Monthly Archives: June 2011

Summertime Booze Recipes: Dish'n'Dazzle

The "Staves & Stones" drink. That sage is amazing in this bevvy. Picture by Cathy Browne! Thanks, Cathy.


Here we go, yo! Just in time for the long weekend. These are recipes for some amazing drinks we got to taste from some of the city’s best bartenders, at the the really great BC Hospitality Foundation’s Dish’n’Dazzle last Friday.
The restaurant’s food choices may have had too much seafood for this landlubber, but they knocked me out with the tasty beverages.
Thank you to Dana for giving me the permission to share these recipes with you. The sponsors of this portion of D’n’D event were Skyy Vodka & Gibson’s Finest Whiskey, so it was nice to attend a wine event with a little kick on the side. Whoo!
What’s neat about these cocktails is that they all include something South American — Chile, or its neighbouring countries. It’s nice to see how traditional bitters/ingredients like Amargo Chuncho can really pack a different wow.
My favourite two were the Afternoon Delight and the Staves and Stones, oh, and the Sangria Blanco. Heck, they were all super-good.
I was put off making one of these drinks because the mixologist was being so fancy when putting it together that it looks like crazy hard work. Now the recipe makes it sound ridiculously easy. I wonder if mixologists learn all the tricks to making drinks look like rocket science and serious work. But, hey, now, the recipe’s reduced to 2 lines. How hard can this be? You know?
Hey, I know: Party at your place, Saturday at 5. Bring the mix! We’ll find out!
Want to make a larger “punch” size of these? Go for it. Multiply! MmMm! Bottoms up, kids!

Afternoon Delight
by Evelyn Chick of UVA Wine Bar

*Steff’s favourite! Nummy-nummy-mm!
Featuring: Cointreau, Chilean Chardonnay, Lemon, Black Pepper, Coriander, Thai Basil, Ginger, Celery Bitters.

  • 1.5 oz Cointreau
  • 1 oz Chilean Chardonnay
  • 5 oz Fresh Lemon
  • 5 oz Black Pepper and Coriander Syrup
  • 1 leaf Thai Basil
  • 2 slices Fresh Ginger
  • 3 dashes Celery Bitters

Place ginger in a Collins glass and muddle gently. Dice basil and place in glass. Add all other ingredients and top with ice. Stir thoroughly.
Continue reading →

Dazzled by The Wines of Chile!

I was very fortunate to have received a couple of tickets to last week’s Dish’n’Dazzle event at the Fairmont Pacific Rim.
Here’s the complete low-down, good and bad.
Dish’n’Dazzle is the BC Hospitality Foundation’s big wine-and-food fundraiser. The Foundation is used by folks in the hospitality industry who have medical emergencies that can be crippling financially but aren’t insured adequately, if at all. It’s a really fantastic charity, if you know what it’s like to face constant rehab or medical costs.
This was a fantastic event with quite a few restaurants making tasting plates that were paired with a Chilean wine palate. The wines were all Chilean, a fantastic range of easy-drinking high-value wines all the way to unlikely splurges topping $70 a bottle.
Bonus was the cocktail room, where everything had at least a smidge of something Chilean in the mix. There was a lemon drink that tasted like a summer afternoon in heaven. I wish I had the details on it, but I was a little busy drinking that night to be making notes beyond “BUY THIS” on my tasting booklet. My god, a restaurant, cocktail name, AND recipe? Too much to ask of me! A print-out of the recipe would’ve been divine!

A Crash Course on Grapes

Whether it’s at the Fairmont, the Playhouse, or the W2, these wine events are absolutely fantastic if you’re a junior vino appreciator, like myself.
Hobbled by a single-life budget while living in one of the world’s more expensive cities in a recession, I seldom spend more than $15 on a bottle of wine, but I certainly LOVE a beautiful bottle. A recent BC Burrowing Owl Merlot from 2007 left me weak at the knees, for instance. Going back to a value wine’s tough after that, but a girl’s got to pay the rent — and when I need value, it’s usually to Chile I turn.
So, this kind of event lets me try all those amazing $20-30 wines that I actually think are fantastic and would love to start collecting soon.
Ironically, it’s also at these events that I get try so many expensive wines and realize that, personally, I don’t find that most of the flavour profile differences between, say, a $40 bottle and a $60 bottle are often worth the jump in price.

