According to this item (which has unfortunately reversed the image captions in error) from the Vancouver Courier, Womyn’s Ware, the Commercial Drive den of politically-correct-fetishism, is sending threatening cease and desist letters to BC artist and graphic designer, Dorrie Ratzlaff, who has designed a Leaping Goddess logo.

It is puzzling that Womyn’s Ware, which claims to be in the business of women’s empowerment, would object to another businesswoman’s interpretation of iconic female power. Jealousy? Vanity? Pettiness? The almighty dollar? Who knows?

Apparently suffering from hubris since their opening a decade ago, the proprietresses of Womyn’s Ware seem to have decided their “fat-leaping-happy-woman-doodle” is the only acceptable likeness of the goddess archetype.

This despite the fact that Ms. Ratzlaff’s Leaping Goddess image is used on T-shirts, caps, and everyday apparel sold via her Café Press site, while Womyn’s Ware sells “sex toys and pornography.”

Let me be blunt. I’ve always found the Womyn’s Ware fat lady annoying and amateurish. For the past 10 years, every time I’ve driven through the intersection at Commercial and Venables, I’ve said a silent prayer for its replacement.

The similarity between the two images is vague at best, and both hearken back to a much older theme. For my taste, Ms. Ratzlaff’s interpretation of a woman enjoying life in her body is far more developed artistically.

Why can’t Womyn’s Ware be happy about someone else’s success?

Take5 Café in the United Kingdom Building at Granville and Hastings has always been an enjoyable stop for lunch or informal meetings, so Vancouveriste was delighted to read recently at VanEats that Take5 is now open till 8pm on weeknights.

It’s sometimes challenging in downtown Vancouver, when one is on the go between afternoon appointments and evening meetings, to find an agreeable place to stop for an early supper.

Vancouveriste didn’t think twice this week before heading over to Take5 for a quick bite. We have always liked their coffee and their style—the terrazzo floor, exposed concrete, and muted colours strike a perfect balance between Euro-modern and West Coast casual that hits just the right notes. The novopop on their music system is always happy and never intrusive. And their coffee is among the best in town.

Despite its obvious charms, the place was empty. The three staff on that night were all aiming to please, particularly a tall fellow who brought the order. He was refreshingly charming and funny, and seemed to enjoy being attentive.

The food, however, did not quite live up to the service. A frittata that had looked inviting in the display case, decorated to look like latte art, was a little insipid, although the ingredients were of good quality. The accompanying cabbage and bacon soup was pleasantly smoky but a tad over-salted.

However, this was fast food, and not a special night on the town; it left a mere quibble to be desired. Next time, though, I’ll revert to my usual turkey san on pecan cranberry bread. It’s always good.

I left $14 poorer, a carry out of maple latte in tow to get me through the long night. You can’t go wrong with Take5’s coffee.

It’s no secret that despite its growing culinary reputation, Vancouver isn’t known for its pizza. Perhaps the worst in Vancouveriste’s recent memory was a low-carb Mexican extravaganza delivered to our door by one of the behemoths that dominate the market. Truly disgusting, but I digress

Vancouver also has many by-the-slice street pizza places that one would do well to avoid. Some of these have the cojones to charge nearly $5 for slices of questionable quality, but we aren’t going to talk about them.

We are talking about Pizza Garden at 1042 Commercial, a little hole-in-the wall place full of hard-working pizza assemblers who probably produce the best street pizza in town. They are very popular with the local crowd, and generally have four or five varieties of pizza ready to sell, and three or four more just coming out of the oven if you want to wait five minutes or so.

Some of their more memorable slices include the vegetarian, which is heaped with artichokes and sun-dried tomatoes, a tandoori chicken version with just the right spark, and when Vancouveriste is feeling like there is room for a few extra calories, the truly amazing cheddar and pancetta. Most slices are $1.50.

This is simple pizza, with a crisp and chewy crust and just the right amount of toppings. One slice is usually enough to tide you over in a pinch, two can make a very filling meal.

