Chapter 7 - VANCOUVER: Patchouli
Alt-crabby at the Water’s Edge
For many soggy years, before the invention of renewable flooring, day spas and giant, colorful cocktails, the emblematic counter-cultural Vancouver neighborhood of Patchouli has really been two neighborhoods: the first is up a ways on a moderately high hill above the less-than-majestic estuary, Lispenard Arm, much smaller and less-well known than larger Burrard Inlet.
This area, Logan Lispenard, consists of old turn of the 20th century single family homes; it’s now highly desirable as it overlooks the remnants of a much larger fishing fleet, and the yacht-choked harbor of the second neighborhood, Crabtown, below, which has been slower to gentrify, perhaps owing to the smell of dead sea-life, or the fact that so many old buildings are sitting out over the water on rotting pilings. Occasionally, one collapses. Don’t let this stop you from visiting: many Crabtown restaurants keep life-vests and life-boats at the ready for just such a possibility, and the safety drills are becoming an under-the-radar attraction in themselves. (Marine Restaurant Safety Drills, 325 Dungeness St.)
Prior to its 1960s raison d’être as the locus of the radical student movement in western Canada, the district was famous province-wide for its large community of both immigrant Germans and Chinese, a combination that yielded countless dumpling versus pot-sticker bake-offs, and some political street-fighting during World War I. Along Dungeness St., Crabtown’s main drag, the rickety old shipping line offices, seafood companies with their cannery buildings, now mostly converted to artists’ studios. Seagulls wheel in the air over the forest of yacht masts; their live-aboard owners letting their gourmet-roasted Indonesian varietal coffee move gently to-and-fro in their stomachs when a passing tanker out in Vancouver harbor sends a wake up the inlet. Despite its historically somnolent nature, Patchouli is now home to a work of celebrity architect Domingo Cantilever, historically-relevant theatrical performances, and the largest restaurant fish-tank in North America.
It was drizzling when I pulled my catamaran up to the Crabtown docks; it had taken three days to sail the seven miles around Stanley Park from downtown Vancouver, and then another day to paddle the catamaran through the thicket of pleasure boats in the Arm to the public dock. Much was happening here, and I was thrilled to be a part of it—if only as a tourist.
Meanwhile, ever so quietly—but perhaps not so quietly, after all, as I had just read a cover story about it in The New York Times Magazine and viewed a cable segment on it, too—a number of entertainment celebrities have bought and renovated large old homes and multi-family structures in the hilltop area, prized for its views of Vancouver Island and, real estate agents insist, on a rare clear day, the Aleutians. The renovators don’t yet include any Oscar-winners, but there are rumors.
Typical is Belize Richmond, a 27-year-old actress, singer, talk-show host, kindergarten teacher, model, pole-dancer, and children’s book author who moved here from Los Angeles: “We bought an old 1910s apartment building for $100,000, threw every one out, spent around $1million renovating it, and now it’s just beautiful! Sometimes we see the old tenants picking through garbage down the hill, and I stop and wave, and say, ‘remember your old building? Well, it’s so much prettier now!’ ”
It does seem that real estate and simple pleasures, like eating, are the bywords in Patchouli and its two constituent neighborhoods. Community leader Susan Rupert-Whiner, who runs the leather accessories shop Leathbian with her partner Molly Whiner-Rupert (308 Beaverdam St., hours vary. Muffins and coffee served Sunday and Thursday), says the recently held winter Olympics brought in business, but derided it in a very direct way characteristic of Patchoulians, for creating more “poop and pollution” than “we need now or in the future.”
The Patchouli water-quarter, Crabtown, owes its name not to the prodigious amounts of crab that were brought in during the height of its role as a fishing port in the years before World War II, but rather to the singular British Columbia personality known as “Crabby” Mike. His statue, often festooned with crab bibs (and prophylactics—more on this later) in homage to the famous British Columbian fisherman, can be found in Patchouli Park.