Our Favourite Vino

In fact, my favourite wine in that whole room was, shockingly, a white wine under $20. It was a 2011 Sauvignon Blanc from Hacienda Araucano, from the Lolol valley. The winemaker is the global big-producer Francois Lurton, with vineyards in France, Argentina, Chile, Portugal, and Spain. Since Lurton’s site sucks for information, it’s almost impossible to find a product page on this wine, sadly, so it’s not being well-marketed just yet, too new, but…

The Reserva de la Hacienda Sauvignon Blanc, the star of the show, is produced using the best grape varieties brought from the French regions of Loire and Bordeaux, and is described by the company as having “an intense aroma that combines tropical fruits, citruses and ‘minerality’”. The combination of micro climates (concentrated atmospheric zones with climates that differ from the surrounding areas) in which the vineyards are located, and the sea mists that arrive due to its proximity to the sea, allow for the production of an excellent range of high-quality red and white wines such as their Sauvignon Blanc.

(from I Love Chile.)

My friend and I so loved the Sauvignon Blanc, not yet in stores here, that we’re scheming to order a case (from Diamond Estates in Canada)between us.

You know what? It’s not shocking such a great wine can be had at a budget-friendly price. Chilean wine is fantastic for value prices. A $10 wine from Chile can really surprise you. (At $13.99, Carmen’s Gewurtztraminer also blew us away, but is also a specialty find, so, an easier-to-find value wine I enjoyed, but red, is the Vina Maipo Reserve Carmenere at $12.99).

It’s Fun, Not Stuffy

The above-mentioned wine we covet, but we tasted the 2011 vintage. Yummy!

My friend laughed at me for my winetasting strategies — I’d walk to every table and ask the reps present “What’s the wine that best represents you?” or “What’s the wine I have to try?” It’d always put them on the spot, and sometimes they’d give me the most expensive wine, but usually they’d give me the one they loved best of their line. It’s working for me, at least.

The night was a great opportunity to small-talk with people who really know their products, and a real learning opportunity.

There are a few such wine events in Vancouver each year, and they’re really worth saving your money for and getting out to experience.

I’m really trying to learn more about wine, trying to drink less frequently so I splurge more for “experience” wines I pair properly with food when I have the time to cook extravagantly. For me, it was all about the wine, but I was hoping to learn more about food-pairing strategies too.

The Food Wasn’t Chilean, Though

Unfortunately, I think the restaurants involved really could have offered more variety than mostly seafood, and thought more about the traditional Chilean food for the wines that were showcased.

There was no chicken, lamb, pork, or, what Chile’s famous for, beef! — it was all fish, mostly salmon (which I didn’t realize is one of Chile’s top exports) save for one muskox carpaccio… which doesn’t really scream “Chile” to me. Neither do cake-pops, I’m afraid, or Toasted-Marshmallow-on-a-stick. I was just surprised at the disconnect between a lot of those dishes and what one thinks of for Chilean wines.

Aside from the lack of Chilean influence found, I’m also not a seafood or even a dessert fan, so that aspect really disappointed me. I wish more restaurants would realize that not everyone likes seafood. I was left without eating as much as I should, and that’s never good when one’s consuming vast quantities of truly tasty grapes.

I was lucky to attend last fall’s Taste of Chile, where those doing the food had everything from empanadas to whole roast of pig, and the food knocked me out. It was truly varied but what I expected to see at an event meant to showcase Chilean wines — like this was meant to also be. I think last fall’s Taste of Chile spoke to the soul of Chilean food, and was a tribute to what the country offered. I was pretty sick at the time I went, and never did blog about it, but the event blew me away.

