Tuesday, October 10, 2006



In August, 1984 I was dispatched for the second time, to photograph Province sports columnist Jim Taylor. Vancouver Magazine art director Chris Dahl had not liked any of my first batch of photos because Taylor was not wearing his glasses. "Nobody is going to recognize him without them. I don't care how thick those glasses are, Alex, go back and shoot him with them on." So I reluctantly returned with my eldest daughter Ale in tow to soften the embarrassment of the "re-shoot". Somehow I was able to position my Norman 200b light in a way that it did not reflect in Taylor's eyes. The early laptop he is using was one of the Tandy/Radio Shack models. It was cutting edge. As serious as he look here he was very warm and gracious at having to pose for me a second time.

It was a relief to leave Taylor's house and I told my daughter, "I feel like having a strawberry ice cream soda. It was a hot Saturday afternoon, in the waning days of a late August summer. We went to Bar Centrale on Commercial Drive. It is now long gone but then they served the best coffee and the best strawberry ice cream. I asked for a couple of ice cream sodas. The young Italian attendant told me, "We don't have them here." So I asked him for:

1. Two tall glasses and two long spoons.
2. A couple of scoops of strawberry ice cream in each glass.
3. Two bottles of San Pellegrino.

Ale and I had the best strawberry ice cream sodas of our life.