You’re perfectly aware that the shuttered windows, huge ventilation system, and mouldy smell coming from next door doesn’t mean your neighbours need a checkup from the neck up. Rather, it’s merely another sign of Vancouver’s multi-million dollar industry at work. You actually admire them for their enterprising way of making a living, but you really would prefer if they’d stop parking their Caddies and Humvees in your spot at the curb.
You feel as comfortable snarfing down chow mein as you do cramming in the nanaimo bars. Ordering your sushi in perfect Japanese is no big deal, and you’d NEVER stuff pickled ginger down the middle of your California roll before putting it in your mouth.
For the privilege of paying a mere $2000 per month for zero bedrooms and a half bath, you get to look out at the garbage bin across the alley and put up with a seemingly non-existent landlord who collects the rent through Paypal from the other side of the world. It’s a good thing the city itself is so damn good-looking, because it’s practically the only return on your hard-earned and ridiculously easily-spent money. That, and the cheap sushi.
Somewhere in the back of your closet is that beloved woolly that smells like wood smoke and the perfume of the crush you locked lips with in your teens. The one with the eagle pattern on the back has been used by your dog as a snuggly for the past fifteen years.
One is a body of water and the other one isn’t.
Because, Stacey and Clinton, slinging your Gucci bag over your Canucks jersey is not a fashion faux pas, it’s fashion statement.
After all, you buy all your 100-mile diet fruits and veggies from your local farmers’ market on Saturday morning, and you take your organic bamboo cloth shopping bag with you to carry them…Which you then place in the back of your shiny new, gas-guzzling SUV that gets 15 mpg. Ahem.
Sundays are about getting all spiritual and like, one with nature. To accomplish this, you religiously jog or bike around the Stanley Park Seawall, or through Pacific Spirit Park, and then you join in quiet contemplation with your fellow worshippers over a newspaper, coffee, and a biscotti at your chosen temple of worship — the local beanery. (But really, the only reason you don’t worship at home is because they haven’t yet figured out a way to make coffee come out of the sink tap.)
But only when the sun doesn’t shine. That’s why you never buy your ticket to anything until you know the 7-day forecast a week out from your chosen event. Those golden rays are too precious and rare to be wasted by sitting inside some darkened theatre…unless the event is outside, and then it might rain, which is another reason not to be too hasty about buying a ticket in advance.
Okay, admit it. True Vancouverites all require a wee dram of piscine DNA to survive a Canadian West Coast winter. But at least you’re doing it in style.
Sorry, got distracted by the sweetest little crocus poking up in my garden. You were saying? Can’t find your car under the snow? Aw shucks!
You thoroughly endorse the trend of mixing it up a bit. After all, no one should be so zen-centric as to deny the logic of signing up for a yoga class that includes brunch with waffles and beer to balance out all that holy karmic downward doggy energy thingy. Right? 