More of a Haunted Run, really

When I lived in Kingston, Ontario, I regretfully did not go on any of its "haunted walk" tours. I'm pretty certain that town has its fair share of gory lore, and I'm told that the ghost of John A. MacDonald still treads its street, pleading that the whole Constitution thing was really a joke.



So I made up for that missed opportunity tonight when I went on Vancouver's Haunted Tour of Gastown. With about twenty other people we got a tour of the section of town reputedly cursed by its ancient First Nations inhabitants when the land was unceremoniously taken away. This, I can confirm, meets the legal test for the imposition of a curse. (See Mummy v. Gravedigger et al.)



I found the tour interesting in part because I had never walked Gastown before, and that now I had a completely new reason to fear it. We learned about ghosts of every variety, from the headless to the feline. I particularly liked the trip down Blood Alley, despite an odour that would suggest it be renamed otherwise.



This is part of the reason I like Vancouver so much. There are countless areas of the city with a feel all their own. At any time you feel like you could be walking through New York, Toronto, Hong Kong, or, as it were, Whitechapel-area London/Silent Hill.

Westside Orcaz are notorious killers

Within half an hour of sitting down to start a paper I found myself on Granville Island getting lunch and then walking across the bridge into downtown. All in all a productive day.


As if to emulate Seattle's fish-tossing Pike Place market, they'll lob arugula over your head.


Would you like boat service with your groceries?


Some high-altitude, high-rise cactus grow-op?


Paul Auster's head explodes.


Senseless, gang-related graffiti.

Then I perambulated up 5th Ave.

Team Awesome is one step closer to achieving a definitive win in the battle royale that is the upcoming moot. I finished my half of the factum today, hopefully overruling what the "learned" trial judge held. Now I'm just practicing my oral argument: "With respect, your honour, is you crazy?!"

For the first real break I've had this week I took a brief jaunt down Vancouver's 4th Avenue. First stop was The Comic Shop to pick up volume 2 of The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist. Now, before you start sounding the nerd alert! alarm, buying this issue has more to do with my admiration of literature than comic books. The Escapist, you see, is the faux-superhero created by Michael Chabon's book The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. (Michael Chabon is ever so cleverly credited as Malachi B. Cohen in the comic's liner notes). So, it's meta-comic-fiction! And I'm not so much a comic book geek as a comic book meta-geek... Yeah, that could be worse.

Anywho, next on our tour is a stop at the much ballyhooed Zulu records. And the ballyhooers are right. Great selection, although I didn't pick up anything this time round. I'll be stopping there again next week when the new solo Joel Plaskett album comes out, as well as the new Bloc Party disc (which my brother described in his instant-messaged haste as "wicket!") Assuming no new developments (viz. leaks) in the indie-music blog world, (see: Stereogum, One Louder, and Soviet Panda) getting that new Joel album will mark the first time in several years that I bought a physical album without hearing anything off of it first. What adventure!

Next stop, there was a great magazine store a few blocks up, though its name escapes me. I spent my money on the new issue of Filter (lame magazine title but a great Beck interview), so I was unable to buy and scan in further evidence that I am Michael Stipe's twin. If anyone is around a magazine stand, check out page 72 of the latest issue of Blender. It's Michael circa 1987, but it's also me circa 2002 when I had grown out my hair for eight months. Zounds!

Tomorrow, I plan to check out Stanley Park and visit Rufus' Guitar Shop on Alma Street. I'm curious to see whether guitar store employees are as snobbish and show-offish in Vancouver as they are in Calgary (and what I suspect, as they are everywhere). Try it out yourself, pick any guitar off the shelf and start playing it. No doubt an employee will approach you, worried that it is out of tune. In "tuning" it, he will "treat" you to some unrequested Zeppelin solo or Stones lick. Not that it'll be any good - it'll sound polly wolly crappy.