Lessons Learned on Commercial Drive

I don’t actually work there, but this office where I go to work sometimes and then they pay me – it’s a very loose, casual arrangement – volunteered to do a flyer drop around the Commercial Drive area for a local charity.  We all readily agreed, expecting a stroll in the sunshine with our friends.

Of course, none of us realised that almost every front door sits high above the ground.  High, like eight or 10 steps high. The first few houses we just went up and down, up and down.  By the time we’d done this 10 or 15 times, each gate we pushed open was accompanied by a silent prayer for a street-level home.  The stickers that said “No flyers or Junk Mail” were nothing short of salvation.  Similarly, getting to the top of the mountain, I mean stairs, only to see a teeny tiny little sticker stating that our flyers were unwelcome felt like torture.

We did learn a few things this afternoon.  One of them was that an overweight letter carrier is a scientific mystery.  Secondly we learned that once upon a time, a long, long time ago, mail was delivered by midget elves. How else would you explain the mail slots at ankle height?  We know it was a very long time ago, because any house that has had any sort of renovation over the last 100 years, has installed a normal, human height mailbox.  Even the heritage homes that still had fancy old doors with mail slots in the door, had a modern day mailbox.

Some homes wouldn’t have a mailbox, but would have a mail slot.  I have seen these before, when I was little, so a long time ago, and usually they flip inwards so you push the mail against them and they open. Not around Commercial Drive they don’t.  There were many moments of confusion surrounding the mail slots.  There were the really rusty ones that would not move.  Then there were those that had to be lifted towards you. How to do that with one hand holding the supply of flyers and the other hand ready to insert the flyers into a gaping mail slot.  Older homes had the teeniest tiniest mail slot that only doll-sized letters would fit in. Other mail slots were hidden behind locked storm doors – why they even have storm doors in Vancouver is another mystery.

The mysteries of Commercial Drive don’t end there.  There must have been one mail box at the fence.  Every other home had their mailbox, when they had one, at the front door.  The front door was usually found through the gate, down the path, across the garden, up the stairs, across the porch. And sometimes, you’d go through the gate, down the path, across the garden, up the stairs, across the porch and there’d be no mailbox and no mail slot either . Walking back across the porch, down the stairs, across the garden, up the path and through the gate you realise there’s no number on the house.  How do these people get their mail? How do they get their flyers, pamphlets and all important junk-mail?

Attempting to identify the neighborhood on any sort of economic or cultural terms is impossible.  There are heritage homes that have been lovingly and expensively restored. Then there are homes that are only marginally maintained. That could mean a few broken or absent steps up to the front door or a jungle where a garden may once have been.  Cracked window panes and peeling paint are not uncommon either, along with dangling eaves and missing roof shingles.  Other homes are freshly painted with beautiful gardens and toy-littered porches.  Right next door to these nice family homes there are the houses which are partially boarded up.  They may have been condemned, but some of the boards have now been removed and there are voices coming from inside. Squatters?

Then there’s the park. The park takes up a square block and has some homeless fellows over in the one corner, with their shopping carts filled with reclaimed empties.   Over at the playground kids are happily playing as their parents watch over them, chatting with other parents. And then there were some older gentleman playing bocce. Not that uncommon – except they were Mexican, and not that gentlemanly from the gestures they made as we passed. 

Whatever their socio-economic or cultural differences, this was clearly a community.  Everywhere people rode their bikes, walked with their kids, parked their cars as they arrived home from work.  People worked in their gardens and almost everyone said hello.  But I still don’t know how they get their mail.