The pedestrian flow on a Friday afternoon

For a few days in June, when the gloom lifted briefly, it was possible to stroll through Vancouver in sunlight, which is what cities are meant for: to steal away and plunge into them, into the pedestrian flow, to dawdle along, to offer oneself to the passing scene. On Robson Street in front of the art gallery, where the sidewalk widens into a plaza, the passing scene on Friday afternoon included shoppers, office workers, tourists in oversized running shoes, joggers, cyclists, mothers with baby carriages, pensioners, police officers, skateboarders, panhandlers, drug dealers, lawyers, judges, court clerks, curators and labourers, possibly even bankers, venture capitalists, clergymen in street clothes, at least one editor—all streaming along in bright sunlight, save for a handful who had been drawn toward a confident young man in shorts and T-shirt and a black porkpie hat who was plunking brass cups down onto a tiny fold-up table and lifting them up to reveal small rubber balls where there had been none moments before. “Now watch closely, everyone,” he said. “My grandfather taught me this in Hong Kong in the old days—when we used to scam the tourists,” and the balls under the cups continued to disappear and reappear as if by magic. The performance seemed nearly to be done, and then the young man began to explain in rapid-fire patter how the trick worked. “You see, people—it’s all an illusion!” he cried out, and he turned up another cup and out popped a big navel orange, and then another and another, and soon there were half a dozen oranges rolling around on the table, in which no trap doors were evident anywhere. In a closing flourish he raised the porkpie hat, which had been sitting on the table, to reveal in the clear light of day an enormous green cantaloupe as big as his head.

A few metres away, under a stand of Japanese maple trees rising from holes cut into the sidewalk, a colony of brooding chess players huddled over chessboards set out on low benches: men wearing cardigan sweaters and wind