Back from Vancouver

I spent pretty close to three full days at the Transportation Association of Canada (TAC) conference, though in fact I got there midway through Monday.  I met a lot of people; while many of them I had known or worked with previously, I did make a few useful new contacts.  I had stayed through Thurs., hoping to spend more time with TransLink staff, but really so few people are coming to the office these days that it is just as easy to do this through MS Teams.  I was able to sit in on a meeting of the TransLink modellers on Tues.  So Thurs., I worked out of my firm's Vancouver office, though I did have a meeting with a subconsultant who is based in Vancouver.  All in all, I probably could have arranged to go back Thurs. morning.

Downtown Vancouver hasn't changed too much from how I remember it.  From what I gather, the Downtown East Side is quite a bit worse.  I didn't head over that way.  On Wed. evening, I did skirt Chinatown a bit, as I was meeting up with a friend for dinner at an Indian place on Main.  It's not a part of town I was ever in a lot, though I did visit the Sun Yat-Sen Garden a couple of times while I lived in Vancouver.  We had a long discussion about how things had changed at TransLink, though we actually covered some of this ground on my last trip to Vancouver in April.  We mostly talked about books.  I handed over Cela's The Hive and O'Brien's August is a Wicked Month.  I also passed along The Gold Bug Variations by Richard Powers, which I had abandoned as I was nearing the halfway mark.  I just found this so pretentious, even if it was sort of low-key pretentious.  I think the passage that did me in is when one of the older biochemists is explaining the history of classical music to another one, as if the long passages about unraveling the structure of DNA and the mysteries of Guanine (G) and Thymine (T) weren't enough.  Also, I wasn't convinced that the minor plot variations needed to hit 32 (to ape Goldberg) or that this novel really needed to stretch out to this length; 250-300 pages would have been fine.  While Stoppard's Arcadia came along a couple of years later, it just does this two love stories in two different time periods so much better.  I glanced through some Goodreads comments.  While most people who stuck it out thought this was a masterpiece, there was some dissent, including someone who said that Powers decided to squeeze in some absurd thriller-like plot at the very end.  I was almost intrigued enough to read ahead but decided I would be better off moving on.  So far I'm really enjoying The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams, and incidentally I am also near the halfway mark. 

I could have wrapped this novel on the red-eye flight back from Vancouver but decided I needed sleep better, so I only read up until the point where they handed out the snacks and drinks, and then I crashed.   (I think the fact that I only managed to get through 100 pages on the Stratford bus and then another 150 pages after 8 or so hours while in transit to Vancouver made it pretty clear that I was just not into The Gold Bug Variations!)  Friday, I pushed through a full day of work, though I was pretty tired (and am still feeling it a bit).  I should wrap up The Quick and the Dead this weekend and likely Waugh's The Loved One as well. 

I don't have a lot planned for this weekend, though I am about to head over to the gym.  I might spend some time working on the deck, and I will also try to swim on Sunday as well as get over to Word on the Street (which should be at Queens Park) and then I have tickets to a Tafelmusik matinee.

Two Trips (and Taxes)

I have been particularly bad about updating the blog, but I had my reasons.  Two weeks ago, I was gone almost the entire week for a business trip.  In fact, I had to leave Sunday evening because the main reason for going was to drop in on the TransLink model users' group, which was Monday morning out in Vancouver!  I also really wanted to see Shakespeare Bash'd do their staged reading of Knight of the Burning Pestle.  So I pushed to get one of the latest flights that I could, which I think was 10 pm.  If the reading had been just a bit shorter or the Dundas streetcar ran a bit more on time, I might actually have run into MOCA, though I'm sure I'll have other opportunities before the new group show closes.  

As it turned out, I had a lot of time to kill at Pearson, so I worked a bit on a bid for the new transit vision for Surrey and eventually read a bit.  It was a game-time decision, but I took Nicholas Nickelby instead of Oliver Twist, in part because Oliver is somewhat shorter, and I thought it might be more likely I could just read that as part of my regular reading (and didn't need the boost of a long train or plane ride).  It might be just as well I did bring that for reasons I'll get into a bit later.*  However, I really read very light on any of the plane rides, except for Tues. afternoon when I went off to SFO.  All the other times, I did my best to sleep on the plane.  I wouldn't say it was a wasted opportunity, but I just hadn't expected it to play out that way.

I got to Vancouver just after midnight, but it took forever to get off the plane and then get my luggage from the belt.  I decided not to risk running over to the Canada Line, since the last train was around 1 am.  I took a 5 minute cab ride to the hotel and crashed.  I think in the end, I left around 6:45 to try to get out to Sapperton (in New Westminster) by 8:30.  I actually had to take everything with me, since I was going to transfer to a downtown hotel after work.

The meeting went well, and I saw a lot of consultants I used to work with, though nearly all the modelling team joined since I left TransLink.  I actually managed to eat lunch with them.  Then I had a meeting at 3.  It took a very long time to get the wifi working, since in fact it was a largely virtual meeting.  Then I hung around for another hour or so, and met a former work colleague, since we were going to have dinner together downtown.  (I may have already mentioned that the weather was pretty overcast and in fact rained on and off all day.  Given that the eclipse wasn't going to be that special in Vancouver, no one bothered to go out to see it.  I was really sad to hear that the weather didn't cooperate much in Toronto either, and in fact the sky cleared up after the eclipse was over, though at least it got really dark and eerie.  Just in general, Toronto weather never cooperates for anything like this, though the partial eclipse in 2017 was an exception...)

Tues. I went over to the company offices, and I had a few phone calls to deal with.  I gave a lunch and learn on post-COVID forecasting.  Four people from TransLink showed up in person, and quite a number were on-line.  Then 3 of them were able to grab coffee afterwards, and we chatted about scenario forecasting and their new survey.  The weather was much nicer, and I took the Sea Bus over to North Vancouver and had dinner there.

Wed. I had a morning meeting quite close to the office, and then a 11:15 meeting at Metrotown in Burnaby.  I was a little early, so I just went a bit further on the Sky Train and took photos and videos of the view.  I do miss the views from Vancouver, which are among the best I've ever experienced.  

The second meeting also went well, then I had lunch in Metrotown.  While a lot of restaurants had changed, there was still a fast-food Indian place.  It was good, though certainly much spicier than I remembered!

I had the rest of the afternoon free, so I went to the Vancouver Art Gallery.  Most of it wasn't all that interesting, though the had recently rehung a bunch of Emily Carr paintings.

I still had some time, so I went into the Bill Reid Gallery for the first time.  It's pretty small but focused on his art, as well as rotating through other First Nations artists.

Then I went over to catch the Amtrak down to Seattle.  It wasn't a bad trip, though it definitely shouldn't take as long as it does.  I managed to finish up a shortish novel (Paradise Travel by Jorge Franco).  In general, I was reading a lot more of The Decameron and very little Dickens, but I did want to see if I could just leave this somewhere in Seattle, which I did in the end.

