Am I... dreaming? Am I… actually writing a weekly column for the legendary Westender? The very weekly I have read religiously ever since moving out of my parents’ home in West Vancouver, and into my first roach-infested dump of a downtown apartment?
The Westender, the very paper that felt like my only downtown friend for those first few years, until I was finally able to find a job at burgeoning indie label Mint Records?
The Westender, that paper I would grab in the lobby every week when I was finally able to move into a respectable-yet-tiny apartment on Beach Avenue after landing a job at the CBC?
Needless to say, it’s an honour for this old Vancouver kid to officially be writing for the city’s longest-running entertainment weekly.
Full disclosure: this isn’t my first time gracing the Westender’s pages. That Beach Avenue apartment of mine was featured in the long-running “My Digs” column a couple of embarrassing times. I’ve also called in more than a few rants and raves over the years (How utterly barbaric is it that Vancouver allows actual WHALES to still be kept in captivity?!… How incredibly awesome are those new bike lanes, eh?!).
My garage rock band, The Smugglers (which attempted to rock the clubs of Vancouver from 1988 all the way through to 2005, during which I was the lead “singer”), even managed to land on the cover of the Westender, way back in February, 2000.
And “Shakedown!”, for which this Vancouver Shakedown column is named, is the title of a bombastic Smugglers tune about the time I was caught in the teenage act of attempting to spray paint our band name on the side of a dumpster, and was arrested on the spot.
All these years later, somewhere in the Downtown Eastside, there’s a dumpster with the words “The Smug” spray-painted on its side.
These crime-free days, my wife Jill and I live happily in Hastings-Sunrise, in the furthest reaches of East Vancouver, with our hockey-obsessed toddler Josh. I traded English Bay Beach for New Brighton, the Fish House for Tacofino, and Denman for Renfrew.
My day job is still miraculously at the CBC, where I have been a host and music journalist for the past 15 years. Late at night, I try to write books, managing two so far, both of which feature Vancouver as prominently as possible.
It’s this city that I will write about in the Vancouver Shakedown, week in, week out, about our triumphs and failures, our warts and our beauty, typed with as much piss, vinegar, and passion as this old punk can muster.
I love this town. I always have and probably always will, and now I get to share that passion with you, in the pages of the Westender.
I couldn’t be prouder. And if this is a dream, don’t wake me up just yet.
