Gerry Marcos

Gerry Marcos

Writer

Gerry Marcos is a food writer and retired restaurateur based in Vancouver, Canada. He spent more than thirty years running restaurants, starting with a small Greek-inspired diner that his parents helped him open after culinary school, and eventually operating three establishments across British Columbia. He closed his last restaurant in his late fifties, not from burnout but from a growing desire to think and write about food rather than produce it under pressure every night.

At VegOut, Gerry writes about food traditions, immigrant food stories, and the cultural memory embedded in how communities eat. His Greek-Canadian heritage gives him a perspective on food that is rooted in family, ritual, and the way recipes carry history across generations. He came to plant-based eating gradually, finding that many of the Mediterranean dishes he grew up with were already built around vegetables, legumes, and grains.

Gerry lives with his wife Maria in a house with a kitchen he designed himself and a garden that produces more tomatoes than two people can reasonably eat. He believes the best food writing makes you homesick for a place you have never been.

Lifestyle

The reason men over 60 struggle to make new friends has nothing to do with personality — it's that their entire social life was built around a workplace they no longer walk into

Gerry Marcos
Apr 4, 2026

Gerry Marcos

Lifestyle

The reason men over 60 struggle to make new friends has nothing to do with personality — it's that their entire social life was built around a workplace they no longer walk into

I asked a divorce therapist what kills marriages after retirement — not arguing, but silence when two strangers realize the kids were the only conversation

I used to be the person my family called when something went wrong — now I'm the person they text when something goes wrong with me, and the difference between those two sentences is the loneliest thing I've ever felt

I asked 10 divorced men over 60 what they'd do differently — not one said 'fight harder,' and every answer came back to the same word

People don't realize that the way a retired man talks to his dog and the way he talks to his adult children activate two entirely different attachment systems and the reason the dog gets the softer voice isn't preference — it's that the dog never required him to perform competence

I got divorced at 36 and remarried at 47 — the thing nobody tells you about a second marriage is you're not starting over, you're just finally starting honest

8 ways a man over 60 shows love that don't look like love at all because he was never given the language for tenderness so he learned to say it by checking your tire pressure and warming up your car and making sure the porch light was on when you came home late

I'm 61 and I still read the physical newspaper every morning with coffee — my stepkids think it's a performance but it's the only 40 minutes of my day where nobody's algorithm is deciding what I think about

I stopped apologizing for keeping a landline at 62 — and the look on people's faces when they realize I'm not embarrassed tells me everything about what convenience culture did to us

I sold my restaurant at 58 with more money than I'd expected and discovered almost immediately that I hadn't thought past the sale

The generation that learned to cook without recipes, fix things without YouTube, and navigate without GPS didn't do it because they were tougher — they did it because asking for help meant admitting you didn't already know, and in their house that was never safe

11 habits that only make sense if you grew up poor but nobody in your family ever said the word

I'm 62 and I've been married for 15 years and I love my wife deeply — but I just admitted to myself that she's my only friend and I have no idea how that happened or whether that's even healthy

I'm 62 and I just understood why every relationship I've ever had felt like a performance — growing up without affection taught me that love was something you earned through usefulness, not something you received just for existing

I'm 62 and last month my ex-wife called to ask if I remembered the name of the restaurant where we got engaged — I did, instantly — and that's when I understood that divorce doesn't delete a marriage, it just locks you out of the building where everything still lives

7 phrases a man starts saying after retirement when he's realized that without his job title nobody in the room knows how to introduce him — including himself

If your family kept the good towels in a closet nobody was allowed to open and had a living room with furniture no one was allowed to sit on — you don't need anyone to tell you what class you grew up in

Nobody talks about the fact that the hardest part of eating alone isn't the food — it's the silence. No clattering, no conversation, no pass the salt, no who wants seconds. Just you and a plate and the sound of your own chewing and a clock that somehow gets louder the later it gets

I'm 62 and I spent thirty-eight years building a version of myself that made everyone comfortable — and now that I've stopped performing I can hear how quiet my phone is

The day I sold my restaurant at 58, I thought I'd finally feel free. What I actually felt took me two years to put into words.

