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"