Rules is Stupid
Blitz Magazine
The other day, I was sitting on the patio of a Vancouver restaurant and a pair of Mexican tourists sat down across from me. After their drinks arrived, they asked if I minded if they smoked. I said no. I almost said: “Uh, it’s against the law to smoke on a restaurant patio in Vancouver,” but I didn’t. Because it would have sounded unfriendly. And stupid.
It is stupid. In Vancouver, smokers can no longer smoke near the entrances of buildings. So they go into the lanes and walk around on the sidewalks. Since there are no ash trays anywhere, they drop their butts wherever they happen to be. So the streets and sidewalks are heavily-littered with cigarette butts. This mess is the basis for the latest move on the part of the anti-smoking Nazis, who want to ban smoking on beaches.
If they succeed, you will be able to drive an exhaust-spewing vehicle, be morbidly obese, raise diabetic children, live on fast food and furnish your home with lead-laced, Chinese-made junk, but you won’t be able to sit on a beach and enjoy a cigar while watching the sun go down. While I’m sure that special-interest groups will soon form to lobby against all of the former, the latter remains strange but true.
The West End of Vancouver is home to one of the largest gay communities in North America. It’s a place where people can be proud of their sexuality. In the heart of the West End is the ironically-named Olympic restaurant. Its owner recently refused service to a heterosexual couple. Why? They were kissing. The owner, while refusing to make eye contact with the woman, told the man: “We don’t tolerate that kind of thing in here.”
I recently pulled into a parking lot, just a few blocks from that restaurant, and was in the process of straightening out the car when an officious little man walked up to my window. He informed me that there is a law against idling one’s car and that if I didn’t turn the car off, he’d call the police.
Also recently, I went into a downtown hotel in search of lunch. Only the lounge was open (the ‘lounge’ being an empty room separated from the restaurant by a movable screen). I was refused service because I had a friend’s son with me—a minor. I told Mr. Rules that he could hardly expect a Liquor Control Board penalty, pointing out that said minor, who was passed out in his stroller, was 53 weeks old and firmly teetotal. We got the boot.
Ahhhh Vancouver. One of the most beautiful cities in the world. Where a West Side housewife waged a two-year campaign to bring down the tree house of the little kids next door. Where community festivals die for lack of funding but millions are spent on ‘traffic-calming devices’ (piles of cement that jut out into the road and cause accidents and vehicle damage). Where there is a sign at Third Beach reading ‘No Ball Playing’.
Tourism Vancouver has a $14 million budget to market its city as a travel destination. It does a great job; 9 million people visited last year. Marketing materials show dazzling images and speak of all of the things there are to do here. And now millions more will be spent on bringing people here for the 2010 Olympics. I’m thinking, though, that they may want to lean on the City Hall plods. Because if you’re spending millions of dollars telling the world that your product is the best choice and it turns out that it is not, why bother? If you tell people that Vancouver is the best place for their honeymoon, but public displays of affection are punished, why bother? If you tell people that Vancouver is kid-friendly and families are refused service in hotels, why bother?
The last word goes to a British tourist who was brought here by successful marketing and noted: “‘Fabulous city. But you people are bloody up-tight.”