ChadSang
03-05-2007, 01:29 PM
Chapter 13
Escape From the East Coast
Well, Jon arrived right on time to take me on another adventure. As usual, he wouldn’t tell me where we were going. We went to the airport and caught a place to Atlanta. Had to change planes there and catch another plane to Seattle. Then, we caught another plane and arrived in Vancouver BC.
OMG, Vancouver is such a beautiful city and has some awesome views. It was about dinner time so Jon and I went to a restaurant that was one of Jon’s favorite. I swear that man knows so many people everywhere we ever went. Dude must spend the other 50 weeks in a year traveling all over everywhere. He told me once that we would really go to some awesome place when I was old enough. I asked him what is old enough and he replied, “When you’re 16.” I was thinking oh shit, that’s 2 and a half years from now.
The restaurant we went to was a French dining establishment. When the server brought us the menus I was totally lost cuz it was in French. Jon spoke fluent French so he said he would order for me. Our appetizer finally arrived. It was escargot…something I had never eaten. I was a bit squeamish but Jon insisted that I would like em if I would just taste one. So, I did and OMG, they were delicious. Next came the main course. I had no idea what it was, so Jon said it was rabbit. That’s OK cuz I had eaten rabbit before.
After dinner, we took a stroll down along the waterfront. From what I saw of Vancouver, I still say it is an awesome city. We finally arrived back at the hotel around 10:00 PM.
Jon spent some time telling me about Vancouver. Vancouver is a city in south-western British Columbia, Canada. The city is named after Captain George Vancouver, an English explorer. The City of Vancouver has a population of 587,891, while its metropolitan region, the Greater Vancouver Regional District has a population of 2,180,737 (2006 estimate). Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area in western Canada and the third largest in the country. Vancouver has an ethnically diverse population: more than half of its residents have a first language other than English. The city is growing rapidly, and the metropolitan population is projected to reach 2.6 million by 2020. A resident of Vancouver is called a "Vancouverite".
Vancouver is located between the Strait of Georgia and the Coast Mountains. Its economy has traditionally relied on British Columbia's resource sectors: forestry, mining, fishing and agriculture. It was first settled in the 1860s as a result of immigration caused by the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, and developed rapidly from a small lumber mill town into a metropolitan center following the arrival of the transcontinental railway in 1887. The Port of Vancouver became internationally significant after the completion of the Panama Canal, which reduced freight rates in the 1920s and made it viable to ship export-bound prairie grain west through Vancouver. It has since become the busiest seaport in Canada, and exports more cargo than any other port in North America. The economy of Vancouver has diversified over time, however. Vancouver has a growing tourism industry, for example, and has become the third-largest film production center in North America, after Los Angeles and New York City, earning it the nickname Hollywood North… Wilmington, North Carolina’s movie industry used to be the third, but since Canada started giving all sorts of incentives to movie productions, like a tax break and other ones. More recently, Vancouver has had an expansion in high-tech industries; most notably video game design…Vancouver is consistently ranked one of the three most livable cities in the world. In 2006, it was ranked the 56th most expensive city in which to live among 144 major cities in the world, and the second most expensive in Canada. The 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver and nearby Whistler.
The next morning Jon woke me too damn early. He ordered breakfast through room service. It finally arrived and was quite a spread. All sorts of the yummies were on the cart. I ate until I couldn't‘t eat any more.
Jon said he was going to rent a car and take me farther north in British Columbia, so I could really see some awesome scenery. We went as far as Prince George. I was so impressed with the things we saw. Made a short stop at Williams Lake and then on to Prince George. We arrived back at our hotel in Vancouver very late. Jon ordered from room service. After we ate, Jon spent about two hours with my vampire education. We had been concentrating on the art of manipulation and also about signatures people give off. I was so sleepy when he finished around 1:00 AM, that I fell asleep quickly
One night, after dinner, Jon took me out to meet some other vampires. This was the first time he had done this and the reason he gave me was that I wasn’t ready to meet others until I had learned some important things. We went down to the cargo port and inside one of the buildings. There were about 20 people there - vampires and donors. Yummy, blood is the deal. Up til now, since I met Jon, I only fed from on our trips. Back home I had two consistent donors who were cutters. I really had a good time that night, because after all, I had not met any other vampires with the exception of Jon.
