A Summer Full of People

Up until recently, many of the pho­tos I’ve been tak­ing this past cou­ple of months have been of nature; flow­ers, birds, the for­est, etc.

Then, Van­cou­ver went all gre­gar­i­ous on us. The fact is, when the days are as beau­ti­ful and com­fort­able as they have been, you just have to get out, and every­body else has the same idea. So this month has been a series of fes­ti­vals, mee­tups, twee­t­ups (think impromptu get-together flash-mob via web mes­sag­ing), BBQs and gen­eral get-togethers.

A cou­ple of weeks ago was Car-Free Van­cou­ver day, in which sev­eral sec­tions of the city blocked off areas to auto­mo­bile traf­fic and ven­dors (and oth­ers) set up booths. Pam and I went up and down a large sec­tion of Main Street, but didn’t get to the other streets that were par­tic­i­pat­ing, includ­ing Com­mer­cial Drive (where the move­ment started) and a large swath of Den­man. We saw every­thing from Tai Chi:

to crowds and bal­loons nearly as far as the eye could see:

Then, this past week­end, it was the Greek fes­ti­val, which took over a stretch of Broad­way to the east of us. It was an enor­mous crowd, and Pam and I chowed down on Souvlaki…

…and Baklava (Pam opted for a lemon pound-cake with almonds called Samali, after a Ugan­dan friend she has of the same name). I learned that my name in Greek is NTABINT (although pho­net­i­cally it’s spelled ∆ABI∆ ). We also real­ized that this sec­tion of the city was full of great lit­tle Greek restau­rants and delis, so now we know where to get the best pita and treats like Koura­bi­ethes (sugar cook­ies), Kataifi (Baklava with shred­ded dough) and the nearly unpro­nounce­able but deli­cious Galak­to­boureko Rolla (Phyllo stuffed with custard).

Last night was the Meetup of all Mee­tups at the Ceilis Irish Pub down­town. A com­bi­na­tion of the Third Tues­day Meetup, The Van­cou­ver Sales Per­for­mance Meetup, Van­cou­ver Blogger’s Meetup, Real Estate Tech­nol­ogy Meetup, Young Pro­fes­sion­als Meetup, Word­Press Meetup and the Van­cou­ver Entre­pre­neur Meetup Group all made for a huge crowd on the rooftop:

I was glad to see a lot of friends and fel­low Van­cou­ver blog­gers there, includ­ing Raul, Tanya, Mon­ica and Shane:

One fun part of this meetup was that there were door prizes, and by pure luck, I won one! Dig­i­tal Smart Homes pro­vided a Kanto Zed iPod Speaker sys­tem, and I’m hav­ing fun unbox­ing it today! Thanks, guys!

See, it wasn’t just a month of flow­ers, birds and trees…