Author Archive

I started this project called A Stranger A Day to overcome my shyness and talk to people. The challenge: talk to a stranger a day for a year of my life and try to convince them to let me take a picture and share a story. Since most tattoos have a story behind them, this will be my conversation starter and a common thread that links them all. Every week I will be sharing one of my favourite findings here on Vancouver Is Awesome.

Join me in this Stranger a Day adventure and let me know what you think!

Stranger #133

Location: an about-to-close Lucy’s on Main.

Yup, you read it, a breaker blew and metaphorically, the night blew for many who wanted a late night bite —food that is (for those that don’t know, the place is a 24hr restaurant). I stepped by, mainly with strangering intentions, but also a bit hungry after a busy evening at school. A guy and girl were sitting at the bar and there was some visible ink showing, so I decided to approach them. He stepped away, but she shared a rad piece, and her story:

“Um, I have many incomplete ones (tattoos), but maybe I can show you the one on my chest. When I was six, I watched the movie ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ for the first time and I immediately knew I wanted to be her. I guess I was always attracted to this sort of things and imagery. So this is sort of a constant reminder to stay true to myself, and be who I want to be…”

I thanked her a lot and told her about the blog. She was really cool. A late night story for y’all (it was collected around 11pm). Now I am totally exhausted, so I’ll call it a day.

Thank you stranger! And thank you all for reading! Have an awesome week start.

To check out the daily strangers, click here:  astrangeraday.com

I started this project called A Stranger A Day to overcome my shyness and talk to people. The challenge: talk to a stranger a day for a year of my life and try to convince them to let me take a picture and share a story. Since most tattoos have a story behind them, this will be my conversation starter and a common thread that links them all. Every week I will be sharing one of my favourite findings here on Vancouver Is Awesome.

Join me in this Stranger a Day adventure and let me know what you think!

Stranger #129

Location: Sidewalk, Main in between 7th and 8th | Story found: Sat. Feb 5th.

This was so random, again, it was awesome! I was really just wandering around after having dinner with some friends. I had been walking for about thirty minutes, when I decided I wouldn’t go to any coffee shop and just try to find a cool stranger randomly, on the street. And so I did, and I was lucky. She was walking on the opposite direction to me, and I stopped and asked her if she had a minute, and explained the project. “I have ONE tattoo.” —she said, as she showed me her wrist. I finished explaining the whole online-documentation aspect of it and she jumped right on it.

“Well, the story is actually pretty boring. One day I was just skateboarding with my friends, and I got really stoned, so I thought I’d get the Peace sign tattooed here on my wrist so instead of doing it with my fingers, I would just have to show my wrist; so that’s what I did.” —I asked her if she did it right away. —“Yeah, there was a tattoo shop up the street, so me and my friends just walked up there; it is funny because the apprentice didn’t have any time, but he thought it was so funny that he just went ahead and did it.”

Gawd, I told her the story wasn’t boring at all!  I thought it was pretty cool and funny. I thanked her a lot for sharing. I got wished good luck, I wished her a good night; then we went on our separate ways. I walked back home just in time for little drops of rain to start attacking me. Cool stuff over all.

Thank you stranger! And thank you all for reading! Have an awesome week start.

To check out the daily strangers, click here:  astrangeraday.com

I started this project called A Stranger A Day to overcome my shyness and talk to people. The challenge: talk to a stranger a day for a year of my life and try to convince them to let me take a picture and share a story. Since most tattoos have a story behind them, this will be my conversation starter and a common thread that links them all. Every week I will be sharing one of my favourite findings here on Vancouver Is Awesome.

Join me in this Stranger a Day adventure and let me know what you think!

Location: Gene coffee @Main (Jan. 24th, 2011)

I was hanging out at Gene this soggy afternoon, and while I was waiting for my coffee to be ready I saw this guy sketching on his sketchbook. He seemed like a cool guy and, although he had headphones on, I went up to him to invite him to be part of the project. He didn’t have any tattoos, but a friend of his happened to pop by (with a lovely dog!) and he said “hey, maybe you should be talking to this man right here, he has some”. Said friend joined us and I explained what the deal was to him. He was in.

“Yeah cool, I can be your stranger. Maybe I’ll share this one on my hand, just ‘cos is the most accessible. It’s SHHHHHH! —he made the gesture as he explained. We laughed.  —I did it to myself with a sewing needle, and I don’t know, I just did it ‘cos I thought it was funny, plus all of my friends were doing it, so… that’s pretty much why.”

It was pretty funny. We then discussed finger-moustache tattoos, to what he said that he had thought of getting a goatee tattoo with the moustache on the index and the beard on his thumb. Haha.

