WHAT IS VERY ETHNIC?

When all is said and done, Very Ethnic is a method.

Very Ethnic begins, for most of us, as a meal in a place that smells weird. There is not enough décor on the walls. Sometimes you get chopsticks. Sometimes no utensils at all. Sometimes the chef, who is also the waiter and the owner and the dishwasher, will sit down at your table with no invitation and light a cigarette that smells like ten thousand miles and fifty years away. He will begin bitching about a bylaw officer. His accent will be so thick that you have to ask him to repeat himself. He’ll smile. The smile indicates that he knows you are actually listening and not just going through the motions. He’ll share a couple of secrets. Give you the names of some people you have to meet. His wife and kids and in-laws will dribble in from doors you didn’t realize were there. He will offer you one of his cigarettes. And that is the moment you become hooked on Very Ethnic.

The meal becomes a portal into a part of the world—you’d never use the word ghetto—a way of life that you’d never otherwise enter. Slowly, after that, Very Ethnic becomes a kind of cinema. A way of dress. It’s music. It’s outrage. It’s gratitude. It’s grace. It’s a way of kissing. It’s confusion boxed in bewilderment wrapped in feathers, a turban and a Jarome Iginla jersey. It is community at its rickety communitiest. And ultimately, it is a demographic. A very influential demographic. Very ethnic is the culmination of so many things. But it is the beginning too. (Because you can always add another “Very.”)

All of this is to say, Very Ethnic is a nebulous thing. It can be as simple as double apple tobacco, complex as the Half Japanese T-Shirt that Cobain put on before he killed himself. You know it when you see it. At its best, Very Ethnic is faintly absurd. A kind of gag, which is what we’ll look for here. And because Buddha said that you cannot walk the path until you become the path, Very Ethnic shall be a method too.