Fred « Mink Chocolates Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Fred’

Hey Buddy, Need a Lift?

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Fred sauntered into Mink looking like a man who’d just had sixty minutes of Shiatsu and was too relaxed to shower afterwards. He called me out from behind the bar and tried to give me a complicated handshake that I’m either too old or too white to comprehend.

“You’ve lost your hipness”, he said, berating me in that playful tone one can when one’s been friends over three decades. “You’re slippery”, I shot back, “and I’m not referring to your methodology”.

“I’ve been walking all over downtown. You should try it sometime. Or maybe you’re just sympathetically pregnant”.

It’s now public fact that Mrs. Mink is expecting in the spring. Still, that jab hit above the belt, so to speak.

I offer him a cappuccino, which I suspect is the sole reason for his having hoofed it from Yaletown. We could have easily talked or texted to catch up.

“Remember Danny Kaide, from high school?” he asks me. “I saw him at an opening last night. He told me no one in his family has lived past 61. I said we should have dinner soon”.

As disturbing as it is to hear that from a man sweating profusely in a chocolate shop, I laugh. “Thanks for the update”, I say. “What else is going on?”

He tells me his daughter is turning eight, and he’s planning her birthday party. All she wants is an afternoon limo ride with a dozen of her closest friends. No bouncy castles, no Barbie impersonators, no magic tricks. Just some urban cruising. Because Fred walks everywhere, I sense she’s feeling auto-deprived, and like her Dad, she’s a go big or go home kind of kid.

He asks me for loot bags, figuring that’s the missing element to making this party a success and I’m happy to oblige. The logistics are simple. I’ll make twelve bags with black and white chocolate cow lollipops, ladybug and dinosaur truffles and milk chocolate cell phones, gender neutral because he doesn’t have a girl/boy headcount, and he’ll pick them up the day before.

Now any parent who’s ever thrown a modern day birthday party for their kids, or at least picked their kids up from a birthday party, knows the loot bags are given out at the end, to take home. Fred made the cardinal mistake of giving them out as they piled into the car. Lots of kids, lots of chocolate, confined space, and stop and go city traffic, equals motion sickness.

Twenty minutes into a two hour tour and the limo driver calls Fred and tells him he’s bringing the kids back, and is expecting help dealing with the barf fest. Fred’s out walking, so the car has to swing by and pick him up first.

I’m laughing, yet I’m disturbed, and it makes me want to take a shower just thinking about it.

Marc Lieberman

Mink Chocolates Inc.,
Mink A Chocolate Cafe Ltd.

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Tags: 38% milk chocolate, artisan chocolate, Barbie, birthday parties, café, chocolate bars, chocolate gifts, chocolates vancouver, coffee, fatherhood, Fred, handmade chocolate, independent coffee shops, limo rides, loot bags, mink, Mink A Chocolate Cafe, mink chocolates, Shiatsu, truffles, Yaletown
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The Mayor of Mink

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Many years ago, before my wife’s gaggle of girlfriends started getting married and raising families, one of the “ladies”, a communications hotshot in the Prime Minister’s Office, was raising a little hell on the campaign trail. I grew very fond of her spirited opinions, forever on message, and relished those times when she was not in the Nation’s Capitol, but here on the west coast, spinning circumstance along party lines.

She always carried herself with the air of one destined to garner the popular vote, riding the middle-of-the-road sentiment of the electorate, wanting to effect change, but nonetheless happy with the balance afforded the centrist.

When the PMO lost the election and his staff was sent packing, I was tickled when she called me up and made me this offer: “I’ve got the balance of the afternoon to pilfer as many things as I can from the stockroom. What do you want?”

I wasn’t so much shocked as excited about securing Government of Canada branded merchandise. In true Canadian fashion, the lowest she would stoop before power changed hands, was to load up on post-it notes and whiteout.

“I’ll take any stationary with the seal of the Government of Canada on it”, I asked hesitantly. “Failing that, any type of form, blank proclamation, or other such document that I could use as a gag to impress my friends”.

After an obligatory reprimand that touched on everything from fraudulent misrepresentation to the penalties for treason she signed off with a firm “I’ll see what I can do”.

A month later a large manila envelope with no return address appeared in my mailbox. Inside was a one inch thick sheaf of letterhead, resplendent with the embossed seal of the Government, and a note from her disavowing any knowledge of my ever having existed.

I thought it hilarious that I could send a fictitious letter to my friend Skelly, offering advice, as his representative in Parliament, about a nasty “tax situation” that was sure to befall him. Or to Fred, offering an opportunity for him to relinquish his unofficial title as Mayor of Yaletown for a crack at, say, Speaker of the House of Commons.

I never did do anything with that paper, and it’s still in a drawer in my office, under a package of page protectors and colored blank file folders, but it serves to remind me of the possibilities that come with power. The closest I have to that is titular head of a household that defers any decision of importance to my wife, or being the Captain of a small business ship known as Mink Chocolates. So how surprised was I to learn that someone else is the Mayor?

There’s a phone app called foursquare, and there’s a guy named James who, because of a well coordinated campaign, became the Mayor of Mink. I guess until the seat becomes vacant I won’t be able to run for that office, even though technically I own it. I’m more hoping that when he loses the next election, he calls me, and offers to raid the stockroom. Maybe I wind up with some great Mink branded merchandise I haven’t already thought of.