Commercial Drive Vancouver Lives

Time passes quickly and much changes in our lives. Looking back just a few years and I recognize how many areas of my life, my values, my habits, my social network, and others have changed. What I don't always see is how much the world around me has changed.

No more than four years ago I would visit Commercial Drive regularly. I'd visit one of the many coffee shops, maybe grab some Sushi or Mexican, occasionally a nice Greek dish, and with rare company wine and dine at one of the hip joints with the trendy ambiance of the new crowds. With major relationship and career changes, I also ended up downtown without a vehicle and my habits and haunts changed.

Now closer to Commercial Drive, I had my real first opportunity to walk The Drive and see the changes. I walked from almost at Venables, all the way past Broadway a half block, and back again. You know what? The only time I tripped along the route was when I stepped off a curb once. It was my own clumsiness, not the myriad of heaved sidewalk cracks I remember littering Commercial Drive.

At the corner of Venables and Commercial Drive, a commercial / residential development property has long been completed and is occupied with new businesses and residents. The life of Commercial Drive is clearly vibrant and extended in length further North than it used to. Even Venables feels more vibrant around this corner.

As my walk ventured south of 1st Ave along Commercial Drive, I always expected some life but not with the same vibrancy and pizazz of the stretch north of 1st Ave up to the area around Grandview Park. There was a restaurant, well-known and liked, right at that corner across from Joe's coffee shop that had burned down. I forgot to notice what was there today, but down to about here and back to 1st Ave was my favourite stretch.

Today though, I discovered a whole new vibe along Commercial Drive right up to and past Broadway. Businesses had brightened up, new faces and fronts lined the street, and a stronger cultural diversity was presented to the passerby. I was having a great time soaking in the senses, sights, and sounds. This brings me to my one gripe.

Motorists, by and large, are quite comfortable wrapped warmly in their metal cocoons ripping along the streets of 1st Ave and Commercial Drive. A lot of the motorists I witnessed in the two hours I strolled The Drive were aggressively impatient and dangerously reckless, not to mention obnoxious. I like the Car Free idea and see why it would be so popular along The Drive. I think drivers need a reality check; that might solve a few more city-wide problems.