So, it’s interesting that I’ve had two amazing Chilean winetasting events, and while knowing what I know from the last one at W2 & thinking the Dish’n’Dazzle restaurants could have offered Chilean-inspired dishes, I gotta say: One thing that REALLY knocked me out were the amazing Mushroom Croquettes from Yew. I went back for two more. And then another! But, you know, French, not Chilean. Tasty as hell, though. Perfectly crisp and not a bit of grease. The coriander-crusted salmon with tomatillo puree from The Salmon House was fantastic as well, even if I don’t love fish.

My Last Words

Finally, I’m a pretty savvy web person, so I’m surprised at how tricky it was to find information on Dish’n’Dazzle this time. The BC Hospitality Foundation doesn’t even list it on its events page, a major oversight by the organization. I hope it has a more obvious home webpage next time around, because, even if the food wasn’t to MY tastes, I know my friend, a big fish fan, absolutely loved the offerings, and value-for-experience, start-to-finish, the event’s really something worth attending if you ever get the chance, and it goes to a fantastic cause. Great service, generous hospitality at every table, and a wide variety worth exploring.

You ought to consider these large tastings a chance to really learn about all kinds of wine. It’s a crash course in Everything Tasty-Grapey, and something every wine-lover needs to experience at least once, whether it’s the annual Wine Festival or gala events like this. Usually priced between $40 and $100, it’s great value for the money at any price-point, and if you throw a few tastings of wines you might never afford, sometimes up to $150 a bottle, you can really experience a tasting journey unlike anything anyone else can offer you. Go for it.

FILE UNDER "OBVIOUS": Alcohol+Speed=Death

TV star Ryan Dunn is dead because he was a jackass.
Oh, sure, people are mourning his death, but not me. I’m mourning his incredible stupidity.
You see, he was legally drunk. He had twice the legal limit of booze in his system. Then he went driving at speeds up to 140mph. Tell me: How was he supposed to survive such stupidity? The odds were low the moment his keys hit the ignition.
All this “oh, it’s so sad” shit just pisses me off. Sorry, kids. Not me. He’s dead and we’re lucky it happened before he could kill many others.
Because that’s the reality of drinking and driving.

Your Choices Don’t Just Hurt You

25 years ago, when I was about 12, my mother got a phone call. “Did you see the news?” she was asked.
It was Mother’s Day. Her friend’s twin boys, 18 years old, were over and teasing their mom, having a great time for her special day. But she realized she’d never bought cream for the dessert coffee. She asked the boys to go to the store and pick up some cream.
Then she never saw them again.
That Mother’s Day eve, a drunk ran a light, T-boned her sons’ car at super-high speeds, killing both good-looking, star-athlete 18-year-old identical twin boys on impact before they’d ever cash in on their university scholarships.
She was never the same. She went from being a great community member and artist to someone who left town to live a reclusive artist’s life on the waterfront up coast. The last couple times I saw her, years after her sons’ death, you could read the tragedy in her face. She never left that sadness behind.

Friends Don’t Drive with Drunk Friends

That’s what excessive alcohol does behind the wheel.
I see friends drinking to excess and driving. I don’t ride with them. I worry about them, but I can’t change their choices.
They’re not drinking double the legal limit and driving 140mph in a Porsche, but it’s bad enough when it’s a big city like this and veering off a road at 80 k/hr can kill a crowd.
Ryan Dunn didn’t just kill himself, he killed a friend.
If you ride with drunk friends, you’re taking your life in your hands. Or, rather, you’re giving your life to someone who was probably too drunk to get the keys in the ignition correctly before starting the car.
Talk them out of driving. Tell them you won’t ride with them.
And if they choose to drive despite you saying you won’t ride with them, don’t change your mind. Your being in the car is even more of a distraction to an already-unfocused drunk.
Trusting your friend not to “hurt” you doesn’t mean you can trust them if they’re drinking and driving. Alcohol impairs judgment. It doesn’t only impair judgment if there’s no good friends involved.
After all, Dunn’s friend is just as dead as he is.
They died immediately of “crash and thermal trauma.” Thermal trauma means they burned to death.
Want to go that way?
Don’t drive with drunk friends.

