November 2005
Saturday, 19th. There are weird sex talk programs and nude clips galore on TV. French stations with melodious cadences of forced jollity; weather channels in tones of seriousness if not dread that go all the way to the Yukon; and American news channels holding a ghost of cheer today that things may finally be unraveling for the current administration. There is roiling in congress as one member of the alleged "opposition party" has finally stood up against occupation. One of the reasons I am here in Canada is to see if I can imagine emigrating. My grandfather was a native of Quebec and an American of Quebecois descent can get help in gaining Canadian citizenship. All it would take would be one more US invasion, after the two invasions so far, the "patriot" act, domestic spying, restrictions on free speech, special rendition, Gitmo, and the political philosophy of "enhanced interrogation."
Right outside a bus stops and I ride it back to the Granville hub. A Saturday shopping scene prevails as I hit the sidewalk. Walk up Georgia to hit the post office--which is closed on Saturday, apparently a new development with a few gripes overheard. The lobby is open but it has no vending machines. Canada seems at times oddly old-fashioned, like the American middle-west. Nevertheless, I enjoy my brief visit to it's deserted halls, observing the utilitarian architectural design. And nearby is the public library building, which is sort of stunt architecture--a narrow high-rise shaped like a book. In a commercial mall on the ground floor, I find a Chinese chinch shop with stamps and suitable postcards for my stateside friends--three of Gastown, and three of the Rockies.
From there the heated indoors beckon so in I go, riding escalator and elevator to the top-floor. There I find Special Collections and take a look at the vitrines of native artifacts. Soon I'm chatting with the librarian who hips me that in Canada the term that is used is not Native American but First Nations. I since read that the name First Nations only really applies to the natives of that Northwest region of the continent. So she meant in this part of Canada.
Next down a floor to take a desk and write my postcards, letting friends far and wide know that I finally got off on my trip. One or two may have doubted I'd ever get started. I had originally planned to come this way last summer. But I had been struck by a car and I had to wait until my arm had healed enough. Hence the near-winter travel in a cold clime. As I reflect on it though, beyond the temperature constrictions, there were many good aspects gained by the delay.
Another librarian looks up the postcard rate to US for me--eighty-five cents! From there I walk around a bit taking in some of the view of snow-capped peaks and ocean bays from ten-stories up. But what I learn is unusual marine fog is creeping in and overtaking visibility. It resembles the SF bay fog I'm accustomed to, but that usually clears daily. This fog sets in and doesn't leave for the rest of my stay. A little more looking around but the fog increasingly enshrouds the island and its surrounds.
I take the tip offered by the first librarian and decide to walk down the hill toward the water. I soon gravitate toward a church. A dissolute fellow asks for spare change and I ask him if he knows if the church is Catholic. As he says he thinks so, I notice the Blessed Mother statue out front settling the matter. This is Our Lady of the Holy Rosary the first Catholic church in the city of Vancouver. I had read about it in a guidebook and thought I might check it out. And this is the somewhat sleazy Richards Street where I had even considered staying, but a Vancouver lady on the train advised me to stay in a better part of town. This denizen of the scene informs me that it was fairly over-run with the hard drug culture, he was himself an addict. His street-smarts come to my assistance when I mention I intended to go and have a smoke in the little park across from the church where youth were shredding on skateboards. He indicates that a car parked nearby contained a narc and I decide to wait. Just then the undercover car starts up and drives off abruptly and I go sit down to have my wee puff.
Then it's into the humble but satisfying church. There are some excellent stained-glass windows whose style and colors seem somehow local in flavor. I photographed four of them with the weak available light following a prayerful meditation and rest in the nearly deserted church.
Back on my walk down the hill. Another spare-changer, a lady worn and wan, gets a little more out of my pocket of unfamiliar coins. The original guy notices this and maybe to appeal to my sympathy tells me more of his story--he has aids, he is an ex-con, did time for trying to steal a two million dollar Stradivarius violin. There are a million stories in every naked city--and I've got to resume forward motion in this cold. I wish him better luck.
