Organ Grinder:
News for Pervy Little Monkeys

Sexy/Not Sexy Tourist Trap:

Sexy: Chinatown. Reminds me of that Waits lyric from 9th & Hennepin: And the steam comes out of the grill/ like the whole goddamn town is ready to blow / And the bricks are all scarred with jailhouse tattoos/And everyone is behaving like dogs… Chinatown is visceral, it's colourful, it's narrow streets and alien vegetables and flattened pigs hanging in the window. It's wet streets and half-smashed neon and history and brick dust and badass little old ladies who sell ginseng.

Not Sexy: The Steam Clock. Somebody get the old babe an inhaler. Only Vancouver would make a big deal out of a wrong-time-tellin' arthritic old geegaw like the Steam Clock. Even the fact that it's remotely phallic and occasionally erupts with jets of white mist doesn't do it for me. And that says something.

Sexy/Not Sexy Neighborhood:

Sexy: Main Street. The street where you can have brunch at Slickity Jim's Chat and Chew, buy a book at Pulp Fiction, thrift the Sally Ann, cruise the consignment at Front, stop for coffee at SOMA, freak out at Mod to Modern, and still have enough cash left to buy a bottle of hooch and go smoke a joint in front of Burcu's. Main Street is upwardly mobile, but not too far gone to get down. Le Freak, C'est Chic.

Not Sexy: Yaletown. I am not prone to pulling juvenile stunts, but every time I walk past the patio of the Yaletown Boring Co. I am seized with the urge to whip out a Zippo, bend over and light a fart. Does that happen to you?

Sexy/Not Sexy Celebrity:

Sexy: (Robert) Mason Lee. I've been On The Edge with Mason Lee and lemme tell ya, the man has an unnatural ability to be charming while reading from a teleprompter, improvising bon mots, and wearing a Celtic vest. It's true that intellect is a real turn-on, because, frankly, Celtic vests give me the willies.

Not Sexy: Pamela Anderson (Lee) I'm sure she's a nice person, but I do not understand Pammy's sex appeal. Hers seems to be the Costco theory of beauty: It's cheaper in bulk.

Sexy/Not Sexy Clothing store:

Sexy: Burcu's Angels. Burcu and her Angels are the most adorable bunch of freekazoids you're ever going to meet. They will make you try on the most outrageous outfits, they will convince you to play trains with the concept of your own identity. But they will not bullshit you. I have seen Burcu holler across the store at some poor boy: "Quit sucking in your gut! You look uncomfortable; I won't sell those to you" …only to have him emerge a minute later to be greeted by the cry "ASS PANTS! ASS PANTS!" whereupon everybody who is in the store, employee and customer alike, are encouraged to go over and comment on how well the garment fits the fellow's heinie. It's a beautiful experience.

Not Sexy: M**k's Leather. I realize that there's an image to uphold when you trade in S/M gear, but please: No customer, even one that's purchasing a forty dollar collar that they could have gotten for ten at PetCetera, should be treated like a dog. And, just as an aside, does anybody else think that a large segment of the S/M aesthetic is hopelessly stuck in the mid-eighties? No offense, but it's time to lube up and push on through to the new millennium.

And finally, the Nightclub scene that manages to be 100% Vancouver, BOTH sexy and spectacularly NOT SEXY: Fetish night. Here's a night where the fact that my idea of sexy doesn't equal your idea of sexy becomes GLARINGLY CLEAR. Still, I enjoy the level of tolerance that the Fetishy Folks show for other peoples' interior and exterior plumage. It's extreme yet somehow comfortable…and if that isn't the definition of Terminal City, I don't know what is.