He was a rather good crabber, this evocative Crabby Mike character. But he, in turn, earned his moniker from the peculiar British Victorian-era street slang prevalent in Vancouver in, or around, 1877. To wit: “crabby” meant “happy,” while “happy” meant “horny” or “drunk” (or both). Meanwhile, “lively” meant “moody” or, as we understand the phrase now, “crabby.” Everyone understood each other perfectly, until the slang was superseded by different slang; some bar-brawls ensued and the casualties of these misunderstandings forced the pendulum (called a “slide-rule” on Vancouver streets of the time) to swing back in favor of earlier meanings. None of this really helped me understand Crabby Mike’s history, but it’s the kind of thing that can really concentrate the mind away from a typical drizzly Vancouver Sunday, and that’s all I needed.
I learned all this and much more at the Crabtown Historical Society (878 Dungeness St., Comox Pier #12d), an authentic ice-fishing house on giant runners that was moved to the waterfront after its unfortunate owner was pulled by an aggressive Lake Gar through an ice fishing-hole in Lake Athabasca, far to the north. A Vancouver relative of the deceased inherited the house and donated it to the society. Kambie Karst, a feisty octogenarian, and herself part-German and part-Chinese, who grew up in the area, runs the society’s information center. She helped me understand the unique history of Crabtown, its up-the-hill neighbor Logan Lispenard and other facts—all while she fished for her supper through the fishing-hole in the floor.
“First off, Patchouli: students took over the neighborhood in the 1960s, owing to its proximity to the University of BC; they smoked up a storm of weed and needed something to cover it up. Round about the winter of ’67-'68, an over-sized shipment of incense, virtually all of it Patchouli, washed ashore in a storm when a Thai freighter foundered in rough seas out in the Strait. Need I say more?” She did not, but continued nonetheless: “…the oldest head shop west of Thunder Bay is right here in Patchouli – I highly recommend it.”
“ Mick Jagger never had an interest in it—that’s a myth. I was a part-owner, just so you know.” Kambie proclaimed.
She continued: “The 1860s saw a huge influx of Chinese, including my grandfather, Karl Karst. He wasn’t actually Chinese; he was a German Lutheran missionary working in China, and felt a calling to leave, and so took ship for Canada. That was followed by a huge influx in the 1870s of Swabia Germans (editor’s note: Germans from Southwestern German, the Swabians speak a dialect of German called Swabish and came to British Columbia in the 1880s to log the vast pine forests), including my grandmother, Su Chow; my great-grandmother was the Chinese personal cook to a Stuttgart industrialist before she emigrated here. Great-Grandpa Karst met her at a Chinese tavern that was located not far from here and attempted to convert her, but she’d already been converted back in Stuttgart. They communicated perfectly, and sailed up the coast to Prince Rupert for their honeymoon and a little salmon fishing.”
“By 1900, Crabtown and Logan Lispenard were together known as the largest Sino-German urban village in the world – that’s a fact. Vancouver annexed both areas before World War One – Crabtown actually had its own P.O., which for a while was called Crabbytown, but there was another Crabbytown in Nova Scotia, so the powers didn’t like that. And, then you know Crabby meant “happy,”…well, I don’t need to repeat the story.” She did not.
The fishing-line that Kambie had set in the ice-fishing hole had moved a little, and Kambie took a little break to jiggle it. Quick as a flash, she pulled up a large sea-trout, which flopped around the historical society’s floor. As I watched with fascination at this display of local color, Kambie motioned me to get back a little, which wasn’t easy in a 5’ by 7’ building, but I inhaled and held my breath, making some room. With a single gesture, Kambie reached behind her head, took the 6-in
ch jade spear holding her hair together in a bun, removed it, and used this stunning heirloom piece of jewelry to paralyze, kill and gut the fish—all within the space of about two minutes. (she proffered, “come back later, and you can have it grilled up with a little bit of soy sauce and rice vinegar and some red cabbage on the side. You’ll love it”)
Having flung the fish into a small freezer, she wiped her hands clean and continued her tale.
