8th Avenue

Rarely do my friends believe me when I tell them about the kinds of things that happen on 8th Avenue right out front of the store and beneath my apartment windows. Like the day I woke up and there was a Mariachi band playing bellow my living room window.

Vancouver has this reputation as being a pretty dull place. We have less festivals than any other Canadian city and every time we do get something kinda cool thing going it somehow gets shut down....I admit it...sometimes it's like a retirement village. There is one exception to this, and that is on 8th Avenue between Main St and the first parallel alley where there is some kind of bizzarro fault line in the earth where weird shit happens. It's not an orginized festival, but it's certainly a festive street.

Like yesterday when I was working, minding my own business chatting with a couple of friends and I look up and there's this guy unloading pig carcasses from his truck onto a dolly. It just seemed kinda out of place, what is usual in Kensingtom Market in Toronto is not so usual in this somewhat sterile and rule bound city. You just don't have chicken trucks driving by leaking chicken juice all over the road here like you do there.

So Dane figures it would make for a interesting picture, he ran out the door and found the guy in the alley behind the store and asks to take a photo, the guy says "You're not taking a photo of my pigs without me" and grabs a pig to pose for this photo (If you are sensitive to death don't scroll down!)




And that my friends is the way it goes on 8th Avenue.