28.2.14
Walk one block north and turn left. Walk most of one block west and look for something elegant or elysian with brash contrast.

27.2.14
Christos Dikeakos took this photo, Burnt Single Family House, 2005. The cottage may have been one of the three Watson Street buildings that were set ablaze by "anarchists" the night of September 27th, 2004, according to a Heritage Vancouver Newsletter (Vol.3 No.8). I recall riding my bike towards the rampage after an outing and stopping to watch while drunks hurled debris into the inferno. (Photo: Catriona Jeffries Gallery)

26.2.14
The latest in a series of posts focusing on Vancouver street photographers. Michael de Courcy took this photo. It is part of a most excellent project named Background/Vancouver- An Artist's View of the City, October 30, 1972. The map as a grid as a montage.

25.2.14
Vancouver street photographer Henri Robideau published a book, Flapjacks and Photographs in 1995. Herein we see Bill Gunterman, a mate and mountain goats posing for a strange symmetry in 1905 near Beaton, BC.

24.2.14
In this snowy scene Curt Lang photographed a carcass behind Fred Douglas's home: North Vancouver, February 1972. (VPL)

Fred Douglas inside his home one month earlier. Photograph by Curt Lang. (VPL)

23.2.14
Curt Lang shoots fish from inside The Only in 1972. The archive files the photo under Cookery; Cooks; Fish as Food.

22.2.14
Curt Lang contributed an enormous body of material to the Vancouver Historical Photograph collection at the VPL. The Only Seafood Cafe was a haunt we frequented in the late 1990's. You could get a fine post pint-drinking meal there well past midnight if memory holds.

21.2.14
Spectacular and beautifully useless. Pulp mill digesting facility with full evacuation. Spectacled and precise. What to do with the impossible. A post-capital icon.

20.2.14
A Bellingham standstill.

19.2.14
Yesterday and today. The promise of white and brick over white and stucco. Cracker board and silicon, granite tiles and halogen.

18.2.14
Walk to the bookshelf. Third shelf from left. Second shelf from top. Choose a book about empire and leaf through. As you always do. As if scanning a room. After opening the door.

Two artifacts. One from the Van-East Cinema (now housing). One from Duthies Books (now retail). Vellum thin in graphic sepia.

17.2.14
Proceed in a westerly direction, eventually making your way to 11th Ave off Main. A colour speaking of magenta coats the building where one version of the Glass Slipper was housed in the basement. Claude Ranger was the last musician I watched here. Eventually the Glass Slipper shut down and moved to a house on the former parking lot of the Biltmore Hotel.

That version of the Glass Slipper subsequently burned down. Perhaps a biker gang was involved. The parking lot vanished under condos. Claude Ranger as well. No connection.

16.2.14
Walk the measure of one block north and turn left. Walk two and one half blocks west along the lane and look for something industrial with corrugation. Take a picture. Packed shed; lead sewage pipe down spout; wood beams and I-beam; vermin entrance.

15.2.14
This just past scene offers a landscape devoid of joint sovereignty. At the time the Biltmore was a fledgling landmark of sorts. Imagining the menu at McTaco's across the street- circa 1980. (CVA)

Pre-Biltmore we see Begg Motors in addition to Johnny's Cafe on the left sometime in the relative warmth of 1961. (VPL)

14.2.14
The great turnover at 41st and Cambie St. For a view of the construction of the original Oakridge Mall development - embedded within a centenary tribute to the founding of British Columbia - this film gives an impression of land assembly as it was in 1958. (CVA)

13.2.14
Five years ago: a pile of Neo-Greco rubble resided here in the forward third of the frame. Dreams are made of these. Olympic Village site. Vancouver, February 2009.

12.2.14
Ferris Road became 49th after amalgamation and a taste for the rational erased whimsy. This 1907 man sits or crouches in the middle of Main and 49th. Perhaps we are looking south as he looks north, or north as south. The perspective is jarring in its flatness. He just might be sitting with a backdrop draped behind him. (CVA) Walk west to Cambie and turn south. More staging. We too look awry as the city shifts, yawns and groans.

11.2.14

Orange separates store from house. Front hides behind back while dwelling sits above work. Back embraces green while front nods at white and green. Orange joins front and back.

10.2.14
On the path of Still Creek. Day-lighting hasn't made it this far. A camper view however. Dozens of transient tourists are possible on these fringes where industrial parking zones flourish. Seemingly an ancient practice that will persist for time to come, under bridges, aside tracks, in shadowland.

9.2.14
The grove beyond the side window provides picnic opportunities.  China Creek wandered through here. Now the soggy land provides a bucolic separation between Clark Drive and the finest cottage sheen in the city.

8.2.14
The anniversary of a quixotic hoax. An event within an event and the revitalization of a uniquely neglected public space. An exceptionally difficult beauty marking the memory of Christopher Columbus.

7.2.14
Walk south three blocks and turn left. Continue for another few blocks with focus on the hidden. A fine example of a double-sided cottage at 1159/1163 Kingsway. Tucked between commercial developments it barely avoids detection. Septimus Warburton was the first resident in the right half in 1912.  Later in the decade the left side was frequently vacant. Septimus refers to the seventh son.

6.2.14
We insist that nostalgia is a hazard. Preservation is secondary to the poetics of use-value; meaning is found in spaces where one can live, work and think. Prime examples of insistence are found on busy streets and arteries. A butcher/grocer at 1260 east 12th ave. satisfies all requirements for cottage feel.

5.2.14
Granville to Oak; 70th to Marine: old and older houses remain on the periphery but after walking up and down each street within only one house remains, disguised as a church. Crisp and dry.

4.2.14
Walk twelve steps north. An end-view of the backside. Careless crafting defaces the brick. Cheap paint peel curls with fade.

3.2.14
A chimney joinery-split aside shed roof. The leeward side of the 600 block of east 15th. Overcast and 8C.

2.2.14
Room and board. Board and batten. Batten and beaten. J.H. Hatch and mates stand and squat in front of cottage near Ferris Road (49th Ave) in 1894. (CVA)

Deadman's Island was a cemetery until Mountain View opened in 1887. One hundred fifty squatters lived on the island until they were driven out in 1909. (CVA)

 

In 1990 I lived a few blocks away from the Frances Street Squat. Notes: Six houses occupied. One house wymmin only. Fences taken down. Free store in garage. 80 riot cops arrive on 27.11.90. 30 SWAT team members. Dog teams. Fire trucks. Police spray paint on the back of one of the houses "VPD Rules". Barricades. Fires. No weapons found. (The Beat of Frances Street: Squatting in East Vancouver, Eleven Foot Productions, Part 5/5)

1.2.14
If a straight line be bisected and produced to any point ... the figures of the whole produced line, and of the produced part, are together double of the figures of the half line, and of the line made up of the half and produced part. (Notion: Kingsway through Euclid through Oliver Byrne p. 64)

Behind the homes owned at one time by the Pantages of theatre fame we see a double cottage event. One shed-like and suitable for a car, tools, a still.

One house-like and unsuitable for living. No. 336 is the address on the nameless lane/street perpendicular to the part that forms the entrance off East 13th just off Sophia.