Sunday Nights in the Neighbourhood.

Earlier this summer I discovered Acme Cafe, a little gem that had just opened up on Abbott and Hastings, in the new Paris apartment block. Acme is retro without feeling kitschy, with formica and chrome booths and a round bar. The food is also retro without the kitsch - simple comfort food like meat loaf, mac n' cheese and crock pot suppers, fresh salads and amazing, amazing pies. My friends Gil and Sarah and I have been making a point of having dinner there at least once a week, and I often run into my pals Kate and Theo there too. It's nice to have a real local cafe where you can pop in for coffee and a piece of pie.

Tonight after a quiet dinner at Acme we headed to the Vancouver Police Museum on East Cordova to see a Vancouver Fringe show (well, two shows) entitled "After the End." As I blogged about earlier in the summer, the museum is in the old Coroners' Court and features the only "real" morgue open to the public in North America (or so we were told). "After the End" featured two ghost stories set in the Coroners' Court, in the 1950s and 1960s.

The atmosphere couldn't have been more appropriate as we entered the museum - it was dark and rainy, and the dimly lit museum felt decidedly eerie as we trooped into the space. We were greeted by two ghosts, a chatty host full of stories and jokes about the Coroners' Court, and a silent woman in a ripped dress with haunted eyes. Half of us were sent to follow her into the morgue. As she led us down the dark halls of the museum, we passed a man in a fedora and trench coat, sitting in a corner, oblivious to our presence, scribbling in a notebook. In the morgue, a body was covered in a sheet lying on one autopsy table, and a woman in a bloody dress, her face chalk white, sat on the other table, scrubbing futilely at the blood on her dress. The man in the fedora soon entered and a supernatural love triangle between Frank, the coroner whose patients speak to him, Bonnie, his latest patient, and Mary, his real-life wife, played out before us.

Before we could applaud the actors, who remained in character, the silent woman was back, and leading us into another room of the museum, where a man was passed out at a desk. We heard high heels clicking on the floor and a voice calling to him, whispering "Eddie," and Eddie awoke to see his long-dead wife, back to remind him of their wedding anniversary and to reveal at long last the mystery surrounding her death.

Both vignettes were well acted, just spooky enough without being over-the-top, and it was a great use of the space. That's what I expect from Fringe - something original, quirky, and untraditional. And there's something about being in a darkened museum that makes you wonder if you really are alone...

Bonnie is going to need more than a Tide to Go pen to get that stain out of her dress....