MAIN-taining

Main Street a few blocks north and south of Broadway has evolved into a hub of hipness so mainstream it has lost some of its hard-earned edginess - and has inevitably acquired the flash flood of corporate chain and condo development dredging...
And yet on a sunny fall weekend during another one of its frequent street festivals - SHIFT? SHRIFT? SIFT?? - the essence of the Main of yore faded in and out of my consciousness, like an old movie that hasn't quite finished unreeling...

[note the new incongruous TIM HORTONS (in the above window's reflection) now ensconced in the cool old marble and glass bank building on the southwest corner of Broadway and Main]

[glue-splotch pattern left after the sign was taken down when the store had to close from damages of a fire next door and a few over]

[during the street festival, the resident of this apartment posted this heartfelt note that was barely visible from the street below - no one paid any attention by turning the music down!]

[where the fire had started and razed, now waiting for a new configuration of commerce]

[but gracious living still goes on around the corner...*]

*more images of the WENONAH in my next post...

backwater stills

another scatological study of an ursine nature...

slightly worn antler missing detached moose...

pioneer coop for fowl long feasted on...

a gang of chainlinks hanging about...

retired from a generation of growing seasons...

rusticated still life perched in certitude...

the river that feeds a thousand fields...

a pristine source that flows into that river deep...

backwoods pathos

Five hundred kilometers north east of Vancouver and we are in a river valley of very few inhabitants...
Land was cheap and one could bird call hundreds of acres a kingdom of one's own for a sing along song...
As we explored one such lyrical kingdom, we stumbled upon a wooded meadow tombstoned with dozens of dead cars - a verdant graveyard of long abandoned machines - as incongruous a setting as a rose garden in a parking garage....

not only decomposing car-davers, but a canoe corpse...

and even a fossilizing snowmobile...

and more implanted rusting hulks...

before almost stepping on fresh scatological evidence of a greater, and much furrier, presence in these deep dark woods...

the undriven Drive

I have walked Commercial Drive a thousand times over the many years that we have lived in this neighbourhood...and the energy and atmosphere is not so different as it was...

The changes in ethnic and age demographics are evident, as are the comings and goings of certain restaurants, cafes, and sundry businesses, but much have also stayed the same...

Look beyond the Starbucks and fast food chains, the busy pub-bistros, the encroachment of Main Street hipsterism, and we still have Norman's and Santa Barbara's bountiful boxes, the always helpful guys at the stuffed to the rafters Magnet Home Hardware and in the recently reduced by half in size Kitchen Corner, the full-frontal Italian kitsch of Calabria, the crazy stock-jam at Beckwoman's...

Yet, change is inevitable as owners retire, rents increase, buildings get renovated, and now with Grandview Park being torn up for a total makeover, the north end of Commercial will be somewhat sanitized to attract a different populace to come...

And as I walk down the Drive on another lovely end of summer's day, I find my appreciable bits and pieces still in their usual suspect places, albeit barely perceptible to most who pass them by...

this sign has been so forever there that you wonder what you can still possibly get for 4 cents...

one of the last "minimally abstract" patchwork walls that has not been "defaced" by officially sanctioned and government funded anti-graffiti murals of questionable artistic merit...

post of a million staples - an anthropic stitching of words and images now long gone...

vestiges of sloppy paint jobs and ripped off vine creepings on a side wall...

disintegrating address on a building in a similar state...

a shaded glimpse upwards provides a graceful relief from the street level visual cacophony...

the lost art of custom tailoring capitulating to the art of customized coffees across from the soon to be new and improved Grandview Park...

groundswell tags to claim ownership of their tiny patch of the unswept sidewalk outside Santa Barbara's...

and across the street, the old silent trees stand stoically as they rip up the ground around them, just as the tired ancient faces of Italy and Portugal look out from their dedicated cafes at the post-punk martyrs and enlightened ethnic food shoppers stomping and chewing their way down the Drive in droves...

marking my clark park:: part II

Summerfall...
as in fallen branches from the late summer pruning of the aging trees,
as in summer turning much too soon to fall...

wreathed festively around a trunk...

lying scattered in dapple sunlight...

and strewn about in voluptuous garlands...

the holly and the pine were prematurely trimmed...

and these little acorns have lost their raison d'être...

dead branches were rightly removed...

but fresh young ones fell disconsolate...

ever mournful in the cooling tree shadows...

 dark lace beneath my dreaming trees...

around oppenheimer park:: façades

Oppenheimer Park in the Downtown Eastside/Japantown enclave has been recently returned to the neighbourhood with much fanfare after a 2.5 million dollar facelift that now seems almost too posh for its previous regular inhabitants, although if they have already re-occupied their "home" territory, the washroom facilities are much brighter and cleaner and well-worth a visit...

I, however, find the blocks [Dunlevy Avenue, Powell Street, Jackson Avenue and Cordova Street] facing the park much more intriguing in their evolving cosmetic alterations and wildly diverse stylistic modifications...

from this vertical strip-lapped bento-boxed minimalism...

to more traditional ship-lapped frontier-style trading post, now jazzed up like a garish show-girl...

to cagey yet hip with cool signage for those without a second hand???

to the sturdy, trustworthy provider of faith and hope for the needy and the speedy...

to a gracious classic pioneer box house with welcoming front porch [but concealing curtained windows]...

to a turn of the 20th century deco-moderne funeral parlour converted into art gallery and multi-purpose live venue for the mostly undead...[needless to say,  memorial services can still be arranged]