9 quiet things men over sixty do when they've spent a lifetime being needed and suddenly no one asks anymore — not even to hold the door

8 things in your childhood kitchen if your parents worked hard but never quite got ahead

I asked 40 men over 65 what they wish they could say to their wives and children if no one would ever judge them for it — and the same five answers came back so many times I had to stop writing them down

I'm 62 and divorced and the thing nobody warns you about starting over in your late thirties is that twenty-five years later you're still performing gratitude for the second chance instead of admitting that some nights the second life is just as lonely as the first one was

If your family ate dinner before 5:30, kept bread in the fridge, and called the living room "the front room" — you didn't just grow up working class, you grew up in a house where love had a vocabulary nobody outside ever recognized

9 phrases retired men say to their wives that actually mean 'I don't know who I am without my job'

I asked 40 divorced men over 55 what they finally understand about their ex-wives — none of them mentioned the fights

I asked 25 men over 65 what they miss most about working and not one said the job — every single one described the same thing: having somewhere to be where someone expected them to show up

The real difference between a retired man at peace and one who seems lost isn't personality — it's whether anyone still needs him

I'm 62 and there's a sentence I've carried for thirty years that I've never said to my ex-wife — not an apology, not an accusation, just six words that explain everything — and I rehearse it in the car sometimes knowing I'll probably take it with me

9 small habits that look like a man is doing fine after retirement — making the bed at 6 a.m., reorganizing the garage again, walking the dog three times a day — but are actually signs he's lost the only thing that ever told him who he was

You know you grew up paycheck-to-paycheck when a sick day was a blanket on the couch, a can of Campbell's, and your mom standing in the doorway saying 'you better actually be sick' — here are 11 more that only hit if you lived it

Psychology says the reason so many children of immigrants become caretakers and fixers isn't personality — it's that they learned before age ten that love in their family looked like solving problems nobody else could see

8 weekend routines that felt normal in the '70s but were dead giveaways your family was lower middle class

6 signs a man over 65 has spent his entire life converting every emotion into silence or anger

Psychology says the shame immigrant children feel about their parents' accents isn't cruelty — it's a survival response that the child didn't choose and the adult never fully recovers from

I asked 50 retirees what surprised them most about leaving work — not one mentioned the money

Psychology says immigrant kids who excelled in school weren't just ambitious — they were performing survival, and most of them are still performing a version of it forty years later

I spoke perfect English by second grade and my parents never learned — and the distance that created between us is the wound I've spent my whole adult life trying to explain to a therapist

I grew up eating my home country’s food behind closed doors and ordering pizza when friends came over — and that one small lie defined the next two decades of my life

I'm 72 and I've accepted that my body now makes a sound effect for every movement—standing up, sitting down, bending over, reaching for something on a high shelf—and the soundtrack of my daily life would be classified as horror if anyone under 40 heard it

8 things men over 60 compete about that they'll never admit are competitions—lawn height, car cleanliness, grandchild count, retirement date, blood pressure numbers—and the scoreboard lives entirely in their head and is updated daily

Nobody talks about the specific anger that hits a person over 60 the first time an automated phone system doesn't offer a speak to a human option because the message underneath is your time isn't worth a real person's time and they hear it loud and clear

8 things boomers consider a real breakfast that younger generations would call a Sunday project

I'm 62 and I finally stopped apologizing for not wanting to travel, try new restaurants, or 'stay curious' — because I realized that the pressure to always be experiencing something new was just another way to avoid sitting with who I actually became

Long-haul truck drivers say there are exactly 3 types of people at rest stops after midnight — and after 20 years on the road they can identify which type someone is in under 60 seconds

8 things you find in every boomer's car door pocket that tell the entire story of a person who leaves the house prepared for 15 different scenarios and has been right about at least 3 of them

8 things boomers do at a car boot sale that are basically a masterclass in negotiation people skills and reading character and the reason they're better at it than anyone under 50 is because they learned to buy and sell by looking someone in the eye not by reading a product review

Your retired father who wanders the house opening and closing the same cabinets isn't bored — for forty years the world told him he was what he produced and now his hands have nothing to hold that tells him he still matters

