Tag: North America

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Trash Talk

In the beginning was the void. The void gave birth to stuff. Stuff gave birth to good stuff and trash. And we threw the trash into the void. Trash gave birth to General Waste, Compostable Waste and Recyclable Waste.

Recyclable gave birth to mixed paper and cardboard. (But not those envelopes with little transparent windows. Nor used pizza boxes.) And Recyclable gave birth to metal, glass and plastics. (But not light bulbs. And certainly not plastic bags, except in some places where you can bundle them all together and put them inside another plastic bag. And probably not margarine tubs. Or least not the lids of margarine tubs.)

Compostable Waste included vegetable peelings and tea bags. (But not paper coffee cups because they are plastic-coated except for those ones which are compostable.)

And even quite intelligent people became confused and decided it was all just Trash.

I’ve been curious for a long time about the different categorisations for wasted used in my hometown of Edinburgh. The City of Edinburgh Council has slightly different ways of dividing up waste depending on whether you are using individual kerbside collections or the large communal bins. (They also periodically revise what is included in each category.) The University of Edinburgh uses different categories from the Council for their in-building waste bins, namely Paper and Cardboard vs. Dry Recycling vs. Other.

This trip has opened my eyes to yet more possibilities.

Waste bins in SFO airport. Items seem to be distributed more or less randomly between the three bins.
Waste bins with illustrative icons in Vancouver International Airport. Stuff mostly ends up in the Trash category.
Waste bins with example items at CIRS, UBC, Vancouver
Waste bins at the Cardboard House Bakery, Hornby Island, BC. Rightmost bin is for pizza boxes.
Redemption centre for recycling in Vanderbilt Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. Providing a cash incentive for different categories of trash probably works really well.
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Unceded territory

We are staying a few days at a hotel: Kingfisher Oceanside Resort and Spa near the small town of Comox on Vancouver Island. Like much of the Pacific North West Coast, this area is known as unceded territory. It is a notion with many complexities, but broadly speaking, it arises from the fact that in many parts of Canada, the British Crown authorities failed to agree land treaties with indigenous peoples. As a result, the First Nations consider that their traditional rights to the lands and natural resources have the same legitimacy as they had before the coming of European settlers. And in this spirit, we respectfully acknowledge that we are currently standing on the Unceded traditional territory of the K’òmoks First Nation.

The hard reality is that the coast here is heavily occupied with suburban houses set in woodland gardens. The grounds of the Kingfisher Resort are carefully manicured, replete with flowering shrubs, water features and (largely decorative) fire pits. And yet. Step down to the shoreline and you are in different, strangely magical world, a limininal space that is under the dominion of the tides.

Yesterday, we decided to defy the proposition that the only options for lunch were the Kingfisher Aqua bistro or getting into a car (which we haven’t got). We started by clambering over the rocky shoreline, inspired by a sign which claimed (over-optimisticly) that there was 1km footway to the nearby hamlet of Gartley. Along the way, we encountered myriads of tiny crabs that scuttled away in panic as we approached.

Lunch at Roy’s Towne Pub

Once we reached Gartley, we asked directions for Royston, which according to the map appeared to have a small store and a pub that served food. Our informant was somewhat incredulous when we volunteered that we planned to walk there, but pointed us in the right direction. After a rapid and nervous 10min promenade along the edge of Island Highway South, accompanied by fast-moving 4x4s and biker posses, and negotiating a narrow bridge over the Trent River, we ended up at Roy’s Towne Pub. This turned out to have a charming, sunlit patio and an imaginative menu that vastly exceeded our expectations.


For our return journey, we ventured back to the shore in the hope that we could avoid the highway. We clambered over more rocky inclines that opened out to the broad estuary of the Trent, the sea still far out in the distance. We skirted huge, ornately weathered pine logs washed up against the sand and shingle. We gingerly waded across the weed-strewn shallows of the Trent debouching into the bay, hoping that no menaces were lurking hidden under the green fronds. Triumphantly across the river, we soon realised that we had only crossed one of several outlet streams, and paddled a few more times through tepid, weedy streams. Despite finding a small path through the grasses that ran close to the treeline, it was still unclear where we were or how many obstacles were still to be traversed. When we eventually returned to leafy paved road, we realised that we had spent over an hour circuitously covering the same as-the-raven-flies distance as our earlier 10 min trot along the highway.

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Avocados with a view

Most days, we have lunch on our balcony, and it usually includes avocados. Not from Mexico (where much of its production is apparently controlled by a drug cartel) or from California (where they drain water from an already dried-out soil). Our avocados come from, uhm…

Anyway, we love avocados. We eat them mindfully, to make up for the fact that we probably shouldn’t.

