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A Final Curtain for New West's Antique Alley!

Throughout the 1990s and well into the 2010s, New Westminster's Front Street was a bustling retail ecosystem known as Antique Alley. Its gritty industrial aesthetic made it a prime backdrop for major productions. The street famously doubled as New York City in Rumble in the Bronx and a quarantined Tokyo in Godzilla. It also hosted filming for projects like The X-Files and Twilight. During this peak period, the area served as a massive physical prop closet for the entire 'Hollywood North' film industry.

Stores operated as massive supply depots for set decorators and locals alike. You could walk in and rent or buy an absurdly wide array of physical inventory. They stocked everything from lavish fur coats and Persian rugs to mid century modern furniture. You might even stumble across a 200 pound bronze ship's propeller or a horrifying 1930s hair curler known as the octopus. It was a thriving local economy built entirely on bizarre physical artifacts.

I took a walk down Front Street today. That historic bazaar is now entirely defunct. I was quite surprised to see how completely the antique shops have evaporated from the landscape. There is only one antique store left along the street. Frankly, it was rather junky and looked like a hollow shell of discarded inventory. The modern film industry has clearly traded physical curation for green screens and digital convenience. A scattering of overpriced garage sale leftovers is now all that remains.

Aligning Our Ducks and Smoothing Natalia's Feathers

We recently officially checked in for our transatlantic passage to Brazil, which means the countdown is actually ticking. We depart in roughly two and a half months to spend a few nights knocking around southern England before boarding our MSC ship in Southampton. After that, we have the remainder of November to float our way across the ocean to Rio de Janeiro.

With the reality of our arrival setting in, we decided it was time to message our Airbnb host, Natalia. We locked in this winter basecamp months ago. Since we are checking in on the first of December for a complete three months, sending a friendly "hello" seemed like a polite necessity. Naturally, it was also a highly calculated maneuver.

As anyone who has ever survived a cruise knows, MSC will inevitably want to eject us from the ship at the crack of dawn. Meanwhile, the universal laws of Airbnb dictate that we cannot breach the apartment's perimeter until 2:00 PM at the earliest. Rather than face the grim prospect of dragging our luggage through the streets for six hours like wandering refugees, we figured a little preemptive charm was in order. We're hoping this early contact softens the ground for a morning bag drop. We shall see if the diplomatic approach pays off.

Natalia answered within minutes of the query to indicate that an early arrival wouldn't be a problem at all. A host with a response time faster than a cruise ship eviction is always a very good sign!

An Old Discovered Artifact

Yesterday we dragged the old Hoover carpet cleaner out from its dusty corner behind the hot water tank. It had been so long since we last made use of its services that I suspect the warranty expired somewhere in the previous millennium. We stood there staring at it, completely unable to figure out what latches and buttons to press. It is a truly baffling piece of vintage machinery.

As the photographic evidence shows, Jay eventually came to an understanding with the appliance and got to work in his finest weekend loungewear. The weather was slightly less blindingly bright on Sunday, and the temperature was not quite as hot. However, it was exactly the kind of August afternoon when the balcony door could be left wide open all day. That made it the perfect afternoon for a little carpet shampooing.

We certainly did not attempt to do it all at once. That sounded entirely too much like actual work. The local weather forecast continues endlessly off the right end of the chart without a single drop of rain in sight. Because of this dry spell, we have the distinct luxury of going at the carpeting on different occasions. After all, if we were to successfully complete our domestic chores in a single afternoon, we would have absolutely no excuse to spend the rest of the month lounging around admiring our partial handiwork.

An August Ritual at Carnarvon Place

Living in a high-rise often means you only cross paths with the people in your own elevators, the lobby, the swimming pool, or the parkade. But once a year, the two towers of Carnarvon Place, representing about 150 units, mingle at the ground level. Last night was the annual strata BBQ, a reliable August ritual.

I was thinking about the history of it all. I still have an old poster from 2013 advertising the 17th annual BBQ. This year's posters indicate it's the 28th year. If you account for the two summers we missed due to COVID, the math actually lines up perfectly. It means this annual tradition started the very same year Jay and I arrived in Canada, though it would be another two years before we actually moved into our apartment here.