Seattle was a bit more frantic.  I ended up meeting two mobility data reps and someone in our Seattle office.  Then I met up with my brother for an extended lunch at Spice King (an Indian place).  Then I went over to the Seattle Art Museum.  I was moderately excited that I had a second chance to see Jaune Quick-to-See Smith after seeing this massive retrospective at the Whitney last year.  It's possible that some pieces were left out, but this felt a bit easier to get through in one pass.

I think the exhibit only runs through mid May, so definitely check it out if you are near Seattle.  They also had a pretty nice Calder exhibit running as well.  I was a bit surprised that they didn't have any Mark Tobey on display.  I think this is the first time since I've started visiting that they didn't have anything of his on view.

After the museum, I went over to the Target, which is basically next door.  Had I realized that everything over at Pike's Place Market shut down at 5 sharp, I would probably have rearranged my visit slightly.  I was a bit bummed that I didn't get a chance to look at any of the used book stores in the market (not that I had much space left in my bag!) and essentially all the restaurants closed up as well.  In the end, I found another Indian place, which was fine, but I would have preferred Thai or Chinese, since I had had Indian twice before in as many days!  After dinner, I grabbed my bag from the hotel and headed over to the airport.  The flight from Seattle to Detroit was uneventful, but in Detroit there was some issue with the plane and we got in an hour late.  At least customs was a breeze.  In an ideal world, I would have just taken the day off, but I had some work to do and to conduct a hiring interview.  Then I was seeing a concert at Roy Thompson Hall (a combination of The Four Seasons and The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires).  It was nice, but I was pretty tired and glad to get home and rest a bit.

In general the weekend was quite busy.  Sat. I saw a matinee performance of George Brown's production of As You Like It, then worked on taxes some more, then saw Shaniqua in Abstraction at Crow's Theatre.  (I wasn't that crazy about Shaniqua unfortunately.)  Then I did more taxes after I got home.  Sunday I met a friend to see El Terremoto at Tarragon, then wrapped up the evening with Lucas Hnath's A Public Reading of an Unproduced Screenplay About the Death of Walt Disney.  I really hadn't planned on seeing this, but I had to move the date from the middle of the next week to that weekend.  It was definitely interesting, and they made Walt to be a right bastard.  One super annoying thing on Sunday was that it appears my printer has died, which then made filing taxes extra complicated.  I had to file the US taxes after work on Monday, instead of around lunch time which had been my original plan.  This is by far the latest I have filed them, but I just wasn't able to wrap them up between all the travel and waiting around on some critical documents from my bank.  Oh well.  Hopefully, next year will be better.  For the Canadian taxes, my wife's are ready to go, and I am planning on wrapping my up this evening.

Monday was a relatively normal day, but Tuesday, I flew off midday to San Francisco.  Again, I got there far too early, and I mostly used the spare time to read.  I had actually managed to get halfway through The Decameron by this point.  Sadly, the flight was fairly delayed, and I had a small child behind me kicking my seat on a regular basis and an infant up in front that was crying a lot.  And we had turbulence for about 3 hours out of a 5.5 hour flight, so people were pretty cranky about not being able to get to the washrooms.  I was supposed to get there before a group of people flying in from Vancouver, but in the end I help them up for close to an hour, which was stressful all the way around.

We actually ran into SF for dinner, which was probably wise as there was nothing to eat in San Ramon that late in the evening.  Then we had two days of work, which aren't particularly interesting, aside from a very interesting opportunity that may manifest in LA.  (More on that at a more appropriate time.)  I was able to run by SF MOMA on Thurs.  Someone in San Ramon office was able to just drop me off at the hotel on his way home.  I was able to see almost the entire museum.  However, I couldn't get tickets to Yayoi Kusama's Infinite Love for Thurs.  I decided to shuffle Friday's agenda and go to SF MOMA first (instead of the Legion of Honor).  SF MOMA doesn't open until 10 am, however.  I ended up getting a Muni 1-day pass and took the cable car back and forth a bit, then went over to SFMOMA.  I managed to get a timed ticket for Infinite Love at 11.  I looked at a few rooms that I had hit too quickly on Thurs.  Infinite Love is pretty neat, especially the second room.  I've seen some of her infinity rooms before of course, but it was still worth it, especially the second room even though you don't get more than 2 minutes in each room!

If I had been just a bit quicker on the draw, I would have gotten a great photo from outside the Infinity Room before the door shut.  C'est dommage.  

Then I took the bus way out west to the Legion of Honor.  In addition to some pretty interesting paintings in the permanent collection, they have a special exhibit called Japanese Prints in Transition.

Gustave Caillebotte, Sunflowers along the Seine, ca. 1885-86

 

Masami Teraoka, 31 Flavors Invading Japan/French Vanilla, 1979

I was a bit ahead of schedule, in part because I managed to catch the 18 bus down the hill.  So I went down to Fulton and then into the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park.  I didn't pay for the special exhibit this time.  Unfortunately, my phone battery completely died, so I didn't manage to take any photos.  I probably would have taken 10-15.  Oh well.  The ones that I cared the most about are in the books about the de Young that I own, but it is probably just as well that their Stuart Davis was not on view at the moment, as that would have been terribly aggravating (to not take a photo of it).

Because the phone died, I had to retrieve my charger from my luggage (in order to prove I was a member of the AGO with reciprocal privileges) instead of going straight on to the Asian Art Museum.  Well, I also hadn't had any lunch, so I grabbed a sandwich at a French bistro.  This meant that in the end, I got to the Asian Art Museum at 4:15 instead of 3:45 or so.  So I did see the Asian Art Museum, but it was a pretty rushed visit.  Fortunately, I have been there a couple of times before and a lot of it seemed pretty similar to previous visits.  I did snap a photo of Ganesh, as is my habit.

After all this, I didn't feel like walking around with my luggage, so I just caught the BART to SFO.  It was a good if somewhat overstuffed day trip.  Again, I had too much time at the airport, though security wasn't as much of a breeze this time around.  The trip back only takes about 4.5 hours, but I was in the same row as an infant.  The baby was fine for the first two hours, but then was fussy and crying most of the last 2+ hours, and then as we descended another young child across the aisle started crying.  So not an ideal flight, but still better than the flight to San Francisco.

I got through Customs and came straight home.  I actually had to go back way out west to the Theatre Centre to see Mad Madge, which is all about Margaret Cavendish, who was a female author during the English Restoration.  They did take quite a few liberties with her life, but it was quite entertaining.  I also managed to see the cherry blossoms at Robarts, which I generally prefer to making the trek out to High Park.

Then the day ended with a concert by Oumou Sangare.  This was quite a nice concert, very upbeat.  She managed to get the whole audience to their feet by the end, which is no small feat at Koerner Hall! 

