Places Where I've Lived: Basement Suite 3

I lived near Commercial before it became known as the Drive.  No matter what you call it, it will always be Commercial.  Which is to say all stores, businesses, restaurants, cafes and services.  I lived there 1980 to 1985, still a few years before it became so painfully and notoriously hip.  Commercial Drive at that time was still solidly working class, strongly left-wing, and the Italian and Portuguese presences were still very visible.  There were not yet any hip cafes except for a generous selection of espresso bars and Italian bakeries and restaurants.  This was pre-Starbucks and pre-coffee snobs.  There were pool halls everywhere, still notorious dens of vice full of tattooed youths before body art became common and rather banal.  There were also, then as now, unique grocery stores and cheap produce markets. 

The Drive was not yet invented.  It was not considered fashionable to live or be seen there, but still rather déclassé.  I would walk along there window shopping and sometimes wandering from cheese and sausage deli, to Italian food store, to Chinese vegetable market, filling my basket with fruits, vegetables, cheese, sausage, tinned mackerel and orzata almond syrup, among other delicacies.  The locals were Italian, Portuguese, Asian, young, tattooed (long before there were hipsters), loud, rude and often poor and sometimes desperate.

I first saw Commercial Drive when I was a kid, perhaps eight years old.  I lived with my family in Richmond and one Saturday my father took me with him in the car to get me out of Mom's hair for a couple of hours.  He had some kind of business to attend to in East Vancouver: I think he needed to buy equipment for his fishing boat.  We drove in from Richmond, then east on Marine Drive to Victoria Drive.  For me, strange, unexplored and unknown territory.  Every house, building and storefront appeared to grab my attention.  Then the street curved and it all looked suddenly strange and different.  I asked my father where we were.  "Commercial Drive", he replied.  I thought, what a strange name for a street.  "Why call it Commercial?"  I asked my father, "You mean TV commercials."  He replied, "No, just Commercial, like business, see all the stores?"  And I saw the stores but mostly the buildings: all old, with strange curves and engravings and enchanting windows that I did not yet know where features of vintage architecture.  It was the colour of the buildings that intrigued me most.  They all seemed to be yellow, golden and orange, though also a bit disheveled, like aging poor women prettifying themselves in cheap makeup and costume jewelry.  A magical radiance seemed to emanate from the buildings and I asked my dad if we could stop, get out of the car and look around.  I already knew that his answer would be no.  We didn't have time.  We never had time.  And the neighbourhood, he said, was shabby, run down and full of Italians.  I didn't know what he was talking about and only left behind this magical radiance regretting and resenting the beauty that one more time my own father would be denying me.