granville island grit

on Granville Island, that floating conglomeration of art, food and cement production, one can still walk into a dark and dingy industrial building [now converted into a parking lot] and find leftover traces of grit and grime from a past era in the shadows...

snowflakes of bird poo and feathers float onto a giant net above the bright shiny cars...

the complicated pattern of wood trusses and beams bearing the corrugated metal roof is calibrated and dignified by the leaf-green light...

a high bank of multi-paned windows stream in natural light and an underbelly view of the looming Granville Street bridge from above...

these weathered wood slats on the ceiling have not been freshened up, leaving the sketchy history in the worn patina...

and as I shoot this last image, a worker in uniform walked by and spontaneously informed me that this barn of a building used to house a chain-making factory...

emily carr grad show:: downspotting

because her name is art itself...

[wandering through the studios of the fine arts grads, accidental abstractions on the now immaculately clean floors also claimed artistic acknowledgement, especially that crinkled up candy wrapper under a display table and the blue pinhead by a plinth... and I pointed my camera downwards many times to the puzzlement of the other visitors!]

behind japantown

the Downtown Eastside is never a Sunday stroll in the park, but on one such lovely Sunday afternoon when all was quiet and tame on the eastern front with the spring sunshine calming the few local sidewalk citizens, we biked the back lanes and deserted streets north of Powell Street to find the most time and weather worn remains still boldly holding up in their gloriously dilapidated state...

detail from the TAMURA HOUSE entrance on Powell Street...

dark and ancient wood striping this back lane structure...

fading graffiti high up behind the old foundry building at the corner of Powell and Jackson...

fabulously deteriorating back wall of the same foundry building...

the mysterious yet hopeful "BRENDA" garland decorating a broken wall of a demolished site...

traces of vines long expired and stripping off the side wall of an old house...

a study in celadon and burgundies on the back alley access of a warehouse...

an abstract painting in the making on the numbered wall of an empty parking lot...

clark drive

this was the first time that I have actually walked all the way down Clark Drive from East Broadway to Venables Street...

[Clark is a main eastside artery and busy truck route as it merges into Knight Street going south and the traffic is unrelenting and thunderous - not so conducive to a leisurely stroll or bike ride, even on a sunny day!]

just before the non-wintery O-LIMP-ics, this large LED-lit cruciform sign [ironically? yet grandiosely titled "Monument for East Vancouver"] by "world-renowned" Vancouver artist KEN LUM was erected on the corner of Clark and East 6th Avenue/Great Northern Way as a non-denomi-national warning that you have now entered the randy republic of EAST VAN... [and the snow-draped LIONS in the background surely add a touch of the majestic to the view from this rough and ready neighbourhood!]

leftover industrial structures still punctuate most blocks, some in use, some just waiting for the right offer to come along to rescue or replace...

this tall brick chimney has always intrigued me, partly because it has been left standing even though it is not attached to any function [that I can see!] anymore...

there are many low-end car repair garages along this stretch, and I ducked into a slightly questionable one to snap this cool old weathered sign...

the sharply defined shadow of the looping barb wire above this wall casts a mildly sinister yet graceful pattern above the abstractly torn posters...

a no-nonsense sign for those super-hungry truckers gunning it through don't-mind-the-exhaust working-class East Van...

at the north-west corner of Clark and Venables, the gently curving façade of this mid-20th century manufacturing building lends a gracious [almost] end-note to an otherwise uncaptivating street that most shoot through and never really slow down to take in the odd sightings...

classical pink

 

Fraser Street between East Broadway and East 10th Avenue

along the nondescript Fraser Street just south of an even more nondescript stretch of East Broadway is this icing pink columned portico to the Campbell Court apartments... it has been painted pink for as long as I can remember and it continues to startle me a little with its coy yet formal faux classicity whenever I bike by it!

stairway to demohell

corner of east broadway and quebec

the entire Broadway corridor has always been endowed with mostly banal and C-grade architecture...if one were to drive, bus, bike or walk the length of it from east of Commercial to Alma, the low rise [and some higher] buildings will blur into a murky porridge of really bland barely sweetened and stirred conglomeration!

but time for renewal has caught up in fits of fire and demolition episodes, especially along the stretch around Main...the most basic 1960's office box at East Broadway and Quebec is now a swampy pool of deconstructed debris out of which will rise the most recent breed of design homogeneity...you know, brick and/or concrete walls, visible metal trusses and beams, solid wood detailing, subtle glazing - to convey a blatant expression of substantial quality and the requisite stilted impression of pre-packaged stylishness...

east 6th & alberta

from peeling paint to crumbling walls of the old house next door...

all in a matter of time...

walking the drive

the Drive [Commercial Drive] is my neighbourhood shopping street...

I have walked up and down both sides of it now for many, many years!

that bowling pin sign has hovered above the corner of East 7th forever,

and incredibly, people still go bowling!

at the entrance to the stairs that lead up to Johnny 5's Billiard Club & Cappuccino Bar, which I have never dared to venture up, partly because I don't think a nosy asian woman would be very welcome in this what I imagine must be a time-warp macho-male dominated domain!

on the side of Norman's greengrocer, a produce institution on the Drive, giant red birds on a wire look down greedily in anticipation of discarded fruits and vegetables, mimicking the real crows and pigeons waiting on the live wires above... 

chinatown upspotting

with the new chinese year of the tiger pouncing upon a city distracted by shiny-money and nuvo-power, old chinatown buildings are being stripped of their quaint chineseness and cultural significance to be appropriated for elitist galleries of western art pretensions, hip design stores of asian chic, cool-million condos and modernized fusion restaurants that no older chinatown resident would ever step foot into...
but then again, all those old chinese people will soon be pushed out of their venerable comfort zone...

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!