My Anger is Justified, and I Don’t Apologize

No, Ryan Dunn’s death isn’t a tragedy, it’s stupidity. It was entirely preventable. If you can afford a Porsche, you can afford a cab.

Ryan Dunn's car. No, your car isn't indestructible. Think you can survive this? Don't drink and drive.


I get angry when I hear people die for stupid reasons. I get angry at the pain and loss that those left behind will endure.
If my anger and lack of boo-hoo about Dunn’s death, my story about my mom’s friend’s tragic Mother’s Day that made her childless, and my harsh words affect just one person’s future decisions, then that’s awesome.
Meanwhile, if you want to be pissed at me for calling it like it is, so “soon” after his death, then you’re a goof.
The fact is, if we wait until a “respectable” time has passed to call Ryan Dunn an idiot for dying an unnecessary death, then we lose the emotional impact his death can have on those who need a wake-up call.
So.
Ryan Dunn was a good-hearted, great-souled, wonderful man who was a jackass. He died needlessly.
Don’t be a jackass.

Uh, Yeah, About That "Bag Discount?"

Dear Whole Foods Clerk (and others):
Yes, I did bring my own bag.
No, I don’t want to donate my 10-cent rebate for being a conscientious shopper to Bob’s Green Yard, Betty’s Pooper-Scooper, or whatever fucking charity it is you’re backing this week.
No, I’m not a bitch because I don’t want to be generous — I’m just really sick of you making money off my dime. Literally.
See, you donate my money, and you get a tax break. Does that tax break go to charity? No, probably into the Whole Foods Whole-Paycheck bank account.
And, hey, now, that sanctimonious look you just shot me because you’re “tired” of “cheap” customers? Go fuck yourself, lady.
It’s been a fucking recession for three years. You know what I’m tired of? Being broke. But, guess what? Nothing’s changing on THAT front because YOUR employer has to keep raising prices because that’s the world we live in.
And, while we’re talking, that bag I brought with me? It doesn’t mean you don’t have to do your job.
Bag my groceries. After all, I’m paying the “We’re Whole Foods, so you’re guilt-free” premium for SOMETHING, right?
Just ring up the groceries, bag ’em, and don’t make me feel like shit for keeping money that I really did actually work for.
Even if it’s just a motherfucking dime.
Thanks!
Love Steff.
 

Big Brother & Vancouver: My Thoughts on Crowd Surveillance

As the dust settles from Vancouver’s riots, a controversy brews.
Public shaming is Vancouver’s new favourite past-time. Know a rioter? Expose that ass!
But should we be doing this?
Some folks have very different opinions, and the loudest voice one hears on the matter is by local professor & author Alexandra Samuel, who explains her opposition very well in this piece, where she says “We have seen Big Brother, and he is us.”
While Samuels has great points, she is not in the majority on her opinions.