Vancouver had a starring role in the Blade: Trinity film. The rain slick streets, the dark canyons of office towers, its bright lights, vamp city. "Made in Vancouver" has often come to symbolize cheap, B-movie science fiction. But ironically Blade makes the city look rather good. Shot in cool blues and on dark rainy nights, Vancouver looks like a perfect home for vampires.
Vancouver has so many ideal locations for them, how could they not love it there? There's already an infestation of Eurotrash vamps, with their Gucci heels and strange hairdos stalking Robson Street, sitting wanly in cafés, leaving Chanel lipstick stains on their coffee cups. Or the younger skatepunks who hang out at the skytrain stations, accosting women and eating babies. The decaying Plaza of Nations, with its peeling paint makes a lovely home for those who shun the sunlight. There isn't all that much sunlight to worry about anyway; this is the rain forest after all. Welcome to Vancouver, Super Unnatural.
If you haven't seen the first two Blade films, I'll set it up for you. Blade (played by Wesley Snipes) is the half-human/half-vampire daywalker, a dark hero whose life's profession is stalker of sanguine suckers. He hates vampires, kills them on contact, helped by his gimpy old pal Whistler (Kris Kristofferson). In this third and final installment, the vampy ones are again plotting to get some rays and take over the world. Seems they've been flying around in their black helicopters (no old bats allowed) looking for Dracula to set them back on the path to righteousness. The humans meanwhile have also hatched a master plan to kill all bloodsuckers with the help of anti-vamp virus. So who will win? There's no question of that.
Blade makes no bones about being a B-movie and that is one of its saving graces. It's kind of silly, goes on too long, and doesn't make a great deal of sense, but there are a few moments that entertain. It has more style than it knows what to do with. The vamps are fashionably pale and super bitchy, but they seem too limp to do much damage to anyone, even the original Dracula (that's Drake to you) stalks around wearing a puffy pirate shirt, and so many silver chains around his thick neck, that he looks like a wannabe soap star or a Russian gangster. Even when he reverts to his original hideous form, something like a crab with scales and armor, his leather pants stay on!
These Nosfera-tutus are not the scariest bunch, but at least the camp factor is cranked high. Parker Posey in particular makes a pitch-perfect predator. (Say that 10 times really fast.) She's always looked slightly undead, and here talking around a mouth full of sharp teeth, she has finally come into her own. She's way more lively than Wesley Snipes who stares grimly into space and does King Fu Elvis moves. If you set a pair of sunglasses on the business end of a bowie knife, you'd get the same effect. His function is to look menacing and not much else. The job of injecting some life into this creature feature falls to Ryan Reynolds (Hannibal King) and bless his little heart, he does his utmost to make some fun happen. He's more Van Wilder than Van Helsing, which is OK. He gets the best lines in the film and has abs you could cut yourself on.
In the recent months, the super heroes of The Fantastic Four, more vampires and werewolves from Underworld 2, and the wizards of Earthsea have all called Vancouver home. But they are just are just the most recent visitors. The number of science fiction films and series shot here is legion. Vancouver’s the city of the future fantastique. So what makes Vancouver such a good location to set a dystopian future? Perhaps because Vancouver can stand in for almost any other North American city or it can be no city at all. Its very innocuousness makes it a perfect undisclosed location, like those other fake metropoli, Gotham or Shelbyville. But unlike other fictional cities, it's always a bit of a shock to be jolted out of cinema reality by the sight of the Bay, (the store, not the body of water.)
Even more distracting are famous Vancouver landmarks getting their architectural asses kicked. Like other past science fiction, Blade devotes a great deal of time to destroying Vancouver architecture. It doesn't compare to 1975's Russian Roulette, the George Segal vehicle that featured a shoot out on the top of the Hotel Vancouver. Yowza! The Marine Building in particular is hit hard, but this is nothing of course in comparison to Arnold Schwarzenegger blowing up the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. We've been used and abused by Hollywood but we still come begging for more. Foreign films, namely U.S. productions, represent an enormous amount of money to the B.C. economy; some estimated $1.4 billion dollars. The threat of losing that chunk of change is always hanging over our heads.
