t's been almost nine years since I had kept a permanent Seattle address. I feel like I can finally assess that city more objectively now that I'm living in Vancouver, BC. Gruff stylist Nelson Algren once famously wrote that to love Chicago was "like loving a woman with a broken nose, you may well find lovelier lovelies, but never a lovely so real." I don't think I can ever be convinced whether a city can be more "real" than another. However, I do enjoy his anthropomorphic analogy very much.
At the risk of sounding like a well-worn cliché, I do feel that while these cities are less than three hours apart, they are also indeed worlds away from each other. When I was having dinner recently with a few of my Vancouver friends, we've decided that until recently, Seattle was, for the most part, a pretty but modest, smart, and a bit bookish post-doc student. Low-keyed but idealistic, she may have brown or sandy hair, and she probably has pale but healthy skin. She wears REI or Gore-Tex, little or no make-up, and sensible shoes always. She rarely wears girly dresses— just trousers usually. She frequents gastropubs, microbrews, bookstores, and regularly attends readings, lectures, gallery openings, and other pursuits that smell intellectual. She takes the King County Metro, or the Microsoft bus, or drives the old Volvo 240 inherited from her parents until she decides to splurge for the Tesla. Despite the insane trading values of her stock options, she doesn't flaunt her considerable wealth. She's dedicated to serious coffee, microbrews, progressive politics, Montessori education for her kids, and indie anything. Despite the crass glamour of the tech boom, lesser men may still deem her a wee bit plain. In the end, for a lack of a better generalisation, she's still "real" to someone like Algren. Her wealth is based upon brains and hard work. The fruits of her labour are given world-recognised names such as Boeing, Microsoft, and perhaps to much lesser extent, entities like Starbucks or Amazon.
On the other hand, Vancouver is a city of similar size that exudes glamour and confidence. She's a stunner. Compared to Vancouver, Seattle's physical beauty is much subtler, and its landscape evokes boreal, non-Norwegian Scandinavia. Vancouver is fit, bold, sexy, and immediately alluring. The towering mountains and mighty forests are in-your-face. The overwhelming Chinese capital sizzles, as it burns away the home-owning dreams of millennials. Rainy weather notwithstanding, Vancouver is more Westside LA, Ipanema, or Shanghai, than perhaps low-keyed Stockholm. You will never mistake Kitsilano for Scandinavia, because when summertime comes, check out the tanned muscles, the peaks, the curves, the silicone, and the botox! Haters may deem her to be "fake."
Vancouver dresses to impress, just like the way she swiftly navigates her path in a crowded club, in heels and with a cosmopolitan in hand. Needless to say, she loves pretentious or fancy cars. The universal basic-bitch car here is the atrocious, gas-guzzling BMW X3 or X5. Reflecting the dramatic mountains, forests, and fjords that frame the city, she flaunts her cleavage. During my four-year stint in Seattle, I don't remember ever seeing any cleavage. More than likely, Vancouver is wearing makeup on top of makeup. There's a good chance that she can speak Mandarin or Cantonese, or if not, she's mixed race, or South Asian, or perhaps a bleached blonde. It doesn't matter as long as you look good in Nollywood.
Speaking of cleavage, I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that it's difficult to avoid it here in the Lower Mainland region. In fact, cleavage is critical to the local business model, which the area's most overwhelmingly popular restaurants are based upon. Whenever you enter the Cactus Club Cafe, Earl's, Joey's, Moxie's Grill, or the Rockford Grill, you are uniformly greeted and served by beautiful hostesses and waitresses, all adorned with easy smiles and prodigious cleavages, not to mention the slightly flirtatious countenances more than capable of soothing heterosexual male egos. While most of these servers are generally quite competent, you certainly do not get the sense that they are hired by their employers solely for their expertise in the food and beverage service industry. Vulnerable male patrons who find themselves particularly susceptible to their undeniable charms may also feel the inevitable lightening of their wallets, as they enthusiastically succumb to rewarding these opportunistic saviours with generous tips.
All the flashy women and fast cars are naturally reflected by the literally flashy new building types. The most prevalent new construction in the Vancouver area for the past twenty years are the concrete-framed highrises universally-clothed by endless glazing. On the other hand, the City of Seattle is slowly being repopulated by relatively anodyne, mostly clumsy but generally ugly, four to six-storey structures of wooden framing with modest windows and stucco cladding, all sitting atop concrete podiums. They do not make much fuss, just like their occupants.