I had planned to go over to Hamilton to see Lobby Hero, but I was just worn out with all the travel.**  I ended up going to the gym (late) and getting groceries instead.  No Frills officially closed on Sat. (due to the Ontario Line construction), which is incredibly sad and inconvenient for us.  So I will have to work extra hard to combine trips over the bridge with shopping at Food Basics.  The rest of the day was spent cleaning up computer files and working on taxes (and blogging...).

Edit (04/28): I completely dropped the thread on The Decameron.  I did wrap it up at the end of second trip, though I cannot remember if I literally finished it on the UP Express trip back from Pearson or later that day.  This is actually my second time through it!  I had forgotten just how bawdy some of the stories are, including a story that starts out as a wife-swapping escapade that ends in a happy, open marriage!  There is even a story (or two) about homosexual acts that doesn't end in eternal damnation.  I do think it is somewhat unfortunate that the final story is Patient Griselda, which is also retold in Chaucer's The Clerk's Tale and then recast again in Shakespeare's The Winter Tale.  It's basically about a young woman, elevated from peasant status to become a lord's wife.  The lord then tests her patience (& virtues) by taking away her children and saying they had been murdered, but she continues to submit to his whims and then everything works out in the end.  Margaret Atwood was so bothered by this story that she wrote Impatient Griselda, where the perverse lord is murdered (by aliens perhaps) and then people live happily ever after.  Anyway, it is not a particularly uplifting story...  But I am through it (again).  On to Shteyngart!

* I see that I dropped this thread.  Basically, I agreed to gatecheck my bag on the way back, and it rained and I guess they left the bag on the tarmac or something, and Nicholas Nickleby got a bit water-damaged.  I'll still be able to read it, but it's going straight to the Little Free Library as soon as I finish it.  (Probably better that than Oliver Twist, though the odds I will ever read Oliver Twist twice are next to nil!)  Maybe the next time I read a big chunk of NN will be on the trip out to Hamilton.

** It actually runs two more weeks, and I may go the last weekend, especially if I can spend most of the day at the Hamilton Library looking into some poetry books that are in their collection and not in TPL or Robarts!  So that's my tentative plan at the moment, but it may get derailed.

Community Theatre (from before the Crisis)

It definitely seems like a different world now, but I thought I would get a few thoughts down on community theatre as a reminder of what is on pause right now.

I guess it can be a fairly thin line between community theatre and the black box theatre that I generally favour.  I suppose the main difference is that, for the most part, the actors in community theatre accept that they are are not on a professional track and they are a bit older than the artistic troupes at black box theatres.  Perhaps this is not universally true...  What does seem to be true is that they lean a bit more heavily on broad comedies, so Norm Foster is commonly programmed, for example, whereas in the past it might have been Neil Simon.

I don't think I saw much of what would be considered community theatre in Chicago, but there were actually two groups in Vancouver that shared the Jericho Arts Centre out at Jericho Beach (I will say it was a lot easier getting out there after I signed up for Car2Go!).  One was the United Players of Vancouver and the second was Ensemble Theatre Company.  I thought I had seen another show by the United Players, but the only one that I am sure I saw was Alan Bennett's The Habit of Art in 2013.

I'd say Ensemble Theatre was a little more ambitious, usually taking on a Jacobean play each season.  I saw them doing Middleton’s Women Beware Women in 2013. I can't quite remember why I passed on seeing The Alchemist in 2012, but it probably was related to the theatre being pretty far from my house and I don't think I had Car2Go at that point. As I indicated, they do seem to be a bit more ambitious, and they are relocating to a theatre on Granville Island, so maybe they shouldn't be counted as community theatre any longer.

I don't really put Alumnae Theatre in the same category as community theatre, though it probably is one notch below professional theatre.  It's conceptually much closer to black box theatre (in a quite nice theatre space), though Toronto Irish Players (which rents out space from Alumnae) fits reasonably well into the community theatre grouping.  I've never actually seen anything by Theatre Etobicoke, and they seem to only put on one show a year.  The Scarborough Players are a lot more active, but I haven't gotten out that way to see anything by them either.

I've seen a handful of performances by the Village Players out in Bloor West.  I had a couple of bad experiences out there (Ken Ludwig's Fox on the Fairway was particularly terrible) and had largely written them off.  But then this season they were doing Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, and I thought this would be a good one to take my son to, and the acting was solid, as was the overall production.  So I decided to be a bit more open-minded towards them.  I then saw Lindsay-Abaire's Good People (just before the hammer came down on live performances) and the acting was very good.  They definitely have a tendency to pick weak but crowd-pleasing comedies, but I'll definitely give them a shot in the future on a case-by-case basis.

I've probably seen the most plays over at East Side Players, which probably not coincidentally is the one closest to me (performing in the Todmorden Mills Heritage Site in the Don River Valley).  They do put on high quality performances, but I do find myself frustrated with their decisions.  There was nothing I wanted to see in the 2017/2018 or 2019/2020 seasons (though I might have gone to see Disgraced if Mirvish hadn't put it on just a year or so before).  However, the 2018/2019 season was solid (and would have been amazing if they hadn't swapped in Shelagh Stephenson's The Memory of Water for MacDonald's Good Night, Desdemona; Good Morning, Juliette).  I really disliked The Memory of Water and left at intermission, which I think is the first time I've bailed on them.  Note that I'm not the only one that strongly dislikes this play (see the very critical review in Variety).

I have enjoyed these plays the most at East Side Players: Speaking in Tongues by Andrew Bovell, Wonder of the World by David Lindsay-Abaire, Office Hours by Norm Foster and Time Stands Still by Donald Margulies.

One thing that is particularly nice about East Side Players is that the building they are in almost always have art on the walls for sale.  One time there was a small photography exhibit (linked to the Scotiabank's Image Festival).  This was probably my favourite of the bunch.

Calvin Lee, Rain

While most of his recent work features photos of dancers hard at work, Calvin Lee also has a portfolio of textures, from which this photo is drawn.

So that's a bit of an exhaustive run-down of the community theatre I've seen in the recent past.  Here's hoping it isn't too much longer before they can get back on the boards!

What Was I Up to in 2013?

I'm making decent progress on cleaning out the basement (I guess I only hinted that I have contractors coming soon to work on the basement) and going through 20 or so boxes in deep storage. At any rate, that's what I have been doing these past few days.

I've come across loads of old photos, some of which I'll eventually scan and post.  I also stumbled across a calendar from 2013.  This was my second full year in Vancouver.  I believe by the summer I had already decided to relocate to Toronto, since we didn't fully enjoy living in Vancouver for a variety of reasons and we felt we were too far from our families.  (Ironically, my brother recently relocated to Seattle...)  My email archive indicates that I really started ramping up the job search to find a company with offices in Vancouver and Toronto (to facilitate the move) by the late fall.

The calendar doesn't really go into that, but it does list some of the main cultural events I was up to in 2013.  I might as well list them here before I recycle the calendar.

