Travel

Katherine and I met her cousins in Manhattan for a long weekend in New York City. We had a great time, but I was a bit disappointed that SOHO looks to have lost a lot of the unique clothing boutiques that I remember from six years ago. Now it is mostly an outdoor version of stores you can find in your local mall. However, there are still a number of cool trendy furniture stores.

We went up the Empire State Building, and I am happy to report a total absence of giant apes. Pictures are here.

Stacking rocks is art?
Stacking rocks is a business?

Walking along the seawall at Stanley park, I discovered a number of carefully palanced stacks of rock. I have not been able to find out much about this practice, Katherine has heard that people do it for good luck, others have told me that rock stacks were originally directional markers. Regardless of the origin or purpose, it was a fun surprise to sumble upon these particular stacks of rocks.

Anyone else seen this in other locations? More pictures are in my Stanley Park folder from the trip, scroll down to see the stacks of rock.

One of the less savory aspects of downtown Vancouver is that a block from Gastown, one of Vancouver’s most hyped tourist traps, is an area defined by its missions, needle-exchange programs, and other outreach programs. This includes people passed out on sidewalks, aggresive pick-pockets, and other homeless people.

This area of Vancouver is still safer than most of DC, but it can be a bit unnerving to realize that the person that you just denied a handout too is now following you down the street, this happened on my first trip to Vancouver. A friend of ours ate at one of the downtown cafe’s in Gastown and the waitress asked them to put their camera away as they had already had one stolen purse, and three stolen tips that day.

The drug of choice in the area seems to be Heroin, which at least produces a mostly non-violent addict. In the most recent trip I ran into an aggressive, ultra-hyper, twitchy guy with an unlikely story (even more unlikely than most) and he insisted on showing me that there were no track marks on his arms. Even though from the look of his teeth, he was a crystal-meth addict. He walked with me most of the way back to the hotel, and the twitching was a bit concerning so I kept him talking. He realized that I was not buying his story as I neared my hotel and I was able to duck inside with only the threat violence.

Recognizing that outreach, needle-exchange, and suprevised injection programs do serve the public good, to what extent do these efforts draw additional addicts to certain areas, allow people to continue with self-destructive activities, and perhaps put law-abiding citizens and visitors at increased risk of violent crime? Perhaps the two people with degrees in Public Health could shed some light here.
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The yacht Attessa III was docked in Vancouver’s Coal Harbour during my trip, and yes that is a helicopter perched on the rear of the ship. Attessa III is 205 feet long and ranks as the thirteenth largest yacht in America, and the sixty-ninth largest yacht in the world.

I have been obsessed with super-mega yachts for the past year, there is just something about having a ship capable of a trans-Atlantic passage. There would be no end to my freedom, well other than pirates! I thought that I had at least one of Katherine’s colleagues convinced that we could easily over power the staff and get into International waters with the yacht, but no one else showed up in black pajamas at the appointed time. I guess my argument that we could use the helicopter for a quick getaway if the Canadian Navy got too close wasn’t persuasive enough.

Hollow Man 2 is currently filming in Vancouver, and I got a chance to catch a couple of shots at Waterfront Station. I only have a couple of pictures because watching a movie being filmed is really not much fun at all. I didn’t see any celebrities, but then I can’t identify many celebs anyway.

Eric and Jamie did see James Van Der Beak buying a belt in the Roots on Robson, but we had to move the car before he left the store. So I just took a picture of the happy celeb spotters leaving the store.

After ten days in Vancouver, and this weekend recovering from vacation at home I almost feel ready to be back at work. I did a lot of eating, walking, and reading and according to the scale at home I gained four pounds while I was gone. Apparently I did not do enough walking to account for all of the eating. I took around 275 pictures, and will be trying to pull out some of my favorites over the next week or two. Now that I am back from my self-imposed computer blackout, life can go back to being pointless and bland.

The observation deck of Taipei 101 is finally open! It had not opened on my last trip to Taiwan, so I was interested to see that someone had posted pictures from the top of the building. Although the pictures were taken while the building was under construction, I am sure the view would be pretty similiar if I could actually get to Taipei this summer.

As this is my first official non site update post, I guess this is my new home! The old entries will be imported soon, until they can still be found at randy.amber.org.