Chowderhead Bazoo

Below Suspicion

(Kling klang image to engorge.)

Seattle Magazine - Surveillance: it's for your own good. Your own double plus good. For an article about the introduction of "park rangers" to Seattle's city parks. Their job: to keep an eye on you. And roust bums and other undesirables, the definition of which seems to be their call.

Meanwhile here in Vancouver, charges of overstepping their authority - I didn't know they had any - are laid against our "Downtown Ambassadors," who are basically, supposedly, roaming tourist guides and friendly Neighbourhood Watch representatives. Instead, they're now turning into beat cops, telling the city's less attractive sights to hit the bricks. Granted this town largely resembles an open air looney bin, but since when does a toy badge give you expertise in social ills?

Proxy police - all part of the new "if you're not doing anything wrong, then you've got nothing to worry about" mentality. How else to explain this wonderful new addition to my girlfriend Bonni's building, in the entrance-way? --

What a delightful greeting. Maybe some razor ribbon and watchtowers around the apartment building's perimeter could really complete that cozy living-in-a-cell-block feeling.

It's certainly news to me that a strata council has the legal authority to call in the drug dogs. (Bonni rents, but most of the suites are owned). A quick peek at the above company's website explains that they specialize in sniffing out grow-ops and meth labs by giving your residential "common areas" the once-over. Sure enough, the other day I saw a woman-dog team combing the lobby. I could have told her that there was no meth lab there, but I didn't want to nail myself as an instant suspect. We have to watch our step now - I think there might be an old roach clip in the junk drawer.

Seriously, I'm going to have to go right ahead here and ask - What the fuck is going on? When did we all become suspects? And if the random drug searches are deemed unconstitutional in public schools, how is it okay in the building you live in? The net gets tighter every day.

The Big Ashtray

Back In late March I was asked by Vancouver Magazine to hit the town on the last night of indoor smoking and write about it. (The article doesn’t appear on their website, only in print and now here. I think it got another once-over from the editors, but this is the version I’m sticking with.)

I’m ready. It’s the Big Ashtray, and pockets bristling with Dunhills, bandoleer slotted with Cohibas, and equipped with all manner of lighters, matches, and holders, I’m planning to mark the occasion with a hard-puffing haze of glory, smoking like it’s going out of style. Because it is.

In accordance with new regulations giving the city of Vancouver even bigger muscles than the rest of newly smoke-free B.C., March 31st is the last chance to light up in such “indoor public places” as taxis, offices, bars, and, yes, cigar lounges. That is, if I’m deciphering the city’s bafflegab correctly: “A person must not smoke in a building, except in enclosed premises that are not private clubs or smoking clubs, a purpose of which is to allow patrons, customers, or other persons to smoke.” Forgetting that Vancouver doesn’t really do momentous—remember the “Don’t even think about coming downtown” buzz kill of New Year’s 2000?— I aim to be there for the last stinky hurrah.

Leading up to the 31st I’d already seen cigarette racks in stores boarded with the sad grey government shutters of shame. By mid-afternoon I’m noticing desolate patios. Small clusters of confused, downtrodden puffers dither about on city sidewalks, trying to figure out where they’re supposed to stand. They don’t look angry. Like buffalos and roller-boogiers before them, they wear expressions that speak of grappling with a new, inarguable reality: it’s over. And yet another phase in Vancouver’s ongoing homogenization is well under way.

This isn’t the city’s first attempt to clear the air. Back in 2003, bar owners and reprobates alike were banging bar tops, screeching at the top of their perforated lungs that they wouldn’t butt out without a fight. Through loopholes of patios and quickly devised, expensively ventilated smoking rooms, many owners did manage to deke through the bureaucratic obstacle course, but it was only a question of forestalling the inevitable. Five years later, here we are - from a scream to a whisper. Is it deference to Olympic fever, recognizing that we need to walk tall, with minty-fresh breath and neatly trimmed nose hairs, when we become all “world class?” Or is it a new era? City health inspector Domenic Losito says that smoking’s day is done - and presumably its nights, too. In fact, B.C. has the lowest smoking rates in the country, which has seen a seven percent drop in a decade.

