If we declared Mount Pleasant “Vancouver’s coolest neighborhood” or anything like that, everyone on Main Street would simultaneously suffer a scintillating chill and start thinking about moving to Hastings-Sunrise. Yes, yes, it’s full of fixie-riding toque-wearers; embrace it. Mount Pleasant is endlessly awesome to explore.
culture crawl: 2414 Main St (that’s almost right above trapezoidal Gene café) harbours CSA Space, an independent gallery where, until November 9th, you can catch Malcolm Levy’s The Rize—a mixed-media response to local arson. Artist Rebecca Chaperon also works from the building; her new book, Eerie Dearies: 26 Ways to Miss School, is a delightfully creepy collection illustrating why unfortunate little girls might be missing class (heartbreak, contagion, astral projection—the usual).
shop infinitely: Main’s the perfect one-stop for gifts. We died and ascended to a million pearlescent heavens at A Baker’s Dozen Antiques, where an entire room is assistance-only levels of valuable and we bought a crystal ball. We found a white ceramic pineapple at Front & Company for our BFF’s birthday (the shop is gift-nirvana and has fox-shaped Christmas ornaments—just sayin’) and popped into Neptoon Records, which was intimidatingly cool to us when we were 15 and is now normal-cool (we changed, not them). Pulp Fiction and Lucky’s Comics have you covered on the literary front with endless used gems at the former and graphic novels and Lucky Peach back issues, plus Pokémon cards, at the latter.
eat up: The good people at Radicle Juice make a smoothie called The Engineer, which has spinach in it but tastes like a mint-chocolate-chip milkshake. Don’t Argue Pizzeria’s mashed-potato béchamel pie is un-missable, as is a stop at The Fish Counter for fried cod and coleslaw (we think their crab cakes, available at the deli, are the city’s best). But before you fill up …
sleuth for sausage: Propelled by a rumour, we barrelled out the back door of Kafka’s Coffee & Tea (amazing pour-overs!) to find … a parking lot. About to dismiss overheard talk of a cool hidden factory, we caught the unmistakable waft of—yes—sausage in the air (hey we’ve been to enough Croatian weddings to know). At that moment we looked down to see a hotdog shape carved into the concrete beneath our feet and, taking in a lungful of cured meat, distinctly thought, "This, this is journalism.” The Original Sausage Haus is imperceptibly tucked away, but makes some of the city’s best links from Chilliwack pork, including the only Camembert-rind dry-cured sausage in Canada (the family-run business has been making it for six generations). You can get their salami with Kafka’s grilled-cheese sandwiches right at the source (do it).
End with drinks at The Narrow and dancing at The Fox, and your day will be about as pleasant as they come. —Adrienne Matei
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