Simon's Travels: December 2018

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we took train and bus to Vancouver BC to watch the OSU women's basketball team play in the "Vancouver Showcase" tournament, and to see the city again. I’m not sure how many years have passed, but I still had about Can$30 in bills and Can$20 or so in change, “loonies” and such, including some number of pennies. To give an idea of how long it had been, when I paid a taxi with the paper, the driver looked at the bills and asked if they were American—he had never seen any like them; when I tried to pay for coffee with pennies, I was told they no longer accepted pennies, that I could get them changed at a bank. I left them as part of the tip.

Deb got us an Airbnb on the tenth floor of a high-rise in the high rent Coal Harbor district of downtown Vancouver around the corner from a Trump tower that was impressive by day and lit at night.

Many of the structures downtown were interesting architecturally, like the twist of the Trump tower or another that expanded over the street as it rose.

Between games, we had a lot of time to explore. On our way to the Bill Reid Gallery, a pair of outrageous sneakers in a Gucci window display caught Deb’s eye, so we went in to try them out. With the bling, they were a bit over Can$2000, without, about Can$1000. The clerk, well-dressed and proper, lived up to Canadian reputation: she spent her time telling us how impractical they were, how limited their usefulness would be. Deb said she’d have to think about it.

When we arrived at the Gallery, we were told it was closed for a private party but we could return tomorrow. Deb told the clerk we would not be in town then, so the lady said we could go in and look around. More Canadian graciousness. Lovely carvings, sculpture, photographs. According to their website, the Bill Reid Gallery is Canada's only public gallery dedicated to contemporary indigenous art of the Northwest.

When we left, rain was pouring down so we popped in next door to Hy’s Steakhouse, a lovely restaurant and bar, wood paneling throughout,

drank a fine martini and when dining opened, moved to a darkwood paneled dining room, shared soup of the day and chowed down on a Beef Wellington for me and for Deb a Filet Neptune, finished with a Bananas Foster, which, unfortunately, showed up blurred on my camera, flames and all.

When the Beavers played, we went to the Convention Center to cheer them on.

The first games were thrillers, but in the championship game, Notre Dame proved too much once again.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves.

We went again to the UBC Museum of Anthropology, which has probably the finest collection of Northwest First Nation art in the world and has one of the best ethnographic collections I've ever seen. The Bill Reid bear is about four foot tall and eight foot long,

the Diam housepost is about 12 foot tall,

Cedar Man, 23 foot tall.

One of the more spectacular displays in the museum is the “Raven and the First Men” monumental sculpture, based on the Haida story of how mankind arrived on earth, carved from an 11.5-foot cube of laminated yellow cedar, started in 1978 by Bill Reid and others.

Smaller pieces are just as captivating, such as the four-inch gold box topped by an eagle

or the Great Raven mask, Walas Gwaxwiwe, made and danced during the years potlatching was illegal (1884-1951) by Canadian law.

Outside the museum, we walked by totem poles and examples of First Nation houses.

I could go on (I have many more photos) but I suggest going to the museum or, second best, visiting the museum web site: http://collection-online.moa.ubc.ca/

We ate one dinner at Kobe Steak house, a traditional Japanese tourist attraction just down Alberni from our Airbnb,

where the food is prepared on a grill at the table by a chef who starts off juggling his spatulas and tongs and moves on to creating a volcano

with a sliced onion.

We visited the Vancouver Art Gallery which featured the production of Guo Pei,

the only Chinese National designer invited to present at Paris Haute Couture Fashion Week, some 40 ensembles—

costumes, shoes, hats, jewelry—produced from 2006 to 2017,

“conceptual wares,” according to the Gallery,

designed “without concern for wearability.”

Amazing stuff.

Upstairs, the Gallery’s permanent collection had fascinating works as well. Two I especially liked were a modern button blanket

and a soap stone carving of a musk ox with a human face.

We went to Gastown and purchased croissants and lattes at Smart Mouth Coffee (Gastown is the old-town, Hippie, tourist area).

Deb bought a pair of purple Mad Max boots (she’s wearing them in the steam clock photo where we spent a few minutes).

We ate a scrumptious dinner at Coast, another upscale restaurant down the street from our Airbnb, where Deb admired a dish served at the table of big spenders behind us so our waiter compted her one: one goose berry on a seared abalone on lamb steak with squash and currant sauce. Double yum, she reported. (I think: wretched excess.)

We visited Lattimer Gallery where Deb tried to find out more about a Tlingit artist, J. Lyn, who created a lovely bracelet we stumbled on years ago in a Grants Pass junk shop. We found fine items but not much information.

Down the street, however, we found Three Centuries Antique Shop, in which we found a fine Christophe Fratin small bronze, circa 1850, of a monkey barber lathering a bear’s chin.

We took Amtrak back to Portland where we laid over for three hours, giving us time to preview an O’Gallerie auction and buy enough Voodoo donuts to keep a sugar rush going for days. The only item at the auction that jumped out at me was a full mount of a musk ox, estimated to sell at $500-700 (it went for $1000 plus 17% buyer's premium).