No Chinese parade is complete without some lion dancers.

Here are a couple of bunnies with waistcoats and running shoes.

The dragon. And a rabbit.

Band truck. Cymbal player. Spare lion.

Here the lion has devoured Raw Sugar’s head of lettuce.

By eating the lettuce and accepting their envelope of swag, a year of good fortune is guaranteed for the hipster coffee shop. Hurray!

Pic 709
Ice sculptor

February 6, 2010

Three years ago:
Pic 38
Blue wall

Feb 6, 2008

Here’s one of the lions. There were three altogether.

The cops escorting the parade were riding on these little ATVs and showing off. I guess that cop in the back was trying to get me to move out of the picture that their photographer wanted to take of the cop in the front.

Too bad! I got my picture. They can be in mine if I can be in theirs, that’s what I always say.

Then I walked back home and snapped a few pics on the way. Here’s a chicken you could buy for $8.99, feet and all.

I think it’s funny how someone has gone around pasting photos of a bald man over top of various things in Chinatown, such as this window painting at the Kowloon Market.

I don’t have any information about this prank. Is it the bald man who is pasting himself onto everything, or is it someone else?

I doubt if it was the bald man himself who drew a cock and balls onto his forehead. Or is that what it is? It’s very misshapen. It must be something else. But what could it be?

Back at home the Sky Pilot came down to play with Clint Eastwood.

Then I took the garbage out, and now I’m thinking of defrosting a few samosas. And that’s about it for my winter Sunday.

How was yours?

Now we just have FestivAsia once a year, and the parking lot is called “Cambridge Park” for the duration. Here are a few pictures.

Art for sale

Lion dance. I’ve blogged about the lion dance before, here.

I liked the lion dance drummers. They were really going for it.

Here’s a picture of the boys, Mayor Larry and Chief Vern, shooting the shit up on the stage. I think councillor Diane Holmes has either fallen asleep or died. Maybe she’s seen the lion dance before.

Cops and ladies at the lion dance.

Kids chasing a balloon.

That’s Peter Yeung, my landlord. He emceed various parts of the show this year. If Chinatown had a mayor, he’d probably run for it.

Speaking of politicians, here is Will Murray, the NDP’s provincial candidate in Ottawa Centre. I don’t know much about him except that he’s young and earnest and he puts in the hours, showing up at every event and pressing the flesh. But I’m thinking of switching to the Greens from now on. (That sound you hear is my dad turning over in his grave.)

But FestivAsia is mostly about food, and little Asian girls in pigtails. I didn’t eat anything this year but here are some little girls. I wish I’d taken better pictures of them. I guess at the time, I didn’t realize they were the main event.

Wherever there are little Asian girls with pigtails and parasols, there are proud mothers and skeptical grandmothers.

That’s all for AsianFest for one more year.

See also:
Festivasia Part 1, The Mural
Festivasia Part 2, My lucky bamboo

Gladstone and Bronson

The palatial new Petrocan station is open now. That was really quick, just a few weeks between shutting down the old one and opening this one.

I dropped in to the Super Stop convenience store looking for some bacon, but they didn’t have any. It’s the kind of convenience store that is very convenient if you’re looking for potato chips or pop. Otherwise you might as well conveniently walk down to Hartman’s.

(I found some bacon at the 7-11, just a block away, but it was disgustingly sweet. “Maple cured,” yuch! You don’t want to eat that stuff. So I had to go to Hartman’s in the end.)

Across the street the old Stone Face Dolly’s has closed its doors, only to reopen as Jak’s Kitchen. I didn’t go in.

Caribbean Flavours

The West Indian place on Somerset near Preston burned down this week. Today I went out to get a picture, but there was nothing left. Just an empty lot with a bulldozer sitting on it, and next door the Joyful Land Buddhist Centre.

Joyful Land isn’t looking so joyful at the moment, but they are definitely lucky the fire was confined to one building.

Year of the Pig

I almost forgot to blog the Chinese New Year lion dance on Feb.18. It was a very modest dance, just one little lion and a few guys with drums and gongs and stuff.

Many people mistake this for a dragon dance. Nah, it’s a lion. What happens is that the lion goes around to all the Chinese businesses, which have to feed it a head of lettuce and an envelope containing money. The drums and gongs make a big ruckus as the lion devours the lettuce and stashes the envelope. This guarantees a year of good luck for the businesses and a year of prosperity for the martial arts clubs that provide the lions.

It was one of those very cold days. Maybe that’s why it was such a small parade. It was so cold that the lion kept getting invited inside the restaurants. I didn’t feel like going into the restaurants, so I didn’t get much for pictures. Here’s the lion emerging from Yangtze stuffed with lettuce and dim sum.

It seems to me they do this whole thing again at another time of year, when the weather is better. I don’t know when it is. My landlord, who is Chinese, was muttering about it once. “Supposed to be at New Year’s,” he grumbled. The Chinese are very pragmatic people (except for my landlord), so it doesn’t seem that odd that they would move the lion dance to another season when they can expect to get a better turnout. Maybe we should move Christmas over to July.

Anyway, here is another picture of Ottawa’s ragged little lion dance. CBC radio producer Kate Porter was there with her microphone, recording the ruckus for a sound bite. That’s her on the left as the lion heads into Ben Ben looking for the lettuce and the loot.

What else?

I saw this sign at a house on McLeod. Maybe it’s a sign of spring.

I like it when people paint their bikes in strange colours. It shows a refreshing lack of vanity and it makes the bike less stealable. Here’s a handsome pink polka-dotted one I came across.

This isn’t really graffiti because it’s done with a stencil, but I like it anyway. I don’t know what Broken Wing is. A band?

You’ll have to excuse me while I go nuke some bacon. Bye for now!