I’d look worried, too, if I faced imminent extinction. It was apparently painted by the James Bay Youth Action Team (who have no Google juice at all). Maybe a Victoria resident can tell me how long it’s been there? I doubt it’s a re-imagining of the chipmunk, but I’m curious.
The Vancouver Island Marmot is a bit of a poster boy of wilderness conservation in BC. According to Wikipedia, it’s one of the most endangered mammals on the planet, though there’s apparently cause for optimism.
While running errands yesterday, I discovered two small inventions which pleased me. They’re probably not new to you, but I don’t get out much.
Too Drunk to Handle the Basket?
First, I was at the Market on Yates (“and on Millstream”–brand extension problem, there), a grocery store. They have these shopping receptacles which work as a large basket or a small, rolling cart. They have two folding handles, and casters on the bottom:
They seem like the perfect solution for an urban grocery store with narrow aisles. They’re also a good fit for Victoria’s aging population, who buy small amounts but may not be able to handle a full basket. Apparently you can also find them at liquor stores, where you can deploy the cart features if you’re too drunk to handle the basket.
Hockey Cards for Hair Cutters
I also stopped in at a hair salon on Fort Street to schedule a haircut. It was my first time there, and it seemed like an ordinary enough place. I booked an appointment, and the receptionist handed me this little stack of cards. They’re essentially hockey cards for the stylists (collect them all!):
These seem to serve a bunch of purposes:
They’re attractively designed, presumably reflecting the aesthetics of the salon.
They’re a practical reminder of my forthcoming appointment.
They’re a little conversation piece for me to take away and show potential customers.
They make the stylists feel a little like a celebrity, which probably helps with morale and employee retainment.
They cost very little to produce, but they’re a striking differentiator in a business where it’s often difficult to distinguish one salon from another. Being “the place with the hockey cards”, is a great hook to hang a brand off of.
I’ve been meaning to write a few posts about my new hometown of Victoria, but other more worldly things keep coming up. There’s a bizarre retail phenomenon in downtown Victoria that deserves mention. On Johnston Street, a busy shopping street in the centre of town, there are three comic book shops within a block of each other. In fact, two of them are next door to each other. Check it out:
I was reminded of this unlikely confluence while in Legends Comics and Books buying the final issue of Y: The Last Man (a truly superb series). I should have asked the guy behind the counter what the deal was (maybe somebody owns more than one of the shops?). I’ll do so the next time I’m down on Johnson Street.
I know there’s some retail theory about assembling a group of similar shops, and a tide that raises all boats. But this doesn’t feel sustainable. Still, if I remember correctly, there have been three shops on Johnson for years. Weird, eh?
LoJo: Really, You’re Going With That?
Incidentally, there’s a City of Victoria-backed effort to rebrand a few blocks of Johnson Street with the heinous epithet ‘LoJo’. It feels like an awful, desperate attempt to associate that area with the SoHo’s of New York and London.
Informal neighbourhood names shouldn’t come from City Hall–they should be devised by the people in the neighbourhood. Maybe that’s what happened here, but I’d never heard the term before I saw it on a silly banner on a lamppost.
I woke up unusually early this morning, and went for a little bike ride. I figured I’d breeze past the Fido store to inquire about timelines and waiting lists for getting an iPhone. To add a tiny complaint to the monumental PR fiasco that the iPhone Canada build-up and launch has been, Fido’s website shows the wrong operating hours for their Yates St. store.
When I got home, one of our neighbours was out in the back lane washing his fancy BMW. It occurred to me–not for the first time–that if you can afford a Beemer, you can afford to pay somebody else to wash it.
When we owned a car–a cheesy little Chevy Metro–we lived in an apartment. We (too rarely) took our car to the car wash because there wasn’t really an alternative.
So, I can think of only two reasons why my neighbour manually washes his own car:
He doesn’t trust any of the local car washes. This seems implausible, because there are plenty of high-end detailing and car wash places around.
