Hello, Yaletown, My New Friend

by Steve Venegas for The Vancouver Observer

Why "Yaletown?"  Where'd the  name come from, I wanted to know when I first  signed a lease on my apartment on Mainland Street.  Having just moved to Vancouver from Calgary, I decided to do some research about my new 'hood. 

I found out that back in the 1880's, when the Canadian Pacific Railway was under construction, some of the workers hailed from a small town  
located about 150 kilometers east of Vancouver, beside the Fraser River.  The name of the town was Yale.  When the rail line was finished, the workers  from Yale planted roots in Vancouver near the train yard. They named their new community after the old one according to the good people at yaletowninfo.com

I also learned what was once a warehouse district was downtrodden for years, but began to transform into a vibrant commercial and residential area in the eighties, due to  development strategies instituted by a city planner named  Larry Beasley.  That district is called Yaletown.

 Suburbia Meets City

I step out onto Mainland Street on a sunny Saturday.  I pass shops and outside cafes full of people.  The sidewalks are packed.   People walking dogs.  Tourists photographing old-brick buildings.  The handsome and beautiful strutting their stuff.  I may be a newcomer, but I get the picture.  To be young and chic is expected in Yaletown.

Outside of Vasanji  I talk with a British couple who are waiting for their teenage daughters to come out of Global Atomic Design. They tell me they've been around the world, so I ask them how Yaletown
compares to hot spots in other cities.

 Yaletown reminds them of  Coven Garden in London, only a little lower end. The shops in Yaletown are aimed at the younger end of the younger market, they observe.

 It seems like everyone is under thirty, wearing shades and  dressed to the nines.  Take for
instance the three hipsters walking past me. The taller girl of three has fire engine
red hair and a bright orange shirt and a black bandana around her neck. The other girl has a bright neon green shoulder tote over her bag.   She goes into the clothing store, Basquiat, named after Jean-Michel Basquiatm the late neo-expressionist who lived and worked in  New York. The sleek and modern clothes have stark lines and urban tailoring.  The prices are high. A chunky cable knit wool sweater is going for $210. A plaid shirt costs $175.   Jeans are listed at $329 and ankle-high brogue brown wingtip boots are priced at $450.  The gray vest I try on is $240, marked down from $420.  It's nice, but not that nice.

Back out on Mainland Street I run into my hairdresser, Nikki Steele. She's been styling coifs at  L'Atelier Hair Salon for the last three years. When I first moved into the neighbourhood a month ago,   I noticed that my dark brown locks had gone out of control.  I asked Nikki to give my hair some shape. She turned an unruly mop into the cut of a fashionable music store clerk.  Not a movie star, yet, but much better, I think.

She's taking a smoke break before her next client arrives. She's been working in Yaletown for a decade.  She's witnessed a lot of changes.  Over half a dozen condominium buildings have been constructed in the last six years, she says and, as Yaletown has gotten hotter and hotter, rental prices  have gone up almost 150% per square foot.   Due to this, a lot of stores have come and gone.

 Nikki has a good view of the neighbourhood from her salon.  I ask her to break the social situation down for me.

"There are three kinds of people who hang out here," Nikki explains, as she takes a drag off her cigarette.  

"There are the people who live here and hang out here.  There're the people who work here.  Then there're the people who come in from the suburbs.  If you come by on a Friday night, it's not a local crowd. It's not funky people.   It's people with money.  They come here to have fun and it's
like suburbia meets city."

  Not A Lot of Grass, but Good Eating Everywhere

Niki Van Kerk  lives in  Squamish but she comes to work in Yaletown a few
days a week for business. I find her seated next to a newly finished limestone park at the base.  It's part of the Yaletown Park condo project. Vancouver's newest Starbucks, which opened three weeks ago, looks out over the park from the base of Tower 3, in one of Yaletown Park's condominium high-rises.

"It looks nice and it definitely has all the high end shopping anyone could want," Van Kerk said, looking around at the ground with its rough concrete finish. "I like the area. I'm just kind of sad about this park, because there's no grass."  She's right. There are a few trees.  The concrete looks like it's supposed to resemble cobblestones.  But there's no earth to be found here, and, definitely no grass.

"There was a building here and they took it down," Van Kerk goes on.

"They put in an underground parking lot here and put this park here to cover it up.  But instead of putting grass in they put in concrete and stone. You can't really walk around in high-heels and it hard on the feet."

 Leaving the park, I walk down Hamilton, past a construction project at the corner of Nelson. I hear a woman and her daughter discuss where they should go for lunch.

 There are two Thai restaurants within a block of each other and they debate which one to choose.

 A block further down the street, two men on a patio smoke cigars while their three overweight beagles are sunning themselves in a flowerbed. The men are discussing the future of Cuba.

They wonder what will happen when Castro dies.

 A lot will change, they tell each other.

Such is the nature of life, I think, continuing my walk through Yaletown, where change is a fixture.  

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