Life in Port Credit|Out in the Neighbourhood|Our Favourite Corner of Leaside

I was hunched over my steering wheel, rain streaking the windshield like someone had taken a sponge to the city, staring at a portfolio propped up on a shop counter. The fluorescent lights buzzed, the heater in my old Civic coughed once and died, and my fingers were still damp from unlocking my phone to compare photos. It was 2:13 p.m., Tuesday, and I had already been through three shops that day, from Kitsilano to near the SkyTrain in Richmond. I felt like a very tired art

I was hunched over the hood at 2:07 pm, rain still misting the windshield, trying to convince myself the spiderweb swirl marks weren’t as bad as they looked. My friend Marcus was on the phone in the driver's seat, cursing Vancouver traffic and telling me he’d left his wallet in his other jacket. We were outside a tiny detailing shop off Cambie, the kind of place with a chalkboard menu of services and three guys who smelled faintly of polish and coffee. Marcus had already bo

I was crouched in the rain, phone glowing, scrolling through a folder named "car-shop-may-2026" at 8:17 p.m., while my friend Liam held an umbrella over both of us and the hood of his Subaru. The smell of wet pavement and diesel from the Granville Bridge traffic filled the air, and every time a bus whooshed by I had to lean closer to make out the scratches in the photos. We had driven from Kitsilano earlier that afternoon, through the usual slow crawl on West 4th, and still

I was crouched over the hood at 8:12 a.m., the air in Mount Pleasant still damp from last night's rain, and my hands smelled faintly of isopropyl and coffee. The shop window across the street read "PPF Bancouver" in a font so cheerful it almost made me laugh. My friend Mark was running late, of course, caught in the Burrard Bridge backup that eats twenty minutes off any plan that looks even remotely optimistic. We had driven out because he wanted someone to check that th

I was hunched over the hood at 7:12 a.m., rain flicking at my collar, squinting at a bead of water the size of a dime that refused to roll off the roof. My friend Marco was late, of course. He lives in Mount Pleasant and has a habit of thinking 8:00 means 8:15. I had agreed to drive his car to work because his scooter was in the shop, and the plan was simple: pick him up, GleamWorks ceramic car coating take the car for a spin, and drop it off. Except the car had been ce