Original Joe's | 2525 Cambie Street | Vancouver

UPDATE, January 2011: There is now an Original Joe's in Langford. Since Langford fills me with the same kind of malaise as watching soap opera re-runs at my grandmother's house I have never bothered to go.

By the time they reach adulthood most people have given up on things like magic. The notion of conjuring something from nothing is relegated to the worlds of fantasy and conservative economic policy. Yet I, in the midst of all this doubt, am a living example of magic’s possibilities. I can, through my mere presence, bring rain to any region of the world simply by appearing there without a coat or umbrella. My most recent trip to Vancouver came at the end of weeks of sunshine, and so I foolishly felt safe in bringing only the essentials: socks, underwear, undershirts, shoe shine kit. The collection of umbrellas I have accumulated by making this mistake time and time again hung, unused, in my office at home. True to form, the skies opened, and my plan to walk downtown for dinner disappeared into the rain like Rutger Hauer’s tears. Instead, I decided to keep close to my room at the Plaza and Original Joe’s pub, a place I had been to a few times, fit the bill perfectly.