All posts in category Architecture

Fun Times

27 April 2025 – A little time travel, my friends. Back to the first image in my previous (23 April) post, with its long view up the Quebec Street bioswale to Science World…

and my cryptic reference to the “mystery interview” I did there before setting off on the walk that became that post.

Here it is, the focus of my 23 April curiosity and topic for the interview: the tall, free-standing Tower of Bauble.

It encloses a whole world of action — a world that had been dismantled for a while; whose return I briefly celebrated with you in my 12 November 2024 post (Under the Threat of Rain), which moved me, in my 21 December 2024 post (The Tilt) to promise you I’d learn more, and report back.

Herewith my report.

The Tower is a 24-ft-tall audio-kinetic sculpture, designed by American painter, sculpture & origami master George Rhoads.

This tall!

A variety of balls (pool, bocce, snooker) are carried up in a variety of ways, for e.g. via this central column…

or for e.g. via this majestically slow-turning blue auger, over there in the back right.

Once up, the balls come tumbling down again in a variety of pathways, like these for e.g….

and land in a variety of receptacles, sometimes (cf. that blurred white ball, below) shooting off a path into a bare metal disc…

or maybe bouncing from one red disc to another.

All of which causes lots and lots of sound.

Balls go thunkkk, or smaaaack; they hit hanging tubes and other obstacles so that clangers claaanng, chimers chime and clappers clap.

Like this yellow clapper (on the left) about to strike that red hanging tube.

That’s all there is to it.

Balls go up, balls come down, noise ensues.

And we can’t get enough of it.

Which nicely demonstrates the importance of having the right object in the right place for the right reason. Because, back in its early life, this sculpture met so much resistance it had to be mothballed.

In 1985, a US shopping mall magnate bought 30 of Rhoads’ sculptures and placed them in 30 of his malls — including this sculpture, in the food court of his Kamloops BC property. Where the incessant sound effects threatened the sanity of food court staff. (Fine for passing patrons, but in your ear all day every day?) The Tower was put away.

In 1995, Vancouverite Derek Lee and his partner acquired the property, discovered the sculpture among its effects and soon afterwards donated it to Science World. (Lee’s parents were long-time patrons of Science World, and he grew up with that tradition.) Whether in its initial position by the main entrance, or its current position next to bike paths, it has always been outdoors — where the audience would be present by choice.

I sit for a while, prior to my interview appointment. I watch how repeatedly people choose to be part of that audience. I want to know more. Why makes the Tower right for Science World, and why it is so appealing?

I ask the right person: Brian Anderson. On staff since 1991, he brought with him a background in computer science, math/physics and theatre, and he is now the organization’s Director of Performance and Fun Times.

Most of those fun times are indoor events and activities, but Brian loves the Tower as well.

“It ignites wonder,” he says, “and that’s an important part of our core mission. My favourite thing is watching people look at it for a while, and see them start figuring out how they could build something like that for themselves, back at home.”

Creator George Rhoads said the sculpture illustrated “the art of music and rhythm.” Brian points out the serious scientific principles behind all that music and rhythm: gravity, Newtonian physics (“balance, momentum, kinetic and potential energy”), probability and combinatorics (“calculating how many paths and how often balls take each path”).

Still and all, the Tower is a playful demonstration of serious science, and its various components have suitably playful names. “This,” says Brian, pointing to a red ledge overhead…

is the Clumper-Upper.” Of course it is. It clumps up six balls with perfect balance — and then a seventh comes along to send things flying, the six balls one way and itself another. Key to their travels are two Flip-Floppers, which direct balls down assorted further pathways.

Theatre buff (and parttime actor) Brian loves the cheeky titles and sheer busy fun of the sculpture; math/science Brian later sends me his chart, illustrating what goes where. (My abbreviations: L & R = left & right; FF = Flipper-Flopper; Sp. Path = Spinner Path)

Path% of Balls
Sp. path 112.50%
Sp. path 212.50%
Sp. path 312.50%
Sp. path 412.50%
R at 1st FFL at 2nd FF6-ball clumperSp. path 15.36%
Sp. path 25.36%
Sp. path 35.36%
Sp. path 45.36%
1-ball clumperTrampoline3.57%
R at 2nd FFSp. path 16.25%
Sp. path 26.25%
Sp. path 36.25%
Sp. path 46.25%
Total100.00%

You see? It is all beautifully calculated.

Ahhh, but there are also what Brian calls “moments of chaos.”

Partly because this sculpture was designed to be indoors, not outside where heat/cold would cause metal to expand/contract and play merry hell with the calculations. Partly because time passes and things wear down. Both these facts led to the 2023 renovations, supported by the Rob Macdonald and Lee Families and led by Vancouver kinetic artist David Dumbrell, which included further fine-tuning of formulae and calculations.

“But, acknowledges Brian, “it’s on-going.” As in, Stuff Happens.

Balls come flying off their tracks, land thunkkk on the floor. Brian twice interrupts our conversation to rescue a ball, the second time…

folding himself into the depths of moving parts, a momentary human addition to all those wonders.

For they are wonders, we agree, and they both illustrate and provoke wonder.

Not in spite of the imperfections, but — at least in part — because of them. I tell Brian the title of the documentary about the life and work of renowned Canadian architect Raymond Moriyama: Magical Imperfection. Brian nods.

One last look at all that magic in action, an entire school class forsaking their phones to, instead, cluster around the Tower…

one last look at the Tower itself, over my shoulder and across Science World’s outdoor garden…

and away I go.

To have my feet ignore my mind and send me on quite a different walk than I had planned.

As I explained in my previous post.

