Does every great city have a "Latin Quarter"? If not, it should!
Tonight we joined the great hordes of Vancouverites, donned our helmets, jumped on our bikes in sundresses and shorts, and rode up to The Drive for an evening cocktail at a cafe whose live Brazilian music wafted beyond our ears, out of the open windows spilling into the street of Commercial Drive. As we sat at our checkered cloth table, we sipped mojitos and wine and gazed out to the sidewalk. Young, hipster parents smiled by, babies riding on their tattooed shoulders. One Dad's t-shirt declared, "Say Hello to my little friend"- indeed I wanted to squeeze the cheeks of the 8 month old riding high above his head. As they passed, I admired the pair of butterflies tattooed on the back of his mommy's arms. Biking is a popular form of transportation here- babies ride in special racks fit onto the handlebars, older children follow behind in carts and on their own attached bikes. One passerby first caught our attention as she walked by with a bike that had a steering wheel instead of a handlebar, then held it because she had the shoulders of a weightlifter, and the outfit of a 13 year old- denim skirt with pepto-pink leggings and all. She had a bounce in her step that said, "I may be a middle-aged man on the outside, but I'm a fun loving teenage girl on the inside".
Our window seat became more and more crowded as the sky so gradually turned a darker shade of indigo, and more and more friends came to dance to the samba beat, singing along in Portuguese. Time to head back downhill, sundress flittering in the wind behind me as the stars twinkled above the mountains beyond the harbour cranes.
