Collective bargaining

About five years ago, a book store fortuitously appeared next door to the coffeeshop, replacing a wine store.  I'm not a wine-drinker, so I was thrilled.  

It's a bit like a Tardis, looks quite tiny from the outside, as you climb the entrance steps, which are painted to look like book spines. (The titles change every few months.). Inside, is much what you'd expect: books on one side; small gift assortments, i.e. bookmarks, reading glasses, cookies, etc. on the other.  But beyond, are two large rooms:  one for used books, and a much larger day-lit room with new books, games, journals and other stationery.  (My particular weakness.) At the end of a corridor with cards for every occasion - some of them quite rude - is a closet stuffed with jigsaw puzzles. There's a puzzle exchange every few weeks; people line up for it.  It's that kind of neighbourhood.

In December, I buy stocking stuffers.  The rest of the year, I mostly buy cards, stocking up every month or so.  Recently, I lay my choices on the cash register counter, in order to rustle up my loyalty card.  The cashier totted up my selection and mulled over what collective noun would work best.

"A kindness of cards?" I suggested.  "No, wait!  A communication of cards!"  She was clearly taken with the former.  I prefer the latter.

Wild horses

On the morning of the Resident Fan Boy's birthday, I pack away my journals after taking my coffee cup to the baristas' sink.  I swing my packsack on to my back and step out into the shade of the coffee shop patio.  The early September morning is cool, but the sunshine bounces off the trees and buildings across the street on to the naked body of a tall, thin young man, prancing and rearing like a mustang as two police officers attempt to handcuff his hands behind his back.

It is an arresting scene, in every sense of the word, surreal and silent, except for the sound of his bare feet beating against the side walk, as he jogs on the spot, tossing his shaved head.  I hear his expelled breath each time he falls to his side in vain resistance.  His forearm is bleeding.

Not one person behind me speaks.  They sit transfixed at the patio tables with their untouched lattes.  I am also rooted to the spot, not knowing where to look, my way blocked.

The officers get him as far as their car, parked in the middle of the north-bound lane;  he's dropped down on his side again, and I hurry down the block to pick up a prescription for Demeter.  The lights on the squad car flash red and blue behind me, and I pass more people, some becoming aware of the drama.

I say nothing about this to the pharmacist, and, making my way back, I see more police vehicles, and about a dozen officers gathered in the decks that the coffee shop erected for more outdoor seating during the pandemic.  The naked man is now in the back seat of the police SUV; someone is leaning to speak to him through the window.

A young woman, who had been further down the sidewalk when I started out, now stands quietly by the curb, gazing intently with the air of one bearing witness.

I continue up the hill, as people appear in shop doorways, murmuring to one another.  There's a corn cob in the centre of the sidewalk, with two of its fronds scattered to the edges.  I pick it up and place it on a bench, not knowing what else to do.

It's not until I get home and sit on my couch, gazing out into the street, that I realize how upset and miserable I feel.

Taking thrills where you can get them

I'm taking in an extra loop of the neighbourhood, to get in a bit of exercise before going to get Demeter's dinner.  A neighbour from down the hall in our building, spots me and scurries across the road to approach me.

"Are you on your way to Roots Cellar?" she inquires eagerly.

Roots Cellar is a local grocer specializing in local produce and "nutritious food and healthy lifestyle choices". It is, as you can imagine, rather upscale and very middle-class, despite its claims for being "dirt cheap".  The business is expanding, and has just opened its second store in Victoria, after a long wait of nearly a year.  The selling point, in addition to what has already been mentioned, is in supporting local businesses and producers, which is not to be sniffed at.

It's been a long year without a local grocery.  The small and even more specialized organic food store appeals to a very narrow (and comfortably off) vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free clientele.  

When we lived in Fairfield in the nineties, there were two supermarkets in Cook Street Village, both doing steady business for years.  The Country Grocer closed down in the aughts, replaced by (of course) expensive condos.  Oxford Foods (named because it was on the corner of Oxford Street) soldiered on in its grungy glory, featuring the kind of items prized by pensioners, of whom there are a lot in our neighbourhood: packaged foods, canned foods, cleaning products... Their produce was serviceable, but not all that fresh, and mostly imported. The owners decided to retire and sell to the younger couple who runs the original Roots Cellar.

