Thank You Corkers! Vancouver Critical Mass, June 2008

This is mostly a huge photo gallery, but let me tell you a little about it too… first off, “thank you corkers!” was the surprising refrain we heard throughout the ride as we passed by groups of people corking. Unlike San Francisco, corkers are welcomed by all here, the police don’t hassle or ticket them, and the riders are clear that a great service is being provided by those who stop to barricade the roads to allow Critical Mass to pass unimpeded. As it turns out, Vancouverites turn corking into a series of mini-parties, each one attracting a growing number of cyclists who stop to talk, have a beer, share a puff, what have you. It was remarkable! Here are a couple of shots of corkers at work:

Motorists were surprisingly mellow in general (a few exceptions of course, including one report we heard a day later of a brawl between a cyclist and motorist, punching each other on the street, but that’s only hearsay)… Here’s an angelic rider in conversation with a sheik and his Bollywood star girlfriend (note the corkers jamming the taxi behind them):

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Exploring Vancouver

I realized soon after arriving that the last time I was in Vancouver was all the way back in 1986 for a conference called “Split Shift: The New Work Writing” when I came up with several Processed World colleagues and we did an early version of the Attitude Adjustment Seminar. In a restaurant downtown I came upon this scrawled graffiti, which echoed that long-ago visit:

Obviously the city has changed enormously since the mid-1980s. I also have another layer of memory from my first “independent” journey as a young fella, in 1973, when I came up here to hang with a high school crush while she visited her boyfriend at Simon Fraser University… that tells ya something, not sure what!!

Anyway, Vancouver is situated in a place that makes it endlessly beautiful to move around and see views of mountains and sea, but it’s also weirdly ugly, with an incredible number of Hong Kong-style glass highrise apartments having taken over a lot of the shorelines here. The area known as False Creek is remarkably similar to San Francisco’s Mission Creek, huge construction underway, up here they’re building the Olympic Village for 2010 Winter Olympics (much teeth gnashing about the waste of resources, and urban history getting bulldozed for the spectacle).

In fact, the building boom here continues what we’ve seen along the whole trip, Portland, Seattle and here, not to mention home in SF, where the financial crisis and plunging real estate values have not halted the frenzied efforts to build still more condos and offices. Here in Vancouver the sense of real estate opportunity is palpable, what with a spectacular setting, a relatively healthy local economy and a relatively small urban space (under 2 million, compared to Bay Area’s 6+ million)… But that’s just one part of the story.

Just below where I was taking these photos was a small park with a dozen junkies in full view shooting up.

There is also an intense outdoor drug injection culture that we stumbled onto as we were cruising through alleys looking for stencils. Suddenly we were dodging dozens of folks who were ignoring us entirely, but many of them were in mid-shoot, blood and needles everywhere… really gross! Here’s the People’s Pigeon Park where a Food Not Bombs-like food table was working.

A short distance away were the alleys full of junkies. On the wall behind this odorific scene were many images, but one odd poster at the top of the right corner caught our eye:

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Nowtopia vs. Despair in Seattle

I had a great visit to Seattle for lots of reasons, but bicycling wasn’t really one of them. I cycled around quite a bit, but it’s an unfriendly place for cycling, even though I did see a fair number of folks bicycling. The hills and wide streets full of cars with no shoulder were pretty daunting.

I was luckily invited to appear on Mind Over Matters on KEXP-FM at 7:30 on Sunday June 22, and thanks to that, my readings at Elliott Bay Books that afternoon at 2 and the next evening at Left Bank Books were both well attended, at least a half dozen at each having heard me on the radio. So thanks to Mike McCormick for inviting me, and hopefully I’ll soon have a place to link to for the podcast. Elliott Bay Books has an amazing big room adjacent to their cafe in the basement, dedicated to author readings. Here I am signing books at the end of the Talk! Can’t say I’ve too many experiences like this on the tour, sitting down at a table at the end and signing books for over a dozen buyers! so THAT’s how it’s supposed to work!

It was a good feeling to arrive and see Nowtopia prominently featured in their main window too:

The next night I went to Left Bank Books, who had been very apologetic ahead of time about how small their space is in Pike Market, and how unusual it is for them to even host events in the store. In fact, it was an odd layout, but about 15 folks crammed in and were very enthusiastic and attentive. Here’s the store from the outside:

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