Two very hard avocados have been sitting on the round table on our balcony deck for five days. They are meant to ripen, and the sun has done its best, as has the company of bananas. None of it works: they are not yielding.

Today, a possible explanation occurred to us. Just look at the view. The Vancouver skyline to the right. The mountains opposite, majestic and assured (if you look west you can still see some snow). The river (or is it a firth, or an ocean estuary?) peacefully lapping away, only disturbed occasionally by a heron slightly adjusting its position, or a gull diving for a fish. Two or three old-fashioned cargo boats that have thrown out their anchor and are sitting dreamily on the water.

These avocados just want to contemplate the view for as long as they can. And who can blame them?

But for one avocado, the strategy backfires when a crow in one experienced swoop disfigures it with a few furious pokes.

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Beyond Bread

The weather app on my phone lets me select “favourite” locations for weather forecasts. At the moment, it looks like this:

It’s currently 16C in Vancouver and over the next few days, all my “favourite” places (including Edinburgh) are predicting significantly warmer weather than where we are.

We are comforting ourselves by going for early morning coffee in Beyond Bread, which has become our favourite go-to place on West 4th Avenue, less than 10 minutes stroll from our temporary home on Point Grey Road.

Indulgent breakfast in Beyond Bread

Macchiato, single-shot-cappucino with fresh cashew nut milk, plain croissant and monkey bread (“cinnamon orange pull-apart croissant”). Who cares about the weather anyhow?

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Bike city

Vancouver is cool, for many reasons.

One of them is the way the city celebrates movement. Whichever way we look, we see people walking, rollerblading, skateboarding, swimming, playing volleyball, doing handstands…

Most of all, Vancouver loves its cyclists. They have been given wide, safe paths. Over and over, cyclists are invited in where other vehicles are told to keep out. Cycling in Vancouver feels good, deliciously good, not in the least because you (or your bike) feel so welcome.

The area we are staying in is called Kitsilano. It used to be a hippy hang-out; now it’s become urban professional territory that oozes a relaxed air. It is bordered by a seemingly endless waterfront dotted with small parks and beaches. Cycling along the sea, as we do pretty much every day, we fantasize about living here. In our imagination, it’s always summer.

Kitsilano has the longest open-air swimming pool we’ve ever seen: 140m, 25 degrees, salt water.

Vancouver aims to be the greenest city in the world by 2020.

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Down-and-out downtown

We visited Vancouver downtown today. Managed to figure out where the buses ran, accumulated 2 x $2.85 CAD in change, and took the 30 min ride over Granville Bridge to Gastown, a popular tourist destination within the city.

Overall, probably fair to say that we were a little underwhelmed, although Gastown does boast some cool clothes boutiques, hipster bars and heavily used bike paths. Despite the fact that it won’t officially be legalised in Canada until October this year, marijuana was also much in evidence, and we passed a number of retail outlets for this recreational drug.

The most distressing aspect of the city was the number of homeless people on the streets. Some of them withdrawn into doorways, others gathering together on the sidewalk, but overall a palpable sense of distress and affliction. As in many places, lack of affordable housing seems to be a key driver in the steadily increasing number of citizens who are down and out on the streets.

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Walking with Sea Wolves

Point Lobos is one of our favourite places in the vicinity of Santa Cruz, and one that we’ve visited on several occasions. The name comes from a rocky outcrop where the sound of “sea wolves” (sea lions) carries inland.

By happy coincidence, we arrived in time for a guided walk by a wonderfully knowledgable expat Brit, Peter Fletcher. We would never have guessed that a untidy heap of branches and foliage in the coastal scrub was the residence of a dusky-footed woodrat. Or that the red rust covering branches of Monterey cypresses by the coast was a rare form of algae called Trentepohlia that only thrives in areas where the air is extremely pure and unpolluted.

Peter pointed out that the Monterey cypress casts a lot of shade, and we could confirm that they were also pretty effective in blocking out the very weak sunlight on a misty, driech day. So we shivered. But it was worth it.

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Walking: Not a Mode of Transportation

We are staying in a quiet, leafy street pretty close to what counts as “downtown” in Santa Cruz — Pacific Avenue plus a couple of parallel roads. We’ve developed the habit of walking downtown in the morning to grab a first-thing coffee, and it’s about 20 mins each way. Although there’s a bit of a hill on the way in, the walk is hardly taxing, and apart from when we cross Mission, there’s very little road traffic. But here’s the thing: there is very little pedestrian traffic either. Actually, that’s understating it — most mornings, we see literally no people on the sidewalks. It’s a bit like being in a zombie apocalypse movie. Usually there’s more walking action along Pacific Avenue during the day, and it can get pretty busy at weekends, but before 8:00 am it was pretty quiet too. All in all, a big contrast with Edinburgh.