My coffee was ready, so I thanked both of the guys and let them carry on with their conversation. I went back to my table and continued with my day. Cool stuff.

Thank you strangers! Have a good day y’all!

To check out the daily strangers, click here:  astrangeraday.com

I started this project called A Stranger A Day to overcome my shyness and talk to people. The challenge: talk to a stranger a day for a year of my life and try to convince them to let me take a picture and share a story. Since most tattoos have a story behind them, this will be my conversation starter and a common thread that links them all. Every week I will be sharing one of my favourite findings here on Vancouver Is Awesome.

Join me in this Stranger a Day adventure and let me know what you think!

Stranger #114 – “No Pictures Please”

Location: Bon’s on Nanaimo and Broadway

I showed up here earlier today almost without thinking, the good ol’greasy spoon place. I guess a lot of people show up there by instinct, the waiters are characters themselves and I enjoy reading the walls. It was on my way out when I spotted some ink. I guess he didn’t expect me to ask him something like this, and to be honest it was an impulse approach. I thought about it, a half a second later I was doubting myself and I guess nervousness was the cue. I am really glad I did it, because this is what followed:

“I can tell you the reason I got this tattoo, but I don’t like people taking pictures of it. There is a reason for that. See, this tattoo was specifically designed for me, to blend with the muscle underneath it and flow with the shape of the arm. People get tattoos for very different reasons, some want a replica of a drawing they saw. Mine is personal and I like that it is unique, it is art on your body. I wouldn’t like to be walking down the street one day and see someone with the same design. This is why I try to keep it away from photos.

The design is based off a necklace that my girlfriend gave me, it was of similar style…” —I can’t quite recall if he said that the necklace was lost or broken, the thing is that it is no longer around, but he carries the symbol with him in shape of his tattoo.

I loved the fact that he took the time to share the reason behind keeping his piece to himself, the few people with tattoos that had openly turned down the project never really elaborated on why.  I asked him if there was any way to document it, without showing the entire piece, if it was ok with him (I really wanted to get this story on record). He immediately said that I could take a shot of whatever his shirt didn’t cover, and so I did. This made me glad. I thanked him a lot for explaining and sharing, wrote down the blog URL for him and then went on my way. :]

Thank you stranger!

To check out the daily strangers, click here:  astrangeraday.com

I started this project called A Stranger A Day to overcome my shyness and talk to people. The challenge: talk to a stranger a day for a year of my life and try to convince them to let me take a picture and share a story. Since most tattoos have a story behind them, this will be my conversation starter and a common thread that links them all. Every week I will be sharing one of my favourite findings here on Vancouver Is Awesome.

Join me in this Stranger a Day adventure and let me know what you think!

Stranger #109

Location: Elysian Coffee on Ash and Broadway
Story originally collected: Friday Jan. 14th

I went into the shop earlier to have a drink as I waited for a friend to hand me some books. I had skipped strangering yesterday, it was my birthday and although I talked to three lovely strangers (really cool people, with small conversations each time), none of them had ink. Then, early random celebrations kept me away from strangers, and surrounded me by (somewhat) known people. So anyways, I was at the Elysian when I decided to talk to the guy that was sitting right next to me. He had a very nice and calm vibe, he later would tell me that it wasn’t odd that people approached him. This was interesting.

I told him about the project, he jumped right into it (and I paraphrase, I always paraphrase…).

“When I was younger my parents got divorced. My dad moved to Victoria and I stayed with my mom in North Van. She had to work from really early in the morning ‘till about six in the evening or later. So many afternoons after school I spent with two of my mom’s good friends and their kids. I grew up with their kids, whom I consider my brothers, you know, my family. Then we grew up, and like you do with siblings and friends, you go on different directions in life, but you still keep in touch. So we were always close.

Well, a few years ago one of those good friends passed away in a car accident. His name was David Stevens. Three out of four people that were in the car passed away. Dave was this big loving guy, football player at SFU, great great guy. He wanted to be Prime Minister of Canada, that was his goal. He was studying Political Science, he was very dedicated. So anyways, the only person that survived recovered from a coma, he is all recovered now. He was sitting behind Dave, so we always joke about how if it wasn’t for Dave (who was huge), he wouldn’t be here, Dave took all the impact. Haha. So yeah, then I had a somewhat hard time dealing with all of this. I would see Dave’s passing away just as if he had gone somewhere and I’d never seen him again. I found myself forgetting about him, then I would remember and it would hit me that he hadn’t gone anywhere, he had died. So I thought, what would be a better way to remember him, than having him with me all the time, here on my hand… DSDS, Dave Samuel Driver Stevens…”

We spent some more time talking, talking about friends and the very interesting connections that life makes, and how things go around Vancouver —at least, how we perceive them to be, perception is the key word.

