These are nine quickies from the enormous "International" Night Market in Vancouver last night. And by "International" they mean "Chinese". Not so easy to shoot at night (I never use flash) with the Sony CyberShot I brought along but a few turned out alrightish. Wasn't up for lugging the bigger gear around. And those Sony's take a worthy snap.
1. The night market is much, much, bigger than it used to be. And far more crowded. It's also annoyingly brighter. The lighting on each vendor's stall is now just glaring. They switched the booths to some sort of planet friendly bulb that has the consequence of blinding anyone who looks directly at one. And the crowds this year have been huge. There's also loudspeakers on the streetlight poles (far right upper corner on pic below) that are turned up to distortion level so everything sounds just like a street market in Beijing or the ceaseless propaganda one hears at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. And there's fifty of them all torturing different announcements or pop music at the same time.
2. Typical vendor. Although sellers of cell phone covers, those rubber things with cutesy images, are omnipresent; three bucks per. This is a knock-off jewelry vendor. She also has a booth that sells knock-offs of Hermes and Louis Vuitton purses which (authentically) run hundreds if not thousands of dollars; she sells them for $40.
3. Knock-offs. Sock-offs. Who wouldn't want Gangnam Style socks? Or, better yet, Shin Ramyun socks (Upper right corner). Those are ten pairs for eight bucks. Pretty cheap when you consider that they were made somewhere in Taiwan or mainland China, sold, put on a container ship, crossed the Pacific, sold again, sold again to whoever that vendor bought it from, ended up at a market for eighty-cents per pair. What a world.
