Kelowna

My through line for this is either 

Kelowna: So you didn’t get into UBC Van, eh? 

or 

Kelowna: The Most Scenic Overdose in Canada

I’m thinking the former, as it’s more marketable. I’m very concerned about my writing being marketable. 

I may have visited Kelowna pre-consciousness, but generally I think it’s best to address pre-conscious happenings by finger painting, instead of trying to write a ditty about it. Inside of the last 24 months, I’ve visited Kelowna between 3 and 6 times. I outsourced some of my friendships there, just like Tim Ferris would’ve wanted; the other half being middle-aged men in Edmonton. Once you meet older people who still dose psilocybin semi-regularly, cultivating friendships with people your own age in your own city seems mind-numbing, given all the farmer’s markets and posturing from the younger group. I’ll take garage metal and whinging about the state of things over ‘slow sundays’ more or less every time. Anyways, Kelowna. 

I’m not done that last point, actually. If you cannot endear yourself to a group of people who are at least 8 years older than you, you’re a bum. Have any sort of conversation with them regularly. Even if it’s arguing with them. Especially if it’s arguing with them. You should cross a threshold in your 20s, and better sooner than later, where your rusting family members are the ones who are scared to bring up politics at the dinner table; -

“I shan’t bring that up around Emily, for she will holler at me”

-  there’s nothing more harrowing to a 50 year old father-in-law than being in the same room with a 22 year old drywaller who has nothing ahead of him but teenage pregnancies and parroted talking points. They feel like they’re watching a bee fly into a window repeatedly. This is what they tell me. Explain slang to them, or how to flip a camera on FaceTime. Say something deeply colourful, just before they inhale a mouthful of beverage. Talk about the big owl statue in the woods. Have thoughts.

Kelowna. Where Albertans and STI’s go to retire. 

Kelowna -  It’s on fire!

Kelowna - An ideal place to ‘focus on you.’ Leave your serotonin alone.

Kelowna - Don’t date women in the same friend group, vol. 2

If you were ever wondering what happens when you smash 50 hockey douche canoes, 50 of the sharpest blondes god has ever made, and 20 UBC students in the same room, visit any bar in Kelowna. None of them are particularly difficult to delineate. I’m not sure how BNA has made it so far without serious bowling-ball involves neurological incident, but that may be the Alberta in me speaking. I’m not going to google or in any way confirm whether they are accident - free. Do you think I google anything? Speaking of being smart (rough transition), Instead of being a useless sack of shit in 2018, you should have bought property here, and watched it double in value over the ensuing 6 years. What were you thinking? 

I have to give the usual pre-amble here in that if any of my friends who happen to play hockey are reading this, I am not about to discuss you; I am instead about to discuss every other hockey mall rat in existence. Writers are always selling someone out and it can’t always be me. 

I played some pond hockey when I was a young lad. I did many crossovers, none of them fast. Never did have anything that resembled a nice shot. I am loosely acquainted with the why and the how but am not here to say anything about that part of it, particularly. Let’s start at the most obvious point: anybody shocked at any headlines concerning Hockey Canada and young gentlemen getting their fun on have never met anybody who has ever played hockey reasonably well ever. Not once. Not even received a dusty snapchat. Nothing. Zip. I heard that news and I said:

“Right…how do we feel about calamari?”

I mean, I meeean. You gonna tell me having more money is better than having less money next? Are we going to discuss the fact that my car has 4 wheels? I hear that tidbit and I go 

“Crazy. So, the steak tartar?”

It’s demeaning for all of us for me to spend 200 words explaining this opinion. Your child’s semi-pro (and when I say semi-pro I mean it in the same way I mean semi-hard. Really leaning into the vagueness of ‘semi’ here) career is not worth ruining the life of every woman he is around for more than 3 months. They literally look like manicured assholes. I would ask them to wear a shirt about it but they advertise it pretty well without any guidance. If you are wondering why they would ever behave this way, google ‘top 10 socioeconomics books’ and buy the one that seems the most relevant. Big stick goes far. The fact that I played 5 years of rec hockey also says something about me, I’m sure, but will leave that up to your expert analysis. 

My only real outstanding gripe with hockey twats (other than the raping) is that despite all their macho posturing, they cannot operate a pair of pliers. I would never suggest that hand tool operation is what makes or breaks your manhood (I have said that many times before and will continue to think it) but if you’re going to be a big red asshole than you’d better be able to tell me where a brake pad is. Or what the difference between brush and brushless motors are. Sir. Sir. I understand you are very good at the ice skating. Now where in the house is the water valve? It’s worth considering, if your face is going to turn into a tomato as a result of 50 years of hollering, followed shortly by your dropping of a stress-induced stroke at the age of 53, was the bluster worth it? I thought you would’ve come to enjoy Chaucer, actually, but you never did give yourself the chance. Listening to Zach Bryant does not make you a reflective person. Stop pretending going to stampede builds character and call your mother. It’s her birthday. 

Every group has an archetype that is easy to hate, but hockey’s is particularly wankish. 

I’ve been on some very mediocre hikes in Kelowna that are worth your time if you have a lot of it. The food at Mad Mango is wildly overrated. The smoothies there are properly rated. The House of the Caribbean in the back alley is severely underrated. Little Hobo can join the ‘properly rated’ group, as they are held in high esteem locally. Unsurprisingly, if you are willing to spend a reasonable amount of coin on Italian, Roma Nord is mediocre, and I do mean mediocre in a very positive way. Recreational towns such as this rarely let down too too hard on the food front. Kelowna’s brand of dining, though, would have to be the wineries. If there is any single activity in any single place that speaks to what the masses are coming to Kelowna for, it is the wineries. To totter around with pink cheeks, in front of a backdrop of vineyard, is what the people here mean when they say ‘I’m in the zone.’ It is the gym mirror for your entire life. Everything is okay here. We all collect dividends, our kids are considering U of T, and this 40$ bottle of Merlot that wasn’t even from here is the best thing I’ve ever drank. 

I made the worst vegan stuffing on the face of the planet in Kelowna. I fractured my foot trying to run to Vernon in Kelowna. I have operated a barbecue on a rooftop patio in Kelowna no less than 3 times for 2 different groups of people. One of my friends gave me the rest of her bag of mushrooms, which I eyeballed, and then a different friend drove me around in her car like a dog while she ran errands, which included the caring of someone else’s real dog. At one point before she went into the grocery store, she asked me whether or not I was going to overheat and I’m pretty sure my only thought was “I like the warm.”

This is what Kelowna is. Hanging your head out of the passenger window while cooked on mushrooms, spending’s your parent’s money on a master’s degree, and leaving all of your uncomfortable feelings in the cupboard at home somewhere. The people are attractive (in a very country-club republican kind of way) and don’t even know where Russia is, much less read their fiction, and all in all live a charmed sort of life. Partake in it, and when flair hits you with a 40$ oversized bag charge on the way home, remember that god needs his get-back somehow. Even if he won’t touch you in the land of the grape.

Eric