The Sunday Best

Wedding Style - Photobooth

I wasn't sure how I felt about photobooths at weddings. But now that I've used one I think I've warmed to them.

Our Apartment

In lieu of style shots, here's the style of our apartment. Also: I've started a blog, Some Munch, where I review every single restaurant I eat in.

More apartment style after the jump.

The Asphalt Between Our Toes

There are a surprising number of cities with museums devoted to torture. I visited two of them this summer, London and Krakow, and while I didn’t head in for a tour I got the gist from the signs outside.

COME WITNESS THE DAWN OF THE PAIN AGE
BLOOD AND GORE AND SPIKES IN HEADS
WE’LL SCARE YOU TIL YOU URINATE. TIL YOU URINATE!!!

I think it was Robert Fulghum who once remarked on the peculiarity of there being so many different and distinct devices for torture. Torture isn’t a complicated process - you inflict pain on someone until they tell you what you want to know. That we should create over the centuries literally hundreds of ways to do this lends itself to one troubling conclusion: when it comes to torture, we like to get innovative.

The only modern equivalent I can think of is women’s shoes.

I know I’m not the first person to notice that women have a tendency to inflict pain on themselves through footwear. Saturday nights have turned into death marches of the damned, roaming packs struggling to move with all the elegance of maimed ostriches. Eventually these poor women are reduced to carrying their shoes and walking - egads - barefoot on urban sidewalks and near toxic dance floors, finally marching determined to the nearest open kiosk and buying the cheapest flip flops they can find.

In Portland I saw pair after pair of shopping buddies passing over more desired items just to get comfortable shoes before they were hobbled permanently by the heels they decided to wear. Why do women go out for a day of city walking in shoes they can barely stand in? Can aesthetics really explain so much?

Men, I’ve always thought, are free from such afflictions. Yes, men wear ugly shoes, horribly ugly shoes, MIND-BOGGLINGLY ugly shoes...shoes that look like poo-coloured clouds with velcro straps. Shoes that take the word “dress” and the word “casual” and force them to do evil, nasty things to each other. Yes, men are not to be trusted to choose their own shoes, but painful? debilitating? These are things men simply will not tolerate.

What men will tolerate are busted ass sandals. Men love busted ass sandals, flip flops so worn they’re practically see-through. Oh I’m sure that when they bought those sandals they represented the height of comfort, if not sartorial good sense. But now...straps falling off, footbed coming away from the sole, they look like the sort of thing a monk wears for penitence. Most of these footwear ruins have reached a point of disintegration where going barefoot would almost be better, which is exactly what some men do in Victoria all year round.

Rain, sleet, snow, or hail - not one of these will stop some British Columbians from freeing their feet and walking sans chaussures. Which is, let’s just admit it, kind of gross. The average city street resembles the inside of a garbage can, and you wouldn’t think of sticking your feet in there. I’d say I don’t understand, except for the fact that I was once, too, one of the barefoot believers. (I should point out that around this same time I could be found wearing pyjama pants outdoors with my hair pulled into two, symmetrical braids.) I had taken up with a crowd of summer camp counsellors, for whom, along with playing guitar and making friendship bracelets, going barefoot was a favourite activity. Being barefoot meant you were at one with the world, while at the same time announcing that even naked you could conquer it. Do I need to mention that during this period I was also writing some very bad poetry?

My barefoot days ended when I left camps and moved onto homecare and teaching. And now when I see adults walking through the streets barefoot I don’t recognize myself in them. Even the ubiquitous Birkenstock, that I once wore for two summers straight until they practically crumbled from underneath me, are now a mystery. Part of me always thinks, I left those behind. Why can’t you?

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Words by Thom Wong

Illustrations by Charlie

Engagement Party

Our sisters threw us an engagement party at the Kerrisdale Lawn Bowling Club.

Sharon and Thomas' European Vacation

New Friends

Wendy B. (http://wendybrandes.com/blog) and Mr. B (Paul Steiger, http://www.propublica.org)

Two of the most interesting people I have ever met. Just an outstanding couple.

Tommy (http://thisisnaive.com)

A must read site for anyone who likes beautiful things, and a wonderfully friendly person.

Steve (http://stylesalvage.blogspot.com)

Susie (http://stylebubble.typepad.com)

Steve and Susie, blogging power couple, lovers of fatty pork, excellent people.

John and Isobel (http://www.seventysomethings.blogspot.com)

We spent more time with Isobel than anyone else during the trip, a strange fact when you consider that we hadn't even written or spoken to her before arriving. We basically moved into their apartment, and if we didn't have to leave we probably would have set up camp on their deck.