Down the hill toward a notable high rise with an observation deck. I try to avoid the elevator charge and still get a glimpse by entering another tower which is more of a private office building. The elevator doesn't respond until office girls get on and give it a code. I ride up but can't continue after they get off. I peer a bit through a closed travel office window at the sky-high view. Then I semi-alarm the girls by knocking on their closed door to ask how to get back down. I do get down and get a smirk from a guard at a desk as if children and old cheapskates make similar attempts all the time. The deck ride costs $8--for fog? I think not.
A short walk on downhill and I'm at the waterfront. A stroll to the right on Water street and it's the entrance to Gastown with its interesting sidewalks and shops. A block or so into it and I find the legendary sidewalk steam clock, the world's only steam-powered clock. There is a steady stream of snap-shot tourists around it as the cold day encouraged great enveloping clouds of steam. I take pains to get a good shot of this oddity, a photograph rather than a snapshot, and, naturally, to avoid having any people in it.
From there gravitate to a marvelous emporium of native arts called Hill's. Established in 1948, it purports to be "North America's Largest Northwest Coast Native Arts Gallery," and I'm inclined to believe it's true. With four other branches in BC, I have to assume that this was the flag ship with three floors of masks, totem poles, carvings and a multitude of indigenous craft work. Moreover it was friendly relaxed place that allowed photography.
I was jazzed to grab a view photos inside. The expressive free-style totemic carvings were new to me and I was impressed, of course, with the phantasmagoria of the masks. Newly carved unpainted totem poles were striking and strange. Everything had eyes. This was the closest thing to a museum that I toured on the entire trip, and it was fit. I still regularly recall how it felt to be in Hill's with its powerful animist objects.
Onward I go for the short walking tour of Gastown-- three or four blocks along Water street before turning back. Along the way I scout likely food places. I momentarily debate buying a Cuban cigar just to spite the right and support the revolution. But...I need my lungs in top shape--no tobacco for me. Several shops tout them on garish signs, intended I imagine for American tourists, maybe smugglers as well. Certainly not just for local cigar connoisseurs.
There does seem to be a sybaritic undercurrent in Canada--casinos, cigars, alcohol--desperate pleasures. Maybe the element of a less-puritanical society. Canada border cities like Mexico's to some extent, particularly in regard to some of the dry state West. (Nevada and California not withstanding.)
At the far end of the district, on a street parallel to Water, I see a sign for soup outside a little sandwich shop. It is beyond the upscale blocks and looks local, so I go in. The proprietor hovers and seems ill-at-ease, a little intense. Glowering in the window, is followed by a terse interrogation of what I want to order. Soon he's put me on edge too. I'm deliberately still talking to him instead of leaving, partially to annoy him. He gets even testier when I ask about salt in the soup.
He's thickly eastern European and undoubtedly has his annoyances bordering on some junk-sick looking blocks just beyond. When I ask him if he'll take a traveler's check or US cash, he goes full-tilt US hatred. He'd rather take British pounds or Mexican pesos!
Rather than flee I remain to mildly upbraid him before bidding him good luck. He returns the wish with even less sincerity.
So I fair hightail back to the place I saw first, Cafe la Luna with it great pottery moon medallion sign out front and another like inside. They are noted as a coffee roaster and I have one with a fine curried vegetable sandwich served by young hip lady at a counter. She appeared over-worked and down-trodden. My heart always goes out in such circumstances, I do my best to subtly imply respect and warmth for the person. I am not comfortable giving orders to people in service positions in general. When I see the entitled "haves" ordering around younger people who come from backgrounds with less resources, I don't find it a pleasant picture.
The girl says sure to my traveler's check but after I sign it I discover that I bear no driver's license. A few seconds of puzzlement and it is apparent that I left it with the receptionist at the compassion clinic yesterday. DANG!
I have just enough cash on hand to pay the bill with little more than $2US left. I go outside to a pay phone as she makes the food, but decide since it is mid-afternoon and I recall the dispensary was to be open today. To return there, I'd just go to the nearby Skytrain station after eating. Without the driver's license, I am in a foreign country with only a birth certificate. And I was scheduled to leave Vancouver the next day, a Sunday.
I didn't let that ruin my meal, naturally. It's good to eat and take meds. I enjoy sitting in the casual place observing the sidewalk traffic as the day grew somewhat dimmer, the November feeling.