“We do know that in July of 1856, Captain Reginald Lispenard steered his Royal Navy 32-pound frigate, H.M.S. Bombazine, into what is now Lispenard Arm. He was looking for a water route to Winnipeg. A few Haida fisherman rowed up to the Bombazine and tried to tell the crew that the name for the inlet in their language, was “rocks under water.” But the ship’s crew didn’t speak Haida. Luckily, his second-in-command, a Lieutenant L. Alec Hall, helped direct the boat into the arm. After beaching the vessel, the crew built a royal garrison atop the hill. Some years later, both men left the Royal Navy; they came down to Crabtown and started a haberdashery and the Logan Lispenard Light Opera Society, which put on quite a few works in its day."
“I understand the pair played many of the parts themselves," she added.
Kambie went on to tell me about the vibrant fishing industry that kept Crabtown busy after the inlet was dredged and most of the rocks in the water were blasted away: crabs and fish from the Pacific, geoducks and salmon from the area’s estuaries and rivers, sardines and all sorts of fish poured into the docks and its maze of canneries and ice-houses. From there, the catches were processed to be sent out to the world’s restaurants and markets, with the occasional bits of shell, a finger, hair and lockets – this was before regulations prevented such things and, in any case, people in those days expected foreign objects in their canned goods as that attested to its authenticity and served as a kind of premium. (A Ontario pastor’s wife received a set of men’s suspenders and a moustache-brush along with her chest of smoked, dried salmon; these items are now in the Royal Canadian Museum in Ottawa).
Helpful Transit Info: As befits its Olympian parent, Vancouver, Patchouli and its upper and lower neighborhoods are accessible by water taxi, sky-train, subway, monorail, people-mover, funicular, ferry, tram, 30-oar galley war-ship, amphibious vehicle, runaway mine train, rickshaw, ropeway and bike-trail. It’s also accessible on the citywide loop-bus, so you can never go the wrong way – but you can wait for it in the wrong place. Check the schedules.
The tram lines split a little closer to downtown Vancouver, so be careful when you use them to travel to and from Patchouli. Just remember to use the Royal Caribou stop, which is at Dungeness and Lispenard Way West traveling outbound, or Pontoon Central, which is at Dungeness and Lispenard Way East traveling inbound. Unless you’re staying outside the city, or you’re traveling on the weekends, and then you should reverse, and invert, respectively, all of the above. Some of these various lines connect to the airport, but I used cross-country ski trails to make my plane, so that didn’t affect me.
I wanted a deeper connection to local flavor. And, Kambie had suggested that I meet a famous member of Patchouli’s counter-cultural elite, the sixties radical Robert Courteney Sherpa (he goes by “Sherpa”), considered to be the founder of modern Patchouli, and recently designated a “First Hippie” by Canada’s Prime Minister. With shoulder-length gray locks, a moustache, leather bolo around his neck, a Tibetan prayer flag flying from his shirt-pocket and a faint aroma of marijuana and home-made bread surrounding his person, Sherpa seemed like he had earned that distinction.
Sherpa initially came to attention in Canada at a 1967 sit-down strike in Vancouver in support of the creation of what would ultimately become Nunavut, the largely Inuit territory finally established in 1990 in northernmost Canada. His radical performance piece given during the strike, entitled “Rape of a Nation,” in which he and several compatriots introduced the bent-over effigies of Canadian leaders opposed to Nunavut, to the top end of totem poles, shocked and scandalized millions of Canadians. Now much-beloved, the piece is performed in repertory at the provincial museum’s outdoor amphitheatre Wednesday to Saturday, twice daily during summer operating hours, and has been set to authentic First Nations music.(see provincial museum website for ticket prices).
I took Sherpa to the nautical-themed sustainable-seafood restaurant Estuary (431 S. Flotilla St.) for a drink and some food. The dishes are unique and have stoked a foodie buzz - along with some international sanctions; they include cruise ship passenger-fed killer whale and farmed giant squid. We chose the shrimp cocktail. I also ordered their signature drink, the Low Tide, which contains vodka, organic clam juice, unagi, tomato juice, vodka, pine-tree sap, vodka and some bits of plastic. Our Nordic-looking waiter brought the drinks quickly; a pretty scallop shell hung on the side of the glass, and silence fell on our little table as we looked to see if it would fall off. It didn’t. Sherpa’s wife turned up soon after. Saktuk “Saki” Five Mile House (nee Susan-Marie Yaptich) Sherpa an artist who works in glass. In this case, she explained that she works in a special glass solarium Sherpa built for her; inside Saki creates art using natural materials, especially marsh grasses, shells and found wood.
