On the other side of the enormodome, on the far side of conformity – nothing’s real.
In False Creek: a spurious water-filled ditch, filled with expensive yachts and boats and cruisers (possibly); and joggers and cyclists and peelers and me, meandering around the bogus bay … getting in each other’s way.
The lot of us loping along past odd shapes and strange fruit, a bright blob of sun blazing down and heating us all up, discarding the cool of the early morning.
With time almost up on my extended adventure, I’m wondering what might be around the corner.
Signs – that’s what … big wooden signs.
And as always, I take my pointers from slogans transcribed in neon lights.
With no immediate answers, I head onwards to Granville Island, drifting by the floating houses, a buoyant neighbourhood, a sea village.
The welcome is rendered in concrete, in silos, freshly picked from the ocean.
Into the market, into the brine … questioning everything except the damn prices.
Difficult to stay grounded when everything’s for sale.
Shopping for souvenirs of fish, chocolate and maple syrup – which would make some kind of sense, if I were a Masterchef contestant.
By lunchtime, I’m chowing down on a loaded bagel in the shadow of the Granville Bridge, immediately adjacent to a docile eagle.
I don’t know which one of us is the more puzzled to be here.
We part on good terms and I head to the brewery, where there’s a very long queue just to get through the goddamn door. I wish this was false, but it appears to be real.
Half an hour later I’m allowed in, on condition of good behaviour.
I take my summery beers perched at the bar with Kelvin from Manchester, and then Hayley from South Korea.
After an hour of idle chat we head back downtown, wandering around the city streets searching for answers (which proves difficult when we don’t know the questions), and later looking for alibis in brewery taps.
Evening crowds are gathered down in Gas Town – in search of life and liberty, in pursuit of happiness / hoppiness, yearning for a broad sense of reality. I’m unsure if Gassy Jack can provide any of this, yet he sure draws a crowd.
I promptly head in the other direction, back to my room at the YWCA, to pack up my exploits ready for a journey home.
I’ve saved a tin for my last night in Canada, and raise it the Great White North.
Which I guess is somewhere beyond the stadium outside my double-glazed window.
An Outside World 