december 18 etc
So I'm meeting a buddy of mine for breakfast tomorrow morning and earlier today he recommended that we go to a place that based on his words and tone miiiiight be a little bit sketch:
A real adventure would be Bon's off Broadway
$3 breakfast
I hear the tables are sticky lol
Then he sent a pic and I got really excited about going for reasons that will be obvious if you have known me for more than fifteen minutes:
Like, not only does this look like a place that serves you $3 breakfast on sticky tables, it looks glorious.
Yesterday I outed myself as a Vancouver hater while also suggesting that I was open to having my mind changed. Places like what I think Bon's go a long way towards establishing a city's soul.
When I moved to Montreal in the late 1990s, Greenspot (which we called the G Spot because of course we did) was a place like that. It was charming but not fancy, friendly but not obsequious, and reliably inexpensive. For 18- and 19-year-old college kids, it was a great place to go for breakfast and brunch while also serving as cheap place to pre-game and/or post-game and/or drink enough coffee to turn your heart into a grenade with the pin pulled for like $1.25. And, when the great ice storm of 1998 happened and everything in Montreal closed down, the G Spot stayed open by way of generators that left a lingering greenish gray mist in the air. We didn't care. We were young and beautiful and indestructible.
Greenspot was immediately comfortable for me. It reminded me of the Greek diner in the plaza near my first high school that we used to frequent to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes instead of going to class. It also reminded me of a legendary Scarborough spot called the Amazing Ted's which you have undoubtedly seen in shows and movies like Reacher, The Handmaid's Tale, Orphan Black, American Gods, and Pushing Tin.
For the Torontonians, I feel like Bon's is going to feel like a cross between Billy's, the greasy spoon/breakfast spot at Bloor/Dovercourt and Sneaky Dee's, which I have never loved as much as most Torontonians. It's not that I hate Sneaks, where I have seen a ton of good shows and last call-ed more than a few times, it's just that putting lettuce on nachos is a war crime and I will always, always hold it down for the nachos at Bryden's.
At any rate it is 11:46pm PT and I have to up early to attend a meeting that is at a normal time (9am)in my actual time zone but which will start at 6am in the time zone I am currently in.
Vancouver places I visited, patronized, or otherwise enjoyed today:
Chinatown BBQ: Incredible spot. The food, service, and decor was on point and the vibes were immaculate.
Breeze Bar: Located inside Twisted Fork, a breakfast/brunch place with an impressive menu, Breeze boasts a fantastic wine list (I'm sober but I wasn't always sober and 25+ years of wine knowledge and related snobbery doesn't just go away), an excellent service staff, and a cosy kind of cool that reminds me of the late 1990s.
More tomorrow. Maybe.
🌲 gonna
🌼 go
🌱 touch to
🌳 grass sleep
🌷 now
Be good to yourself.
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