My first den of iniquity is City Cigar on West Sixth, but when I get there it’s as vacant as it is fragrant. I talk with manager Lianne Ashley about the ban. Her words are tinged with outrage, and who can blame her? People don’t go to a cigar lounge for food, drink, and clean mountain air, so who’s being protected? With the ban’s provision that customers respect a clear-air cordon of six metres from any building, let’s say a patron, having successfully scored a Montecristo, obediently strides out the door, measuring tape in hand, only to wind up on top of the yellow line down the centre of the road. Whoops—his neatly contained hobby has just turned deadly killer. Whose hands are bloody now?

My next stop on the search for smoke is a downtown hookah lounge. I fire up immediately. The rush hits me, followed by the familiar jab of recovering smoker guilt until I discover that I’m not even smoking tobacco. Apparently that was an apple rush. And our overlords don’t like them apples either. As far as they’re concerned, smoke is smoke. Or, in bureaucratese: “ ‘Smoke’ or ‘smoking’ means to inhale, exhale, burn, or carry a lighted cigarette, cigar, pipe, hookah pipe, or other lighted smoking equipment that burns tobacco or other weed or substance.” So if you ever get Tasered by the cops indoors, try not to smoulder.

Onward and downward to Pat’s Pub and its notorious smoking room. You don’t even have to spark up in this Downtown Eastside mainstay; you can get half a pack’s worth just walking in. But not tonight. I walk into zilch. A waitress says the kibosh came out of nowhere. Word got around, she said, and the word was fines—up to $2,000 per person. Everybody misconstrued the government-speak; the ban started the previous midnight. A poke into a rancid dive down Hastings confirms it, and if there’s no smoking going on in these off-the-map hellholes, then it’s all over. April Fool’s Day came early this year.

City Cigar’s Ashley sees a different joke in all this; city hall cracks down on a legal activity while helping fund illegal activities like injection drug use. It does seem ludicrous on the face of it, and it gets me thinking that maybe smokers just aren’t political enough. If smoking is an addiction, where are the safe inhaling sites? I can picture the place: a comfortable little haven for the nic-fitters, with some snacks, a dartboard maybe, some beer. Strikes me as ideal, but “safe inhaling site” sounds too clinical. I know—how about “bar?"

Where Are They Being Insane Now?

"Hello. I'm still breathing. I bet you were wondering what I've been up to. Still enjoying the fruits of my various scams, thanks. Faaantastic. Go B.C.!"

History doesn't just re-write itself around here, it turns it into a children's book.

Straight Blog

Seven Months of Silence

Granville street the day after Paul Boyd was gunned down by police in August 2007.

Straight Blog.

Smulk Hash! No, wait...

Straight Blog - Hulk For Dummies.

It's a Fucking Bar

"When the owners of Union Hall — a moody, dark-paneled bar and brunch spot in Park Slope, Brooklyn — recently posted a sign that read Please, No Strollers under another one reading No One Under 21 Admitted, they

did not see it as a declaration of war with the neighborhood’s sizable population of young parents."

From the New York Times, the saga of a Brooklyn bar and the sports utility stroller crowd and their spawn who seem determined to turn what is widely considered to be an adult haven - you know, a bar - into some empowering, self-actualizing alterna-parenting lifestyle zone. Or something.

Not only does professional pussy Neal "Alternadad" Pollack chime in with his usual self-fellating attention whore patter, but there's also this charming factoid thrown in by the article's writer, Alex Williams:

"It makes extra sense, parents said — in Brooklyn, hoodies and skateboard sneakers constitute a uniform for parents as well as their 5-year-olds."

Great. Just great. That's something to brag about. And it makes extra sense? Okay, you know what? I'm just going to stop typing now and just say this. It's a fucking bar. That's it. I've got nothing. Except maybe to quickly add that Alternadad and Alternamom and the whole space-sucking Alternafamily can go alterna-fuck themselves. It's a bar. The end. Go away.
 

Spielplatz Non-Stop

(Kling klang image to engorge)

Now it is time to play. If you can only figure out how.

