tugboats and sunsets
For the past week I've been relatively homeless. Once again, I am couch surfing. My roommate is rennovating and I can't sleep in my room because the entire contents of our living room, dining room and her guinea pigs are all being stored in my bedroom. But I digress....
Luckily, a friend has voluneered her lovely North Van couch to me. I've decided after three nights there and 6 rides on the 'Sea Train' that I ♥North Van. Walking to the sea bus every morning and taking the boat is a pleasantly different experience to the crush of elbows that consitutes riding the Sky train. People politely stroll on to the boat. There are always enough seats. Everyone quietly reads their papers or watches the mountains get smaller as we drift towards Vancouver. If you're gonna fall in love with Lotusland this is the way to do it. Its not a bad way to start your 9-5 slog. Plus! This morning I found a wharf where real live tugboat dudes hangout. Now I know where to go to ask for a ride. Fuck seadoos. I'm stoked on getting a ride on a tugboat.
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Calling all romantics. Looking for a place to take your sweetie with a killer view to enjoy the sunset? You don't have to do the Grouse Grind, you don't even have to go to English Bay. One of East Van's best rendezvous secrets is the Nanaimo street Skytrain station. The sunset view of the city is bloody gorgeous from the skytrain platform. This spot for an ideal cheap date: $2.25 each for the Skytrain ticket, $5 for your fave mini-bottle of booze, $0 for a brown bag = under $10 for lurv on a budget.
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At the very same Nanaimo street skytrain station there was a guy with a really cool hoodie last night. He was probably First Nations. On the front of his hoodie it said: Got land? On the back it read: "Thank an Indian". Love it! Hopefully with the the BC gov't' "New Relationship" document the message that the hoodie carries will diminish with time as First Nations once again gain some control of their lands, title and resources. Read these two articles here and here for more info.
Fireworks and almost fights
In the past 12 hours I've experience the best of bus times and the worst of bus times. Let's start with the worst, cause its always more fun describing humanity's stupidity.
Last night was the annual Celebration of Light in Vancouver. For those of you not from Vancouver or who've never ventured to Kits/the West End late July here's the scoop. Basically the celebration is a bunch of fireworks. Big ass fireworks. Hundreds of thousands (I'm not kidding here) people flock to the shores of English Bay to watch 4 different countries compete in a show of choreographed fireworks and music (symphony orchestra stuff) on four different nights. For the city of Vancouver its a total logistical headache. For those aged 15-30 its a trip to Vegas - brown baggin booze an'all. For those of us working in the West End its a nightmare trying to get home any time after the fireworks. Trying to get from point A to point P is worthless until well after mid-night or two hours after 400, 000 Surrey, Coquitlam and Burnaby residents make their tracks home. Cabs dissappear in the madness and guess what the main mode of transport is? The bus. Our first bus wasn't so bad. The ride entailed the usual standing-room-only-squishyness. I was sandwiched between two large hairy dudes and my travelling companion. Things didn't get fun unti l we hopped on the connector bus to Kitsilano. That was a doozey.
You know its going to be a good bus ride when you get on board and the smells of liquor, cologne and sand are all having a good dry hump in the back of the bus. The culprits were a loud group of middle-class, university types in the back. The antagonist was a portly guy with a shirt like this drawing attention to his, I'm assuming, smaller than usual penis. Then there was ruffle skirt girl next to him doning a tight little tee "Buy me something". But the kicker was young petal of a boy in a black t-shirt with "Vagitarian" embossed across his pecks. Just like school on Sunday, no class. The Legend proceeded to yell, brag about how pissed he was, ask me if I was Austrailian, "Because, like if you were that would kick ass." Whatever that means. The Legend ended up pissing off a drunken Brit/Scott sitting a few seats up who kept on yelling, "Shut up!". The Legend took this cue to power up his not-so-flexed muscles and yip back. Along came the camo-Scott. The Vagitarian jumped in to save the legend and Buy Me Something lost her seat off the Vagitarian's lap. Shame. We scooted off the bus at the next stop, narrowly avoiding drunken brawl debris that was sure to start flying round the back of the bus. How unAustrailian of me.
The ride to work today was dull. It was all Starbucks and Fendi bags. Beige dockers and uassuming ties. West-side Vancouver middle-class. I wondered if there were any Vagitarians or Legends in the crowd. Judging by the slightly haggard looks on everyone's faces I bet there was.
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So someone asked me about the significance of the 'indabusblog' URL name. She guessed it was my African obsession shining through and I was adopting the Ndbele pronunciation of some words. Ahhh. I wish I was that cool and creative. Bus Blog was taken. So was In Transit. Indabus is sort of homage to being in grade 9 and the Quebecois exchange student I was friends with who used to always sing, "I missed da bus" by Kriss Kross.
The Sea Train
My friend Elske always teases me because I have transit dylexia. That is I get the names of Vancouver's translink vestibules wrong. Lately, your girl-about-transit-town (aka me) has been taking the Sea bus between North Van and downtown because she's homeless. My roomie is renvoating and as a result I get to stay in lovely North Van and take yet another distinct form of 'the looser cruiser'. I call it the Sea Train. Not to be mistaken for the Sky Bus (aka the Skytrain). The Sea Train sounds like an Earth, Wind and Fire song from 1978. I much prefer it to the Sea Bus, which for some reason draws up visuals of adults in diapers and creamed broccoli. Speaking of broccoli...I've been meaning to start this blog for a while. I am the proud owner of a one zone translink pass. Besides work and sleep, I would say my time spent riding various forms of transit is the third largest time sucker in my life. I live in East Van, approximately a 20 min car ride from all things I like and must do (job, 2nd job, boy, Main Street, the beach) so I spend copius amounts of time on the bus. Some highlights I've been saving to share with you from my 7 months of yanking the transit chain include: gout in gastown, junkie-shit smudges on the back seat and the international campaign against home-made doorags. More later...