Pizza Garden is no gourmet destination. It is a garishly neon-lit no-nonsense take-out, with three cheap and tired plastic patio chairs out front on the sidewalk. But on a sunny day, there is a little pocket park just across the street, and when it rains, well there is always the car.

My first impression of Moulé in Kitsilano was precious, self-conscious, and hung up on its own image. Vancouveriste was not amused at this seemingly pretentious waste of time. Our delusions, however, were soon put to rest.

Moulé is a garden of delights that offers a little bit of everything, much of it difficult if not impossible to find elsewhere in Vancouver—private label clothing, house wares, jewelry, cosmetics, and more.

We loved the whimsical clocks, gorgeous glassware, and beautiful leather accessories. We were especially taken with a set of sterling salad servers. But Vancouveriste was not shopping for ourselves…at least not very much.

In the end we left with a Frank Lloyd Wright pen, a charming coat rack, a couple of boxes of gorgeous caramels, and some DuWop Buttercream. We rewarded ourselves for our shopping success with a box of the caramels (deliciously satisfying) and the Buttercream (oh! my! god!).

Moulé (which roughly translates as “molded”) is a family-run business with one store in Kitsilano (1994 West 4th Avenue) and another in Park Royal, West Vancouver. It may be the perfect place to find the perfect gift.

This past weekend we’d arranged to have a sleepover with my partner’s young niece and nephew, six and eight respectively, who had requested Kentucky Fried chicken for dinner.

Junk food is no novelty for them, and my mother-in-law had made a strong case while we were visiting at Christmas to nix the Colonel’s garbage in favour of decent home cooking.

We hemmed and hawed over this. I was leaning strongly towards the home-cooking, but my partner’s preference was to get the junk, particularly since this sleepover had been postponed on more than a couple of occasions, and Kentucky Fried chicken had been “promised.”

We compromised. He bought a bucket of the dreaded chicken, and I made steamed broccoli, caesar salad, and low-fat oven fries.

It had probably been twenty years since I’d had the “pleasure” of dining with the Colonel, but this was definitely my last date with the old guy. The kids dug in with abandon, while I gingerly picked up a golden brown hunk that looked like it might be a breast.

The kids ooohed and ahhhed and smacked their lips as they began to gnaw, while the adults stalwartly picked at batter, bones, fat, and skin, hunting for fragments of lean protein. My hunger waned as visions of battery hens danced through my head.

The kids soon noticed our lack of interest, and began asking questions. They began to pick the skin off, too. They learned a little about trans fats, and a little more about “good tasting does not necessarily equal good for you”.

Maybe next year we’ll talk about humane farming…over a home roasted, organic, free-range chicken.

It had been a while since Vancouveriste visited our favourite sausage joint, and when we walked in to Falconetti’s at 1812 Commercial Drive the other night, we were impressed.

The owners have been decorating, and have transformed their little Commercial Drive eatery to a cheap chic hideaway complete with liquor license and 10-seat bar one can belly up to and watch the action at the grill.

I always liked their sausages—particularly the merguez—and respectfully accepted their management decision to limit the choices of condiments to special sauce, grilled veg, and those very sexy custom-baked curved buns. But, I had always found it a bit of trial to eat in and stare at the hapless stainless sink over the too-low, too-tired arborite counter.

Finally, the place is taking on a little character; designer paint, slate and wood accents, new lights, and a bar high enough to hide the view of the sink if one sits at the tables. If I lived on the Drive it might even become my home away from home, I love those homemade Falconetti sausages that much.

On the night we visited, my partner ordered the Sirloiner, a mega-beef behemoth, and reportedly delicious. I was eating light, and ordered the wild salmon sausage, which was tastily spiced, and played very well off the toasted bun, house sauce, and condiments. So well that my partner said he’d order it next time.

This will be an ideal spot for a late summer snack, once they get their beer taps installed.

Running late, I was looking for somewhere new to pick up a quick take-out lunch in Gastown, and decided to try the Salty Tongue. This neighbourhood-deli concept eatery has been at 213 Carrall Street for some time, offering eat in and take out food including specialty cheese, olives, and designer water.

The Terra Breads sign in the window gave me some confidence, and I ordered a turkey sandwich. I was upsold on a “side” of pasta salad.