Saki told me that the pair met when Sherpa worked as a part-owner of the Oldest Head Shop in Patchouli, (420 Concubine St.). Later Sherpa started a book-store called Don’t Shop Here that was highly successful for a few years, but recession in the 1970s killed off the trickle of customers who dared patronize the store.
Saki wanted to try the Giant Squid, but the waiter demurred, saying, “we’re all out as the squid attacked the sous-chef during feeding time and dragged him and one of our bar-backs to the bottom. ” We offered our condolences and finished our drinks.
After lunch, we moved down the docks of Dungeness St. to the most famous Chinese seafood restaurant in Canada. The Seven Seas (475 Dungeness St., #A & B) sits on its own pier. Founded by a Hong Kong businessman fleeing China in the late 1980s, after the British announced they’d hand back the colony to the mainland communist government, this restaurant features the largest restaurant fish-tank in the world. It covers several acres in an enclosed, roofless area next to the restaurant. A full-time diver is on hand and snorkeling lessons are available. Call way ahead in advance; some of the natural bottom of the tank is still being mapped by oceanographers. Not only can you pick out your fish, you can pay extra to spear it yourself.
You can find a statue of Crabby Mike—it’s Mike holding a crab-trap in one arm and a a pint of ale in the other—in tiny one-square block Patchouli Park, which contains the only small, surviving piece of the great Pacific Northwest rainforest, extant in this part of Vancouver. It’s revered by its neighbors as an unrivalled environmental treasure, small though it is, especially by the residents of the 22-story tall sliver condominium (232. S. Park Way West) built overlooking it in 1999. A commission of starchitect Domingo Cantilever, the building is designed to look like a giant sailing mast, flanked by ‘sails,’ which are actually wind turbines arrayed horizontally from the bottom of each sail to the top. Once they get going, watch out: several elderly have been blown over Lispenard Arm to downtown Vancouver when the turbines are powered by North Pacific storm winds. Only a few of the hapless geriatric residents were carrying their umbrellas, enabling them to land, Poppins-like, on sidewalks and balconies. The rest are missing or were found farther inland. The resulting lawsuits are winding their way through British Columbia court system at a leisurely pace, with settlement expected sometime in 2032; ownership of the building will likely pass to the affected families, according to legal experts.
It’s ironic that the most famous generator of wind-power in Patchouli is a large condominium, for Saki told me that Crabby Mike had a reputation in that regard.
“Nobody wants to reveal that,” said Saki. “Crabby is so much better for tourism than Windy. But that was his nickname, too: Windy Mike.” She leaned in a little: “basically, he used flatulence to signal his crew. He was just talented in
that way. One toot to cast the lines, two to unload the catch. These were allegedly fog-horn quality. I’m talking loud.”
Suffice it to say, the date of Crabby Mike’s birthday, August 1, often finds his statue in Crabtown Park, adorned with crab-bibs made of bio-degradable material and prophylactics.
(The controversy doesn’t end there. A noted feminist sociologist at the University of Toronto recently asserted in her history of women in the early Canadian seafood industry, “Small Hands on Deck: the Women of Western Canadian Fishing, 1864-1939,” that Crabby Mike got his name from the infestation commonly known as crabs, which he often bore, owing to his patronage of Crabtown prostitutes. This charge is firmly rejected by the official association of Crabby Mike descendants, now numbering over 23,000 in British Columbia alone.)
It was a typical Vancouver day: sun appearing, then hiding behind thick gray clouds, the sky turning slate, then lightening up a little; the temperature hovered around 62, but it felt much more like 57, perhaps because of the humidity. A light drizzle began, then ended.
Much of the surrounding area was logged out by 1900, and so many of the Swabish-speaking Germans emigrated to the suburb of Hoodoo, farther inland. Others colonized the nearby town of Williwaw, a half a day’s journey up the Fraser River by steamboat. With the British handover of Hong Kong, the neighborhood has gradually taken on a more Asian flavor as the old hippies and Swabians move out.