As it happened, I told my eager neighbour, I had popped into Roots Cellar early that morning, securing a Bosc pear for Demeter (one of her favourites) and having a quick look around at dazzling stacks of every kind of fruit and vegetable imaginable, up to and including jackfruit and pineapples.

If you're in the market for dairy products (see what I did there?), you're in luck: wide varieties of yoghurts, milks, sour cream, and whipping cream in many forms, to say nothing of a huge selection of cheeses.  There's a meat counter and a deli counter, and many options for meat substitutes.  A small display of ice creams, a modest bakery and baking section.  No boxed cake blends (small bags, though, of more local mixes).  Absolutely no paper products, or cleaning aids. If you want cereal, you go to the bulk bins for rolled oats or granola. Very West Coast.

So, no one-stop shopping, but an easily accessible place for staples such as eggs, milk, or fruit.  It's been more than nine months since Demeter's fall, and my being able to quickly replace supplies will be a welcome change from making do with what I can find in convenience stores.

Our condo building was positively buzzing with giddiness.  Over a grocery store. 

The Resident Fan Boy, trying to transport a heavy basket to the laundry rooms upstairs, encountered neighbour after neighbour, unseen for months, using the elevator to get to the sidewalks and join the pilgrimage.  

Is this touching or pathetic?

The middle ground

This is probably in a meme somewhere. I don't care.

It was new to me, as I zigzagged between others to maintain the six-foot difference. I chortled out loud.

Actually, the opening lines of The Twilight Zone are indeed, pretty damned pertinent:

It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge.

Doo-di-doo-doo, doo-di-doo-doo....

Whimsical wallabies

Walking down into the Village one bright morning - with the switch to Standard Time, we're getting a few back - I happen to glance down and spot two painted rocks, tucked in by the sidewalk at the edge of someone's lawn.  I've included my shoe-tips for scale.

This makes me wonder:  does anybody wear Wallabees anymore?

The invisible holes of a neighbourhood

Yesterday was dark and rainy, and the gutters became cataracts.

Today is the epitome of a perfect day in late May - something it's best not to mention to those I know in Hades.

This morning, I paused by a large bush of California lilac, listening to the powerful buzz of scores of industrious bees at work, their abdomens orange with pollen.

All the flowers and greenery have responded exuberantly to the combination of rain and sun.

Cook Street is white with tents for their annual street party. I walked along here last year, and browsed through boxes of DVDs as Pic-a-Flic downsized for their impending move after three and a half decades on Cook Street. I didn't know that then, but I knew their site was optioned to make room for yet another condo, and I feared they would go altogether.

I seemed to spend most of my time in Hades watching books stores and video stores die off. My two favourite bookstores managed to survive, but a video rental by a pizza place, preceded by another small establishment specializing in art,documentary and foreign films, succumbed a few years after my arrival, leaving me to depend on the public libraries.

Through the Victorian summers in the years of my Hades exile, I always had Pic-a-Flic, with its long corridors of films and television series from around the world. I also had other fixtures of Cook Street, for example, the grey and gaunt proprietor of the old-fashioned grocery stand, whom Demeter and I called "Grumpy" - never to his face, of course. Grumpy seemed to mellow over his decades in the drafty recess where he sold fruits, vegetables and flowers. I learned that he was a regular entertainer at the coffee house across the street, where he sang, of all things, folk songs by the likes of Gordon Lightfoot.

Shortly after Pic-a-Flic made the move to Stadacona Park and a much smaller shop, I saw the notice that Grumpy was retiring, and not long after that, the coffee house where he sang disappeared.

I gather that Grumpy is now strumming his guitar at the local pub, and other businesses have sprung up where he displayed his wares and sang his songs.

I still feel a pang when I walk past the refilled gaps, because I know there are gaps. It's okay; holes rarely remain empty for long -- even invisible ones.

At the time, it was also the smoke from hundreds of wildfires....

....but we won't discuss that.