Maybe they were having a bad day. I’ve never been a believer in combining turkey and tomatoes, and if the blackboard menu had mentioned the turkey sandwich included them, I would have made sure they weren’t.

The only good part of the sandwich was very fresh and chewy, always wonderful, Terra bread.

The “side” of pasta salad turned out to be a huge styro take-out soup bowl of rigatoni tubes slicked up with a dressing of bits of last-legs broccoli and cauliflower, dill, some sort of oil, and way too much mashed garlic. Inedible, it was consigned to the garbage almost immediately.

Vancouveriste will be giving this place a pass for the foreseeable future; it has too many tasty competitors in the Gastown area.

After almost a one-year hiatus, this afternoon I decided to pop into the Laughing Bean, a “neighbourhood” coffee house on Hastings Street at Slocan, not far from the PNE grounds.

To say the least, the joint was jumping, but with only one laptop in sight. For the most part, it was filled with the after-school crowd—moms with pre-teens in tow—helping with homework or gossiping with girlfriends.

Seats were at a premium, though a couple of 40-somethings vacated a corner just as I, laden with a steaming cup of green tea and a ginger vegan cookie, was looking for a perch. My butt was settled into an armchair and tea and cookie were balanced precariously on a table laden with toddler toys.

The Laughing Bean is nothing if not eclectic. Much more spare in décor when it first opened about 18 months ago, it seems to have evolved organically into something akin to a neighbourhood recreation room that is threatening to morph into a collection of po-mo kitsch.

The counter staff were friendly and helpful, the music cheerfully ambient, the tea and cookie unmemorable, though I hear the JJBean coffee they serve is pretty good. The worst one can say is: “It’s definitely not Starbucks!”

Every holiday season I buy chocolate for my dear ones from the aptly named Chocolate Arts store in Kitsilano. This is chocolate to die for…concocted with love from the finest beans, filled with hand-crafted organic ingredients, encased works of edible art created from the molds of artist Robert Davidson. One is often enough—at least on any given day. The experience of eating such richness goes beyond indulgence to the holiest halls of sensuality—pleasure more associated with moaning than talking.

Recently, though, an article in Utne Reader got me thinking about fair trade, and then asking the folks at Chocolate Arts about it. Their answer was interesting. Apparently most chocolate from Africa is tainted with child labour and worker exploitation; the chocolate from South America not so much, mainly because child labour is outlawed there.

Chocolate Arts endeavours to source as much ethical chocolate as possible, but the world is ambiguous, and nothing is necessarily the way it seems. Just being told that a particular chocolate is fair trade apparently does not make it so.

Chocolate from Chocolate Arts is not an everyday treat at my house. But we’ve been eating more premium dark chocolate lately, since the word has been out about dark chocolate’s anti-oxidant health benefits. But, what’s good for me has to be good for the rest of the world, too, or there’s no point. I’ll be searching over the next while for ethical premium dark bars that are available in Vancouver.

Trains, terminals, and trucks. Oh the romance of life in the north-east corner of Vancouver. Livability in this charming neck of the woods has been threatened for some time now, what with the Provincial Government’s ill-conceived highway twinning, the City of Vancouver’s greed-conceived slot machine onslaught in Hastings Park.

But this is death by one thousand cuts, or at the very least, water torture. The Port of Vancouver has concocted another bit of business brilliance with its “Extended Gates Progam.”

Seeing as how the economy is cooking along, what with our insatiable appetite for cheap Chinese imports, the Port and its tenants needed more trucks to unload the booty. Just one problem….the East Vancouver Port Lands (affectionately known as the EVPL) just weren’t big enough, and it’s been getting crowded down there.

But the new solution, sold as a sop to air pollution and congestion on the streets, is to open the gates on Saturdays. From 8am, no less. Now the neighbours living along the Wall Street corridor don’t have to worry about getting up early and having a productive day off. The smoke-belching monsters and their air brakes will be their alarm clocks!

Keeping the economy safe by squeezing the livability out a once-charming neighbourhood. That’s the spirit, guyz.