A few months ago I heard David Duchovny would be doing a concert in Vancouver BC, and on a whim I bought the tickets and said ‘whatever happens, I am going to this, and we’ll just see who is going with me as we get closer.’ Dave was expecting to be in a play that would actually be going on that weekend, and Michele thought she might be in it too, and so Sherry said she would go if I needed a partner for this escapade. I’d go by myself if I had to. Glad I didn’t have to though, turned out the venue was sketch as hell. We’ll get back to that.
It turned out Dave didn’t get cast in the play he thought he would, and Michele was an understudy, so we went ahead and planned our trip. Right before the trip she got moved from understudy to actually being IN the play, but she had already told them she needed that weekend off, so they had HER understudy cover those days. Our little adventure was still on!
Michele thought it would be fun to rent a room instead of staying in a big hotel, so after much discussion we all agreed on a little 2 bed, 1 bath flat downstairs in a 1920s house in Kitsilano. It was walking distance to stuff. Parking wasn’t terrible (we found a spot on the black every time). It was a cute little place. Upstairs we could hear the landlords family walking, talking, playing piano, their little dog’s nails tapping on the wood floor and yipping. It was fine though. I liked it. It felt a lot more personal than just being in a hotel.
We had a lot of fabulous food while we were there, starting with a place right down the street called the Oakwood that did a menu with small plates to share. The food was amazing! The poutine with glazed brisket – drool! We waddled out of there and then took a nice long walk to Safeway for some snacks.
Can’t go to Vancouver without visiting the Aquarium. Lots of cool displays.
After the Aquarium we headed to English Bay Beach, and I found a restaurant with a view on Google, so that’s where we were headed. The XF Season 11 trailer had just come out the week before, and it showed a scene of Mulder next to some crazy laughing statues.
Found ’em!
Saturday night was the concert. We drove by ahead of time to check it out and it looked super sketchy. Lots of homeless people around. The parking looked iffy – since we have the Flex with the giant kayak rack on top, it couldn’t go in a parking garage. Dave found street parking a few blocks away. He dropped us off since there was already a line forming, and Michele and I got a place in line while he parked the beast.
We had to stand in line for a bit, but the other folks in line were friendly and chatty, and everyone was pretty chill. Folks kept walking by with dogs, and since I missed our dogs, we kept pointing them out. At one point Dave pointed out someone had a little corgi-esque dog with a fluffy tail, but I was short and couldn’t see it from where I was. Eventually they opened the doors and we all went in.
The venue didn’t have seats, just big open areas for standing, dancing, and a few tables around the edges which were pretty much taken. I wanted to stand up by the stage, so I staked out a spot and made like a rock – nothing would move me from my spot – close to the stage, and the exit door – just in case. I’m not fond of crowds, but I had Michele next to me and Dave behind me, and the rest of the floor just filled in until they were packed like sardines. I have never been in a concert like that! Michele proved to be a master at chatting up people, and ended up talking to some folks next to her about the wildfires in Santa Rosa (where she is from), because they were from the Bay Area too – small world!
Finally the show started about a half hour late. DD seemed tired, not nearly as energetic as the last concert. Seemed like he hit a lot of sour notes too, maybe his voice wasn’t up to it, or he just wasn’t feeling it. After a while he started to loosen up and it got better. I liked the songs he sang off the new album. And he played guitar this time, which was cool.
There was a group of girls behind us who were absolutely plastered by the time it started and were super obnoxious, falling over, dropping their bottles, squeeling randomly, waving a lighter around (for god’s sake, use a phone like everyone else before you set someone on fire!), shouting stuff out. Finally a stage hand came over and asked them to chill. At the end of the show our friend Michelle went over to thank him for doing that, and he said no problem, and said ‘oh, here, you might like this’ and handed her the setlist off the keyboard station. So she gave me that, and when we got home I hung it on the wall next to Mulder 🙂
It was a fun concert, and I wish I could have brought my camera because the pics would have been so much better, we were way closer than the cell phone pictures make it look.
The next morning we were talking about the concert, and I pulled up Twitter to show Michele a picture of Duchovny’s dog, Brick, and Dave says ‘Hey, that’s the corgi-esque dog I saw while we were in line!’ What?! You got to see Brick and I didn’t?!
The next day we went up to the Bloedel Conservatory, which is full of exotic birds and plants. Very cool.
All the beautiful birds! I can’t wait to make art out of some of these.
But Dave got tired of chasing birds and looking at plants. Poor Dave.
Then I think we took a long, meandering trip over to the north shore of Vancouver and drove until we got hungry, driving through little touristy towns that were hopping on Sunday afternoon. We had lunch at a random spot in a strip mall next to a grocery store, and the food was amazing! I don’t know how we got so lucky every stop.
We continued back, doing a loop around what used to be the XF studio, not sure if they are still filming there, and then back over the bridge and around Stanley park, stopping to take pictures of the city at sunset.
You’ll just have to trust me that this pic looks amazing blown up. The blog just can’t handle it.
The next day we swung through Steveston on our way home, and like everything it has grown a lot from the sleepy little beach town we found on our honeymoon. We also stopped in Bellingham to see this cool old sailing ship Michele had gone on a tour/crewed on. Then we pretty much hotfooted it home, because Dave had a rehearsal to get to. It was a fun weekend, I’m so glad Michele was able to join us, and ultimately even if the concert wasn’t the greatest concert ever (super hard to beat the last one), it gave us an excuse to wander around Vancouver all weekend, and that was pretty awesome.
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Steff Does Stuff! 