In mid Jan., I was in DC for the Annual TRB conference.  This is probably the second-last time I made it to TRB, and unfortunately I don't think I'll be going back to TRB until I change jobs again...

Jan 19, I was at the VSO to see Prokofiev's Symphony 5 and Grieg's Piano Concerto.  I probably have already mentioned this, but I much preferred the overall concert-going experience in Vancouver, relative to Toronto, as the Orpheum Theatre is so much nicer than Roy Thompson Hall.  The two symphonies are surprisingly similar in terms of quality and adventurousness, rather than the TSO being light years ahead of the VSO.

Feb. 7 I saw Ninja Pirates Theatre Company (or whatever they called themselves) doing a SF play (about a cat cloning itself) called Kitty Kitty Kitty.

Feb. 17, I was back at the Orpheum to see the VSO in a very full program - Delius’s Brigg Fair, An English Rhapsody, Elgar's Enigma Variations and Britten’s Violin Concerto.

The calendar indicates I was thinking about checking out Swan Lake, but for one reason or another I didn't actually go.  Conversely, I did see Bach's Goldberg Variations out at the Chan Centre, but this didn't make it onto the calendar.

On March 23, I had to take an English comprehension test as a condition for getting my permanent residency status.  While this was quite annoying (given that I actually have a Master's in English literature, from the University of Toronto no less!), there really was no way around it, so I went off and took the test.  At the end of March, I took my son and daughter to visit their grandfather in Greensboro, NC.  The whole business of having to transfer for practically every flight heading east of the Mississippi (except for Toronto of course) was definitely one thing that pushed us out of Vancouver.

April was very busy on the cultural front.  I saw the Borodin Quartet and the Smetana Trio.  Then there was a program of slightly avante classical music on April 20 (Edward Top, Colgrass, Magnanensi, Gubaidulina and Andriessen).

I saw Chekhov's Three Sisters at The Cultch on April 16, and on April 27, I went out to UBC to see Heiner Muller's Hamletmachine (the performance was ok, though nothing as interesting as the version I saw in Ann Arbor as an undergrad).

On May 5, I saw the Pacific Rim String Quartet doing Schubert's String Quintet, and I took my son to the concert.  I saw the VSO twice in May (May 11 - Brahms Double Concerto and May 23 - Prokofiev's Sonata for 2 Violins and Shostakovich's 15th Symphony).

I actually flew down to San Francisco to see Tom Stoppard's Arcadia the first weekend of June.  The calendar doesn't actually have a lot on it for June or July.  I see that my mother-in-law visited briefly, and at the end of her trip, my wife and the kids went back for a long visit to Chicago while I stayed in Vancouver and worked.  At the tail end of July, I saw Middleton's Women Beware Women, and I checked out the Vancouver Art Gallery to see an exhibit called Persuasive Visions: 17th Century Dutch and Flemish Masterworks.

I'm really struggling to reconstruct mid-August.  It appears I flew into Toronto on the 7th (to start making plans to relocate to Toronto at some point in the near future), and I was at the Stratford Festival on the 9-10th (for essentially a triple bill -- Othello, Waiting for Godot and then Romeo and Juliet!).  But then on the 11th, I travelled to Chicago (presumably on Porter) and rejoined my family.  Then on the 13th, I took my wife to see The Book of Mormon, which was awesome.  And then on the 15th, I returned to Vancouver.  Presumably I brought the whole family along.  I have to say, I am completely exhausted just reading over this, and it is only slowly coming back to me.  I may have repressed some of those memories.  (In fact, I went to Seattle for a day in early August, but I can't get a clear understanding of why, since there doesn't appear to have been a major exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum opening or about to close...)

On August 25th, I saw Hamlet at Bard on the Beach.  I don't actually see anything on the calendar for Sept., which is a bit suspect...  In mid October, I took the kids to a family-oriented classical concert at the VSO (Carnival of the Animals and far too many other short pieces), and I saw the Kronos Quartet on Oct. 19 (which I blogged about at the time).  On Oct. 20, I saw the Vancouver Arts Club doing Baitz's Other Desert Cities.

In Nov., I saw the VSO on the 2nd (Mendelssohn's Symphony 3, Scottish) and then the 16th and 18th, for the first two parts of Yefim Bronfman's Beethoven Piano Concerto cycle (with the final concert on Dec. 7).  I saw Alan Ayckbourn's Relatively Speaking, and then towards the end of the month, I saw Pi Theatre doing a new piece called Except in the Unlikely Event of War (a dark comedy).  I went down to Seattle one more time.  I can't recall if I went back to the VSO to see Strauss's Don Quixote (soloist Raphael Wallfisch), since it is on the calendar but with a couple of question marks, but I suspect I went in the end.

Dec. 1 I saw the Takács Quartet presented by the Friends of Chamber Music.  And that wraps up 2013.  It was a fairly quiet December, all things considered, but the year was pretty full overall; 2014 was definitely more chaotic, as I got more and more serious about relocating.  I actually received an offer letter in early January, then had to pack up the house through the late spring and early summer (and we actually moved in early July).

Sitting through Shostakovich

The title probably makes it seem like sitting through Shostakovich is a burden, which is certainly not the case for me.  (I just liked the alliteration.)  However, there were quite a few people who left at the end of the 3rd and 4th movements of Shostakovitch's 13th Symphony last night.  Well, their loss for sure.  It wasn't an easy symphony -- it's essentially an hour-long setting of Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poem "Babi Yar."  So if you don't like sitting through long stretches of unintelligible lyrics, this is probably not for you.  I kid, I kid.  But it can be hard to separate the fact that the lyrics make sense for the Russians in the audience (generally quite a few when they play Shostakovich) and for the rest of us it is mostly ornamentation, and we pay far more attention to the music (though they did provide a full translation of the poem in the program).  I know that Shostakovich has written other symphonies that incorporated some choral sections, but I cannot recall if any others incorporated it so thoroughly.

In any case, I can understand why the 13th isn't programmed that often.  I may have seen it before, but I can't find any definitive evidence.  I will probably remember this one from last night as the definitive performance (performed on Friday the 13th no less!), as the soloist, bass Petr Migunov, was quite magnetic, even occasionally interacting with the chorus up in the balcony.  There were all the quirky characteristic Shostakovich touches, including jazzy syncopation in the lower woodwinds and brass and a section (I believe it was the 3rd) that sounds a bit like a peasant melody a la Dvorak.  Even though I couldn't follow the lyrics, I definitely like the message of the 5th and final movement, which praises Galileo and dismisses the mere "careerists" who attacked and slandered him back in the day.  A very fitting message.  The symphony does end quietly, which is certainly a shift from several of the more bombastic sections.  Interestingly, the Mozart Violin Concerto #5, played before the intermission, has quite a few parallels, including some playful interplay between the solo violin and orchestra and a fairly surprising ending: all of a sudden it stops.  I thought it was a very good concert.