The BC Film Commission recently issued a press release ringing the warning bells. "The rising Canadian dollar and competition from other filming locations have put us at risk of losing our foothold as a preferred destination for production. The primary concern is that jobs and infrastructure are at stake." Coupled with the growing threat from Eastern European locations (cheaper and more vodka) and the rising cost of teamsters, Hollywood North may soon be out in the cold. Undead and not loving it. Whether this is actually a good thing or a bad one, depends on where your pay check comes from. People employed in the industry have a vested interest in keeping film production in situ. But suckling at the sagging American tit may keep the Vancouver film industry in a perpetual state of dependency and some might say infancy as well. Not having to suck up to Hollywood might be the best thing that could happen to Vancouver.
Jon and I took a few more sightseeing trips while we were in Vancouver for the two weeks. Then the day arrived that we had to head back to North Carolina because school started the day after Labor Day.
A bit of this is getting ahead of myself, but I’ll go ahead and list the school activities I was involved in during high school. The numbers after the activities denote the year in high school. For example being a freshman was 1; sophomore, 2; junior, 3; and senior, 4.
Basketball Manager, 1; Football and Basketball trainer, 2; Monogram Club, 3, 4; Science Club 3, 4; Boys Club 3, 4: Latin Club 4, Officer 4; French Club 4; Library Club 2, 3, 4; FTA 4, Officer 4; Class Officer 2; Senior Superlative 4; School Plays 1, 2, 3, 4; Yearbook Staff; 2, 3, 4; Newspaper Staff 2, 3, 4; Safe Driving Rodeo 3; Typing Contest 3; Biology Award 2; Geometry Award 4; Valedictorian 4. With all of the school activities I was involved in, I still kept an A average in all subjects I took.
Vancouver Photos, left to right:
1. Bridge in morning's mist
2. Cargo Port (where Jon introduced me to other vampires)
3. Entrance to False Creek
4. Lighthouse Park - Point Atkinson
5. Vancouver skyline
Escape From the East Coast
Well, Jon arrived right on time to take me on another adventure. As usual, he wouldn’t tell me where we were going. We went to the airport and caught a place to Atlanta. Had to change planes there and catch another plane to Seattle. Then, we caught another plane and arrived in Vancouver BC.
OMG, Vancouver is such a beautiful city and has some awesome views. It was about dinner time so Jon and I went to a restaurant that was one of Jon’s favorite. I swear that man knows so many people everywhere we ever went. Dude must spend the other 50 weeks in a year traveling all over everywhere. He told me once that we would really go to some awesome place when I was old enough. I asked him what is old enough and he replied, “When you’re 16.” I was thinking oh shit, that’s 2 and a half years from now.
The restaurant we went to was a French dining establishment. When the server brought us the menus I was totally lost cuz it was in French. Jon spoke fluent French so he said he would order for me. Our appetizer finally arrived. It was escargot…something I had never eaten. I was a bit squeamish but Jon insisted that I would like em if I would just taste one. So, I did and OMG, they were delicious. Next came the main course. I had no idea what it was, so Jon said it was rabbit. That’s OK cuz I had eaten rabbit before.
After dinner, we took a stroll down along the waterfront. From what I saw of Vancouver, I still say it is an awesome city. We finally arrived back at the hotel around 10:00 PM.
Jon spent some time telling me about Vancouver. Vancouver is a city in south-western British Columbia, Canada. The city is named after Captain George Vancouver, an English explorer. The City of Vancouver has a population of 587,891, while its metropolitan region, the Greater Vancouver Regional District has a population of 2,180,737 (2006 estimate). Vancouver is the largest metropolitan area in western Canada and the third largest in the country. Vancouver has an ethnically diverse population: more than half of its residents have a first language other than English. The city is growing rapidly, and the metropolitan population is projected to reach 2.6 million by 2020. A resident of Vancouver is called a "Vancouverite".
