|
Front Page » Archive » Vol
2 No 57 » here
The city you live in
What if everybody on the same SkyTrain car
felt exactly like this?
by Chris LaVigne
The Republic
I'm standing on SkyTrain, listening to my CD player,
heading downtown to work. Looking around the car, I think about
how wearing headphones is the modern equivalent to the moats
that medieval aristocrats used to dig around their castles to
keep unwanted nuisances away. Other people use novels,
newspapers, or crossword puzzles, but the same message is
always clear: Keep out! The drawbridge is up!
As we pull away from Broadway Station, the trademark
SkyTrain chime happily warns of closing doors. I'm
listening to a favourite CD, Stand Up For Your Mother, by local
Vancouver band Young and Sexy, and a song is just starting,
entitled "The City You Live In Is Ugly." It begins
with the same SkyTrain chime I had just heard, followed by the
stuttering electric whir of the train gathering momentum. I
note the synchronicity.
SkyTrain noises melt into a lush piano trickle that matches
the rain falling outside. Singer Lucy Brain croons hauntingly:
"You wake before the sunrise / And at 5 AM you get on the
bus / The people look so resigned to the daily grind / And you
swear it'll never be you."
I glance around the car, making sure to avoid direct eye
contact so nobody will think me a pervert, hooligan, crackpot,
or, even worse, someone who wants to have a conversation.
It's 8:15 AM and the car is packed. In Japan they have
people whose job it is to push commuters into the subway cars
until no more will fit. It's never that bad in Vancouver,
but I feel like a sardine anyway.
The next verse perks up in my headphones: "You said
that you were new in town / With no friends around, no family
to speak of / Everyone you met out here was just full of fear /
With no time for dreams or schemes."
I feel someone accidentally rub my butt--at least I
think it's an accident--and it occurs to me how
strange it is being in such intimate proximity to so many
strangers. I spin my head to see who felt me up, and it's
just a woman with no distinguishable features who looks like
she's on her way to work too. I can't remember having
ever seen her, and yet it seems almost impossible that we
haven't crossed paths before in our synchronous daily
routines. She looks away the moment we achieve eye contact.
Another Young and Sexy band member, Paul Hixon Pittman,
chimes in for the pre-chorus: "And as you're walking
down the street / What do you see? / Well there's cars,
strip malls, and little blank houses / What do they
mean?"
I stare out the window at the concrete, traffic, and endless
buildings. Living in a city is kind of like standing in this
SkyTrain car--every conceivable piece of space has been put
to use. There's no room for anything new unless you tear
something down.
In a city, you always know that the room you're taking
up could just as easily be used by somebody else, and that not
many people would notice the difference.
Brain and Pittman harmonize for the song's chorus:
"The city you live in is ugly" they sing, and the
view down Main Street would make anyone nod in agreement.
However, they add, heartbreakingly, "But it wasn't
meant to be."
It's this line that makes the song so different and
moving. It's easy to hate Vancouver. Another local band I
often listen to are the Nasty On whose song
"Citysick" is full of civic rage. "Let's
bury this place," sings front-man Jason Grimmer,
"Let's burn it down / This city is sick / And I
don't care a bit."
Ultimately, it's not what Vancouver is that frustrates
me. It's what it could be.
Brain starts a new verse: "They covered up the BowMac
sign / With Toys "R" Us, you didn't make a fuss
/ And now you're regretting it and forgetting it / And you
don't drive by that much."
My friends and I often complain about how Vancouver is
filled with snobby cliques who have no time for strangers, but
maybe that's a natural reaction for people sardined into a
city with 550,000 others. Really, what are the odds of meeting
the same person twice? Why bother talking to anyone?
The SkyTrain hits that really fast roller-coaster part
before Stadium, and Brain sings another verse:
"You're working on Broadway / The early shift in a
new cafŽ / Lately you've been palming bills just for
the thrills / And your boss hasn't noticed a
thing."
"The spirit of the city was still, as it had been at
the beginning, predominantly materialistic," wrote
Margaret Ormsby about Vancouver as centennial historian in
1929. Nothing much has changed since then. Vancouverites spend
most of their time working, traveling to and from work, being
tired from work, and complaining about work. And then on the
weekend, they go shopping.
Pittman adds a final, unforgettable pre-chorus: "And
you're feeling very lost / In the world today /
There's no use for you here / But here's just the
same as anywhere."
In their compendium of urban lore, The Original Canadian
City Dweller's Almanac, authors Hal Niedzviecki and Darren
Wershler-Henry don't try to cover up the emptiness of life
in the modern city. "The city promises alienation and
angst," they write, "and delivers exactly
that--by the busload." And yet they also claim to be
"100% for the Canadian city." This seems to me too
optimistic, too exactly the opposite of being
"citysick." I choose the comfortable waterbed feeling
of ambivalence instead.
I arrive at Granville Station and step off the SkyTrain to
begin the trek to work. I'm still surrounded by people,
but now we're all walking together, so I don't feel
like we're sardines anymore. No, more like cattle now.
I search the herd for eye contact, but come up empty. A
swinging arm swipes my butt. Frustrated, I raise my drawbridge
and sing along under my breath with the Young and Sexy, as they
launch into the final chorus.
"The city you live in is ugly," I sing to myself
and to the crowd of strangers around me. "But it
wasn't meant to be."
Front Page » Archive » Vol
2 No 57 » here
top of page
| 