So I decided to go over the scanned programs to see whether I had seen #13 before or not.  As I said, I can't prove whether I had attended this symphony before.  It was interesting, as I was flipping through the programs, in that only occasionally could I recall much about the actual music, like the long drum part in Shostakovich's 7th Symphony.  I am far more likely to remember something about the events framing the concert, like Leonard Slatkin stepping in to conduct Shostakovich's Symphony 5 when Muti collapsed on the podium and had that health scare a few years back.  When I do remember the music itself, it is almost only for very familiar pieces like Dvorak's Symphony 8 or 9 or the Beethoven symphonies, and I am kind of recreating the memory of the piece out of all the times I have heard the music (mostly likely including from recordings).  I simply don't have enough musical memory to distinguish between different performances of the same piece of music, with a few very limited exceptions.  That doesn't mean I don't plan on attending classical concerts in the future.  I do enjoy them, but it is much more of a transitory thing.  In contrast, after spending a few minutes with the program of a play I attended, huge amounts of the play will come flooding back.  I just can keep far more of a play in my head because I can grab onto various plot points, whereas music is pleasant but not central to my mental processes.  I think that is the best way to describe it.

Anyway, I might as well keep track of how many of Shostakovich symphonies I have seen.  I'm coming fairly close to seeing a whole cycle.  Now I think I already mentioned that I saw the Pacifica Quartet do the entire cycle of Shostakovich string quartets -- all 15 spread over 5 concerts.  It was truly remarkable.  I suppose it was around 2005 or 2006 that I caught the Shostakovich bug and made an effort to seek out his work when it was being played.  There are a few other pieces that I hone in on (Elgar's Enigma Variations, Prokofiev's 5th Symphony and Dvorak's 9th Symphony), but the only other 20th Century composer I always seek out is Messiaen; I've seen his Vingt regards sur l'Enfant Jesus, L'Ascension twice (once conducted by Boulez!) and Quatuor pur la fin du temps (Quartet for the End of Time) at least three times.

Getting back to Shostakovich, I've also seen Shostakovich's Violin Concerto #1, Cello Concerto #1 and #2, his Piano Quintet a couple of times, Suite for Variety Orchestra (very jazzy!), and his Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk suite (the music that started all his troubles with Stalin!).

While I am probably missing one or two, these are the symphonies I can prove I attended:
#1 (VSO - Jan 2012)
#4 (CSO - May 2008)
#5 (CSO - Oct 2008 and Feb 2011)
#6 (CSO - May 2010)
#7 (CSO - Nov 2007)
#8 (CSO - Oct 2010, London Philharmonic Oct 2014 and TSO April 2016)
#9 (VSO - Feb 2014)
#10 (Grant Park Orch. July 1999 and Aug. 2011, Chicago Civic - Nov 2007, OSM (Montréal) - Nov 2015)
#11 (Chicago Civic - April 2008 and CSO - March 2010)
#13 (TSO - May 2016)
#15 (CSO - May 2009 and the reduced version by VSO Chamber Players - May 2013)

I wouldn't be surprised if I managed to see #12 or #14 and just don't have the programs, but anyway those are certainly the highest priority in terms of completing the cycle.  It is interesting how the CSO and VSO are far more likely to play Shostakovich than the TSO, although I did pass up a late night concert a while back where the TSO was playing Symphony #5.  (I just didn't want to be out that late frankly.)  I see that the VSO is ending its season with Symphony #5 and in March 2017, they will be tackling Symphony #12.  I'd like to get out there for that, but it is fairly unlikely at this point.  I no longer am doing any consulting for TransLink.  It seems I have missed out on #5 several times, including on the spring break trip to Boston, but I'm sure I'll catch it again eventually.*  For a composer a bit on the obscure side, I actually have managed to see an awful lot of his work.

* Actually, I was going through my subscription for the TSO for next season, and while they still have a fair ways to go to catch up to the OSM, it is a slightly more adventurous season than before.  In addition, to a few favorites like Dvorak's Cello Concerto and his 9th Symphony, I'll catch Shostakovich's Symphonies 1 and 5.  (Now if I could only come up with a good excuse to go to Montreal to see Shostakovich's Symphony 15 and/or Messaien's Turangalîla-Symphonie (which they are only playing on Tuesday and Wednesday evening.  How crazy is that!).)

Douglas Coupland exhibit in Vancouver

This is another very tardy review.  The Douglas Coupland exhibit only runs for two more weekends (three if you count this weekend).  I do apologize about that, but my life has been hectic as should be clear from just a short inspection of the posts from 2014...

While I will mostly be focusing on the Coupland exhibit, there are some other quality exhibits on other floors and in most cases they are up for another couple of weeks past the closing of the Coupland.

I should say right up front I thought I was not going to care for the exhibit.  I generally find Coupland's books a bit empty (which is largely the point) and it is surprising how much he glamourizes the glass skyscrapers that make up most of downtown Vancouver.  He really does embrace the spirit of the age (this must be the only exhibit I've ever seen advertised in elevators -- see below), whereas I would say I have a far more complicated relationship with today's society, finding that many things I valued have not survived the Internet all that well.  I suppose this is an old (and trite) lament: we see it in Stefan Zweig (in the World of Yesterday) and even more acidly in the Frankfurt school, particularly Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Should I really be aligning myself with unabashed elitists?  At the same time, I am sure I will never throw my lot in with the optimists who see things as always getting better.

At any rate, I liked the exhibit a lot more than I thought I would.  Coupland has a quite good grasp of pop art (while it isn't my favourite period -- I prefer the abstract expressionists that came immediately before then -- I still think they are generally worthy of study).

For an in-depth overview, you can go to this site.  One thing that was a bit different is that Coupland made it explicit that anyone that wanted to could take photos of his art and post them on-line, particularly to Flickr.  I have not spent a lot of time looking on-line for other people's photos, but I do have a few of my own.

Right off the bat, you start in a section that celebrates Canada, but Canada of the 1970s or so, with some of the objects even older from the 60s or 50s.  This is an intriguing era when Canada was sort of struggling with whether its ties with England were strong enough to counter-balance the trickle (turning into a flood) of US consumer goods (and later and more insidiously US media).  I think most objective observers would agree that the battle was lost by the late 1970s.

I felt the first part of the section had a shared sensibility with Rodney Graham, who has become a bit of an art world darling.  I will probably write a separate post about Graham later.  As it turned out, I had to skip out on a couple of exhibits of his work in Vancouver, right before I left.  But I did see a small, focused exhibit at VAG a couple of years ago.  This was probably my favourite piece from that exhibit.

Rodney Graham, Canadian Humourist, 2011

But back to Coupland: the first part of the exhibit displayed some interior shots that had this same kind of colour scheme.  But there was also an ice machine that held a dark secret.  The liquid pooling at the bottom was clearly blood.  Perhaps Fargo by way of Vancouver.

