The year end has always been a time of gentle reflection for K&K, usually as we lean against a fireplace mantle, wearing a lamb’s wool turtleneck sweater and periodically sticking our snout into a brandy snifter to savour the aromatic bounty that is life and all of its wonderful and exciting potential.
Which is why, rather than rehash the past, the forward thinkers and envisioners at K&K prefer to look back at the year ahead.
• January: Feeling confident with his party’s fortunes and ability to pass just about whatever motion they desire, Mayor Gregor Robertson and his Vision Vancouver-dominated council approve a controversial provision that whenever Robertson is away on city business, the interim mayor will be none other than Robertson’s 15-year-old Rocky Mountain 18-speed with removable panniers. “The Rock,” as Robertson often refers to him, would be fair, balanced and not easily swayed due to its “smoothlink” suspension system and light but rugged body. And while some will no doubt lament the perversion of the political process where an inanimate object can be given so much power, at least it will be more of an active participant than Vision Coun. Tony Tang. Oh snap.
• February: Vancouver’s other representative to the Sochi Olympics, Quatchi, will cause an international scandal after drunkenly inviting Russia’s polar bear, hare and leopard mascots to perform a four-mascot luge with him. Consequently, Quatchi will spend three weeks in a Siberian gulag, where he will have a brief affair with a member of the re-imprisoned Russian punk band Pussy Riot. Upon return to Vancouver, Quatchi will get a high-paying job with the city’s communications department.
• A controversial new restaurant will open in the Downtown Eastside, once again raising the ire of so-called poverty activists protesting what they see as the ongoing gentrification of the neighbourhood. Headed by self-taught French chef and former Maillardville Chuck E. Cheese dishwasher and blogger Gaston Gaston, Dumpster will focus on small plates and amuse bouches made from recycled food scraps “harvested” from nearby dumpsters. In fact, the compact restaurant space will consist of eight retro-fitted dumpsters stacked in a stylish cube. The restaurant will also be mobile due to its built-in wheels and thus be able to spread its gentrification and economic destruction wherever it pleases. By the way, its grain-fed sea otter cheek simmered in a balsamic reduction with quail’s egg and rootbeer-soaked watercress will be to die for.
• March: The Vancouver Canucks will meet the Ottawa Senators in the NHL’s Heritage Classic in the great, wintry outdoors of B.C. Place. The temperature will be a bone-chilling 18 C, with a slight chance of rain and UV index of 8. “It reminds me of my childhood,” a man wearing sunglasses and an oversized Tommy Bahamas shirt will say, “when we’d head to Arizona for the winter and play bubble hockey in the air-conditioned games room of my parents’ time-share.”
• April to October: Not much exciting happens.
• November: Gregor Robertson and his Vision-dominated councillors lose the municipal election in stunning fashion to a mob of old people holding torches and pitchforks in the air. The mob’s message “Enough is enough” and “Change will change things that we don’t want changed” resonates with the two per cent of eligible voters who bother to vote.
• December: In another stunning move, the city’s communications director Quatchi will take over for Penny Ballem as city manager, ushering in an era of stability, goodwill and civility not seen at city hall for years, giving way to murmurs of “Quatchi 2017.”
