gotta luv wikipedia

Here is an interesting link about the neighborhood I live in, called The Drive. I know it to be full of coffee shops and a few great restaurants. Dominated by early Italian immigrants, the coffee is the best in the city, I'm sure. During World Cup Soccor, the drive is quite boisterous and exciting as all the coffee shops are full of italians and portugese cheering on the teams. In the summer, it is a major hippy hangout with its leftist leanings and healthfood stores.

Yes it's true, it is home to the Vancouver Dyke March. You gotta love those girls, the way they got themselves kicked out of Joes Cafe for a little too much PDA. It's also true that the Drive had Canada's first Amsterdam style coffee shop openly selling marijuana. It was called Dekine and it lasted 4 entire months until they went super public to CBC and the pressure was on for the cops to do something.

The night was warm and humid. One of those summer nights when the sun starts to set around 9pm. Moisture hung in the air and a nighttime rainstorm was in the near future. The local movie crews had set up on one end of a block and were filming the pivitol scene in The Fantastic Four where the man who was made of stone hides behind the bushes and calls his girlfriend in effort to explain his change in appearance. (You know the scene, the one where the blond in the blue negligee runs out into the street. Ya, ok.)

Anyways, at the other end of the same block, the police set up baricades and with a force of 8 cop cars, and twice as many cops set forth to shut down one little cafe that admitted on the national news to be openly selling marijuana in effort to get those ridiculous laws changed. Well, in the summer night heat every hippy, pot smoker, activist, wannabe activist, bystander, passerby, or resident with some gumption got in on the action. The end result.. Fantastic Four production was halted, a few people were arrested and Dekine was no more.

Incidentally, the drive is also "a popular place for Vancouverites who want to experience a safe version of North American counter-culture." That, I did not know. I mean that sounds like there are bongo players with berets, young girls with flowers whispering poetry, and tour buses filled with the curious intrepid traveller flowing peacefully down the street. With all the heroin addicts, panhandlers, and meth junkies I would have guessed something different was going on.