He enjoys the process of washing his car. I can’t imagine why–I’ve always found it a loathsome task–but I may be in the minority.
I went clothes shopping today. Specifically, I was looking for a couple of pullovers that I wouldn’t have to iron and could wear under a jacket to a business meeting. I made a foray into a bunch of shops in Victoria (admittedly, a relatively small trading area). My conclusions:
The eighties are back with a flaming (in every sense of the word) sword of vengeance. Stripes! Primary colours! Sleeves rolled to the elbow! Big buttons! Skinny jeans! And that’s just the men. It’s all awful.
Like magazine racks, men’s wear departments are suffering increasing incursions by departments for women. This is on top of the usual ghettoization of men’s wear (“Oh, yeah, we’ve got some men’s shirts in the basement, down that hatch in the floor, behind some cardboard boxes. Watch out for rats.”) Clearly my gender is not spending enough on clothes.
I would kill and pay a premium for a store that could streamline my clothes shopping experience.
Tunics and Pajamas
I specifically visited two hemp and organic fashion stores in Victoria: Hemp & Company and Fiber Options. I didn’t find any of the pullovers I was looking for, but I did get a couple of casual shirts at the latter store.
Both were combinations of bamboo and organic cotton. One was from HTnaturals, and unfortunately made in China. The other was a cool t-shirt (er, unflattering product shot) from Salts Organic Clothing (they also have a blog). It’s made in Canada.
In both stores, I did didn’t find any clothes that I would wear that would qualify as (an awful term, but bear with me) ‘business-casual’. All of the hemp products looked like pajamas, or hung off me like tunics. They weren’t even a little cool.
This has consistently been my experience at stores that sell clothes made of hemp. I’ve begun to wonder if there’s a chicken and egg problem with these stores and their suppliers:
The average person won’t buy the current offerings in hemp clothing AND
The people who buy hemp clothes aren’t interested in what the average person might buy.
This is all speculation, and I’ve only taken a very small sampling thus far. Still, I wish I could find a store that offered great clothes made of organic fabrics that ranged from pajamas to business suits. I know Vancouver has more to offer–maybe I’ll look around the next time I’m in town.
Forgive the, uh, narrowcasting of this particular entry, but we’re looking for a dentist. We don’t have many requirements, except that they shouldn’t be a sadist, and should be located within walking distance of downtown or Cook Street Village.
If you live in Victoria and like your dentist, leave a comment or email me at darren at darrenbarefoot (full stop) dot com.
We’ve just moved into our fourth furnished apartment. The other three were in Europe and Africa (where it’s par for the course, as far as I can figure)–this is our first in Canada. I can’t sing the praises of furnished apartments enough–they make so much sense:
They reduce waste, because people (especially young people) aren’t buying crappy furniture that gets used for a few years and then replaced. It’s in the landlord’s best interests to buy furniture that lasts.
In a small way, they reduce fuel consumption. There’s much less business for moving companies and their trucks.
It’s bloody convenient.
Normally any move is fraught with painful, expensive trips to Ikea. Our place in Victoria is ‘furnished’ right down to cutlery and cleaning products. We could literally walk in with a bag of groceries and be ‘moved in’. We’re also fortunate to have a garage in which we can store our sundry boxes and the few sticks of furniture we’ve got kicking around.
When singing the praises of furnished apartments, people often become concerned about aesthetics. It’s not their stuff, so they could never get comfortable. I wondered about this, too, but it turns out that I couldn’t care less. Yes, we’ve lived in nice places in Malta, Morocco and Victoria, but our first apartment in Ireland was kind of shabby. And appeared to have been decorated by a colour-blind octogenarian with bad cataracts.
You get used to things pretty quickly. So the walls are a kind of rotten robin’s egg blue, so what? Either you learn to live with it, or get permission to change it. In either case, these aesthetic compromises seem like a small price to pay for the convenience of your place being fully furnished.
Do you prefer furnished apartments or blank slates on which to lay your lifestyle?