My position on public shaming shifting slightly. I worry about the severity of public outing right now because of the passion with which the entire city has jumped on these guys.
I loathe the extent to which some are taking the public shaming, via printing phone numbers and addresses of parents of rioters, contacting employers, and things like that. (Not cool, people. Don’t be an ass and do that, or initiate contact that way.)
We live in an era where the saying “Pics or it didn’t happen” is ubiquitous. Everything gets caught on video. If you had a camera on me 24/7, you’d find some real good footage for upending people’s thoughts on the person I am. This is true of all of us.
You’d sure as hell never catch me damaging public property, harassing or assaulting others, or flying into physical rages, though. You’d never catch me vandalising, shouting down a cop, shoving a citizen, or even littering.
That’s my ethos, and a lot of citizens share it.
We citizens are tired of the permissiveness with which people litter, vandalise, and generally abuse public spaces. We’re tired of people who get away with acting like assholes.
Maybe it’s time public shaming come into vogue.
Maybe it’s time we stop worrying about politicians with prostitutes, and start worrying about punk-assed people who treat cops like trash, who burn our city up, and who generally don’t seem to contribute to where we want to go as a society.
Destroying their lives, though, may do us more harm as a society than good.
In this instance, I believe we need to offer first-offense rioters a chance to redeem themselves. We need to give them an opportunity to give back instead of destroying. We need to allow them the chance to not throw their lives away over a stupid night in which they maybe chose to embrace a mob mentality when they might have never done otherwise normally.
Then there’s the part of me who feels that there are people on those videos doing heinous, awful things — beating people, blowing shit up. That side of me feels those people don’t get the benefit of the doubt. They don’t deserve it, they deserve to be outed.
In the end, my ambivalence on meting out justice the old-school way, in a court of public opinion, is tempered by the thought of living in a world where everyone felt accountable for their actions.
If people realise that being a jackass for 15 minutes on Youtube can have real long-term life effects, maybe then we’ll see people acting like citizens, not hooligans.
Actions should have consequences. Good citizens should be angered when hooligans act this way. Thugs who attack our police and other citizens deserve to be exposed for who and what they are.
However, just being present at the riot doesn’t mean one is complicit in it. Jumping on a burned-out car isn’t the same as burning it. There are levels of asshattedness going on here, and painting them all with the same brush of ostracism isn’t ideal.
So, I’m still at a loss. To some degree, this public shaming of thugs is long overdue. Hooligan behaviour needs to be seen as unacceptable, not “fun”. We need youth and others to understand that we expect more of citizens.
At the same time, lives can be destroyed by this process, and while I trust my own judgment in reading facts and situations in an equitable manner, I do not trust that others can or will do the same. My ethos is liberal and open-minded, which isn’t always the case with others, so whose idea of “wrong” is right?
The only thing that isn’t questionable for me is, if one is celebrating that kind of destruction, if they’re contributing to it in any way, if they’re cheering it on, then it makes them a douchebag, and maybe it’s in everyone’s interest to know that about ’em.
Beyond saying “Hey, this guy is a rioting douche,” I don’t think we should be doing anything. It’s not up to us to contact their employers, their schools, their family. We don’t have that right, and anyone who does it should be reprimanded.
In the end, Alexandra Samuels has a very valid point — it’s a really slippery slope. It’s a worrisome possible trend when one thinks of ways it might be misused.
But I don’t like the society we’ve become. I don’t like the lack of social responsibility so many show. If this is what it takes to have a society where everyone cares about how the street looks, respects others’ belongings, and treats each other with dignity, then maybe it’s time to stand atop that slippery slope and see if it leads us to a better place.

The Day After

Photo by Steffani Cameron.


