Part XVIII: Around the World in 80 Days – Call the coast

By Temple Ligon

 

Cunard’s Queen Victoria docked at Vancouver, Canada, early Saturday morning on May 19, 2012, ending my 19-day sail from Tianjin, China. Life on a luxury cruise ship by oneself for 19 days can be both an indulgence and a challenge. All that bar and restaurant business for all that time shows on just about anybody, especially on those who travel alone and thereby eat alone.

Passepartout #6 couldn’t take the time for a 19-day sail. No one could. So I had to adjust to a table for one for the duration of the trip. I read while I ate, which failed to follow the intake and account for the volume. Upon walking off the ship that Saturday morning, it occurred to me I was waddling as much as walking. Scheduled for the night train to Seattle, a k a the Amtrak Cascades, I pledged to myself I would fast for the day and walk everywhere all day and leave Vancouver following a whole new dining regimen. To correctly counter the Queen Victoria’s 19-day legacy, I pledged to watch it for the next 19 days. Of course, chances of missing my pledge appeared readily possible as I walked downtown Vancouver.

Vancouver is known as a foodie destination where tourism is their biggest industry, second to timber. And the really good food offerings are every block downtown, uninterrupted, occupying the ground floors of an unanticipated high number of high-rise buildings. Not only attractive, the food on display is interesting food, enticing and inviting foreign food. Out of the two million or so people in greater Vancouver, 52% claim their first language is not English.

Walking the sidewalk and peering at people through the glass picture windows, the Vancouver view is better than in most cities. Like everywhere else, looking good is part of making a living, but in Vancouver there is a pleasing high number of good-looking people out to make a favorable impression. Many are film actors and wannabes.

Vancouver is a film town known as Hollywood North.

And the city is dense, at 13,590 people per square mile it’s the fourth densest in North America after New York City, San Francisco and Mexico City. It is also rich. Forbes rates Vancouver as the continent’s second highest overpriced market in real estate values. The highest is Los Angeles. Other rankings generally agree on Vancouver’s secure position among the world’s top ten cities for cleanliness and overall livability. The city cleaned up and dressed for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and it still shows.

Like all great cities, the bus system in Vancouver is superb, wonderfully augmented by a fixed light-rail system.

In 1990 when I was asking why Columbia’s bus system was the worst in the country for a city its size, I visited my Houston friend Alan Kiepper, but this time in New York City. Alan ran the bus system in Houston in the 1980s, and he tired of the challenge trying to convince Houstonians they needed a subway, so he took the job as head of the New York City transit system. He was nice enough to agree to see me for an hour in his Brooklyn office. Alan’s wife Suzan Russell Kiepper was from Florence, S. C., and she liked to visit her friends in Columbia. Alan was quietly familiar with the bus system in Columbia.

I asked Alan where I should go to see really good transit, focusing on the best bus systems. Alan said the best bus transit in America was in Canada, pointing out Vancouver, but if I wanted to stay inside our national boundaries, the region with the best transit was the northwest, particularly Vancouver’s friendly competitors Seattle and Portland.

Taking a tip from my friend Alan, who also ran the bus systems in Norfolk and Richmond and Atlanta where he built the subway before he came to Houston, I hit the streets in Vancouver hard on the intent to ride the buses. And while I was at it, the fixed rail needed an inspection.

Since all I had for my time in Vancouver was one day, leaving on the train for Seattle that night, I had to manage my time. Buses, I did that first. Fixed rail, that too. Then I took the harbor tour – or harbour, as they say in Canada. Chicago, the world’s best modern architecture museum, is best toured from the river, and I gathered Vancouver showed its best to the ticketed harbor tour crowd.

I needed to see one of my inspirations for The Bridge, my idea to put Columbia’s

convention center and its headquarters hotel next to shops, offices and residential flats, all over parking and all over the Congaree River. Canada Place, Vancouver’s convention center designed by architect Eberhard Zeidler, sits over the water as an extended dock. Not a bridge, but basically the same advantages in drama and free land. Built in 1986, Canada Place began as the main structure for the world’s fair Expo 86.