Jan. 14, 1853, Osborne House. Isle of Wight
Her Royal Britannic Majesty hereby commands and gives leave to Capt. Reginald K. Lispenard and the crew of the Royal Naval Vessel HMS Bombazine for the exploration, surveyance and reconnoiter of an inlet lying to the south approximately two miles, of Gastown, British Columbia, herewith, and, lacking in name, to name it, and thence to proceed inland to our province of Manitoba, by land or sea.
Victoria Regina
Today, the debate about whom, or who, Logan Lispenard was, or were, has receded with the growing recognition of this neighborhood as “cuter than cute,” “boring as firm tofu” and most proudly, “Canada’s Greenest Urban Neighborhood.” There are more solar panels, tricycle-driven power sub-stations, thermal baths, windmills and composting toilets here than in any other Canadian city. You may see (or smell) some of them on your visit.
Robert Doric, the famous French-Canadian architect, was the son of a grocer, growing up in a housing block near Toronto. Doric created many famous early twentieth century buildings in the Patchouli area. His Swabish Fireman’s Union (1909) building is a typical example. Now a coffee-shop and community center, it is open to the public (451 Bombazine St.). Tours are given on the third Thursday after Royal Canadian Mounties Day, or Confederation Day, whichever one can be remembered first.
I wanted to rest a bit before continuing to track down the heritage of this coolest of urban 'hoods. Next to the Asian-inflected dance-club beat of Pier 23, the white-hot club of the moment, lies the terribly correct two-floor houseboat bed-and-breakfast known as The Inlet Inn. It’s woody and wet and wonderful, and I couldn’t wait to leave. Owner Revell Stokes loves her guests. Too much, if you ask me. I was never let alone from the moment I set foot on her little house on pontoons: I received a tour, a history lecture, a lesson on how to make geo-duck fritters, a massage from Revell’s husband, an espresso flight, and a welcome cocktail hour, before begging off from the bonsai class to go to bed early. Stay there at your peril.
Homer Tomalley, is a Japanese-Canadian, who runs a small sushi stand on the water, called “Sushi So Fresh…” as well as a water taxi service to other parts of Vancouver. Born in Nagoya, Japan on a Canadian grain-freighter, he was raised in Victoria. About five years ago, he started his business. While he prepared some lunch for me, he spoke about the area.
“Lispenard? The truth is we don’t know a lot about him. Sounds like he was slightly loony, looking for smooth water to Canadian plains, eh?. Off his kiester, really. He wasn’t as famous as George Vancouver or Juan de Fuca or any of the other explorers, who came to this region. He only discovered one estuary - named for himelf, too!
“So they built a little fort up the hill, that’s the story. Then, when the garrison was re-supplied, and Lispenard’s time in the service was up, he and his friend--Hall was his name--they decided not to return to England. Instead, they come down to Crabtown, to start a store. After a few years, he’d made enough to money to do something else, they say, and so he repaired—again with his friend, Lt. Hall—to one of the Gulf Islands, across the Straits of Georgia. No one remembers Hall’s first name. Might have been Lovell, or Lenihan, or even Logan. Some say they took two Haida women as wives, and that the women lived in one house and Hall and Lispenard lived in the other, right next to each other, on a small lake on this island, with the lake providing fish, as well as ice for storage.
“No one’s really sure what to make of that arrangement,” mused Tomalley.
We sat down on a nearby bench; the sun was peeking in and out and a slight breeze came off Lispenard Arm; the temperature stood in the mid-50s, though, truth to tell, it felt much more like the upper 50s. We looked out past Cantilever’s imaginative and futuristic condominium, a strong breeze coming in off the arm, beginning to turn its mighty turbines. A woman on the 12th floor clutched at a scarf that took air as a turbine spun past her balcony.
From somewhere, I smelled a spicy scent that wafted past, and made me especially glad, if not downright smug, about finding this delightful corner of Vancouver. I pictured skate-boarding to the airport over an accessible trail, the wind at my back, and my rolling duffels-cum-backpacks trailing behind via a stustainably-produced tether, as I rounded corners planted with native plants, my solar-powered-and-body-heat-regulated reflectors on my packs blinking a warning to all in my path.
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