In opposition to her brainy Seattle sister, the average Vancouverite (someone who doesn't live near hippy hipster Commercial Drive) is more middle-of-the-road, or shall we say, more 'pedestrian' in outlook, in politics, and in sensibilities. She's generally apathetic, except when it comes to issues that may affect property values. While Seattle is certainly no fat slob, Vancouver stridently keeps in shape regimentally and religiously. You may even call her vain. Consider this: the walk from my usual kerbside parking space to my Kitsilano office is marked by various gyms, tanning salons, beauty salons, and countless day spas offering services such as waxing, abrasion treatments, pedicures, facials, aromatherapies, homeopathic therapies, herbalists, and an endless litany of different massages, interspersed by Lamborghini or McLaren dealerships-- they're not just for laundering Chinese money. In the building where my office is located, there are four hairdressing salons as well as an acupuncturist. What kind of a city can support such an array of vanity services? Decidedly unlike the situation in Seattle (where several independent bookstores are thriving, and incidentally, one of my friends has just opened a new one in Phinney Ridge), bookstores and newsagents have become virtually extinct in the Lower Mainland-- who has the time to read around here when you've got all this work to do on yourself?
The Vancouver area cannot support bookstores partly because it barely has a general readership that reads in the same language. I've always suspected that the attenuation of a general English-language-reading constituency in Vancouver may be attributed to its astonishing ethnic diversity, and its attendant tendency to atomise into discrete communities with its own corresponding language publications and outlets. As a matter of fact, the only significant bookstores remaining in the Vancouver area is the nationwide bland big box chain of Chapters / Indigo, most of whose stores now feel like the last days of Borders in the States. Many of its outlets convey the distinction of having their employees outnumber the patrons, while their anaemic aisles are increasingly given way to gift and novelty items aimed at a middle-class, suburban female clientele. The Lower Mainland, and probably the entirety of Canada west of the Rockies, even recently lost its sole art and design bookstore-- Oscar's on Broadway. Where else can one even buy these often expensive items, which really require browsing and scrutiny before purchase? It does rain a lot in western British Columbia, but it has become an intellectual desert.
The fact that the days of the remaining booksellers are probably numbered in Vancouver does not mitigate the nagging perception that there are so few people with "real" honest jobs here, for a lack of a better expression. The building boom of Vancouver is made of up entirely residential high-rises. Unlike Seattle, its downtown is almost devoid of tall office buildings, because so few people work in conventional office jobs in BC. Like the rest of Canada, BC's wealth comes from exploiting its natural resources, and increasingly, from falling back on its good looks. In stark contrast with Seattle, the people here are basically illiterate, and do not use their brains to build wealth. Seattle also actually builds things, like airplanes. Here people just build condos and McMansions for the mainland Chinese. Alas, there's no such thing as a knowledge economy here.
Speaking of good looks, real estate investment is becoming the main industry of Vancouver. More specifically, Vancouver is a stable destination for the Chinese to park their capital, or as often the case, to launder their ill-begotten gains, most commonly in the form of real estate, or flashy cars for their spoiled brats. The stratospheric real estate values here do not reflect the wages of the average inhabitants (relatively low by North American standards), as they naturally do in tech-hub Seattle. They correspond to what the Chinese are able to afford. By stark contrast, many people in Seattle actually have high-paying jobs that make actual things, whether they are planes, software, apps, biotech patents, or coffee. In Seattle, there are plenty of people whom one can come across who are coders, game designers, biotech or mechanical or electrical engineers, or even machinists and welders-- people who actually produce something or belong to a union.
On the other hand, here in Vancouver, unless you're the ubiquitous "student" "studying" English from China (who ostensibly do nothing except hanging out in teashops and shopping centres) every other bleeding person in the Lower Mainland seems to be some sort of marketing / sales / events planning / web-design / colour / spiritual 'consultant' or another, and usually also hustling to become an automotive sales rep / massage therapist / yoga instructor / make-up artist / dog walker / barista / glamour model in order to afford the insane mortgages. How do you find time to read, even if you're smart? The entire region seems in on some sort of a scam. How is this "real"?
Ultimately, compared to Seattle, Vancouver is an airhead. She's too stupid to be a post-doc. It's no accident that BC's most famous native is Pamela Anderson. Come to think of it, I should apologise to Pammy, who actually does a great deal for the protection of animals and their habitat. However, because Pammy actually works for a living, she lives far away in California, naturally. Vancouverites don't do any real work; they just aspire to flip real estate.
01 May 2012
