Recent Stories with tag bc road trip

Every time I visit Victoria BC, it's a different city. A different, yet still completely crazy city. A constantly evolving kind of crazy, so that I am never able to get my bearings, to feel comfortable or oriented, despite a mostly shared culture and language. I've felt more at home in Tokyo than I do in Victoria.

My last visit to Victoria was among the most depressing holidays of my life. We saw a show at a club that shall remain nameless to protect the pathetic, a Stygian hole featuring the musical stylings of the clinically depressed bartender, who sang about his part-time job working in a retirement home in a manner that was neither funny, nor plangent. It was the most horrifying exhibition of talentless narcissism I have ever had the misfortune to witness. I cringed on his behalf, even as I longed for him to slit his wrists on stage, in order to put us all out of his misery.

This visit was better, for the most part. I had a poutine of duck confit over truffle fries at The Office (the fries were tasty enough, but there was too much duck in the confit and the curds were more like half-melted cubes of bland mozzarella), and Hermann's Jazz Club, self-billed as "suitable for ladies without escorts," is a terrific venue.... (more)