Gastown

Last weekend began as a culinary quest and ended with the unexpected purchase of a half-price pre-Black Friday Christmas tree. Plus of course, as has been our ritual these past few months, we took our dog Tannah for a walk through a park; Fraser River Park (aka Angus Park). We hadn't been there in ages.

Bakeries are the new black these days in Vancouver. You really can't swing a croissant without hitting a new one every coupla weeks. Late last week I read about a new one close to Gastown, so we hopped a bus to check it out. I actually knew exactly where it was just by the description of its location; Flack Block. I'd done some work in the Woodwards development a while back, and in my discovery of Meat and Bread (sandwich shop) one lunch hour I encountered the restored facade of the heritage building in which Purebread has set up shop. The amount of detail in the Flack Block's arched doorway is quite extraordinary when (if?) one really stops for a moment to appreciate it. Can you imagine what it would cost in today's wages to carve a design like that?

After an unbelievably tough selection process (how to narrow it down to only one item?) we explored a bit of Gastown.

Shouldn't everyone's Christmas list contain at least one item with one's own name on it?

This was the view through one heritage pane of clerestory glazing as viewed from a Gastown vendor.

Isn't this a bit extravagant to be labeled merely as "graffiti"? Although I probably wouldn't want to discover such a tableau on my garage door one Saturday morning. Just saying.

This is what I call "Painting with light".

To me nothing sounds like Christmas like Vince Guaraldi. Sorry Bing.

We even took in a film shoot.

Tannah indulged us in our bakery excursion as long as she got to go for a trot in a park. All parties win!