Past & Future Downtown

Boca with swiss & Mushrooms, fries, water at Mannie's

I end up downtown with Andy & Coach Etheridge. I think we have have flown there somehow, vague memory of feeling really uncertain & unsafe, descending from the east along Central Ave, near the Sunshine Building.

But we're downtown. It's a ghost town, completely deserted and weeds are grown up through cracks. Snow on the ground. Coach Etheridge and I are explaining to Andy about why he doesn't recognize it. This is the OLD downtown, from before he moved here. All of these skyscrapers were torn down, we explain. See here, this is where the Cafe (I think maybe New York Pizza Department) will be. We gesture to an absolutely huge black glass building, which must be 50 stories tall. They tore that down, too, we tell him, pointing to the equally huge building just next to the black one (this one white and stripey like the bank building at Central & San Mateo). We make gestures with out fists like we are swinging hammers, to indicate the past/coming destruction. (The buildings and sky have a very downtown Vancouver feel to them.)

And then down HERE, we continue... The street falls away and there is a long, wide, deep gouge back into the earth, into solid rock, like a massive rock overhang at Mesa Verde. It reaches under where the two skyscrapers stand. We scuttle down the slippery snow covered incline until we can see up under, and there are indeed cliff dwelling ruins up under there. I tell Andy that this is the Mission, point out where a mission church (California style, like off a salsa bottle) is grafted into the native architecture. I tell him how I would go down there and look around, but it's just too dangerous. Brave but smart, that's how I present myself. There are bright strands of plastic in neon colors stretched here and there, indicating the danger and instability.

We enjoy the view for a while, and then it's time to work back up the incline to the surface. It's a bit slippery, and coach Etheridge is wearing dress shoes. Andy and I try to give him a supportive shove up the path. It takes a couple of tries but he figures out a way to get traction.