Wow. What a difference 24 hours makes.
There’s something about hundreds, maybe thousands, of drunk-assed fuck-faces rampaging through your city, breaking glass, burning cars, and hurting innocent civilians that makes one go, “Hey, you know what? I love this place. And you just PISSED ME OFF.”
One of Vancouver’s finest somewhat-under-the-radar bloggers (bookmark that shit, yo) is Kimli. She has deliciously turned her snark on to these three asshatted rioters. Based on the strength & zeal of this piece, I think she should embrace her angst and do an entire series on these jerks (and out-of-towners!) who thought they’d try messing up Vancouver, and tarnishing our reputation worldwide.
I love my town, man.
I love my town with its disparity of lives, rich-versus-poor, plastic-ass districts like Yaletown, through to hard-ass hard-luck big-art cultural-love-in ‘hoods like Commercial Drive on the East Side.
I love my town with its ludicrous concrete jungle in the middle of a temperate rainforest at the bottom of big-ass mountains on the coast of the wide watery world of the Pacific.
I love my wickedly multicultural once-upon-a-world white-folk sushi-capital crazy-ass side-of-Little-India jumble of a town.
And these guys picked the wrong fucking day to toy with us.
We were gonna take it all, win the Cup finally, and instead of just losing The Cup, we lost our reputation and our self-respect.
A sick billion dollars will be pumped down the drain because of these asshats. Some will be getting in trouble with the law for stealing a Big Gulp or Pringles, and I hope the insignificance of their theft does not diminish the extent of punishment they receive.
Principles, baby. Gotta have ’em.
Because the world is hurting, because the economy has been gutted like a fish, because there are better things to do than coddle these spoiled drunk punks with incarceration, I would hope the City of Vancouver will solicit “alternative punishment” ideas from the public.
Whether it’s making rioters clean up inner-city elementary schools, ridding beaches of trash, doing clean-up after civic summer events, working for the employers whose businesses they damaged, being forced to talk to high schools about why they regret doing the criminal acts they did — I think there are two things we can’t really do; We can’t run up taxpayers’ tab with jail time for all these assholes, and we can’t cripple them too far into their future with huge reparations fines, thus escalating their angst.
But they need to pay with their time and their physical labour. The city and Mayor Gregor Robertson should let the public speak as to how that should happen.

Photo by Steffani Cameron.


Last night, I was embarrassed. I was hurt. I was angry. And I would have beat the living shit out of someone who was guilty of crimes against this city if I could have.
This morning, I got up, I did my social-media-woot thingie of informing the locals and world at large about Douchebaggery Central as the morning unfolded more and more. Then I decided that, back instability or not, I just had to get my ass downtown to experience the “Day After.” I couldn’t let the asshats win.
And I’m so very, very, very glad.
Tonight, fueled by the clearly mad-deep-true love most Vancouverites have for their city — because, after all, more than 18,000 people signed up on Facebook to do clean-up today and, as a result of those who honoured that commitment, the biggest riot in almost 4 decades was cleaned up before lunchtime.
During the clean-up, hundreds and perhaps thousands of people wrote on the boarded-up windows with markers left by every pane, messages of everything from apologies to the hockey team, testimonies of love for the city, through to rightful damnation of the rioters.
As the city was literally swept up in a wave of awesomeness, people’s angst turned to pride and love for their fellow citizens. Friendships formed, people shared and laughed. It was a really, really awesome experience to be there even for just an hour.

Photo by Steffani Cameron.


Now, people have turned their attention, like Kimli, toward trying to expose all these assholes for who they are. They need to pay with their friends, their schools, their jobs, everything.
We cannot abide this behaviour.
If the government cannot punish them, then we must socially ostracize them.
There is a code. You do not fuck with another man’s home.
This is our home. This is our town.
Whether local or not, that behaviour will never be tolerated in Vancouver at our public events.
You’re on notice, asshats. We have smartphones. You’re on video. And it ain’t the 15 minutes’ fame you’d hoped for.
Everyone else, we got your back. Get here, have fun with us. We’re good people. We’re not gonna let these chumps wreck our party.
We’ll see y’all same time next year, man. Without the losers.

See below for TIJANA MARTIN PHOTOGRAPHY's link. Photo by Tijana Martin.

Visit http://tijanamartinphotography.wordpress.com/ for more heartwrenching riot (and pregame fan) photography.

I'm a Citizen, Not a Rioter

A fan-created image on the Facebook "Post-Riot Cleanup" page for the Vancouver Riot.


