8/31/02-A longwinded and rambling update about going to Canada featuring Running Red Lights, Surefire, 10 Ways From Sunday [asstd. venues, Vancouver B.C.]

We made our way back to the place we were staying at to find that they'd very nicely made down a futon and a futon-chair for us to sleep on. Being the Drunk Guy Jon got the short straw and had to make due with the floor. I slept underneath a half naked mannequin of a child that was missing an arm. When you wakeup at 5 am and see something like that staring down at you it's kinda scary. We woke up, stumbled down to the car, and headed north. The ever smiling face of Buddy Christ wished us luck and we made a speedy trip up I-5 on our way to the Canadian border, managing to somehow avoid the radar guns of the Washington state police troopers that seemed to be posted every 3 miles in an attempt to slow down traffic on this Labor Day weekend. I'd been told a ton of different stories about crossing the border. We'd need a passport, a birth certificate, two pieces of picture id, just a drivers license, you name it. I decided to simply go with just a drivers license and see what happens. As we approached the border the traffic crawled to a halt, and we were forced to listen to the SUV full of giggly college women singing what sounded like the same crappy pop song over and over again. Hardened terrorists would have turned back, but not us. Oh no, the prospects of drinking in another country was too alluring, especially for our 19 year old. We finally got to the stop at the border and the "guard" was a twenty-something slacker who didn't seem too concerned with his job. He finished up his conversation with his buddy in the guard booth and sauntered over to collect our ids. "Where are you heading to?" "Vancouver" "Where are you staying?" "Vancouver" "No, what hotel?" "Uh, I dunno, is that important." He then wipes his leather gloved finger over the dashboard of the car. "Why's your car so dirty?" "Umm, it just doesn't get cleaned much..." "Hmm, and how do you all know each other?" "I co-own a comic book store with him" I say as I point to Jon. "Fine, move along." sez the vigilant guard. It seems that being business men must mean we're fine upstanding American citizens. Heh. Suckers. Smooth and easy, we could have been smuggling a family of Asiatic midgets in the drunk and had submachine guns under our seats and they'd never have known. And perhaps we were....there's quite a bit of money in Asiatic midget smuggling...or so I hear. 

We hit Vancouver, found a decent hotel, and went in search of some music. Vancouver seems to have way fewer bars than most large cities I've been to. I'm used to simply getting on a main road and finding more bars than I can handle. Not so in this fine town, we didn't have much luck finding any at all. There were more Subway restaurants than people though. Creepy. We finally saw a bar that looked promising, and stopped inside to see what was what and look at the assorted flyers we'd seen on poles. This bar kinda sucked, and what looked like a funk band with too many drum kits was setting up, so a change of location was neccesary. We gleaned the location of a couple of other bars that looked liked they'd cater to people of our caliber and set out. The first place we hit was the Cobalt, and upon our arrival we discovered that DBX was playing. Since we'd seen them just 4 days earlier we decided to pass and made our way further downtown. The bar that was supposed to have a show was in a rather seedy section of town. Never have I seen so many crack heads, lunatics, and prostitutes. Yay, Canada! (This was also the first time I'd ever seen a prostitute in a wheel chair. At least I assume she was a prostitute, most women don't wear silver halter tops and excessive makeup and hang out on corners. Or maybe my small town upbringing is making me stereotype people.) We found that this bar was damn near deserted, apart from an elderly group celebrating someone's birthday with what looked like powdered donuts. A random drunk guy started talking to us, and exclaimed that "there were bars on every corner in Vancouver". Sure buddy. Maybe they're all inside the Subways, eh? We took off in search of more exciting environments and discovered a place called the Brickyard. This club looked like it'd be perfect. Great interior, video games in the corner, pool table, a circular bar, slightly seedy, kind of a punk motif going on, friendly bar staff, and some very attractive girls. This place looked like gold. Paying the $6 cover we plunked down to start the drinking, and awaited the first band to start: Running Red Lights. These guys played a funk influenced rock. They also listen to way too much Incubus. Their vocals had a VERY Incubus sound to them. They weren't too shabby. It wasn't the most original of bands I'd ever heard, but they were ok. I'd probably go see them again. Next up was a band called Surefire. Let me give their guitar player advice: If you have to try to get the crowd going there's something wrong. It's not the crowd, it's you sport. A good band will always get the crowd moving. A bad band will get them to sit down, or go play Area 51 in the corner. Anyways, Surefire played rap-rock. It wasn't that good. At the end of their set they played a medley of today's top shitty pop songs strung together in a funky way. A medley of today's top shitty pop songs is never good. The people in the crowd seemed to like that one though. Maybe I'm an elitist bastard, but these guys were just too mainstream for my tastes. A band called 10 Ways From Sunday was the headliner. They played a sort of alternative hard-rock. Eh, they were talented, but just not to my tastes. It's sad when the opening band is the best band to play in a bar. Maybe it's like bizzarro land up there and things are backwards. We got out of their with our pockets full of funny Canadian coins ($1 and $2 coins like mad. I hate it.) and headed back to the hotel to catch some Z's.

Day two in Vancouver and we each chose one fun thing to do from the cheesy tourist book that was left in our hotel room. First up we headed to China Town to grab something to eat and look for some tacky tourist crap to bring back with us. Hit a parking garage, took the smelliest elevator I've ever seen (and I've been inside elevators while someone was vomiting, this one was worse). The Chinese restaurant we hit would have been nice I expect. If we'd gotten any proper food. It was the sort of set up where they wheel around carts and you choose what you want to eat off them. Being the only non-asian people in the place we never once saw an entree cart. The cart featuring the chicken feet we saw several dozen times however. I'm sure they cackled in the back about the confused American morons. Yay, discrimination! We then shopped. Finding no acceptable cheesy tourist crap. We hit a Virgin Mega store. There was a 15 foot tall Distillers poster outside the building.  Mega describes only one thing-their prices. The selection was shit, the prices were high, and it was amazingly crowded. I led the way to a more rundown record store, and there I found paydirt: cheapass cd's. I picked up 4 cd's for about $26 us. Excellent scores all around. The first time I really found that the exchange rate was a good thing, as it seemed that everything else was about the same price as in America. I thought this was supposed to be the cheap land? We hit an internet cafe to catch up on email, because we're junkies, took a ferry across the river, drank some more, and took the Vancouver mass transit to what I had been told was an epic 3 story arcade. I was mislead, and the arcade kinda sucked, but it did contain a really really cool bar. Cushy chairs, dark, within plain view of the Dance Dance revolution machines so we could watch girls playing them. This bar was deemed good. We headed back to the Cobalt to discover that Sundays were their "Scary-oke" night. I really wish we'd paid to see DBX here the previous night. This bar had a lot of atmosphere. Punk rock goodness at it's finest. Jon asked for a beer, to which the bartender replied "How big?" "BIG" was his reply, and big was the pitcher that the 'tender plunked down for a measly $5. What a fucking deal. Songs were butchered by drunken punks, and a good time was had. This place was really fucking cool, and makes me yearn for a decent bar here in Bend. 

The next morning we made our way back home, and breezed through the border. The crusty old man asked where we were born, grunted at the answers, and let us through. Simple as that. Yay, American vigilance in the post 911 world is seemingly very high. I don't know whether to be disappointed or happy at this. I expected much more security from the U.S. 10 hours later we were back in Bend. Road Trips. Ahhh.

This was a sign we saw on the Canadian side of the border. Those wacky canucks.