While some folks at the gathering have been around nearly as long as we have, we also made a point to invite a young Asian couple with two little girls who just moved in next door to us about a week ago. It is always good to introduce the new arrivals to the community.

Jay and I went down for about an hour, just the right amount of time to socialize. It has always been a BBQ organized and paid by the strata, but in years past, potluck dishes from the residents were highly encouraged. While the current approach certainly makes things simpler, alas, we do miss the multicultural culinary variety of those older gatherings. Still, Dax, our resident manager, took on the role of head chef and handled the grilling. The menu was straightforward: hamburgers, sausage-type hotdogs, fresh condiments, various chips, and a few tubs of Costco brownies to finish it off.

It was a simple, well-attended evening, and just a nice part of living here during August.

West Coast, Best Coast

A morning stroll down Carnarvon Street took in the Salvation Army Thrift Store along the route.  It served as the anchor of my loop that eventually crossed the tracks and returned along the riverfront past the Pier West towers. I checked out the newly opened park facilities and plaza space installed at their base. 

This stretch of late summer reminds one precisely why living in British Columbia remains so agreeable. A persistent breeze finally swept up the Fraser today, evicting the grey haze of wildfire smoke that had settled over the river basin for less than two days and restoring proper visibility to the landscape.  Life in this corner of the province becomes effortlessly appealing when the weather behaves, and the upcoming forecast offers every reason to lean into it. With mostly sunny conditions stretching well into next week, daytime highs holding steady between 22°C and 26°C, and comfortable overnight lows around 11°C to 15°C, the calendar naturally fills itself. 

Whether mapping out extended afternoon walks, filling the days with outdoor errands, or simply lingering near the river, the immediate stretch ahead promises ideal conditions for an active agenda. Ultimately, turning a routine neighborhood walk into a smoke-free loop along the riverfront proves that when a favorable wind clears the air, life is perfectly fine. 

The Wearable Drama: A Trilogy in Three Short Acts

My relationship with Google’s wrist-borne hardware has devolved into an abusive cycle of misplaced optimism and premature electronic mortality. Averaging a fresh smartwatch every two years is not a badge of tech-enthusiast honor; it is a damning indictment of a company using its early adopters as unpaid beta testers. The original Pixel Watch set a low bar by surrendering after a mere 22 months, only to be succeeded by the Pixel Watch 2, which I naïvely trusted to manage the simple task of surviving a standard daily wear cycle.

Foolish me. On Wednesday, the heart rate monitoring temporarily stopped functioning, delivering a subtle prelude to the impending collapse. Prompted by a subsequent desire to test the device further and actually use the Always-On Display, I embarked on a brief experiment to see if the two-year-old lithium cell could handle an evening of passive monitoring. I was actively trying to rationalize keeping the aluminum slab and glass out of pure, unyielding pragmatism. The watch responded with a dramatic midnight suicide. I woke up at 1:00 AM to a pitch-black screen, no optical green sensors, and an ominous red thermometer icon warning me that the internal thermal cutoffs had triggered a terminal lockout loop.

Once I realized it was unequivocally dead, I was finally liberated from my own cautiousness. Its thermal meltdown won. So, a Lemongrass-colour banded Pixel Watch 4 is now en route via Amazon. I give it until the spring of 2028 before it, too, succumbs to the threat of spontaneous combustion.

Our City Opens Up More Waterfront

After years of construction dust right outside our front door, the westward extension of Westminster Pier Park officially opened yesterday. The city and Bosa replaced that bleak old surface parking lot with two acres of proper green space, capping the underground parkade and seamlessly connecting Pier Park straight through to the Quayside Esplanade at last.

It is a well-designed stretch of riverfront. Beyond the open lawns and new trees, there is a central festival plaza with splash jets, a shaded stage, and a striking Coast Salish art installation titled Ebb and Flow. They even managed to squeeze in an outdoor gym, ping pong tables, and a dedicated dog relief area.

The community turned out this afternoon. Families milled around a food truck, kids invaded the water jets, and a few brave souls tested out a cold plunge setup by the boardwalk. The formal speeches and ribbon cutting wrapped up around 19:00, leaving live acoustic music to drift over the Fraser as the sun dipped. It is a genuine, long-overdue upgrade to our city's connection to the Fraser River.