Last night, a couple thousand drunk assholes brought shame to the city I’ve loved my whole life.
Normally passionate about personal freedoms, I’m shouting the loudest for people to ID those they know who have brought this riot and destruction, and the shame and poor reputation that come with, to justice.
Some speculate it was all suburb folk, some speculate it was all locals. We don’t know. I speculate more suburbs and other-place types who didn’t come looking for a hockey game, but who came looking to shit-kick the world.
More on that later.
But I know who it wasn’t. It wasn’t George Roux, this passionate Canucks Fan.
I want to share this brilliant twist on the great “My Name is Joe, And I Am Canadian” Molson ad, written for Facebook by George Roux, who knocked me out with this:

Hey.
I’m not a pyromaniac, or a car flipper,
and I didn’t trash Sears, or Chapters, or the CBC screens
and I don’t know Johnny, Sunny or Raj from Granville Street
although I’m certain they’re really, really drunk.
I have a jersey and car flag, not a Molotov cocktail.
I cheer all the time, not just when we’re winning.
I can proudly wear my jersey daily, not just on game days.
I believe in puck-handling, not crosschecking; passing, not tripping;
and that the Canucks are still the best team in the league
A fan is proud, a fire is to keep warm, and it’s a beer, not a weapon; a beer.
Canucks were the best in the regular season this year.
All of Canada cheered us on! and we’ll be the best again next year!
My name is George!! And I am True Canucks Fan!
Get off my Bandwagon
Thank you.

Thank you, George.
Thank you, Vancouverites who are cleaning up.
Thank you, Canucks, for trying.

***
Dear Francesco Aquilini: Can we get the team a sports psychologist now? If they didn’t need one before the game, they need one now. Thanks!

Suck it Up, Buttercup: The Road to the Cup

As the saying goes, life’s tough — get a helmet.
The omigod-I’m-bagged feeling I had last Monday sure as hell hasn’t improved this week. Let me tell you, people, if you’re a hockey fan and the Stanley Cup playoffs hits your town, you will feel like shit by the time the playoffs are over.
Drinking, eating badly, and falling off one’s routine has never been so easy as it is right now. Praise be, we’re at least half-way through the final series. The two-plus month road is nearly at an end.
This morning, it’s evident I’m closer to 40 than I’d like to be. I call it “Stanleycupitis.” It hurts here, and here, and here, Doc.
Tonight, I’ll eat better. I won’t get the sleep I want, what with a 5am wakeup call for yet another early game day. But THIS IS WHAT WE LIVE FOR, like the Canucks’ team signage says this year. We want the Cup.
If the players can make it through, I can toughen up on rigours imposed by a gruelling playoff diet of booze and pizza.
Oh, Lord Stanley’s Cup: The double-edged sword you wield.
Given my back injury’s nowhere near where it needs to be for the longterm, I have not yet celebrated with the masses downtown. Tomorrow, I may. Depends on the back, of course. Something about crowding with thousands and thousands of easily-excitable people on city streets is a little unsettling for me, even now.
Between the playoffs, having to start work at 7am just to fit in treatment sessions on my back, struggling to keep my place in not-a-crackden status (but not doing too well at that), I’m reaching the end of my ever-aging fuse.
I’m not alone, of course. A lot of my friends are trying to fit life in with epic hockey that’s become don’t-miss-a-minute kinda gameplay. (Well, when an overtime-producing goal happens at 13 seconds remaining in regulation, or a game-winning sudden-death goal hits the net 10 seconds into overtime two games later, would YOU want to miss a minute? Not me.)
They’ll tell you that the Stanley Cup is incredible for the local economy, but I propose that any advantage the local economy’s experienced through the cash-happy hockey fan’s overzealous spending of late has been directly countered by productivity losses in all offices as employees buzz with “We’ve waited our whole lives to win hockey’s Holy Grail!” energy every day, with more hangovers per capita over a longer period than even the Olympics could’ve induced.
We Vancouverites are hanging on by a thin-but-happy thread.
Usually, we’re celebrating victories but today we’re lamenting the worst game of all the series so far. An 8-1 drubbing at the hands of Beantown’s Carebears certainly took the swagger out of the Canucks’ game.
Secretly, people like me are happy. Good, Game 5 is when we’ll win the kit and the kaboodle. We’ll take it all, baby! And, on a Friday night, at home, with sunny weather, and the whole weekend to celebrate and recover.
Yep. Let’s do THAT.
I remember that game in Vancouver’s ’94 Cup-run, against Toronto or Dallas, I don’t remember — someone whose asses we thoroughly kicked as we made our way to the Finals with New York. Some 40 gloves were littered from end-to-end on that ice, with so much penalty time handed out you needed a calculator just to get a tally of it all.
I don’t remember the score then, I don’t remember the next game’s score either, but I remember the buzz around it, and I can’t wait to see how Vancouver responds on Wednesday.
The hangovers, the antacids, the ass-dragging, the time-crunch, the flagging energy, the death-defying schedule juggling — THIS IS WHAT WE LIVE FOR. This is what the Stanley Cup does to you.
This isn’t no dinky football final where they play one game, and whoop, there it is, you have a victor. This is an all-out, bone-crunching, bruising, gasping best-of-7 fight through the injured-reserve list victory, baby. The winner’s gotta make it happen four times JUST THIS SERIES alone! Never mind the other three series nor the oodles of overtime played.
Two months, man! I hurt, and I’m tired, and I’m fed up.
But I’m not gonna miss a goddamned minute.
Because, really, this is what we live for.
Today, this week. The Stanley Cup hasn’t been held by a Canadian team since 1993. Vancouver has never owned the Cup.
But this year we will.
And I won’t have missed a minute.
Make my coffee a double. Maybe a triple. And get me a bigger piece of thread to hang onto, buddy. 31 hours to Game 4. I’ll be glued to it. You?