Pacific Avenue, Santa Cruz

We expressed our puzzlement about the lack of pedestrians to our friend Line (a Dane who studied in Edinburgh and is now firmly rooted in Berkeley). She summed up the situation neatly: for Californians, walking is not a mode of transportation. The other side of the coin? Driving and parking is super-easy across the whole of Santa Cruz.

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One day in New York

One day only. We are predictable and take train no. 7 (Express) to Manhattan.

Our destination is MoMA, an undisputed highlight. But MoMA doesn’t open until 10:30 and, being jetlagged, we’re early. That almost never happens.

To fill up the time, we take a stroll in Central Park. We’re struck by how well-cared for it is, and chat to a friendly, open-faced woman who is part of a group of volunteers busy trimming and tidying. After a while, we pause on a bench near the pond. We feel contented. All is well with the world.

The robed Buddhist monk who approaches us with a smile increases our sense of peace. He strikes up a conversation of a kind; his English is a basic but he does manage to tell us he is from Taiwan. We want to tell him about our own connection with Buddhism, but out of the blue, he takes hold of my arm, then Ewan’s, and slips a wooden-beaded bracelet on each of our wrists, muttering ‘gift, gift’.

We are perplexed; we are not in need of a bracelet (as we are trying to shed rather than acquire stuff). A little tussle ensues (‘no, no, thanks, thanks’ – ‘yes, yes’) which he wins, and as we surrender (remembering that loving kindness is one of the heavenly abodes), he shoves a lined page with names and amounts (ranging from $ 20 to $ 100) onto my lap. The message is clear: look what others give, you must do the same.

Our feeling of harmony has been replaced edgy sense of feeling manipulated – something we don’t respond well too. I feel a little dazed and confused as the smiling monk puts a pencil in my hand and gestures pointedly.

Our friendship with the monk is short and not very sweet, and all three of us know it. To put a stop to it, Ewan reluctantly digs up a $20 note, asking for $10 change. The monk hastily throws us five dollars and turns away. We watch him go, marveling at being such easy prey.

A small illusion poorer, we head for MoMA, which restores our spirits within minutes.

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Elmhurst

We took the heroic route from Newark Liberty International Airport to our Airbnb apartment in Queens. Eschewing Uber and disregarding Google’s recommendation of taking an express coach, we waited patiently for an NJ Transit train that would take us to Penn Station. Once in Manhattan, we faffed around for a while trying to figure out whether the 7 was a bus or a subway, and were rescued by a helpful native who pointed us to the subway station around the block. (No, not where Google said it was. Bad Google.) Followed by lots more faffing while we tried to rack our brains and memories about how subway tickets worked, and why the Metrocard machine wouldn’t take our bank cards. After some more mishaps in finding the right platform, we were eventually aboard the 7 Flushing subway line. (NYC subway lines have their own Wikipedia entries. Who knew?) Turned out to be the 7 Flushing Express, rather than the 7 Flushing Local. So we overshot our station, and then immediately took incoming Local train one stop back towards Manhattan.

Apart from that initial total disorientation that descends when you exit a station for the first time and have no idea which point of the compass you are facing (thanks again, Google. Not.), we eventually found our way to the apartment block that contained the apartment that contained our “Spacious, Peaceful” Airbnb room. There we were greeted by monolingual Spanish Agustina, large dog and two cats. We did our best to make friends with all four.

Feeling frazzled from a long day’s travel, we ventured out at 4-ish looking for a small bite. Vietnamese sandwich sounded good, but the place we had identified didn’t feel right. So we backtracked a few stores to the Lao Bei Fang Dumpling House, which somehow called to us. Cheap, cheerful, and pretty full with Asian customers, despite the early hour. We both had enormous bowls of spicy noodle soup, chockfull with vegetables, some familiar, some like lotus root, not so much.

Replenished, we walked a big circuit that took us back towards, Roosevelt Avenue, the bustling commercial centre of Elmhurst. It’s narrow, it’s crowded, it’s full of life and colourful lights. Above it runs the 7 Flushing viaduct. Every two minutes, a train rushes through in one direction or the other, almost drowning out every other sound. But the locals seem to be impervious.

Spiritual Advice

Why we liked Elmhurst? Just consider the demographics: 44% Asian, 48% Latino, 6% Anglo.