fallen states

 an understatement of disrepair

hammers home the sordid truth

more will fall in exiled state

preponderances null and void

down market alley...

The enigmatic riddle that is Vancouver's Chinatown has of late been unraveling in a decidedly un-chinese turn - the invisible knots of clandestine activities, the blank doors of self-protectionist secret dens, the survival commerce of basic needs, the resourceful stealth of a long marginalized and ill-treated race have all been slowly dissolving in the face of changing demographics and rising property value.
The Chinatown of old that had bordered on a swamp and been ghettoized in hostile restriction to a few square blocks grew inwards and upwards in ways that slyly mocked the building bylaws - what is not seen did not exist was the modus operandi.
Over a hundred years since its beginnings, while revealing a quaint and half-heartedly presentable face to tourists, there are still hidden layers to be found even as erosion due to age and neglect has continued. One such esoteric zone has long been obscured by a loss of customers and the lack of will to take it back from the drug dealers and addicts who scuttle in the shadows.
Market Alley was once a thriving collusion of a laneway between East Pender and East Hastings Streets and stretching two blocks from Carrall Street to Main Street, comprising of opium factories [the entrance of one such was at No. 34], gambling dens, covert restaurants, and assorted tinsmiths, tailors and shoemakers.
I recently joined a walking tour of this still grimy yet curious alley to learn more about Chinatown's guarded history and below are some of what caught my excitable savage eye [albeit in the safety of a group]...

[the smidgen of leftover green paint indicates where the infamous Green Door Restaurant was located - the Green Door had been a gambling den that also fed its denizens and eventually became a cheap and popular insider's chinese restaurant for the young and the stomach-hardy in the 1960's-80's]

[The Chinatown walking tour was led by John Atkin through the Vancouver Heritage Foundation]

ex oriente lux

across from the patricia hotel a ghostly sign glows luminous thoughts in strict chinese strokes,
the windows dark the building blank as the eastern words jack across a slow to 30 kph zone...
the drifters and the seekers spread out their accumulations in exchange for another day,
another day of rounding the block only to find themselves back in the same fabrications,
where the fabulists drown in their own spit and the somnambulists soothe the nay-slayers...

"The simple damning lust, 

float flat magic in low changing 

evenings. Shiver your hands 

in dance. Empty all of me for 

knowing, and will the danger 

of identification,

Let me sit and go blind in my dreaming 

and be that dream in purpose and device."*

[*excerpt from "The New World" by Imamu Amiri BARAKA, 1969]

PiDGiN PARK PiCNiC:: a poetic persiflage

PiDGiN PARK PiCNiC

on a redoubtable corner of east hastings central

the blankets are spread out on the pavement and

a few bottles of cooking wine have been uncapped.

some loiter and wait for their promissory meal -

not expecting much, not having studied the menu. 

the smell of searing drug-free angus wafts out

and whispers of foie gras on taro chips are

rather too incomprehensible for most to bear.

some lit the candles in anticipation and some

lightly polish up their pure plastic cutlery.

others strut up in their tailored redemption

averting eyes and holding righteous breaths -

not there to join the picnic upon concrete grounds

and certain other well-oiled principles...

"feed them pigeon pie, let them eat crow! -

no need to brine/purée/infuse/foam

for the unindoctrinated", they sneer,

swishing into the white indemnified room.

no, not until they lay down their arms,

their un-artful and belligerent signs,

their flaring convulsive anger - and not

until they stay down on their filthy blankets,

will this fusion picnic ever happen...
if ever.

before the love...

 "In the silence he hears an answer coming.

From far away.  A kind of coarse child's voice.

It rises, a bellowing from the hill.

A roar of mingled notes.

A long-hoarse trumpet from the Iron Age.

Perhaps from inside himself."*

[*last two verses from "Downpour over the Interior" by Tomas TRANSTROMER, 1966...translated from the swedish by Robin Fulton, 1972]

DTES SEREENA

a garlanded name hangs unceremoniously from a chainlink fence on a side street off no-man's-land east hastings...
a public declaration of love for sweet Sereena who lives or works nearby perhaps -
or a poignant commemoration for some sad Sereena who is missing or lost or worse...

once in a while I come across one of these evergreen name garlands strung out from a derelict setting - a mysteriously handmade reminder of the somber reality of such a being with that particular name -
who is she, who was she... is she still?

[BRENDA from two summers ago...]

*postscriptum:: I have since discovered the artist and the raison d'etre of this project posted on this site www.evergreen26.blogspot.com

east hastings vestiges

If there is one street in Vancouver that I haven't ventured alone for a very long time, it is the much maligned East Hastings stretch through the impoverished downtown eastside, often demeaned in the media as "the poorest postal code in all of Canada"...and yet people survive and conduct business and feed and sleep - in perhaps not as safe, hygienic nor as comfortable quarters - but life continues pretty much as it has for quite a long while now...
In the last few years however, the long touted efforts to "clean up" the area has been yielding to the gentrification projects in the surrounding Gastown and Chinatown enclaves...and so a new generation of developers with design sense and of course, dollar signs in their starry eyes has finally encroached and con-descended [and so rises the anchor - a mightier and loftier cap-red-W Woodwards, with other aggrandizement projects following in its wake...]
Before every building and block is liberally dusted by the re-development vanity-wand, I decided to spend an afternoon biking through to find whatever traces still abound...especially vestiges of old advertising signs from the early decades of the 20th century painted directly onto the brick walls of multi-storey buildings...

the ubiquitous red and white Coca Cola logo very much fading away...

this building has already been renovated but they seem to be keeping the old sign intact, for now...

the signage is long gone, but the squiggly grime pattern presents a strangely subliminal-minimal canvas...

does the prominent sign of the old Ovaltine Cafe still light up at night... do they still serve Ovaltine drinks in the cafe... what kind of product is the large sign on the side advertising...

a little further east along East Hastings, the elegant façade of the Ferrera Court building announces itself quietly on this  block of mostly nondescript design and banal destination businesses, and the reach of the downtown eastside has loosen its grip somewhat as Hastings continues into East Vancouver's residential ethnic mix and  detached home equity...