In a category entirely its own, Don’t show the elephant (1201 Hamilton Street, Yaletown, 604-331-1018) may defy description, but I’ll have a go. It’s a beautifully appointed, late-night Japanese café and gallery of sorts (which closes, usually, at 2 AM). Perfectly aligned CD covers, mostly Norwegian (elusive owner’s fetish, I expect), enli¬yen an interior wall. Another wall is taken up with a glass-fronted lavatory — public yet, ultimately, private. On warmer evenings, deep slip-covered chairs draw patrons outside to what was once a Canadian Pacific Railway loading dock, now with a distinctively angled over-head canopy. Suffice it to say that there can be few more appropriate vantage points from which to ponder Vancouver’s oddball, pluralist culture.
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