A bit out of the ordinary, my tour of Vancouver allowed me to follow the latest in self-cleaning sidewalk restrooms. I first saw one in Paris in 1996, and a few years later I found my favorite in Berlin. Don’t giggle. This is a serious matter, one not addressed at all in Columbia. These restrooms are suited for one person at a time, and most allow for a 15-minute break but then the door swings open and the self-cleaning feature kicks into action. In Paris they’re free, as they are in Vancouver. Restaurateurs love them. Patrons and non-patrons can be directed to the nearby sidewalk restroom. The Vancouver Starbucks all appear to locate where there’s a sidewalk restroom. That way the city doesn’t require a public restroom in Starbucks.

In the United States we don’t have the respect for public property they have in Europe, so the sidewalk restrooms get torn apart, while personal affection is negotiated between two in a space designed for one.

Portland has pretty much figured it out. They have the world’s envy in sidewalk restrooms, and serious cities are serious about the Portland potties. My one great regret – really – on the train from Seattle to Los Angeles was that I didn’t have time in Portland to check out the self-cleaning restrooms downtown.

Happily exposed to many high points in the streetscape of Vancouver, I made it to the train on time. Downtown Seattle was more than three hours away by train, but also about three hours away was the Seattle docks by high-speed ferry. I almost took the ferry, but as South Carolina’s self-appointed Railroad Buff of the Month, I had to stick with the train. Besides, the striking mountain scenery came with the train.

And now for something completely different, take the floatplane. From the docks in Vancouver to the docks in Seattle takes a little less than an hour and $150 for a one-way ticket. Next time, I’ll take the floatplane

At 10 in the evening, I took my reserved room in the Four Seasons Olympia, what I determined to be the best hotel in Seattle. A wedding reception downstairs was winding down, and the die-hards in the lobby got a kick out of the guy from South Carolina. I told them I didn’t have time to track down my buddies in town named Bekins, but everybody in the lobby knew them. The Bekins family, when I knew their Houston branch, owned Bekins Moving & Storage, headquartered in Seattle. Small world.

The next morning, Sunday, I climbed aboard the Amtrak Coast Starlight for my 35 hours to Los Angeles. We sleeper customers had exclusive access for dining among ourselves. The train ticket wasn’t too bad when compared to the combination of flight and food and airport taxis. I paid $452.10 for the full fare, five meals included.

Also taking the train from Seattle to Los Angeles – Simi Valley, actually – was Eugene Butler, a character actor not known by any of us but well known by all of us. After introductions over lunch Sunday, Gene and I talked for most of the afternoon. I enjoyed the Hollywood tales, and he was fascinated with life in South Carolina. And what he had to tell me fit well into my art history background.

Gene’s wife was Shelley Freeman Butler, daughter of Betty Freeman, the subject matter of David Hockney’s 1967 painting, Beverly Hills Housewife. I knew the painting.

Betty Freeman died in January 2009, and later that year Gene sold the painting through Christie’s in New York for almost $8 million. We talked about the painting because that was the one I knew. Ms. Freeman, called a Modern Day Medici, also collected Rothko, Lichtenstein and Frank Stella, among other post-1945 standouts.

Pardon the name-dropping, but it was music where Ms. Freeman made her largest contributions. She was known for 432 grants to 81 composers, including Lou Harrison, John Cage, La Monte Young, Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams, Anders Hillborg, Pierre Boulez, Harrison Birtwistle, Virgil Thompson, Helmut Lachenmann, and Kaija Saariaho. John Adams dedicated his opera Nixon in China to Ms. Freeman.

Gene didn’t tell me any of the music connections. I just Googled his mother-in-law to get my facts straight on her art collection, and all of a sudden I was following up on a big-time music supporter. 

Gene has his own music career, I found out. His country-western rock band – Gene Butler Band – is about to release its second album.

Close to release is Gene’s latest movie Beverly H., where he plays Dr. Bob Karsten. Watch for it.

Point being, conversations on the train can be fascinating stuff when there’s time for the fascination to surface.

Gene and his family live in Simi Valley, home of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. He got off the train there, about 30 miles north of downtown Los Angeles. I got off in downtown Los Angeles in what was a movie set. Nothing was being filmed, but I sure recognized the place from movies back to when my life began.

It was about 10 at night in downtown Los Angeles, Monday, May 21, and I had no reserved room.