cozy apts

such a quaint term..."cozy"...from that long ago era when it connoted grandma's nest redolent with hot tea in a brown betty...
if it is ever used in real estate lingo nowadays, it would be just a snide euphemism for a cramped shoe-box!

on the waterfront

The SALT Building located in the southeast False Creek development [at First Avenue and Manitoba Street] was built in the 1930's on what was then the original shoreline...
designated as a heritage building, it had been a raw salt refinery and was later used for recycling paper products...
it is now being renovated into a social hub for the 2010 Winter Olympics Athletes Village and will serve as a cafe/bakery/restaurant/brewpub post games...

grain elevators on the south shore of Burrard Inlet loom high above the industrial docks off Powell Street in east Vancouver...

fire on main

what was once Zocalo [above] and other eateries at Main St. and Broadway...

shrink-wrapped

at Woodland Drive and East Broadway, a shimmering ocean liner parked behind a condemned bungalow...

random walls on commercial drive

make-shift "art gallery" on a disintegrating wall...

window art on East 2nd just off Commercial...

beware where you park, even if it is only for a dollar...

a poster for my son's first "Four for Four" show that he organized...[Half-Chinese is his very cool band!]

a corner of east 10th and Main

florid fatima

twice a year this floral centerpiece encasing a statue of the Lady Fatima floats by our house along with the full congregation of the portuguese church nearby...transforming our neighbourhood into a small timeless Iberian village for a brief enchanted afternoon...

shaded walls

sometimes in certain attempts to paint out graffiti, the patchwork effects of layering on fresh hues create abstracted and ephemeral works of art...

on East 11th Avenue and Commercial Drive... [now a garish mural - so sad...]

on a backlane off East 10th Avenue and Main Street...

on East 2nd Avenue and Commercial Drive... [now a gaudy mural - so very sad...]

death of a house

"GREEDY DEVELOPERS TORCHED THIS BEAUTIFUL HOME...QUESTION YOUR POLITICIANS!
(BUT THEY WILL LIE!)"
by Anonymous Concerned Citizens who Write their Thoughts on Unvarnished Plywood Sheathing behind Dying Houses

the telephone stopped ringing...

long incommunicado at the corner of East Broadway and St. Catharines

east 4th avenue

Running parallel north of East 6th Avenue are another few blocks of mix-used buildings along East 4th...
I begin this series just east of Main Street with the lovely old turreted ice-blue house below, snugly sandwiched and dwarfed between two industrial-style work-live studios...
At the corner of East 4th and Main Street is the "ABC Auto Gas" service station and garage [their large sign in the above image reaching for the sky]...

Across Main Street is "Northwest Music" store on the north-west corner, beside "Heather's Place Doggy Daycare + Grooming", "R Resource", and the ever tasteful "Ledingham Design Consultants", with an unscalably high hedge wall wrapping around the corner of Quebec Street.. across from the "Employment Paper Western Investor Business in Vancouver" offices...

The block between Quebec and Ontario Street includes "Final Touch Frames", "Quality Saw & Knife", "Torbram Electric Supply", "Mount Pleasant Furniture", "General Equipment", an apartment building with the "Sweet Basil Cafe" [above picture and detail below of one of the upper windows], "Showcase Automotive Detailing", and "Cool King Refrigeration Ltd."...

The "ALSCO Uniform & Linen Services" facility takes up the entire northside block between Ontario and Manitoba Street [brightly painted green benches and picnic table outside for lunching staff to cool off from all those steamy laundered stacks]...
Across the street is an imposing multi-level concrete and glass bunker showcasing "MP Lighting", next to the much more modest "Michael St. Clair Fine Cleaners" - such a bright, clean and shiny block! - and a "Factory Clearance Centre" for young active sportswear labels "Gaia", "Turf Girl", "Baby Bean Athletics", "Twice Shy"...

"Laura's Coffee Shop" below, on the northwest corner of East 4th and Manitoba Street is a throwback to converted homey lunchstop to serve the neighbourhood workers and residents...who can also rent all the party supplies they need from "A & B Partytime Rentals" across the street...

Below is a graphic shot of an upper corner graffitied creature in mid-holler/hollow-eyed angst above "Dream Dance Studio"...and further along "Acklands-Grainger Industrial Safety Fasteners" and a "Vinci Parking" lot...

On the other side of the street is the mod-industrial-style "Mountain Equipment Co-op Head Office" [with a well-tended garden courtyard and large doghouse], in contrast to the arid still-life/lifeless planting in a dented metal box gracing the sidewalk outside "Browning & Co Picture Framing" and "Red Door Discount Warehouse", which had hung a large red wood door for their signage, and at the corner a plain sign announces "Human Garment Fty. Fashion Ltd."...my favourite buisiness name so far in this series!

The abandoned ghost town quality permeates on in the empty signpost below on the northwest corner of East 4th and Columbia Street beside "Electric Motor WHSE" and across from "Erickson College" and "NLP Institute"

east 6th avenue

I frequently ride westwards along the lower streets north of Broadway...
along East 6th Avenue between St. Catherines and Ontario is a quiet stretch of low rise apartment buildings, many from the 1960's and 1970's and quite architecturally bland but with panoramic views of the city and north shore mountains - note the "Vancouver View Terrace" apartment complex below...

then the "Picasso", across from the "McMillan", further on past Fraser Street there is "McAllister House", "Landmark Gardens", "Terrace Heights", but not all these apartment buildings are named...

strong exterior decorating tendencies assert their presence among certain apartment dwellers below...

some older houses remain between the apartment buildings and are generally well-kept up...

on the corner of Prince Edward is the "Kimount Club" for boys and girls, on the next block the "Mount Pleasant Lions Manor" and "HITFAR Concepts", a wholesale supplier of cellular and wireless accessories, across from the "New Chelsea Society Lodge"

"The Brewery Creek Building" [with ghost sign for "Fell's Candy Factory] below on the south-west corner of East 6th and Scotia is an earlier conversion of old factories into upscale residential units...

another one next door being saved and renovated into an arts centre...

the block east of Main Street houses "Vancouver West Motors Ltd.", "Hoskin Scientific Ltd.", the "CDC Livingston Bld.", the "Vancouver College of Counsellor Training", and
the grander and well-preserved "Ashnola Apartments" below, built in 1912, with storefronts along its Main St. side and "The Whip Cafe and Gallery" with a sidewalk patio on East 6th...

crossing west of Main Street is more of a mixed-use neighbourhood, with a few run-down rental houses, the old "Teacher Centre", now converted to the "Worldwide Christian Training Centre", wholesale businesses, studios and offices...

deflating rainbow balloons leftover from the Gay Pride Parade, summer of 2009...

commercial street

Commercial Street veers off westward where Commercial Drive merges with Victoria Drive, and between East 18th Avenue and East 22nd Avenue are a few quiet blocks of mix-use buildings...including storefronts that have been converted into studios and offices, a Portuguese restaurant/social club, a commercial kitchen equipment supplier, metal fabricators, leather tanners, the odd detached house tucked in between the larger buildings, and the corner store that has now been renovated into a popular neighbourhood café...

In the past few years, upscale developers have descended and erected attractive townhouses and condos amongst these older businesses... thereby changing the flavour of a street that although sandwiched between more conventional residential streets has always been somewhat of an anomaly with sidewalks that were always empty and buildings that stared blankly out onto a non too bustling commercial street...

 

two "ghost signs" on the side and back walls of a furrier company...

old advertising sign from the 1950's for a laundromat...