Hot dog!

Vancouver's destination hot dog stand. A hot dog stand good enough to go out of your way for.

West Broadway, near-ish Burrard, in front of the Future Shop. Russ and I eat there every time we are in the area.

The buns are homemade. The cooked onions are free. The wide assortment of sauces are mostly homemade. Choose cheddar or mozza cheese, both real, not processed. They have an assortment of meat dogs, and two different veggie dogs.

But the best part are the owners and the other customers. An older couple owns the stand, and they are both cool folks. I think they are Philipino, but I've never asked. Many of other customers are also regulars, and they know they've found something special. Every time we've been there, there's been a line (not always long though), and we always end up chatting and laughing with the strangers around us. There's a little community feeling around this little hot dog stand that is almost as good as the hot dogs themselves.

If only there was a Commercial Drive location, my neighbourhood would be perfect!

How to act on a dark street

[Inspired by a man on the street who probably had no idea how his actions could be perceived.]

Many people, in particular female people, have been taught from childhood to fear strangers (even if you are statistically more likely to be attacked by someone you know). As a result, many women have a great deal of awareness of what is going on around them, especially while walking down a dark, mostly empty street alone, and they react with fear to certain actions.

So, to all the wonderful men out there who would never harm anyone except in self-defense, some tips to avoid frightening pedestrians (note, these are probably good tips to apply no matter who the other pedestrian is, but I've used "woman" because they are more likely to notice you and be frightened or at least unnerved by these actions).

1. If walking up behind a woman on a dark, empty street, try to avoid suddenly speeding up. On an overactive imagination, this appears to be you trying to catch up to them to do some harm.

2. If walking up behind a woman on a dark, empty street, try to avoid suddenly slowing down right behind her, as now you appear to be stalking her. Just pass her, with as wide a gap as the sidewalk will allow.

3. If walking up behind a woman, etc., and she suddenly crosses the street in the middle of the block, there's a chance she feels uncomfortable with someone she doesn't know following her on an otherwise empty street. For goodness' sake, don't follow her across the street! Now she's really going to think that you are stalking her! If you actually need to be across the street, wait until you are parallel to your destination and cross the street and go straight to the house, side street or whatever.

4. If you are driving down an dark, empty street and you need to pull over to look at a map, try to avoid slowing down as you come parallel to the only person on the whole street. We've all heard stories of women being pulled into cars; this is going to make us nervous, to say the least.

I have experienced all of the above by men who were probably just innocently going about their lives, completely, blissfully, unaware that their actions looked suspicious and dangerous. None of them did me any harm, but they did cause my pulse to pound.

I'm sure there are other examples; please feel free to add your own tips in the comments if you wish.

Thank you Grandma!

This is a big public thank you to my Grandma - she's not on LiveJournal, so I'll print this and mail it to her - because the mad money she gave me for my birthday paid for my LiveJournal paid account renewal.

So, thanks to Grandma, I will continue to be able to use all my user icons (I only have ten or so, but I can't imagine going back to just three), subjecting you all to surveys (well, I haven't used that feature yet, but it's just a matter of time), and hosting my pictures on the LiveJournal scrapbook!

THANK YOU GRANDMA!