The next rooms were totally different.  There was a sculpture of a electric power line tower that had collapsed.  My son said it looked a bit like a fallen bull.  But on the walls were simplified versions of some Group of Seven painters.  I guess one could choose to take this as a slight or a sincere homage.  I suspect it was somewhere in between, but I actually thought they worked pretty well, and it indicated to me that Coupland really had engaged with the art at some level.  Here are a couple that appear primarily inspired by Lawren Harris.

 

Then there was a large section devoted to Lego buildings.  While we missed out on the all-night Lego building event, there were still bins of Lego for children to build with.  Here is the building my son worked on in an early phase.

After this, there was an entire room filled with aphorisms related to the Internet and the modern world.  Nothing quite as punchy as one might find in Nietzsche, but still a few zingers here and there.  Here are a few that I thought were worth repeating.

 

Then there was a room that showed Coupland grappling with the Pop artists of the 60s.  I liked this piece, which seemed a bit of a fusion of James Rosenquist and Roy Lichtenstein.

I also thought that the mounted wigs, supposedly worn by Andy Warhol, were a nice touch.

The next section was a bit creepy where Coupland was sort of reflecting on 9/11 and the World Trade Center.  There were a couple of paintings that only came into focus when viewed through a cell phone.  Some of these showed the people falling from the towers, and a few showed Osama Bin Laden.  I preferred the ones that were slightly less weighted down with symbolism -- there was a series of just the World Trade Center facade -- which was Coupland riffing on Lichtenstein riffing on Monet. (My son photo-bombed this one.)

After this, there were two room-sized installations -- The World (dominated by petrochemical processing places) and The Brain (which had sort of a left brain-right brain, white-colour scheme going on).  Both were pretty overwhelming.

Douglas Coupland, The World, 2014

 

Douglas Coupland, The Brain, 2014

Douglas Coupland, The Brain, 2014

Douglas Coupland, The Brain, 2014

So certainly a lot to absorb.  But that is not all!

If one goes up a floor, there is considerably more on view. There is a bit of a traveling exhibit: "Lost in the Memory Palace: Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller."  This was one view earlier in the spring at the AGO, and I was thrilled to see that the key pieces made it to VAG, and even a couple of pieces that I had not seen in Toronto.  This will be on view through Sept. 21 and is definitely worth a look.*

A very creepy piece is The Killing Machine, which combines electronic music (perhaps inspired by Berg's Wozzeck), Kafka's In the Penal Colony and a trip to the dentist.  (Not sure how long it will stay up here, but Youtube has a video of this piece.)  My very favourite piece in the Memory Palace is Storm Room, which does have to be seen in person, but it is basically a spartan room with a storm outside.  The ceiling occasionally drips real water into a bucket.  One advantage is that I was actually able to make it inside the The Dark Pool installation, whereas the lines were too long in Toronto.  So definitely a very cool set of exhibits on this floor.  I've written too much already, but here is a good blog covering the Memory Palace as installed in Toronto.

The next floor has a lot of pieces from the VAG's permanent collection.  Presumably, if they move to bigger digs closer to the Main library, more of their permanent collection will be on display.  I jokingly said that once this opened, it restored the natural order of things, as there was about a month where there was no Emily Carr on display.  I don't recall too much about this, other than they had a decent Jeff Wall piece, and I liked the urban themed room.  Unfortunately, they didn't allow photography up here, so no pictures.  Perhaps some day VAG will put together a proper catalog of their permanent collection.  This floor will be on display through mid October, and is worth a look if you are coming for the Coupland and/or the Cardiff-Miller exhibits.

Finally, on the top floor (where they traditionally display Emily Carr), they have some new acquisitions.  While it isn't going to be too everyone's taste, I liked Angela Grossman's Wish You Were Here.

Image Credits: OutofSight-08 Angela Grossmann Wish You Were Here, 1985 oil, tar, collage elements on plywood Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of Pamela S. Boles Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery

I found it vaguely reminiscent of Max Beckmann, maybe in the overall composition and the use of heavy black outlines.  One interesting fact is that it appears to be painted on a kind of textured wallpaper, which can only be made out up close.  Actually, Grossman had another piece I liked in the permanent collection a floor down.  Interestingly, I don't care for her current work, but perhaps she will return to her mid 80s style at some point.

So a lot to see and take in.  I think at this point, I need to stop.  My next posting will probably be one of the much delayed reviews for the Canadian book challenge.  Until then...

* After a considerable delay, the catalog finally turned up. (I can't imagine VAG was pleased about them not being available to sell during the exhibition.) It's actually quite thorough and nicely done, though I was surprised that they don't have a good picture of the blood from the ice machine, but fortunately, I have that posted just above.

Toronto v. Vancouver

I am really struggling to find any time to update my blog.  As much as I would like to, setting up the house and unpacking boxes (and heck, even work) are the higher priorities right now.

Anyway, a few initial impressions after making the switch.  The art scene is definitely better here, though it doesn't really kick in until the fall.  But no matter what, it will be easier to get to arts events in Toronto.

Garbage/recycling.  I didn't think I would ever think the Vancouver garbage cans were roomy, but the standard size ones in Toronto are just absurdly small.  I may have to work out a deal with the landlord to pay more to upgrade one size.  I like how recycling is slightly less onerous than in Vancouver (and more items are eligible for recycling), but I don't like how it is only collected every two weeks, as opposed to every week in Vancouver.

Traffic is pretty bad in Toronto, particularly in the downtown.  Cycling could be so much better here (at least in non-winter months) but the paths are not continuous.  Bike parking is incredibly scarce in Toronto (wait lists of over a year for bike lockers in the downtown) and building managers are pretty resistant to doing anything about it (in contrast to both Chicago and Vancouver where a strong nudge from City Hall has made building managers rethink their position).  Nonetheless, a big cycle centre is supposed to open up (this fall?) at City Hall, despite Mayor Ford's opposition.  That will help me out a fair bit.  I'm actually not able to ride at least for another week, since I need a shed or something put up in my back yard.  I have nowhere at all to store the bike, aside from my basement, and I can definitely see breaking my neck trying to get the bike up and down those stairs on a routine basis.  So one more thing to deal with.

I would say libraries and community centres seem relatively underfunded in Toronto (again, a victim of the right-wing ideology that tends to dominate city council), and that is unfortunate.

For me personally, transit is way better in Toronto than in Vancouver, but part of that is where we chose to live relative to work.  I do think the subway is appallingly over-crowded during rush hour and strive to avoid it.  I also think the TTC transfer policy is stupid and unfair compared to Chicago or Vancouver.  And the monthly and annual passes are overpriced.  I'm not going to buy a pass, particularly once I do start biking.  But on the whole, the transit experience works for me.

That's it for now.  Hopefully I can get around to some reviews this weekend.

