veganunderground.com recently jumped on a boat and landed on the city of Victoria on Vancouver Island to check out its vegan lifestyle.  We had read the excellent local vegan newsletter, The Victoria Vegan which is published monthly by Friends of Animals and distributed free, so we had a list of places to go.  With only an afternoon to work with, we had to be efficient.  Fortunately the bulk of the vegan businesses are concentrated in Victoria's compact downtown core. 

 

We started with Shift Natural Fashion, a clothing and accessory store that carries Herbivore mags and t-shirts, Satori Movement clothing, Splaff belts and many other cool, conscious brands of shoes, belts, clothing etc.  Needless to say, we did not get out of the place with our bank accounts intact.  It's better than ordering stuff online!  Next stop was Utopia to get a 'CBC - Canadian Bullshit Corp' sticker for the office and to look for Blackspot shoes.  They didn't have the size we needed, so we pressed on. 

 

All the shopping for vegan and uncorporate goods made us hungry, so it was back to Market Square to try Green Cuisine (read review here).  It's a 100% vegan buffet and salad bar.  There were a bounty of choices for salads, soups, raw veggies, cooked dishes and desserts.  Our plates were heaping by the time we reached the cashier - you pay by weight - but our total for two, including desserts, was $21.  For the reasonable sum, the food was pretty good.  All ingredients are listed so it was easy to avoid any possible allergens.  As a quick lunch option, Green Cuisine is just about perfect. 

 

From there, we wandered over to Tattoo Zoo on Wharf St.  It's vegan-owned and one of the few shops anywhere to use vegan ink, and their own vegan ink at that.  Trev got measured up for a sizeable cover-up of an old, tired-looking dragon on his right shoulder.  Preliminary drawings should arrive in about a week and veganunderground.com will be there to report on the work when it begins sometime around the end of July. 

Right next door to Tattoo Zoo, is a pizza place called The Joint.  While it is a conventional pizza parlour, it does have a rice crust option, and a vegan toppings option.  Suz did backflips and rice crust, vegan pizza, complete with vegan cheese was in her hands 25 bucks later. 

 

 

Pizza box in hand, we made our way back to the car and headed up-island to Nanaimo to stay with frequent veganunderground.com visitors, Pam and Steve (both vegan, Steve, a respiratory therapist and educator, urges his patients to switch to a whole foods, vegan diet to treat asthma, sleep apnea, allergies and other respiratory ailments with good success). 

The last minute jaunt to Victoria turned out to be a great time.  As far as a vegan scene goes, Victoria is like a mini-Portland.  It helped that almost all the vegan businesses one might patronize are downtown and within easy walking distance from one another.  Friends of Animals has an active presence there and are currently campaigning to free the horses enslaved by the horse-drawn buggy tourist enterprises.  Organic Athlete has a Victoria chapter including track cyclists and triathletes.  We have more places and people to visit so another trip across the Strait is pending.  We will, of course, report on our adventures right here.

 

 

Shift Natural Fashion
574b Johnson St.
www.shiftfashion.ca

Green Cuisine
560 Johnson St. (in Market Square)
www.greencuisine.com

Tattoo Zoo
1215 Wharf St. 250-361-1952
www.TattooZoo.net

The Joint
1219 Wharf St. 250-389-2226
www.eatatthejoint.com