_______________________

Photo: Canadian Press. Baby Sign: No idea–bouncing around Facebook for a few weeks now, anonymously.
Not-so-Confidential To Boston Fans:
After last night’s game, you don’t get to whine about “dirty” play. Enjoy losing the series, Beantown.

Mid-Morning Moody Skies

The rain is oppressive this morning. It’s hardly June-like, this.
I live in a rainforest, I have to remind myself. Man can slap a bunch of concrete together but he can’t fool the planet. City-schmity, buddy. Rainforest-central, that’s Vancouver. The trees are just hiding amidst the concrete.
I watched a little of a doc on Ansel Adams this morning. That man made nature photography like some people pray.

Photo by me, last June. Maybe this *is* "June" weather.


Between last fall’s pneumonia and this spring’s back problems, I haven’t been out in real nature in months. In the coming weeks, I’ll be working up to riding the trails of UBC and getting out to the North Shore for hikes.
Ken Kesey once wrote to the effect that if you can’t find god in your backyard in Kansas, you’re not gonna find him in Egypt’s pyramids, either, or anywhere else. He meant the world’s a beautiful place and full of mystery wherever we are, but if we choose not to see what’s there in front of us, going lookin’ for it elsewhere ain’t gonna make it anymore tangible for us, even if we’re lucky enough to find it.
It’s easy to have a mindblowing experience when you’re away from home. Finding it in close quarters takes a different kind of awareness. I suspect we all fall into the routine of seeing the street we need to turn down yet again, before we go to X building for Y duties, and not that there’s a strangely random rhubarb plant growing roadside in the middle of a high-end shopping district full of concrete, or an eagle soaring over the downtown core when on our work lunchbreak.
Both those things have happened to me, lately. In Vancouver’s Yaletown, in front of Earl’s, there’s been a rhubarb plant sprouting, I think. Eagles are often around Vancouver.
We see what we want to see. And on another grey day like this, most of us just see the wet cuffs of our jeans, the moody skies, and the crowded bus shelters. Too bad. There’s a lot more out there. Try to see one interesting thing a day. Keeps me alive and plugged in.
Well, perhaps if I bring my umbrella, the rain will stop. So goes the Vancouver legend. Chuckle, chuckle. Right.

*** ***

As of today, Vancouver’s Canucks are ahead 1 game to none in the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals. You’re goin’ down, Boston. This is the year. Vancouver’s bringing it home. (Rainbow power, baby. Just like the start of game 7 against Chicago, a rainbow appeared in the last period of the game yesterday. Victory goal with 19 seconds to go. Beauty. Rainbow power!)