A man carrying a blue Nalgene water bottle with a “No Pipelines” sticker strikes up a conversation with a woman in a health-food store on the Drive. It’s mid-December, 2014, and they chat about kombucha and Hornby Island before parting ways. Later, the man regrets letting her go without even an email address. He submits a heartfelt letter to the Georgia Straight’s I Saw You section and hopes for the best.
No one ever replies.
This is because neither the man, nor the woman, nor even the Nalgene bottle ever existed. Trying to contact the man from the shop—or the woman folding her delicates in Rainbow Coin-op Laundry, or the man in the black sweater in La Taqueria on Hastings—will only lead to Lisa Icarus (not her real name). She’s the elusive author of at least a dozen anonymous I Saw You letters. And, therefore, possibly the most prolific inventor of supposedly genuine romantic encounters in Vancouver.
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Jimmy Thomson 