sullen monuments

In the graceless state of the semi-industrial eastside, I have driven by these two sites countless times and not given them too much thought...

but the recent installation of Ken LUM's pseudo-monumental EAST VAN CROSS glowing at the intersection of Clark Drive and Great Northern Way has enlightened me to examine more closely these odd and neglected "monuments" in the midst of an arid landscape of overhead Skytrain tracks and the nondescript commercial structures below...

 This monolithic stone stairway does not lead to some sacred temple or sweet secret folly, but the statuary lining the edges might have one believe that a grander pavilion perched above will reward the climb...

Turn around at the top and the view northwards is expansive across a desolate stretch of Great Northern Way and as yet undeveloped swath of prime inner city land...

 Go up the small hill [where the CROSS burns brightly] and turn left onto Clark Drive, and this strange little "square" is easy to miss tucked in as it is beside a car service garage on a non-pedestrian friendly street...

 The unornamented raw concrete structure embraces a round plaza sunken a few steps down - the perfectly trimmed shrubs have almost fully filled in the openings between the pillars, thereby obliterating the view of the mountains...

 The lonely pedestal in the center of the plaza is obviously missing a statue and the small plaque left on it only bears a mysterious date - the commemoration day of the site perhaps...

 As the skytrains swoosh by above every few minutes, the hollow mechanical sound fills this dejectedly hidden site as harshly as the half-hearted brutalist design of a monument that was once dedicated to, grandly enough, Christopher Columbus...

opsal skeletal

The long suffering OPSAL STEEL building on the corner of West 2nd Avenue and Quebec Street has finally been stripped of its tattered wood cladding and now sits as a hulking carcass with its innards mostly gutted...

Waiting for its new incarnation as two residential towers looming over a measly token remnant of its original west coast vernacular industrial building design from 1918, this salvaged skeleton is the last of such structures that once populated the grimy end of False Creek...

The two photos below are from a series I took of the building a few years ago when reindeer still dared to land on its roof and perched there for a while...

For another recent posting about this development:: www.miss604.com/2011/03/opsal-steel-building

mount pleasant fragments

 We walked - frequently slowing down - under a mixed bag of early spring weather cues on a recent afternoon around the eastern slope of the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood...

towards Kingsway and Fraser Street and up Fraser to almost East 30th Avenue, then down to Kingsway again, with their block after block of rather banal and gritty storefronts and restaurants operated by mostly

Vietnamese and Philippino interests, with the odd Polish deli and bakery remaining...

I was more taken in by the odd splashes of colour and art that jumped out every now and again then by the fairly benign street life of a quiet Saturday afternoon along these stretches...

and by the quirky home-made signs gently exhorting drivers to slow down in the laneways, and for those on foot to slow down and look up or sideways or downwards every once in a while...

  

softspring

 hope springs eternal...

plasticgreens

In the Pendulum Gallery in the Atrium of the HSBC Building on West Georgia, there are installed full containers of perpetual greenness in the form of intricately clustered boxwood surrogate that is dusted daily to retain the fresh sheen and luster of luxuriant plastic...no watering necessary...

vag:: upspotting

 lawless art...

an empty nest perched high on a bare tree by the Vancouver Art Gallery was an elevated respite from the visual cacophony within the gallery - where the second floor was laid out with the myriad accumulated contents of one [just one!] family's home in China with a population of over ONE BILLION...
["Song Dong: Waste Not" the exhibition is over now, but the methodical display of the obsessive collection of stuff imprints a psychological (and physical!) burden too heavy for some - who can fly away and leave their nests empty for a while...]

royal remnants

New Westminster, "the Royal City", has not been royal for a very long time...but is undergoing a revitalization bloom to accommodate the ever expanding population bulge.

I had been wanting to see how much change is happening and on a recent Saturday afternoon we drove out to explore this first capital [from 1858-1866] of the colony of British Columbia.  The original main street, Columbia, has perked up somewhat from its drawn out slump since the completion of Highway 1 in the mid-1960's, and the old Royal City Cafe sign is still hanging - but the cafe is no more and a Thai restaurant now spices up the space.

More bizarrely, Columbia Street is afluffed in more bridal salons and ballgown "outlets" than any town has a need for - which begs the question, what really goes on behind the walls of all those Queen Anne mansions??

Not so far from the gracious [and ballgown-filled!] mansions of Queens Park is dark and gritty Front Street, running along the railway tracks and the river, and the location of the original Chinatown of which there is no trace of now in NW...

The rough and tumble dockside atmosphere has been incorporated in certain movie scenes and the few antique stores on this section of Front Street still cater to the movie industry.

[The staircase above leads to an elevated parkade built in the 1960's to facilitate overflow parking from the commercial district.]

sloping side street onto Front Street

the "blue brick" building on a slightly more decrepit 19th century block of Front Street

the contrast of early and late 20th century apartment dwellings - 

[the Telford Block on Royal Avenue is the oldest standing apartment building in this "Brow of the Hill" neighbourhood, and will be preserved and rehabilitated with modest living units.]

We had parked across from this large old factory in the industrial backside of the Royal seat and approached the commercial area through an alley of mechanic garages and small manufacturing plants, descending upon an upscale Salvation Army thrift store encamped in the resplendently restored B.C. Electric streetcar/tram station across the street from a meaty Keg restaurant lodged in the old CPR station...

And such is the essence and mildly outlandish state of New Westminster on one dreary winter's afternoon in the year 2011...

stripped, pickled and stuffed

 25 meter long blue whale skeleton hovers over puny humans in the atrium space

Millions of specimens of animals, plants and fossils are encased in glass, preserved in jars, pressed inside folders, stored in old shoe boxes, taxidermied and displayed in cabinets within the Beaty Biodiversity Museum on the campus of the University of British Columbia, all accessible now to the curious public and serious researchers alike...

The collection is massive and comprehensive, contributing to contemporary progressive studies into the incredibly complex biodiversity of our little planet...

On a rainy winter afternoon we roamed the long repository of darkened corridors inventoried with its enormous and carefully catalogued collections, stopping often to be awed by the specimens on view and being constantly reminded that we have the capability to be cognizant of such a superabundant and wondrous diversity of life forms that we are only a very very minuscule part of - and hopefully help to preserve for a while longer...

 ancient reindeer skull

ugandan giraffe skull

 malaysian long-nosed horned frog, marinated since 1963

 the older cabinets of traditional specimens display...

white swan, black swan... dance no more...

tunnel vision

 in the underbelly of Vancouver General Hospital, hollow arteries snake between the main organs...

walkways the colour of dried blood disappear into nether regions, the cold lights casting a ghoulish pall...

 a small heart lies unbeating on the hardened vein...

a microbial creature is tethered by its umbilical cord...

 the efficient processing of the elimination system...

a mysterious instrument clogging one of the vascular tunnels...

*thanks to the intrepid Jan Snow for forging ahead through some of these underground capillaries of the VGH - with me ever so squeamishly following along!