Then off I go, off stopping a moment in a money-changer to convert the American bills to some ready. Confident in my used and somewhat stale bus transfer I just breeze into the Skytrain station, conserving my few Canadian coins. No sweat and the car for Commercial street is waiting at the platform of this terminus station. I ask a question of one and ladies young and old want to know about me and help. I hop off again and hike uphill to the...yes!..open clinic.
As soon as I enter and begin to speak the sweet middle-aged English lady says, "There you are!" and hands me the license. We chat a bit and I manage to resist the urge to go over to the counter for more herb. Right now I more need to keep stocked with enough money.
So it's off downhill to the station to return on the same route at the same time as yesterday. Nothing like the beginning of routine to make one feel at home in a new city.
At the Grandville stop, I detour on my way up the escalator into the Bay department store (Hudson's Bay). It is a maze of cramped aisles and not easy to find a cashier or an exit once inside it. I do accomplish my mission for toothpaste and puzzle my way out to the street. Low on funds until I cash a check, I decide to walk to my hotel.
It is a diverting tour indeed Saturday night on what may be the rock and roll strip in this town. Not just frequent rock clubs with bouncers already out front, but instrument store, record store, rock and roll clothes stores all interspersed with neon marquees, local shops and restaurants. Somehow it reminds me of Weybosset street in Providence in the nineteen-sixties, a lively downtown youth scene.
Weary but amused I reach my hotel and have the great feeling of coming into a warm bedroom after a day spent outdoors in cold weather. It had been long enough that I thought that this was cold--I was to be reminded what real cold felt like.
After a nap I went out for a bite, turning away from downtown I find a busy little pizza place in an area full of activity. This I learn is where Grandville meets Yale town. After eating I roll a blunt of this Fabled BC herb and head out again. A sweet return of Curtis the bellhop--earlier today he told me about a choice seafood at a Chinese place nearby Chinese place. This time I mention that I'm going to try some new med-can from the dispensary. He wants me to try his stash instead on the hotel's roof.
I have just finished wrangling with a Chinese dragon-lady at the desk. I wanted to use the traveler's check I had signed earlier today at the Luna cafe, but had been unable to use without my license. She tormented me a little with distrustful looks and comments, but ended-up accepting it.
Curtis is very cool-- cellist, about 21, First Nation blood, from the Yukon. Now he lives in Vancouver where he has a band, The Whiskeydicks. He says his stash is superior to the compassion club's--everyone seems to know everything that goes on here. He tells me a tale of island pot farms where the excellent BC strains were developed from seeds brought from northern California.
We climb ancient stairs into a wooden loft and finally up a ladder and onto the roof. It is wild up there with strange effects caused by the fog which has gotten heavy a the evening rolled up. The entire chasm of Grandville is on view with the neon marquees and other signs bleeding colors into the fog. He tries to roll a smoke under difficult circumstance s until I insist we go back a floor or two to my room and use sissors to chop the buds and do it right. He agrees and we do, lingering a while in my room. We do and the talk is rich, he really digs being shown a couple of my chapbooks of poetry. Back to the rook to partake where I find his herb is more or less comparable to what I had gotten. Curtis admits he had heard the compassion club had better cannabis now. I give him a book of papers and some vitamin C, had I remembered my camera I would have gotten his photo against the blurry neon strip--I just have the memory.
Then the angry dragon-lady pages him twice. He scoots.
I gear up and go back out. My walk toward the water is bootless--there is only a over-pass style bridge and no pedestrian-friendly area to savor. The Saturday night youth are sometimes rowdy. In front of the blues roadhouse-looking place The Yale a bunch of young guys coming the other way hog the sidewalk. Maybe I looked annoyed because a tall one reached over and clapped his hands near my head as to scare me-it doesn't. I stand on the ramp of the bridge a moment, then take a walk though Yaletown. Not much to see at night--there are plenty of revelers en route to clubs.
Next I circle back to order fried oysters at the place Curtis recommended. Earlier I had gone inside but I snubbed the menu when I saw it was all dishes not, for example, just fish. Glad I went back because the take-away menu is much better. I wait on a bus stop bench near the take-away window with a ring-side seat on wild-in-the-streets. Actually I am gradually coming o the opinion that old-fashioned fun is being kept alive here. It is certainly a different vibe than the Berkeley youth scene. At last the oyster bag is produced and I take them back to my room to devour. Desultory channel-surfing and a hot bath follow.
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