Yesterday, me and my chum, Ethan, decided to head out for a belated birthday lunch (E’s birthday, not mine) and maybe do a little photo prop shopping while we were at it.
We thought we would check out the newly resurrected Save-On-Meats diner on West Hastings. For those of you unfamiliar with Save-On-Meats you can watch the story of how restauranteur Mark Brand is trying to bring good to Vancouver’s downtown east side – one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Canada – in the new Oprah Winfrey Network show, Gastown Gamble. I’ve been wanting to try this place out long before I knew it was going to star in a reality show – the building is iconic, the decor is pure deli-diner and the word was, the food was pretty good.
It was all those things – we both had the signature burgers with fries for $6 each. Solid bun, great tasting patty, fresh lettuce, bacon, cheddar and crispy fries. For SIX dollars!! It was a winner. Plus, cool neon all over the place. Definitely worth checking out. There was a line to get a table during our entire stay but it moves fast.
We did a quick wander by the old Woodwards building, through parts of Gastown, stopped to add a few photos to my street art collection (get this, when I took these two photos I didn’t see that the graffiti was a face – it wasn’t until I got it up on the screen that I saw it. I just thought it was cool geometric shapes! Just proves half the time I don’t know what I’m doing with my camera!)
Then we decided to head up to Chinatown and do a little prop shopping and check out Chinese New Year’s festivities.
Chinatown is always a fun visit – so I thought I would just leave you with a photo essay of our day. We had adventures, as one often does in Chinatown or the Downtown East Side. Ethan got a warm welcome to the DTES on our way back from our day. It’s an eye opener to anybody who’s only ever seen Vancouver as a pristine city of glass, mountains and ocean on TV. Drugs, prostitution, homelessness… people tripping you with their umbrellas on purpose (yeah, that happened! What a mean old man!)…
We had trouble identifying the bottom photo above. After a call out to Twitter, we’ve come to the conclusion that they may be water chestnuts, but more likely they’re Chinese arrowroot.
Fresh Ocean’s Fish – that’s what the sign says. No Clean – I guess that means you gotta do it yourself…
What’s New Year’s without BBQ??? BBQ duck… mmmm… But we wound up going with Chinese New Year’s pastries. We waited in a crushing throng of people lined up at a bakery counter but eventually came away with a paper bag of goodies.
Red is everywhere in Chinatown at New Year’s – banners, lanterns, the lucky red money envelopes, and with it being the Year of the Dragon, gold dragons. So much colour!
We did well on our prop hunting too – so many little shops selling pretty much everything you could ever need for a kitchen. Some were huge, some were tiny. One teenie tiny shop had an upstairs that looked choc-a-bloc with goodies but when Ethan made a bee-line for the stairs a little tiny woman grabbed his arm and shook her head and very emphatically said “no upstairs, no upstairs”. So… we didn’t go upstairs!
And so I say to all of you, Gung Hei Fat Choi! Happy New Year!
A beautiful essay Melissa! We ended up in West Ed for the cultural celebrations and loved it. I love the ‘no clean’ by the way, very similar to a sign you’d probably get on the Indian fish docks 🙂
And I personally think the best part of a city is the one that’s not shown on TV!
That sounds like a great New Years adventure. I miss china town in Vancouver! I love all the dishes in the shops there. This year I got to try homemade dumplings and spend the evening with a Cantonese family.. so much fun!
I love that graffiti with the face!
I’m jealous! We have one little Asian shop here that carries maybe 100 items, that’s it. Great Falls isn’t exactly a cultural mecca. Photos are stunning!