Footnotes: Not Just Any Sign

It's like mistletoe, only different...

On first glance, this is a silly tourist photograph of a situationally appropriate sign. But this sign has a greater significance... a paranormal significance... a significance which I will acquaint you with in the following paragraphs.

Do you feel like you are watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents?

you should

Just a few months ago, my friend (and renowned sparkle expert) Ashley accompanied me to Vancouver for a tour of the local cuisine. Indeed, sushi and delicious cheese were high on our list of activities. Were we also excited at the prospect of being in the vicinity of one Robert Pattinson? Perhaps we were. Perhaps we made constant allusions to the fact that we were in a city full of vampires, that at any given moment, Mr. Pattinson could be partaking in the exact same activities we were enjoying -- eating, walking, drinking -- but of course, in a different location.

One of the restaurants we hoped to find, called The Salt Tasting Room just so happened to be located on a street called Blood Alley(blood is salty, right?). A mere coincidence? I think not --if we had any hopes of meeting RP, surely it would happen in Blood Alley, amidst the towers of wine and cheese that we were promised by the salt lick. or whatever.

Ashley and I set off on foot down W. Hastings Street with google map in hand, ready to have the best time ever. Did I mention that we had spent a good two hours tackling not one, but two boats of sushi? It's pretty much impossible to squash a sushi buzz of such proportions. We would not be deterred by hell or high water. Or junkies. Or the obvious lack of alleys named Blood.

Blood Alley proved elusive. The junkies, however, were out in full force (enter sagebrush and foreboding whistle). Each time we circled the blocks, the concentration of junkies grew at exponential rates until we were wandering through an entire sea of them.

I believe the saying is "third time's a charm." So when we once again came across the dreaded W. Hastings (informally known as junkie alley by now), we decided to quit our search for cheese and set out for another location in which to rest our bones. At this point I felt skeptical that anyone named Robert Pattinson would exist anywhere near a place called Junkie Alley.

Our small party discovered a bar in downtown Vancouver that didn't have a line of meat marketeers -- a small Irish bar with an enthusiastic crowd. We couldn't be at odds with Vancouver, not when the jovial bartender handed me a frothful glass of Guinness. Not when a couple of fellows played live music, which the entire bar sang along to. Not even when the nosey nose dude spit on our onion rings, water, faces etc. Wherever RP was, whatever he was doing, it couldn't top our night.

It turns out Mr. Pattinson was hunkered down in a bar just two blocks away.

Everything fell into place. The lack of blood (and alleys), the surreal experience of wandering through gastown, the nosey nose guy -- clearly Mr. Pattinson and I exist in parallel universes, and ne'er the twain shall meet!

Well, do you have a better explanation?

Anyway. A few weeks ago, as Sydney and I wandered along the daylit streets of Gastown, I made a small joke about Blood Alley.

Sydney: Oh yeah, that's just a few blocks down from here! I'll show you.

So there I am, standing at Blood Alley, the gateway to another universe.

The End.