yaletown revisited.

I was unfair to Yaletown way back last spring. I was in a bad/sad mood and I didn't appreciate what I saw. Now I walk downtown 3 times a week. It's a 40 minute walk one way that I find I know need for my sanity.

I have grown to love the yuppy homes, so tall and made of glass. They really are quite incredible. I've also become much more open minded about yuppies as a result. I can see what they like about living there now. It seems like an easy way to live, although expensive. Besides that, I recently got a ride in a BMW and it is much more comfortable than the bus or government van (that last reference is work related, not prison related).

I'd still rather walk though. You see so much more when you walk.

the library.

The Vancouver library is such a cool place that it is featured in the future. Yup, Battlestar Galactica style future (or is does that merely make it far far away? I sort of lost interest in Battlestar Galactica after season 1 when I discovered that they wouldn't be making a robot dog like in the original.)

denny's.

I don't eat at Denny's. It reminds me of Smitty's where I was introduced to the reality of the working world. Reality often pisses me off.

oh montréal, you are such a snob.

Carrie Carm and I spent about 5ish years living in Montréal. We are largely fond of the experience. I really liked the fact that my french immersion education was finally useful on a daily basis. Finding paying work was another matter.

And then we got a horrible phone call and very suddenly the whole Montréal experience came to an end.

So we came out here to Vancouver. We live in an area known as Mount Pleasant. I’m almost as pleased about that as when we lived on Parc Ave on the border of Mile End and Outremont. And just like the name, the Mt. Pleasant neighbourhood is very nice. Yup, people smile back, and it is pleasant.

Before we left La Belle Province, we heard from some friends how Vancouver has no ‘soul’ (I’m paraphrasing here, I don’t know that anyone said soul. One friend said that Vancouver has no genitals. I quite liked that statement, though I’m still trying to figure out what that means since East Hastings strikes me as the anus of Canada, so the proverbial genitals can’t be that far away.)

A former colleague told me that I would have no creative/professional future in Vancouver, despite it’s status as Hollywood North. This is the same colleague who promised me much money and fame in Montréal... but when the EI ran out, the promised funds never managed to make the short trip to my bank account. Their are plenty of wealthy people in Montréal. The money just doesn’t seem to flow all that well. I think there is some sort of blockage between Westmount and Mile End.

I’m not entirely bitter about my friends saying these things though. Our sudden exodus was not done under happy circumstances and mostly our friends just didn’t want us to leave.

However, I had already heard much of what Montréalers had had to say about the west in general. Being from Edmonton meant that I couldn’t possibly speak french and that my education couldn’t possibly be up to par. Sometimes I laughed at the ignorance, but it began to grate on me after not too long as it seemed to be tied to how I was viewed professionally.

Clearly a slightly delusional view of their city had clouded their collective brains. When a documentary director I was working with asked a former hassidic jew how he defined himself, he proudly declared that he saw himself as a montréaler before anything else, including jewish, male, human or canadian. I stayed silent, but outraged. There is something ironically small minded about thinking that simply living in a certain city will provide you with an open mind and artistic heart. When people gasp around the world at the Cirque de Soleil, it only adds to the mystique.

Yesterday, Carrie provided me with this link to a video blog done by a cute montréal francophone named Catherine. It certainly has production value. The intro clearly shows Montréal as a party capital. Montréalers tend to think that they are the only folks in Canada having sex, that anglophones don’t even masturbate, don’t know how to express themselves, aren't in the least artistic and are painfully shy.

Well, Catherine certainly didn’t disappoint. Vancouver is described as “a pretty 16 year old girl who hasn’t learnt to drink yet.” I’m not even stretching the truth here. That is a word for word translation.

Furthermore, Vancouverites are viewed as shy, friendly people. Really? Shy and friendly? Can’t say that the evidence even in their video clips shows this. The host goes on to interview Nardwuar the human serviette, which pretty much blows her view of Vancouver to shreds. What a freak! And there is a long list of strange and wonderfully unique people who came from out west.

Somehow Catherine and her interview subjects, two of which are montréalers that moved here, see themselves as open and relaxed artists amongst a bunch of prudes. All this while walking around my new neighbourhood and enjoying the cute, artistic boutiques and cafés of East Vancouver, failing to see how similar East Van is to the Plateau area of Montréal. Sure the architecture is different, but the same sort of comic books and artistic shops exist. The rent is just double.

Yesterday I spent a good hour at an over crowded craft fair selling the exact same sort of knitted goods, belt buckles, artisan chocolates and other assorted gifts. It was only a slightly smaller version of expozine in Montréal. The main difference was that the sellers were friendly and happy to engage in conversation even if you didn't buy anything. Despite the lack of french being spoken, I couldn't really tell the difference between the Mile end craft fair and the Commercial Drive craft fair. See how similar it all is?

I’m a little tired of this incredible regionalism, especially as it pertains to Québec. They are a distinct society, but so is Edmonton, Yellowknife, St. John’s, and so and and so forth. Canada is full of distinct societies. I have been lucky enough to visit and live in many of them and certainly not all. But on focusing on ridiculously pointless facts such as french being ranked at only the 9th most spoken language in Vancouver, what are you really saying? By putting down an entire city as being too innocent to live in the sexually charged way that Montréal does is not only insulting, but completely false.