11 things that were completely normal in a middle class household in the 1990s that now cost enough to make you feel like you're falling behind even though you never stopped working

I got divorced at 36 and remarried at 47 and the thing nobody tells you is that the second marriage doesn't heal the first — it just shows you exactly who you become when you stop trying so hard to be loved

The most paycheck-to-paycheck thing about growing up wasn't the food or the clothes — it was your parents waiting until you went to bed to sit at the kitchen table and figure out what they could survive not paying this month

8 things that were completely normal in a middle-class household in 1995 — and would quietly bankrupt you if you tried to keep them up today

My parents gave up everything to bring me here and I repaid them by being ashamed of their accents in public — I've never forgiven myself for that and I don't think I'm supposed to

I worked for thirty-five years, saved 15% of every paycheck, and retired with $420,000 — and by year three I was applying for part-time work at Home Depot because inflation ate through my 'comfortable retirement' faster than I could process what was happening

9 things that counted as dinner in the 70s and 80s that would get a parent reported to a Facebook group in 2026

I'm 62 and my relationship with my adult children finally makes sense now that I've stopped expecting them to value my experience — they love me, but they don't actually think I have anything to teach them, and that acceptance changed everything

9 things boomers find genuinely offensive about modern restaurants that younger people don't even notice — the QR code menu is just the beginning

I'm 62 and I've accepted that my kids don't actually want my advice, they want my approval — and the moment I understood that distinction, I stopped feeling hurt every time they smiled and nodded and then did the exact opposite of what I suggested

I got divorced at 36 and remarried at 47 — the thing nobody tells you about a second marriage is you're not starting over, you're just finally starting honest

9 things boomers over 70 have quietly stopped pretending to enjoy — and why their refusal to keep performing might be the most honest thing any generation has done

I retired at 58 after owning the same restaurant for twenty-six years — the hardest part isn't the money, it's waking up at 4 a.m. and realizing nowhere on earth needs me to walk through the door

My boomer parents give financial advice like it's still 1987 — "start at the bottom and work up," "just live below your means" — as if the bottom still pays rent and below your means still exists in a city where groceries cost what their mortgage did

I worked forty-three years without a single sick day because that's what you did, and now my son tells me that was exploitation — and the hardest part is realizing he's right, but also that I was proud of it, and I don't know what to do with that

7 smells that immediately tell you you're inside a lower middle class home and none of them are bad — they're just specific in a way that money replaces with something less honest

You know you grew up blue collar when your parents' idea of a financial plan was a coffee can in the freezer and the phrase 'we'll figure it out' — and somehow they always did

11 habits of boomers who are aging slower than everyone around them — and not one of them involves a gym membership, a supplement, or waking up to an alarm

There's a specific kind of man in his late 50s who starts cooking real meals for the first time after his kids leave — and what's happening inside him is the opposite of falling apart

I got divorced at 36, ate cereal over the sink for a year, and remarried at 47 — and the version of love I found the second time doesn't look anything like what I lost

9 things people who grew up in paycheck-to-paycheck households still do with money — even decades after they don't have to anymore

8 things that were always in the houses of families who were comfortable but never wealthy — if you recognize more than five, you already know

I'm 62 and I finally understand why my father ate dinner alone in the garage — he wasn't avoiding us, he was protecting the only hour in his day where nobody needed anything from him

There's a generation of men who expressed love entirely through acts of service — fixing the faucet, checking the tires, leaving the porch light on — and most of them never heard 'I see what you're doing' once

I grew up in the 70s and we settled arguments on the playground without an adult intervening — and that unsupervised chaos taught me how to read people, negotiate conflict, and take a loss without falling apart, and I'm not sure where kids learn that now because someone removed the classroom

8 things retired couples do every morning that keep their relationship stronger than it was at 30

If you grew up eating dinner at 5:30 sharp because your dad had to be up before dawn, you carry a relationship with time most people will never understand

I'm 62 and I remarried at 47 after a divorce that gutted me — the thing nobody prepared me for was how much harder it is to be gentle the second time

At 58, I sold the restaurant I'd spent almost two decades building.The silence that followed taught me I'd been using 80-hour weeks to avoid a version of myself I'd never actually met