Wrapping things up in Vancouver

It's been really interesting as I have raced to get through various things here in preparation for the move.  Things are really winding down.  I've given up on the idea of doing the Grind again.  I'd like to figure out a way to bike in Stanley Park, but I'm just not really seeing that happen.  (Maybe it will be an incentive -- if everything is completely done by Thurs. evening, I will take Friday afternoon off (it is supposed to be nice) and ride to Stanley Park from the office.)

I did get a fair bit done today, but it meant dropping things off in charity shop bins and selling CDs to basically the only store in town that still pays cash (Neptoon).  So I am behind where I wanted to be in terms of the final rounds of boxes, which means that I will be packing on Canada Day instead of relaxing...  Well, it could be worse, and I'd have to take all this time off work.  I was annoyed to 1) run out of tape while trying to seal up boxes and 2) to not have any spackle compound, so I'll need to drop by Home Depot tomorrow around lunch time.

I've completely cleared out my queue at Burnaby Library.  For some reason, one book was never actually released to libraries (it's been on order for months).  I believe the only way to get a copy is to go to the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, which is frankly ridiculous.  It's the catalogue for their Mexican art show.  The book is by Nicola Levell and is called Marvelous Real: Art From Mexico.  I'll just have to try to do ILL from Toronto one of these days.

For the Vancouver Library, I have 4 items out, all going back over the next couple of days.  I really thought I would get the DVD of the Dallas Buyer's Club from them in time, but it looks like I will be a few days short, so I will go way to the back of the line in Toronto.  Sort of on the same lines, the library just did not process Kiarostami's Like Someone in Love in any kind of reasonable time frame.  I would actually have been better off going through the Burnaby Library.  As far as I can tell, the Toronto Library doesn't have Cassavetes' Love Streams in the system (yet), so I might actually not be too far back in that queue once it gets entered.  I'm assuming that since it is put out by Criterion, they will eventually get it in their collection.  Or I can look into an actual DVD stores (a few more seem to be hanging on in Toronto compared to Vancouver).

In terms of things that should have been in, but went missing and couldn't be traced, there are just a few things:

• Britten Death in Venice (CD)
• It Came From Beneath the Sea (DVD)
• 20 Million Miles to Earth (DVD)
• The Time of the Doctor -- Dr. Who (DVD)
• Globalization and Transformations of Social Inequality (will try ILL)

Perhaps the single most annoying library thing (aside from the Levell book, which is certainly not the library's fault) is that there was some vaguely interesting paperback title by an Indian author.  I wrote it down but the slip got lost.  Burnaby is odd in that adult paperbacks are not in the system by title, so I can't just ask them to point me to the list of the paperbacks they were recommending.  They have no idea.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to track it down and found a bunch of recent Indian and Pakistani literature that looks quite interesting (if only my TBR pile wasn't already so absurdly long).

In the course of this search, I found this article, which I will definitely return to some day.  Of the top 25, I had read 7 so far.  I have to report that I weakened and ordered All About H. Hatterr by G.V. Desani, as it sounded so unusual.  As for the rest, if I ever do get to them, I will try to be strict and just go through the library.  Here are the ones that looked the most interesting to me (from these lists and elsewhere):

• Train To Pakistan by Khushwant Singh ✓
• The Great Indian Novel by Shashi Tharoor ✓
• One Night at the Call Centre by Chetan Bhagat ✓
• Love and Longing in Bombay by Vikram Chandra

I suppose at some point, I will come across that book again (or even the slip of paper with the title), but there is no point in getting hung up over it when I have many years' worth of books still to go.  On that front, it does look like I will finish Two Solitudes before the move (but I'll review it in July) and maybe one or two half-read books.  I'll probably kick off the Toronto commute with The Tin Flute.

Review of last VSO concert

The perhaps sounds a bit apocalyptic (perhaps appropriately given that I have been reading a fair bit of apocalyptic fiction lately), but I really only mean that I am probably not going to be attending any more of their concerts, given that we are moving in only 3 more weeks.  Stranger things have happened, and TransLink might bring me back for an extended trip, but I am not expecting it.  Of all the cultural things in Vancouver, I'll probably miss the VSO the most.  While Bard on the Beach is fun, there is no question that Stratford is a huge upgrade in that department.  I had a good time at the Fringe Fest, but Toronto has one that is fairly comparable.  Same thing with the International Film Fest and the Jazz Fest, with the added benefit that it will actually be easier for me to get to these places, as they won't be tucked away on a hard-to-get-to place like Granville Island.

Obviously, Toronto also has a good symphony, which is probably a bit more technically proficient than the VSO.  However, I am not at all crazy about Roy Thompson Hall.  The Orpheum is just such a nice place to go and see a concert, although does struggle when there is a completely sold out house (last night and then some of the Yefim Bronfman concerts when he was doing the Beethoven piano concerto cycle).  I assume that the Yo-Yo Ma concert will be sold out (and incidentally it turns out Ma is doing a similar concert in Toronto, so I really had better order tickets soon).  I guess my general feeling is that the VSO punches above its weight, and the TSO isn't quite as good as it ought to be.  That feeling may change over time, and who knows what will happen in a few years after Bramwell Tovey retires for good.  (I'm actually feeling a bit sentimental and a little bit sorry that I am not seeing an intimate concert today (just too busy) where Tovey and Dale Barldrop and a few others are going to pay Smetana's String Quartet #1 and a piano piece by Sarasate.  However, it turns out that I actually saw the Pacific Rim String Quartet do this Smetana String Quartet a couple of years back.)

Anyway, this was essentially the final concert of the season, although they repeat the same program on Monday.  Some general program notes are here.

I thought it was a very good concert. It kicked off with the Passacaglia from Britten's Peter Grimes.  I believe there is a different concert version that includes 4 Sea Songs as well, but I think they cut those, knowing that the concert would run long, as indeed it did.  The Passacaglia really features the cellos and I was sitting near them, so that was good.  However, I often find myself drifting off in the first half of concerts.  I have lived most of my life in a state of extreme sleep deprivation, and being in a darkened hall with mellow music is pretty deadly.  I often kind of drift in and out.  That was definitely the case with the Elgar Violin Concerto, though I would occasionally pinch my fingers and such to try to stay awake. I did manage to keep alert for the final movement.  The Elgar was a nice piece, though probably not one I would make a point of seeking out to see again.

James Ehnes got a huge standing ovation, and eventually returned for an encore.  (Encores, even for featured soloists, are actually fairly rare in North America compared to Europe.  I think I've only seen four or so in Vancouver and almost none in Chicago after years of concert going.  Here I'm only talking about for classical concerts.)  He did a very lovely piece by Bach, and I was able to stay awake through that.

