The tomb at Granville and Dunsmuir

I've had the privilege of seeing the Taj Mahal in India, and I can honestly say it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the world.

It is also a tomb. It is cold, hard, colorless, mathematically precise,more expensive than the human mind can contemplate, and dead.

Vancouver's answer to the Taj Mahal is the newly renovated Holt Renfrew on downtown Granville, still in upheaval.

Holt Refrew is, I will admit, well-designed and attractive, enough to draw even me in. I literally choked a bit when I idly picked up a cashmere sweater and saw than it cost only slightly less than my monthly rent. My mind filled with fantasies of revolutionaries in khaki fatigues and Che Guevera t-shirts bursting in, guns drawn, and shouting rhetoric like, "This eleven-pocket harvest wheat riding coat will feed a peasant family for a year!"

I searched through the store, trying to find something that didn't make my brain reel with questions of how and why anything could cost this much. No luck: after touching a pair of $2000 leather jeans, my skin began to crawl, some kind of psycho-social-somatic-financial allergic reaction. The store itself seemed to be rejecting me. "Get your Ei-report filing ass out of here," it whispered with well-heeled menace.

I staggered south on Granville, narrowly avoiding falling into the pit, and dragged myself up the escalators to Winners, where I recovered, surrounded by comforts of the linoleum tile, fluorescent lights and slightly flawed jeans.

Photo from SqueakyMarmot on Flickr