Updated Review: The Dime

 

After the NPA event, I went to the Dime for brunch with the Everloving. It is nothing much more than a bar with background music, TVs on most walls, heavily tattooed staff (giving great service), and good cheap food.  I really enjoy the place, as does herself, and I thought it time to give it another shout out.

If we go there during the week for lunch, we are both addicted to the Breakfast Sando, served with greens and a piquant dressing. Great stuff.  But on the weekends they have a brunch menu and we both adore their Chorizo Hash Skillett. It is a good plateful of potatoes and onions and peppers, a fried egg, with enough chorizo to give it a kick, and served with a form of hollandaise that is to die for.

The quality of the food is superb and the real kicker is that, like all the food at the Dime, they are just $5.95 each. So, two filling brunches and a great pint of local beer cost $17.00 including tax.  Most breakfast places on the Drive will charge you $17 for a single serving of hash and eggs with coffee. And most of them won’t be as good.

If you’ve never been to the Dime, I can thoroughly recommend it.

The NPA’s Meet & Greet

I attended the NPA’s meet and greet session at the Drive Coffee Bar this morning , and what can I say?  The coffee was great!  [I am still practising with my new camera so the following is the only half decent shot I got!]

It started slow, but by the time I left the place was packed.  Most of the crowd were clearly NPA caucus members, their friends and families. Obviously there were a few interested civilians but perhaps not as many as they would have hoped for.  Much of the NPA’s time was taken up with talking among themselves.

I was disappointed not to see George Affleck there; he’s always fun to chat to.  However, I did spend some time chatting with long-time Parks Commissioner John Coupar who complained bitterly about the huge cut in City funding that Vision imposed on the Parks Board.

I was with a Twitter buddy who has serious concerns about housing affordability for professionals like himself, and he asked John about it.  Coupar propounded what I assume will become the NPA line:  a history lesson that the beautiful Vancouver we all grew up to know and love was created by NPA Councils and that only the Vision reign has caused the problems.  He, of course, skipped over the fact that this current sequence of disasters actually started with the NPA and Sam Sullivan’s infamous Eco Density project.  Vision fought and won their first election with a campaign against Eco Density. However, as we all now recognize, once in power they actually fed massive steroids to the same policy and got us to where we are today.

Prospective NPA mayoral candidate Hector Bremner was there, surrounded by his acolytes from AHV and elsewhere, several of whom seemed keen to look like mini-Bremners. Unlike an old pro like John Coupar who was working the tables, Bremner mostly stayed where he was and had people brought to him. Noblesse oblige, I guess.

The other prospective NPA mayoral candidate, Glen Chernen showed up around 11 and did his best to meet and greet. However, the tiny space was so packed with Bremner’s people that it was hard to get around.

If they have more of these types of events, they have to do one of two things:  (1) use a space that is not long and very narrow; or (2) have their reserved tables near the back of the space rather than blocking up the front.

 

Wise Words

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There are no easy or hard questions.

There are only questions you know the answers to

and those that you don’t.

 

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Image: Heron