After splashing water on my face at the intermission, I returned to my seat.  A few people here and there had left at intermission, but most stayed. They were in for a treat.  Tovey programmed two really up-tempo energizing pieces.  Berlioz's Roman Carnival and then Respighi's Pines of Rome.  I can't believe how big Tovey built up the final movement of Pines of Rome.  It was incredible, and I will definitely try to see this live another time.  It was terrific.  Most amusing was that as the musicians were taking their final bows, I saw that James Ehnes had joined them to play in Pines of Rome (and probably Roman Carnival, since there was almost no changeover between these pieces).  How cool is that!  They made a bit of a big deal a year ago when Dale Barltrop did the demanding Britten Violin Concerto and then joined the back row of violins for Elgar's Engima Variations.*  But Dale is a mainstay of the VSO and would have time to rehearse the Elgar.  I'm certainly not aware of any other time that a featured soloist has gone back into the ranks for the second half of the concert, so huge respect to James Ehnes.  It was a very fitting (and rousing) last concert of the season. I'm glad I was along for the ride.

While I am definitely more of a "program guy" than a ticket stub sort of guy, I did hang onto this one.

* I was also at that concert incidentally with the same general issue of needing to fight to stay awake to hear the amazing music.  Then as now, I generally do a bit better in the second half of concerts, though Britten's Violin Concerto isn't quite as "relaxing" as Elgar's, so that also helped.

Vancouver let-downs, part 2

Or more likely part 5 or 6.  I'll keep this fairly short but tart.

I already mentioned how annoyed I was at a Vancouver musical society that raised their door price well beyond the advance price (and if I am recalling correctly what was actually printed in the newspaper).  I left in a huff.

This past weekend I just barely made it in time to see the Vancouver Philharmonic performing Dvorak's Cello Concerto and Symphony 9.  The tickets were the correct price, which was a good start.  I didn't have a lot of experience with the Vancouver Phil, but I thought that Dvorak's 9th is a pretty forgiving piece, so could they really mess it up that much?

Well, it turns out they are essentially an amateur orchestra.  I am surely being too harsh, but I found them pretty sloppy, particularly the horn section.  The Cello Concerto wasn't too bad, particularly in the 2nd movement when the cello largely has the field to itself, but the 3rd movement was kind of mangled.  I actually decided to bail at intermission, so I am not sure if they managed to pull off the 9th, but I certainly have my doubts.  As it happens, the Toronto Symphony is doing Dvorak's 9th in Oct. I believe, so I'll try to catch that.

Then today was free donut day in the US but apparently not in Vancouver (or only at Krispy Kreme, which only has an outlet in Delta, which is a heck of a long way to go for a free donut).  The Tim Horton's people just told the guy in front of me: no--no free donuts here.  So I got out of line.  What gives, Timmy?  You're only giving away free donuts in the States?  Lame.  (Ok, this wasn't a specifically Vancouver-only let down, but I experienced here, and that's what counts, right?)

At this point I am just looking forward to turning the page on Vancouver and returning again to Toronto.  Will being there magically return me to being in my early 20s (when I first lived in Toronto)?  Sadly no.  But it was a place I felt I fit in very well and had the right scale for me.  I don't think that will have changed, even if the traffic is a lot worse and housing prices have sky-rocketed (if only I could have stayed on in the 90s and scraped together some dough for a house then --sigh).  If anything the cultural scene is better than it was when I was there 20-odd years ago, and that I am definitely looking forward to. 

And one more thing... I don't know if this is specifically a Vancouver thing or a Canadian thing or just a rotten-luck thing, but I really struggled to find a place among the writers and artists here.  I kept having ideas including hoping to do a staged reading of one of my plays, and I just could never bring it off.  Now it was not easy doing this in Chicago, but with some effort you could make these things happen.  Not here.  Let's see what Toronto brings. (Apologies to the Hip.)

Vancouver, not gonna miss you

This was just such an unbelievably frustrating day.  It just encapsulated so much of what I dislike about Vancouver and am so glad to be leaving this behind.

The bus system let me down very badly coming and going this afternoon.  Vancouver has such a great rail system and such a weak, weak bus system, even for people living in the urbanized core.  There are things I have decided to pass on, just because I have to make a bus-to-bus transfer and these are generally quite dreadful here.  Toronto bus service is fairly poor out in the burbs, but the streetcar service certainly appears to be far ahead of Vancouver bus service.  Not that I won't have complaints in Toronto (I always do).

But it really is the crappy arts scene that drives me crazy here.  The quality generally is poor, though the chamber music can be ok and the symphony is on the rise (and quite possibly the Toronto symphony is on the decline).  But everything is just so amateurish.  And it's usually crammed into these hard to get to places.  I can't stand going to the Cultch or Granville Island, and I'm not even that crazy about Bard on the Beach.  Nothing is centralized and easy to get to.  With the exception of Queen Elizabeth Hall (which has some of the worst seating arrangements I've seen in a long time) and the Vancouver Playhouse (all but abandoned after its resident theatre company shut down), nothing is walking distance from a rail line.

Nobody advertises properly.  I just found out that there was a performance of Goodnight Desdemona out in New West, which I would have gone to see, but there was no notice.  I doubt very much that this Gruesome Playground Injuries is going to get sufficient press (the last I looked you don't see if from the main Pacific Theatre page, only if you go through back channels, i.e. you already know what you are looking for, which totally defeats the purpose).

But mostly I am really pissed that I was going to see this concert today which was listed as $10.  Well, it turns out it was $10 if you booked ahead but was $20 at the door.  A bit of a discount may make some sense (though actually they take a bigger cut at the door than for on-line sales), but 100% mark-up seems ridiculous, and the guy kind of gave me some attitude when it was obvious that I thought their pricing policies sucked.  So I left and went home early, quite upset.  It is clear I will never see an event in St. Andrew-Wesley Church.*  I've tried and tried, and you just kept letting me down.  Frankly, good riddance crappy Vancouver arts scene.

As an update on the move, I am probably 1/3 done with the shelves, including one book case dedicated to art books (and quite heavy ones at that).

The remaining books do look forlorn.

Here is the growing pyramid of boxes in the garage.  I'm a little scared of how big the pile will be in six weeks.

* Other things I will never do:

Go to Whistler

Go to Squamish

Ski in Vancouver & environs

Snowshoe up on Grouse

Visit Burnaby Village Museum

See the Vancouver Aquarium

Things I don't plan on doing again:

Go back to SFU

Go again to Science World 

Going back to the Museum of Vancouver

Go back to the Cultch

Go see any of the films at VIFF 

Listen to the Pacific Rim String Quartet (as they appear to have disbanded)

Skate at the ice rink at Robson Square

Things I might do one last time:

Go to UBC

Go see the VSO play at the Orpheum

Go to the Vancouver Art Gallery

Go around the SkyTrain loop (I really ought to video this on a nice day)

Go to Granville Island (for the Jazz Fest)

Do the Grouse Grind (a bit unlikely, however)

Go to the Sun Yat-Sen Gardens (ditto).