The pigeons of Granville Island had little qualms hopping onto the arms of the children and feeding directly from their hands. Two girls chased the rock-colored aviators around the deck, temporarily sending about thirty birds into the air and effectively disrupting the courtship dances the males were demonstrating for their unimpressed mates. Two women, seated in the far corner, sipped their morning mochas and picked at a large loaf of bread. Sunglasses on and unshaven, men leisurely flipped through the newspaper, their cups of coffee untouched on the tables. The yachts remained at the docks; the only vessels on the water were a few geese and ducks.
Large tomatoes, pyramids of strawberries, glittering fish heads, stacks of freshly-baked bread, greasy pizzas, colorful smears of gelato, gardens of lilies, tulips, and orchids, dusty bins brimming with dried humus, coriander, and cloves, and juicy slabs of meat greeted us within the public market.
The black and white cookies at Stuart’s are pretty good, though, as stated elsewhere, the chocolate chip cookies were too cakey for my tastes.
Paper-Ya satisfies stationery lust; it’s like a pornography shop for office supplies.
I also encountered the Banana Guard on the Island; there was a reader of intueri who told me that her brother (an emergency medicine physician?) invented this contraption. I didn’t realize that the Banana Guard had ventilation holes.
I must agree: Vancouver’s Granville Island is much more entertaining and enticing than Seattle’s Pike Place Market.
30 Apr 2007 | 4 comments.
Vancouver: Diversity.
“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the cultural diversity in Vancouver,” my friends advised me before I left for my trip. I am currently making my way through the late Iris Chang’s The Chinese in America; Chang’s writing frequently demonstrates her disdain for The White People. Although I am aware of the Whiteness of Seattle, as a result of reading this book, I have become even more aware—perhaps even sensitive?—to the ethnic homogeneity of this city.
Along Robson Street trotted gaggles of Asian women, Guess? and BCBG bags dangling from the crooks of their slender elbows, their large metal hoop earrings swinging in time with their black locks, and dainty ballet flats gracing their feet. Prides of Asian men, interspersing the word “f@#$ing” liberally in their sentences, strutted along the sidewalks, the toes of their white Adidas sneakers and black leather loafers poking out from under their Levi’s jeans. Two gigantic replicas of a Pocky box are attached to a store front. I spotted at least two “bubble tea” stores off of the main drag.
At the Vancouver Aquarium, a Chinese boy, no older than four years of age, looked with awe at a gigantic fish that was larger than the size of his head. His mother grasped his hand and gently pulled him towards the door. In that sing-songy voice of young children, the boy inquired in Mandarin, “Mom, do you think that fish tastes as good as the fish we ate last night?”
I couldn’t tell if the people in Stanley Park were primarily tourists or Vancouver residents, though everyone agreed that it was a glorious day to be outside. Fluffy, light grey clouds blossomed in the distance in a field of light blue; the mountains north of Vancouver were iced with snow and sprinkled liberally with evergreen trees. Large, cargo ships milled about the dark blue-green sea.
A couple, their language thick with an Eastern European accent, asked if we would take a picture of them. She hopped onto his back.
“We want a goofy picture,” she explained. When they smiled, one head directly above the other, they revealed their teeth—off-white, mildly crooked, genuine.
While meandering along the sea wall (at least what portions were open), small collections of people strolled past us in the opposite direction, their voices speaking in tongues that we could not recognize. Young children clung to the pant legs of their parents; young couples held hands—sometimes only by one hooked finger—and shared whispers; elderly people shuffled along the path, their large sunglasses hiding the wrinkles around their eyes; runners and joggers panted past, their shoes dirty and faces sweaty; babies rolled past in prams of all shapes, sizes, and technologies, the inhabitants within invariably asleep from the warm afternoon sun; cyclists zipped past with their 21-speed road bikes, their pink and blue Lycra outfits gleaming as brightly as the spokes of the bike wheels; middle-aged people wearing old jackets and loose pants lost in their thoughts, their heads turned towards the water, but not looking at it….
Though more diverse than Seattle, Vancouver had a dearth of skins featuring darker colors.
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Open Letter to Canadian Readers:
Why do some (but not all) of your traffic lights feature flashing green lights? How are they different from solid green lights? (Is this just a Vancouver thing? a British Columbia thing?)
Your money is pretty. The iridescent stripe along the left side of your cash bills easily captures the eye. American money is boring in comparison, with its uniform green hue, lack of female figures, and absence of French text. How do you all deal with your change, though? Those one- and two-dollar coins are neat, but the change purse gathers mass quickly.
Does the rest of Canada poke fun at Vancouver for all the rain it receives, just as Seattle receives grief from the rest of America for its wet clime (although, truth be told, New York City gets more rain than Seattle…)?
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Vancouver: Border Patrol.
When approaching the Canadian border from Washington state, there is a sign, in all capital letters, that reads “THINK METRIC”. The “K” and the “M” are in bold-face font and underneath this imperative is an explanation that Canadians drive in kilometers per hour (hence the “KM”). “30mi/hr is now 20km/hr”, the sign chides.
Overhead, perched upon a large, white, rectangular arch, are the Canadian and American flags. It was raining when we crossed the border. The guard, an unsmiling woman with shoulder-length brown hair underneath her tan hat, asked us where we were coming from, where we were going, and why we were going there.
“Have a good trip,” she said, returning our passports.
It took us over an hour to travel from the sign that indicated we were approaching the checkpoint to the actual checkpoint to return to the US. The two are not even a mile apart.
“Maybe this is due to the Homeland Security fracas,” I commented. My window was rolled all the way down; my elbow was poking out of the car as it rested against the car door. I extended my arm and felt the Spring breeze trickle between my fingers; the sun felt warm and inviting on my skin.
The guard, a smiling, portly man in a tan suit, took our passports and skimmed them.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Seattle,” I answered.
“Why were you in Canada?”
“Vacation.”
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a doctor.” (My medical training has made me concise to the point of terseness.)
“You could use a vacation.”
We chuckled—we were being polite.
“What kind of doctor are you?”
“Psychiatrist.”
“Ooooh—then you could really use a vacation.”
I politely smiled.
He returned our passports and took a step back into the booth. For the next minute, he told us about his experiences working at a hospital in Portland, Oregon, where his job was to “hold down patients until the doctors could see them, order Haldol and Ativan, and ask the nurses to deliver the injection”.
“You’d be surprised,” he continued, “about the types of patient we saw there.”
I looked at him, sending him telepathic messages to let us go—we had just waited an hour to get to this point and he had just extended the wait time for the cars behind us by at least a minute!
He motioned for us to move on. “Have a safe trip back,” he said as I stepped on the gas.
He didn’t even ask us to declare what items we had acquired in Canada (for me, two loaves of bread (walnut and pumpkin seed), two cookies (the chocolate chip cookie was too cakey for my tastes), and an Inukshuk pin).
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Going North.
Two fish are in a tank. One says to the other, “Do you know how to drive this thing?”
I’ll be in Vancouver, British Columbia, this weekend—finally!—and thus, I shan’t post here for a few days.
I invite you to leave an amusing (and tasteful and appropriate) comment to entertain (or educate or illuminate) me upon my return. Go on.
26 Apr 2007 | 14 comments.