Vancouver is located between the Strait of Georgia and the Coast Mountains. Its economy has traditionally relied on British Columbia's resource sectors: forestry, mining, fishing and agriculture. It was first settled in the 1860s as a result of immigration caused by the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, and developed rapidly from a small lumber mill town into a metropolitan center following the arrival of the transcontinental railway in 1887. The Port of Vancouver became internationally significant after the completion of the Panama Canal, which reduced freight rates in the 1920s and made it viable to ship export-bound prairie grain west through Vancouver. It has since become the busiest seaport in Canada, and exports more cargo than any other port in North America. The economy of Vancouver has diversified over time, however. Vancouver has a growing tourism industry, for example, and has become the third-largest film production center in North America, after Los Angeles and New York City, earning it the nickname Hollywood North… Wilmington, North Carolina’s movie industry used to be the third, but since Canada started giving all sorts of incentives to movie productions, like a tax break and other ones. More recently, Vancouver has had an expansion in high-tech industries; most notably video game design…Vancouver is consistently ranked one of the three most livable cities in the world. In 2006, it was ranked the 56th most expensive city in which to live among 144 major cities in the world, and the second most expensive in Canada. The 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver and nearby Whistler.
The next morning Jon woke me too damn early. He ordered breakfast through room service. It finally arrived and was quite a spread. All sorts of the yummies were on the cart. I ate until I couldn't‘t eat any more.
Jon said he was going to rent a car and take me farther north in British Columbia, so I could really see some awesome scenery. We went as far as Prince George. I was so impressed with the things we saw. Made a short stop at Williams Lake and then on to Prince George. We arrived back at our hotel in Vancouver very late. Jon ordered from room service. After we ate, Jon spent about two hours with my vampire education. We had been concentrating on the art of manipulation and also about signatures people give off. I was so sleepy when he finished around 1:00 AM, that I fell asleep quickly
One night, after dinner, Jon took me out to meet some other vampires. This was the first time he had done this and the reason he gave me was that I wasn’t ready to meet others until I had learned some important things. We went down to the cargo port and inside one of the buildings. There were about 20 people there - vampires and donors. Yummy, blood is the deal. Up til now, since I met Jon, I only fed from on our trips. Back home I had two consistent donors who were cutters. I really had a good time that night, because after all, I had not met any other vampires with the exception of Jon.
Vancouver had a starring role in the Blade: Trinity film. The rain slick streets, the dark canyons of office towers, its bright lights, vamp city. "Made in Vancouver" has often come to symbolize cheap, B-movie science fiction. But ironically Blade makes the city look rather good. Shot in cool blues and on dark rainy nights, Vancouver looks like a perfect home for vampires.
Vancouver has so many ideal locations for them, how could they not love it there? There's already an infestation of Eurotrash vamps, with their Gucci heels and strange hairdos stalking Robson Street, sitting wanly in cafés, leaving Chanel lipstick stains on their coffee cups. Or the younger skatepunks who hang out at the skytrain stations, accosting women and eating babies. The decaying Plaza of Nations, with its peeling paint makes a lovely home for those who shun the sunlight. There isn't all that much sunlight to worry about anyway; this is the rain forest after all. Welcome to Vancouver, Super Unnatural.
If you haven't seen the first two Blade films, I'll set it up for you. Blade (played by Wesley Snipes) is the half-human/half-vampire daywalker, a dark hero whose life's profession is stalker of sanguine suckers. He hates vampires, kills them on contact, helped by his gimpy old pal Whistler (Kris Kristofferson). In this third and final installment, the vampy ones are again plotting to get some rays and take over the world. Seems they've been flying around in their black helicopters (no old bats allowed) looking for Dracula to set them back on the path to righteousness. The humans meanwhile have also hatched a master plan to kill all bloodsuckers with the help of anti-vamp virus. So who will win? There's no question of that.
Blade makes no bones about being a B-movie and that is one of its saving graces. It's kind of silly, goes on too long, and doesn't make a great deal of sense, but there are a few moments that entertain. It has more style than it knows what to do with. The vamps are fashionably pale and super bitchy, but they seem too limp to do much damage to anyone, even the original Dracula (that's Drake to you) stalks around wearing a puffy pirate shirt, and so many silver chains around his thick neck, that he looks like a wannabe soap star or a Russian gangster. Even when he reverts to his original hideous form, something like a crab with scales and armor, his leather pants stay on!