“Do you find your friends to be symmetrical or more of complementaries?” He meant, symmetrical as in they are all the same, or complementaries, as in you don’t know how or why, but you get along… I told him my folks were oddly different, but with subtle symmetries here and there, not much of an answer, I guess. I shared an anecdote from last night, where friends showed up to a lil’ bday get together, but none of them knew each other —at least that’s what they thought at first. Only to find out a few minutes later, that they had ALL met before in some way. Our theme for the night? “I think I know you from somewhere”. 3 (or less) degrees of separation in Vancouver. I just found it fascinating.

We talked. My friend came in with the books and left them on the table. It was a lovely encounter. I scribbled the details of his tattoo story, hoping to get the names right. He scribbled the blog address. Then it was time for me to go. I thanked him a lot and then we waved from the outside, after I had unlocked my bike.

Beautiful friday over all, and it is barely 6ish. Keep enjoying it, y’all!

And thank you stranger! I hope our paths coincide again sometime in the future.

To check out the daily strangers, click here:  astrangeraday.com

I started this project called A Stranger A Day to overcome my shyness and talk to people. The challenge: talk to a stranger a day (for a year of my life) and try to convince them to let me take a picture and share a story. Since most tattoos have a story behind them, this will be my conversation starter and a common thread that links them all. Every week I will be sharing one of my favourite findings here on Vancouver Is Awesome.

Join me in this Stranger a Day adventure and let me know what you think!

Stranger #102

Location: a morning at Prado

It’s been a remarkably amazing day so far, and it is barely noon-ish. So many cool things. After skipping a day of strangering, to avoid spreading a contagious cold bug, life brought me to Prado again. After some time, I spotted a man sitting on the opposite side of the room. He was focused on his notebook. I saw some ink and impulse decided he could be an interesting person to talk to, so I approached him and explained the project. He put aside his book, by the camera that was sitting on his table, and invited me to sit with him. I never know how long these encounters will take, the usual is a couple of minutes, very brief. I sat down and we started talking, after a few minutes I interrupted the conversation and migrated my belongings to the new location.

He shared a bit of his life stories with me, from all over the place. From Paris to de DTES here in Van. “I am an artist”–he told me. Writer and photographer, but life artist over all. Then we got to his tattoos.

“You know that pile of bones that is in Paris’ underground? Well, the skull is the single most recognizable bone of the human body. For all we know, we could grab a bunch of dog bones, or any other animal and pile them, and we would hardly notice the difference in between that and human bones just by looking at it. But when you see a skull, you know it is human.

I personally don’t care what colour you are, where you’re from, if you are a girl or a guy you know… and that’s another thing with skulls too. You get the skull from a big black though guy and one from a girly girl and just by looking at it you wouldn’t know the difference. It is all down to what is inside, we are all the same.

I’ve been to Paris, New York, London… Vancouver is no different. There is always something in common with cities, people are afraid of talking to others. So I am glad that you are doing this… You know, sometimes people would look at me, with the skulls on my arm and then look away. Eye contact in NY or Washington, and you’ll have a 22 pointed to your face. So this is somewhat brave of you. I am glad.”

We continued to talk, then he mentioned that he also had some skulls drawn by his kids. I found this extremely asasfbbnfkjwFBHAKAJDA (AWESOME, or whatever that means!) and asked him for permission to grab another shot:

The conversation branched off to other topics (but somehow always surrounding the central meaning of his pieces). He then told me a bit more about the skulls on his arm. He had heard of this tattoo artist from Edmonton (I think it was Edmonton) who did great great work. So he came up to her with the idea and “In two three minutes she sketched it out, and I told her ‘That’s exactly what I want!’”.

A great encounter. He then asked if he could take a picture of me for a project of his own, a book of portraits. I said yes.

“When?”–he asked. “Whenever, I hang around here.”–I said. “Right now?”-he replied.

I said yes, he asked if it was ok again and I went close to the window to get the right light. Three shots of my portrait. Then he said: “You know, I have to make a living, but I want to give back too. If you had a pile of money right now to help people out, who would you give it to?” We both agreed that education was the way to go.

Anyways, there was so much more to it, but there is only so much I can fit in a post without boring you. So if you made it to this line, thank you! I was honoured to have this encounter. Good times.

Thank you stranger! And best of luck in your endeavours. Thanks y’all.

To check out the daily strangers, click here:  astrangeraday.com