On one final note, the back pages of the weekly art newspapers out here have just as many ads to cater to the pervert in all of us. Montréal, you are not as distinct as you think, especially in matters regarding genitals, proverbial and otherwise.

You do make a fine, unequaled bagel though.

i AM aware of my hypocrisy.

For months now I have been annoyed with this new 'technology' called Twitter. On the surface, I hate everything about twitter. I'm told that it will bring much in the future, but as to what that much consist of, I cannot understand.

Much like blogs and facebook, it was explained to me that this was the future and I'd be left behind and that I was a luddite and that it was a new technology... that there was no limit to the communication possibilities.

Well, I did not believe this. I did not believe it about blogs and I did not believe it about facebook. However, you will now see that after long ignoring this blog thing of mine, I have added a new feature to it. It is my twitter account.

The thing is I don't believe the hype. I don't believe it anymore than the blog that I am posting this on. I don't like the word blog, facebook or (sigh here) twitter. Now it is 'tweet', before it was 'blog' or 'facebook'. At least facebook is still underlined in red when I spell check, but we already have words for these things. Other than being able to be ignored by more people than merely roommates, a blog is just a journal. Facebook is just your yearbook permanently being signed by old friends.... a never ending class yearbook. Tweet is the sound birds make. What you really mean to say is sentence.

The blog hasn't really changed my life in any profound way, other than to be an excuse as to why I don't have a proper website of my own creation. I don't worry about it. I certainly don't post everyday, and I have not received the promised book deals and fame and so forth. It does give me the added benefit of having a soapbox to stand on without the danger of public humiliation. Like everything else on the internet... it is virtual and thus harmless.

I have also not received anything from facebook. I have found some long lost buddies, but other than accepting my friendship, we have no real friendship now. Facebook did provide me with a headache in the form of a now former friend who hired me, underpaid me, and then decided to yell at me. We are not facebook friends anymore. I would hardly call that progress.

So now we get to the crux; Twitter. The Tweet.

See, first off, it isn't a new 'technology'. It is a new program. To me technology isn't merely some code, it is a real thing, like the wheel, the plane, the lighter, the computer... not something not real that is already on the computer, but now looks pretty and everyone is doing it.

And somehow typing short 140 character bits of trivial fodder that is running through my brain is going to change the world or magically make me money? I'm about to prove how it won't... at all. Just watch how pointless the whole exercise is as you sign up to follow me and I let you know what little I can contribute to your day by knowing even less important things about me than that which I bring up in my blog.

By the way, I only have a twitter account because I wanted free software that makes your voice sound like a squirrel and you could only get it if you had a twitter account.

See? I'm a whore just like everyone else. But can you blame me? It's a squirrel voice.

gimme a decent bagel already.

When I wrote this blogpost, I had no idea how much I would miss a good bagel.

I thought that I had merely become a snob, that it was all in my head and that surely Vancouver would provide a bagel as perfect and beautiful as those on offer in Montréal.

I am sad to report that I stand defeated in my quest to find a truly perfect bagel in Vancouver.

My last attempt was yesterday. i tried Solly's bagels which was on our route home from getting a coffee and some special beans. They came up short.

First of all, you cannot call yourself a bagel shop and then run out of sesame bagels. Sesame bagels are the only bagels for me and many others and should never ever run out. If it's getting close to the bottom of the bin, start bakin' kids, cause that is what a bagel shop should be doing.

I can understand running out of something pointless and silly like a pizza bagel or a cinnamon bagel. Those are for kids in both the real and figurative sense (yuppies with the fancy sports/hybrid cars outside, I'm looking at you!). But no sesame and to follow that up, no multigrain or even plain?

Secondly, I haven't smelt or seen any evidence of wood burning going on at Solly's or the other bagel shop closer to Kitsilano. I could be very wrong. You guys could be hiding anything back behind the wall that separates me from precious baked goods.

But that brings me around to my third point. The best bagel makers of the land don't have seating for folks to enjoy themselves at. Coffee and bagels are both too specialized for you to do well at both... and you don't. And I want to see you toiling to make the bagels. At both Fairmont and St.Viateur, you can watch the presumably underpaid staff, largely immigrants, sweat in front of open, wood burning ovens, rolling each precious bagel. There is no mystery. And these hard workers don't put down their long wodden peels at 5 pm. No sir. Fairmont and St.Viateur work around the clock, all year long. This is impressive in a neighbourhood full of Hassidic jews that take every Friday sundown to Saturday sundown off.

At 4 am, I could muster up the strength to make my way through the frozen sidewalks and fully expect to be back in 10 minutes with as many bagels as I might want at 4am.

My last complaint, this time, is the price. I don't know who you are fooling, but I have never spent 15 bucks on a bagel outing that didn't include lox in Montréal town. Is western wheat that much pricier? If it tasted more like a Montréal bagel, as you so proudly advertise, then I might not mind so much. But as it stands, it is only somewhat better than what Tim Horton's can do. Shame.

Oh Vancouver, why can't you figure this one out. I don't know if you have strange labour laws preventing bagel makers to work through the night, or haul firewood to the back of the oven, but it has got to stop (or start, perhaps). Surely there is nothing that difficult in the recipe. Come on. Gimme a taste of Montréal. Try better.

i don't know.

When a conversation starts with "I don't usually tell people this, but I did wet the bed as an adult once." it's gonna be a good time.