These Nosfera-tutus are not the scariest bunch, but at least the camp factor is cranked high. Parker Posey in particular makes a pitch-perfect predator. (Say that 10 times really fast.) She's always looked slightly undead, and here talking around a mouth full of sharp teeth, she has finally come into her own. She's way more lively than Wesley Snipes who stares grimly into space and does King Fu Elvis moves. If you set a pair of sunglasses on the business end of a bowie knife, you'd get the same effect. His function is to look menacing and not much else. The job of injecting some life into this creature feature falls to Ryan Reynolds (Hannibal King) and bless his little heart, he does his utmost to make some fun happen. He's more Van Wilder than Van Helsing, which is OK. He gets the best lines in the film and has abs you could cut yourself on.
In the recent months, the super heroes of The Fantastic Four, more vampires and werewolves from Underworld 2, and the wizards of Earthsea have all called Vancouver home. But they are just are just the most recent visitors. The number of science fiction films and series shot here is legion. Vancouver’s the city of the future fantastique. So what makes Vancouver such a good location to set a dystopian future? Perhaps because Vancouver can stand in for almost any other North American city or it can be no city at all. Its very innocuousness makes it a perfect undisclosed location, like those other fake metropoli, Gotham or Shelbyville. But unlike other fictional cities, it's always a bit of a shock to be jolted out of cinema reality by the sight of the Bay, (the store, not the body of water.)
Even more distracting are famous Vancouver landmarks getting their architectural asses kicked. Like other past science fiction, Blade devotes a great deal of time to destroying Vancouver architecture. It doesn't compare to 1975's Russian Roulette, the George Segal vehicle that featured a shoot out on the top of the Hotel Vancouver. Yowza! The Marine Building in particular is hit hard, but this is nothing of course in comparison to Arnold Schwarzenegger blowing up the main branch of the Vancouver Public Library. We've been used and abused by Hollywood but we still come begging for more. Foreign films, namely U.S. productions, represent an enormous amount of money to the B.C. economy; some estimated $1.4 billion dollars. The threat of losing that chunk of change is always hanging over our heads.
The BC Film Commission recently issued a press release ringing the warning bells. "The rising Canadian dollar and competition from other filming locations have put us at risk of losing our foothold as a preferred destination for production. The primary concern is that jobs and infrastructure are at stake." Coupled with the growing threat from Eastern European locations (cheaper and more vodka) and the rising cost of teamsters, Hollywood North may soon be out in the cold. Undead and not loving it. Whether this is actually a good thing or a bad one, depends on where your pay check comes from. People employed in the industry have a vested interest in keeping film production in situ. But suckling at the sagging American tit may keep the Vancouver film industry in a perpetual state of dependency and some might say infancy as well. Not having to suck up to Hollywood might be the best thing that could happen to Vancouver.
Jon and I took a few more sightseeing trips while we were in Vancouver for the two weeks. Then the day arrived that we had to head back to North Carolina because school started the day after Labor Day.
A bit of this is getting ahead of myself, but I’ll go ahead and list the school activities I was involved in during high school. The numbers after the activities denote the year in high school. For example being a freshman was 1; sophomore, 2; junior, 3; and senior, 4.
Basketball Manager, 1; Football and Basketball trainer, 2; Monogram Club, 3, 4; Science Club 3, 4; Boys Club 3, 4: Latin Club 4, Officer 4; French Club 4; Library Club 2, 3, 4; FTA 4, Officer 4; Class Officer 2; Senior Superlative 4; School Plays 1, 2, 3, 4; Yearbook Staff; 2, 3, 4; Newspaper Staff 2, 3, 4; Safe Driving Rodeo 3; Typing Contest 3; Biology Award 2; Geometry Award 4; Valedictorian 4. With all of the school activities I was involved in, I still kept an A average in all subjects I took.
Vancouver Photos, left to right:
1. Bridge in morning's mist
2. Cargo Port (where Jon introduced me to other vampires)
3. Entrance to False Creek
4. Lighthouse Park - Point Atkinson
5. Vancouver skyline