Eliza (http://stylesalvage.blogspot.com) and Rob

Adopted us for the wayward children we are when we looked for the cheapest flight home (from Manchester), then did it again when we missed that flight.

Gondry, Us

He's still doing them, but only as part of a DVD package deal for $99.95. (Ours was a total steal at $19.95.

Is this waterproof?

(Don't have time to read this article? Download the audio version.)

Is this waterproof? (mp3)

Journey into retail's heart of darkness.

When I was seventeen I worked for about six months at Gap. It hadn’t been my intention, but the girl I was seeing at the time applied and in the way these things happen I applied as well. She ended up taking a job at a much cooler music store and I ended up folding sweaters with a plastic board all summer.

I don’t know how Gap works now, but back then you were given one hour stints in each of the store’s sections. By far the worst position was “greeter”, where you stood unmoving at the front of the store and welcomed people coming in, and then thanked them as they left whether they had bought anything or not. (In contrast the best was all the way at the back in the change room, where all you had to do was fold clothes and open doors.) When there were a lot of people both coming and going the routine bordered on farce as you made split second decisions on which was more important, greeting or thanking.

One day we arrived at work to find a new system was in place where they would track the sales we made. There was no commission, and the system was never explained although I guess it was pretty self-explanatory. The problem was that on an average shift you would move around the store seven or eight times, and if luck wasn’t on your side you could end up being in an empty section all day.

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"I’m going on a trip to Australia," the man told me. I smiled at him like you would a small child who had just informed you of his intention to travel to the moon. I couldn’t put together what his trip to Australia and our standing next to oxford button-downs had to do with each other. He walked over to a windbreaker that looked to be made of wax paper. “Is this waterproof?” he asked. I told him that it was water-resistant, and he nodded at my wise choice of words. I didn’t bother pointing out that by that broad definition, the cotton t-shirts were also water-resistant. The jacket went over his arm. Next he walked over to the khakis. “Do you think it will be hot there? I’m going in November.” He seemed to have me confused with one those hale and hearty types who know how to do useful things like start a fire and tie knots.

Even in 1993 Vancouver had several large outdoor retailers, including the now gargantuan Mountain Equipment Coop. I could imagine any number of jackets--and pants, and boots, and multi-coloured straps--that could help this man in his pursuit to confront, and then conquer, nature. But I guess he didn’t know about those places and had wandered into the first store he recognized. Gap, I could hear him thinking, they sell clothes. I’ll find what I need there. I wanted to set him straight, but I also wanted to meet my arbitrary sales quota. I could see Rob out of the corner of my eye, selling up a storm to some teenage girls. “Perhaps you need a day bag?” I found myself saying. “Hey,” he said, “now there’s an idea.”

All of this was about a year before Reality Bites and Saturday Night Live would make Gap a running gag. As for “just cinch it”, I can tell you unequivocally that many a pant was sold with the assurance that a belt would improve the fit. (I once sold a pair of 38x36 jeans to a beanpole of a guy fully two inches shorter than me. You can cut the legs and fray them in the wash, I told him. That’s exactly what I was thinking, he said.)

I started work at Gap style-impaired, and I finished not much better. Even adjusting for the tastes of the time, that leaned towards Mondetta sweatshirts and Reebok Pumps, my outfits were a disaster. Still a ways off from the grunge style that would sustain me for the next three years, I dressed mainly in Eddie Bauer, middle America banality - rugby shirts, denim shirts over jeans, t-shirts with random faded dates printed on the front. I dressed like someone who had only heard about outfits from people in a foreign language and then tried to duplicate them with different clothes.

 

The end came rather suddenly. One day the assistant manager, a blond woman probably the same age I am now, asked if she could speak to me. Sitting in a makeshift office, tucked behind boxes of v-neck sweaters and plain front khakis, she asked me if I liked working at Gap. Oh yes, I assured her. Because, she said, leaning back in her chair, some people have heard you make disparaging remarks about it while customers were around. I was shocked. Not because of the accusation that I made disparaging remarks, which was 100% true and probably an hourly occurrence, but that there were “some people” who had ratted me out. Who was it? Rob? Miko? The mouth breather whose name I could never remember? Was he the one? Thomas, she said, please tell us if there’s something bothering you about working here. We want all our employees to be happy. She said this as if there was something I could say that would lead to a significant change, like I would come to work tomorrow and we’d be selling Nintendos or gathered around a giant swimming pool that had materialized in the centre of the store. Instead I said no, there’s nothing. I must have been having a bad day, I said, parroting a line I’d heard on TV that seemed to fit the occasion.

The next day when I quit they didn’t seem surprised.

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Words by Thom Wong

Illustrations by Sharon Mah

Not me.