Life, without a helmet (or a bike)

Michael wanted to go for a bike ride today but I don't have a bike or a helmet. There's a bike rental place nearby, but I think I'd rather buy a bike and helmet and get some practice on my own time before attempting to integrate myself with downtown Vancouver traffic. Michael and some other people went for a bike ride a while ago and I guess one of the women was a little rusty and she rode into a chain link fence. That would be me. No, wait, I would probably manage to fall off one of the bridges or something. I used to ride my bike everywhere when I was sixteen, eighteen years old, but that was like... five years ago. Heh heh.
So we decided to go for a walk. I'm pretty good at that, and don't often screw it up. It was a great day and we grabbed a coffee at the quay while waiting for the seabus to take us to Vancouver. We walked through the tourist trap known as Gastown. I used to laugh when I saw people taking pictures of the steam clock there, because someone told me that it actually was electric and wasn't powered by steam, but it appears that's incorrect: it is a mix of a steam engine and electric motors (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_clock). But I'm still going to laugh at the tourists because people from other countries deserve to be ridiculed. A group of people asked us for directions at one point and I sent them packing towards the worst part of town where they were no doubt robbed and beaten senselessly. I kid. I helped them. Only because we were actually standing on the street they needed to be on. I get lost a lot. One time, about four years ago, (I wasn't working downtown then) I got lost and I asked some people for directions, but they were tourists and were like, "We have no idea" which is pretty funny.
We checked on the progress of the Woodwards building which is frigging huge. Every time we go there to check on the status we see further gentrification in that area. It used to be unnerving to walk in that part of East Van, but it is changing: and fast.
Then we walked by the gates to Chinatown. That area is also totally changing. I need to walk around my city more. I also think I might have found this hole in the wall Chinese restaurant called the Green Door (or was it the Red Door?? cause the door I found was green) that my family went to a million years ago. I think we had just seen the Blue Jays or the Mariners play and my parents, along with my uncle and his kids, all went to this tiny restaurant that had like four tables in it and it was the best Chinese food I've ever had in my life.
We wandered over to the Concord Pacific presentation centre and Holy Real Estate Market Crash, Batman! there was NO ONE in it. Five, ten years ago they were lining up before they even broke ground to buy condos. Ha! So, as retribution for all the times realtors in presentation centres were condescending to us we used their washrooms and didn't buy a $600,000 condo.
Wandered through Yaletown and then over by the Vancouver public library built by Moshe Safti. I like the architecture, but I don't like the color of the concrete. I guess grey might have been to brutalist, but I find the ochre color is kind of aesthetically displeasing, though it has held up really well. And it really turned my crank to see that they had closed the street next to the library off for some kind of literary fair and that the public space around the library was host to a band and some spectators. I just love to see people enjoying public spaces since, um, we effing paid for them. Which brings us to the next contentious issue...
... Arthur Erickson's law courts. When we were at the Erickson lecture last weekend we learned that the law courts had a roof top garden. After a fantastic sushi lunch we went over there and discovered that the entryway to this public space was very tiny and not very noticeable. The entry route we found was on Robson Street, one of the busiest streets in Vancouver: full of residents and tourists and shops. Michael said the steps looked as though they were leading up to some sort of utility building because they weren't really marked and the path was surrounded by heavy foliage. But once you get to the top it's this beautiful, open space resplendent with flowering bushes and fairly mature trees. It's vast and it's a couple of stories above the hustle and bustle of the city so it's quiet. And there was likely only a dozen people there on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Which has led to a little debate regarding accessibility to public places. I enjoyed it as a nice, secluded respite in a busy city; a veritable secret garden. Michael didn't agree and though the paths leading up to it should be more evident and openly available to everyone. He also thought that, because of its seclusion, it would be unsafe at night and decried he would not venture up there unless he had a "machete and a cattle prod". I don't disagree that it would an unsavory place to go at night, but I do like the idea of hidden place in Vancouver that not everyone is aware of unless they're in the know. And I know this flies in the face of what I just said about Safti's library. Whatever. Sometimes I just wanna eat my egg sandwich in peace, ya know? And stick people with my cattle prod.
Then Michael was initiated as a true North Vancouverite when we saw we had two minutes to make it to the seabus (or wait half an hour). I've made it with just a little more than a minute left on the clock and it was one of the few times I ever thought "holy shit, thank god I run marathons". So we ran for it and I overheard some people laughing at us, but then they ended up running too and I was mildly pissed when some guy passed me going down the escalator. I think he was blood doping.
To round out a huge day we watched "The Foot Fist Way", which was one of those painful-but-hilarious movies like Napoleon Dynamite. Will Farrel produced it. It was, apparently, shot in 19 days. I recommend it. The more I think about it, the more it grows on me. Especially with lines such as, "I'm so hungry I could eat a grown man's ass" and "Meditation is terrific and all, but I've never heard of it saving anyone from a gang rape type situation".
So. The weekend. Kicked off with a piss up and some strippers, was followed by a trip to see my mom in the house I grew up in and might not ever see again, and was topped off by a tour de Vancouver and movie that I've never heard of.
But then I never hear about anything cause I don't have cable.
Or a helmet.