Sun
The Pulse new-home project, a seven-storey concrete structure of 74 homes – 72 apartments and two townhouses – is a socially sanctioned addition to the streetscape on West Broadway.
The households in these two apartments will be across-the-hall beighbours on three of the seven Pulse floors.
The Bastion development company has flagged the imminent release of the Pulse homes with an arresting advertising campaign — arresting for what’s there and what’s not. There’s a young woman’s face behind a pair of Vivienne Westwood sunglasses, but no couples on scooters or bikes, at table or at market, in a pool or on a beach anywhere.
The face belongs to Lubica Parilakova, a member of Bastion’s marketing department.
Here, she writes what she and Bastion hope her image — and Pulse — personify: “Kits.
I love Kitsilano. There is no other place I would rather be. Screeching seagulls, enchanting seascapes, happy dogs on the beach, determined joggers, salty air on bare skin, wind in the hair are just a few strokes defining the unique attractions of the neighbourhood.
I am constantly torn between a desire to live centrally and a desire to live ‘socially,’ to live, in other words, in a community in which people still greet each other on the street by name. Kitsilano meets both needs.
I am from Stropkov, a history-rich, small town in Slovakia. Only five years ago, I was helping my family collect the annual harvest, reluctantly, and between university exams.
This is not to say my family is made up of devoted agriculturalists. It is to report, however, that the land we were working was taken from my great-grandfather by the Communist regime and only recently returned. Suddenly a family of intellectuals could experience, unmetaphorically, what toiling the soil was all about.
When I left Slovakia, I left as a nanny or, in Canadian government nomenclature, a live-in caregiver. I left with a limited work permit and a determination to earn permanent resident status.
Today, I am a Bastion development company marketing director — and, in our advertising campaign, the face — mostly, the half-face — of Pulse.
We named this project Pulse because the street on which it is located, Broadway, reminds us of an artery, whose role is to distribute freshly oxygenated blood, spreading vitality and life throughout the organism.
Ever since coming to Vancouver, I wanted to be part of the vibrant Kitsilano — a beer at the King’s Head Pub, a glass of wine at the Watermark, a cappuccino at Epicurean, always in the company of friends, always casually assembled, on a minute’s notice or during a shopping expedition along West Fourth or an evening jog.
More than anything, I wanted to feel accepted and stylish without artifice — no hours in front of the mirror applying deceitful layers of makeup.
Is that ‘lifestyle’? Well, it certainly is a style of living to which I aspired.
Today, I live in Kitsilano and work in Kitsilano, and most importantly, many of my great friends live here as well.
The unexpected chain of events that eventually put my face on a billboard at Broadway and Maple started in the Smoking Dog Bistro.
While still a nanny, feeling isolated in West Vancouver, I decided I might improve my chances of meeting new people by working as a volunteer in the Campoverde Social Club, near the Smoking Dog.
When I came over to Kits for the interview, I saw the man I was then dating and his dog sitting on the Smoking Dog patio.
The dog recognized me immediately; his master pretended he didn’t. For good reason: He was on a date with somebody else.
My heart pounding, I took a deep breath and walked into the ring of fire to say hallo to the lovely couple.
The scene that followed could be described as serene and peaceful. We introduced each other and started casual small talk, a calm scene crackling with intensity.
All of a sudden, my then dating-object excused himself and went off to the bathroom … never to return … leaving his ‘other’ girlfriend and me to ourselves.
Another Smoking Dog patron noticed our discomfort and invited us both to a party in his nearby apartment, his motive more or less to see what would be the next chapter of a very real reality show.
Of course, we passed the rest of the evening drinking and comparing ‘our personal diaries’ — and creating a lasting friendship. Through this bond I was introduced into the Bastion orbit.
Life happens when you open yourself up to it, no more so than in Kitsilano.
To the question — What happened to the boyfriend’s dog? — Lubi Parilakova says, Buy the Book!
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
