Yaletown

 by Brendon J. Wilson

Top Five Unsexy Things About Yaletown

I came across a ridiculous piece of news via the ever-amusing condohype blog: Yaletown is being dubbed the “sexiest neighbourhood” in Canada. Really? I can think of at least five reasons that this isn’t the case (and yes, I’m channeling Nick Horby’s Rob Gordon here):

  1. Pretentious: Tiny dogs, overpriced restaurants, snotty attitudes, and waiters and hairdressers who seem to think they’re &*%$ing James Bond (where I’m using “&*%$ing” as both an adjective and a verb). Turned on yet?
  2. Costly: Given the cost per square foot of housing in Yaletown, you might end up doing it in the street. But maybe that’s “up your alley”, so to speak.
  3. Smelly: Garbage dumpsters in the street. Mmm. Sexy.
  4. Annoying: 1 way streets, no parking. This has no connection to sex – it’s just a bloody pain in the ass.
  5. Cramped: When all else fails and you can’t get laid, there’s always the Internet. Except your wireless router keeps cutting out due to interference from your eight adjacent neighbours’ own wifi networks. Guess you’ll have to exercise your imagination (and no, that’s not a euphenism).

Have I missed any? Shall we try for a Top Ten? Add yours in the comments.

Now, in the interest of disclosure, I have to say that I lived in Yaletown for three years – not because I was sexy, but rather because I was lazy. The location allowed me at one point to walk across the street to work. I have since recovered, and now live in Cambie Village.

in Opinion 7 comments
 by Brendon J. Wilson

An Eventful Evening

It’s been a stressful couple of weeks, what with all the exams I’ve been writing lately, so I haven’t had much time to blog. That aside, I didn’t have many spare brain cells left to write with or any interesting events to report. And just when I thought I had nothing to write, I get assaulted on the way to the movies.

Ashley and I were going to see a movie up on Granville Street and were just crossing the intersection of Nelson and Richards when we saw a man strike a woman. At first, I thought it was a guy being a jerk to his girlfriend, but then he rushed at Ashley and me, striking me in the side of the head. No big damage, but it was a bit of a shock. He was yelling and obviously just looking for a fight. Ashley and I put a bit of distance between ourselves and him and went to help the woman.

At this point, I started thinking straight and asked Ashley to dial 911 on her cell phone. Of course, the one time we actually need a cell phone, she doesn’t have it. I watched as across the street the man proceeded to kick at a taxi and get into another scuffle with another man. I signaled to a woman in a car to dial 911 on her phone. She was in some kind of stupor and took forever to pull out her phone and start dialing. By that time, the man that had been involved in the scuffle had dialed 911. I approached him and used his phone to talk to the police.

We followed the man down into Yaletown, keeping our distance while giving the police directions and a description of the man. The police caught up with us near the Opus hotel and arrested the man (much to the chagrin of a classmate I ran into just as the police showed up).

As it turns out, the man had a mental condition of some kind.

What should have been an episode that would only make me further cynical about the human condition turned into quite the opposite when I met up with Ashley at a local Starbucks. As it turned out, the Starbucks manager had given her a free latte while she waited for me, which was a pretty decent thing to do. And it happened again when we went for dinner: we were a little zoned out so Ashley explained to our waitress what had happened. The manager came over and explained he’d had a similar experience in the restaurant a few nights ago. Then he gave us our drinks on the house!

Wow. Maybe people aren’t so bad after all. Only in Vancouver could I get assaulted and end up feeling better about humankind. How’s that for something to write about?

in Personal 0 comments