Snippets of Vancouver

Many many years ago, my grandparents lived in this city, merely 15 minutes or so away from where I now live and only five minutes walk from my office.

I think I've mentioned this before.

What I haven't mentioned is that five minutes west of there is a rather infamous beach. A nude beach. A beach that has been there for a long, long time. Nudity isn't strictly allowed -- we're Canadian, and we're a little prudish -- but for some reason this beach has been around for 30, 40 years or more, just conveniently ignored by law enforcing bodies, and tolerated by the more conservative of Vancouver's citizens.

One of my early memories is of walking along that beach with my grandmother. Why she took me and my sister there, I will never know. Perhaps she was unaware of what type of beach it was; perhaps we wandered too far around the coastline and accidentally happened upon it. The only thing I remember for certain is my grandmother, in a hushed British whisper, saying "(My name), don't stare!!"

This afternoon I played hooky from work for an hour and a half. I picked up some snacks and went to the daycare to fetch my son. We went to the beach for some mother - son bonding time. I figure that whatever's going on at daycare, this might help and certainly won't hurt. And we went down to the coast. I parked the car, we ambled down to the rocky beach. The waves were fierce and wild, spraying up on the rocks, the sun was shining, and the city glinted in the light way off into the distance. This beach is juuusst far enough from the city that it's much less populated than many other beaches, and the solitude was very pleasing.

To the left, if we walked far enough, was the infamous beach. To the right was a long stretch of beach that, once you get out of the forest park, is a public recreation area. You know -- barbeques and picnic tables and volleyball courts and stuff. We walked to the right, strolling along the rocks and the logs and picking up various things we found and chatting about our walk. After about a half hour, we sat down and had a snack.

When we got up I realized we were mere metres from the main beach recreation area. The only human in sight was partially hidden from view, someone leaning up against the sand sunbathing. We went a little closer, it's a middle aged, balding man. Slightly paunchy. I think nothing of it.

A little closer and it's clear that the man is wearing nothing more than what could generously be described as dental floss. As we approached, he seemed to be a little disconcerted, and he reached about and found some clothes. Soon after he left the beach.

I didn't mean to make him uncomfortable, and I wasn't terribly concerned about my child seeing the man, although I really would prefer that he not be exposed (ha!) to that. But at the same time ... people, please! When a very welcoming, accepting, rather famous nude beach is only a few hundred metres -- maybe a couple of kilometres away, wouldn't you just be more comfortable there?

It's a puzzler, that's for sure.