Saturday, morning, after the free hotel "breakfast" I headed out to find a Starbucks with hopefully a newspaper and a place to sit. I didn't even bring my camera. I figured I'd be back in an hour. There are a tons of Starbucks, as well as fifty billion other coffee houses in this city, but the Starbucks are tiny, with rarely a place to sit. So I ended up at Blenz Coffee, there are tons of these around as well. Before I knew what was happening, I had been walking around for a few hours, enjoying the sights. I checked out the Waterfront subway station. I'm thinking of taking the ferry across the bay to North Vancouver for funzies. As I'm heading back to my hotel, I come across the Vancouver Art Gallery. Bingo. It looks big and impressive from the outside. I put down my $17.50 and excitedly walked in. I don't mind the money, but that's an hour and a half I'll never get back.
First off the sign should say "Canadian Only Art Museum". Everything seemed to have a Canadian defensive explanation attached to it. The worst part of the museum was the headline exhibition entitled "Beat Nation, Art Hip Hop and Aboriginal Culture" Here's the thing, you can't just do hip hop, as if your from Compton, with the exact same gestures and dress (minus the Raider gear) as an African American and call it aboriginal hip hop. I mean, you can, but you would be wrong. I sat and watched three full music video's of this "aboriginal" art form and left in disgust. Add a little of your own culture to it and I'll listen. Fuse it with you. I might not like it but I'll respect it. A few splashes of tribal petroglyphs does not make your hip hop art aboriginal, neither does the "Fuck the White Man" photo. The low rider bicycles were straight out of east LA. Very disappointing and derivative.
Continuing on my path back to the hotel, I cam across a great little Japanese restaurant, and buried my freezing head in a huge bowl of steaming ramen. With that and my Canadian Molsen all was right again.
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