he was trying to flag a hooker. Then I thought he was keeping six, and this was a more subtle form of yelling “Cheez it!” when the cops turned up. Still don’t know, but it’s damn annoying.
There’s a whistler in this town, and he comes out after midnight. If this were the Scottish moors he could call a collie a mile away; this is the kind of whistle that passes through stone and steel and my bedroom window as if they weren’t there. He sounds off about once every 90 seconds, for couple of hours, and downpours do not deter him. Sometimes there are bursts of whistles, sometimes just one. The bursts are not musical, just the same rising note, a nonverbal questionmark. I wonder what the question is.
The screamers are back. Tonight, there were two: a man and a woman, and a yeller, all going at once, having, to all appearances or accoustances, a grand old time, screaming and screaming and yelling. Yeller isn’t angry, just loud enough that I can hear him a block over, and he yells alot. Some day instead of tuning him out I’m going to listen to it. I’ll either be bored or forced to testify: guess which is more likely!
And then there is Whoo! Whoo! (not to be confused with John Woo, the Hong Kong phenom of film) Whoo! is a guy whose vocabulary has been reduced to a single word, the aforementioned “Whoo!” and a single volume setting, maximum. Foreigner was playing in town recently, and Supertramp is coming, so maybe he’s just reliving the glory days of rock, when your Bic lighter and your Black Sabbath T-shirt were all you needed for a party. It’s nice to hear someone having such a good time in the neighborhood, but if I get him in a dark alley I’m going to…tell the junkies the cops might investigate all that noise…and then I’ll just walk away. No fingerprints.
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raincoaster 