This thing showed up in the revamped Nelson Park here in the West End and I'm baffled. What the hell are kids supposed to make of this futuristic, hi-tech Miro-esque jumble of pipes and wires? Upon closer inspection there was a company sticker - Rectec Industries - with some blather about fostering kids' imaginations and creativity. Well, they're sure as shit going to need all the imagination they can muster:

"Look, mom - I'm imagining some goddamn swings over here! Whoop-de-doo - It sure is fun pretending to have fun! Yaayyyy!"

Of course it has to be some kind of neo-hippy-dippy hand-wringing bullshit involving ergonomics and values and life lessons in weepstickery. Great. Explain that to a six year-old who might prefer an old-fashioned slide over a mysterious narrow, wavy strip of hard rubber that leads to nothing. Either that or the school next to the park is some kind of elementary post-industrial design school for tiny Huns.

Feelin' Slumpy

Sylvia Hotel - English Bay

Let's talk about feelings. Special feelings. Grab a snuggy blankey and I'll put the kettle on and then... sigh... feelings.

I hate this time of year. Can't seem to get back into a creative groove despite a number of attempts at jump-starting the ol' giving-a-shit molecules. Maybe I just need more work or maybe it's the endless goddamn winter rain. Or maybe I just gotta' shaddup and ride it out and... Oh - there's the kettle!

2010 Mascots: the Excruciating Wait is Over

Reflecting Vancouver's ongoing near-paralyzing identity crisis, these three critters - or whatever they are - sum it all up nicely: a little bit Asian, a little bit Native, a little bit imaginary, and a whole lot cute! And meaningless! I take it as well then that the Olympics are for babies and very young children? I didn't get that update, but now I'm looking forward to the revamped Games - Jolly Jumper Gymnastics, the Drooling, Pissing, Pooping Triathlon, Hide and Seek Marathon, Peek-a-Boo on Ice, etc., etc.

Personally, I had been thinking of a character called "Junki" - the cute little Eastside addict who just happens to be a squirrel! Awww! Or "Tazey" the cuddly, capering cop with the electric personality. Hey? Huh? Huh? How about "Frenchy" the adorable Hells Angel? He could have a tiny politician in one of his pockets...

These characters fill me with nothing but despair.

Are You Fried Right Out of Your Giant Skull?

Some promo buttons for another pile of glass here in Vancouver, actually touted on their website as "highly collectible." The sad thing is, for all I know, maybe they are. Maybe strange and dazed condo groupies walk among us, collecting condo gear, pasting slick brochures into treasured condo scrapbooks, having high-pitched debates about which condo development is cooler - Pulse or Zone. I'm getting fairly indifferent to the fire hose blast of one cynically hip condo come-on after another, but they are often difficult to ignore. I've seen a lot of Vespas, European-style faucets and soft-focus cappuccinos in my day.

But these buttons bear closer examination. They speak volumes - lousy, really terrible volumes - about the state of affairs not only here, but the world in general, I would imagine. But mostly here. Particularly, a button that asks "are you high?" when the building they're plugging is roughly five short blocks from one of the worst open-air drug markets on the continent. I hate to use the worn out "disconnect" fallback to describe how fucked up this is, but really, in this case the socket's been yanked right out of the wall, the wires have been stripped, and the fusebox has blown. Then again, they might  actually be appealing to self-absorbed, reasonably affluent asshole coke-fiends. Read them again. Yeah, it all fits. First stupidity becomes a virtue, now a baseless strutting, cock-measuring egomania. Or worse, the aspiration to such. That's real good news. Things were getting too dignified there for a while. Too classy.

Just for kicks I'm going to answer "no" to all of the questions; I'd like to think that it would screw up some weird, sinister scientific market survey they're conducting somewhere from behind one-way glass, analyzing complicated Project Humourous Button data and figuring out new and terrifying ways to fuck with our heads. If only it were true - somewhere, a bunch of condo people would end up in windowless underground bunkers with Russian faucets and an unexplainable Le Car fascination. Exist. Toil. Sleep. I think it's catchy, but man, I'm high as a sycamore.