I am sitting in the Caffe Calabria on Commercial Drive in Vancouver, drawing people and thinking about Hokusai and Breugal. Franky and his brother claim to make the best cappucino in the world here, one of which sits before me on the little round table in the back room I favor with its Poseiden fountain and movie set suits of medieval armour and pictures of Italian icons: Dean-o, Frank, Luciano, Sophia, Gina. I like this place. I like the people who own it, who make it what it is, distinctly Italian; like the music--no numbing techno beat here, thank you--and the fact that people come here to be people, not to snap open their laptops and retreat into private circles of light, one to a table, alone, alone. But I am alone today, and I am thinking about Hokusai and Breugal. And Leonardo and Michaelangelo, because Franky and his brother have had the walls and ceiling decorated a la Sistine Chapel.

     Toward the front, the cafe is crowded this afternoon, and customers spill out onto the street to sit at more little round tables on the sidewalk, even on this January afternoon. There is an almost-life-sized statue of "David", painted glossy white, and one of Julius Caesar, who wears a sash proclaiming him "Italian of the Year" (and at Christmas, a Santa Claus hat), and left-over panettone dangle in boxes from the ceiling. The coffee is good, the biscotti just right, the panini exceptional.

     When he was fifty-four years old, in 1814, Hokusai published his "Manga", eclectic images of flora and fauna, of landscape and grotesqueries, and, above all, of people as he observed them. People playing, working, travelling; people in their everyday-ness. His sketches were reproduced in three-colour  woodblock prints and sold bound into books that became enduringly popular. I think Hokusai would have liked the Caffe Calabria.

     And Breugal: he lived over two hundred years before Hokusai, but they shared a delight in this everyday-ness I see before me. I am sitting in the Caffe Calabria and drawing people: quick sketches, furtive observation: the tilt of a head, the gesture of a hand, the fall of a scarf. The coffee is good, and the music is just right, and Hokusai and Breugal are here too.