6 Comments
by icelandpenny on 27 April 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, photography, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 27 April 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/04/27/fun-times/

Mind Plans; Feet Don’t Care

23 April 2025 – My mind has created a very clear plan for the morning.

Follow the Quebec Street bioswale — not a ditch! a rainwater gathering/purifying system! — to Science World, down there at False Creek…

do the interview; walk my usual “Cambie Loop” to and over the bridge; and then zigzag eastward back home.

I do the interview. (The Mystery Interview. Be patient, a post will follow.) I start walking west along the False Creek Seawall.

All according to plan.

Suddenly, where Carrall St. butts into the Seawall, my feet execute a sharp right-turn. They don’t even inform my mind, let alone ask permission. They just take mind (and the rest of me) hostage, and execute their own plan.

Away we go. I find myself walking north on Carrall.

I decide not to argue: this could be interesting! The route offers a tidy cross-town slice past Andy Livingstone Park, through Chinatown, on into the Downtown East Side (DTES) and Gastown, all the way to Water Street with Burrard Inlet just beyond.

Poignant, powerful street art at West Pender, by the impressive street artist and DTES resident/advocate, Smokey D.

“It’s by Smokey D,” I hear two street kids say to each other, their voices full of respect. The City agrees. In tribute to his concern for others and use of his skills to inform and empower others, in 2023 Vancouver proclaimed March 11 — his birthday — to be Smokey D Day.

Another downtown symbol at Water and Cambie streets, this one much happier in mood: Raymond Saunders’ 1977 Steam Clock, still puffing steam and, in another 10 minutes, due to mark 12-noon with the opening bars of O Canada.

By now my mind fully supports what my feet set in motion: this is a promising route! I even manage to rediscover the Silvestre café and reacquaint myself with its Peruvian menu — another mug of Chicha Morada (purple corn drink) but this time, a Chicharron sandwich (pork belly) rather than an Alfajor dessert.

At Richards Street, my feet graciously allow my mind some say in what happens next. Continue west another block or two? Or turn south right here? Right here, says my mind, and my feet pivot accordingly.

Yet more patriotic fervour in the Macleod’s window at Richards & West Pender…

and appropriately vintage in style, as befits this rare, used and antiquarian bookstore.

I cross Dunsmuir, where signage informs me that this next stretch of Richards is part of the City’s “blue-green rainwater system.”

The last panel of the sign is an illustration of the pavers involved in the system. The caption asks, “Do they remind you of water flowing towards the tree?”

I step out into the street, check the pavers.

Yes, they do.

Another happy rediscovery, a place I can never find on purpose. I just have to, literally, walk into it…

the joyous, multi-level Rainbow Park at Richards & Smithe.

Getting closer to False Creek with every step!

On past Emery Barnes Park at Davie, and then across Pacific Blvd., right to the tumbling fountains of George Wainborn Park, which slopes down to the Creek.

Eastward along the False Creek Seawall, past a swimming dog (and ball-tossing owner)…

and then I’m beneath the towering girders at the David Lam ferry dock. Each girder base is incised with a different story of time & place.

This one commemorates the Great Fire of 1886…

when, on June 17, an authorized clearing fire on CPR property blazed out of control and destroyed the infant city, whose wooden structures were no match for the wind and flames. In the words of one survivor: “The city did not burn, it simply melted before the fiery blast.”

And then I walk some more, on past the Cambie Bridge, on along to Coopers Mews, with its symbolic barrels on high. At this point, mind, feet and the rest of me all agree on our course of action.

We follow the Mews to Pacific Blvd., and catch a bus for home.

11 Comments
by icelandpenny on 23 April 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 23 April 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/04/23/mind-plans-feet-dont-care/

3 x W

6 April 2025 – Three images from the last two days, and the subsequent discovery that all three dance to the letter “W.”

Water…

and Wood…

and Wall.

This one embodies a more complicated bit of alphabet than its companions. At the time, any designation would have been “S-for-shadow.” Because… well, look at it. Look how that boring wire-mesh fence throws filigree shadow on the rusted corrugated metal.

Even if we boot “S” to the sidelines, we can still applaud this image as a triple-W, all by itself.

Wall, check.

Also, Warehouse, check. The rusty metal covers a ramshackle old warehouse on False Creek South, one I’ve eyed with fascination for the last seven years, wondering whether entropy or the bulldozer would finally bring it down.

Turns out: bulldozer. The cheerful young City employee padlocking a bit of the security fence told us that yes, the building is about to be razed — but the wood will be saved.

W for wood!

“Inside this metal crap, it’s all old-growth timber. Old growth! Still in good shape. We’ll be taking it apart piece by piece, because the City plans to reassemble it as part of an industrial-heritage display.”

No, he didn’t know how soon, or where. We then grimaced our mutual recognition of the best-laid plans of mice, men and civic authorities.

Still! It’s W-for-wonderful.

(Says Walking Woman.)

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by icelandpenny on 6 April 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 6 April 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/04/06/3-x-w/

Le 6 AM (& Other Discoveries)

29 March 2025 – I’m still pursuing light, as a resource for coping with darkness. This time, not physical light, but emotional — small things I notice along the way that encourage, impress or just plain amuse me.

Truly small, truly everyday. That’s what I like most about them.

For example, the City’s network of bike lanes…

this one veering past a corner cafe’s turquoise “tiny free library” over there by the flower bed.

I check it out. At the top, the slogan “freely take, freely give, for the joy of sharing”; at the bottom, a bin marked “free dog toys/balls.” I do take a book (one of Reginald Hill’s old Dalziel & Pascoe series), knowing I’l be dropping it off again, one of these days.

Next corner over, a young woman with skis on her shoulder.

Still ski season at altitude — and available by public transit, all the way from downtown Vancouver. She’s not dressed for skiing today, but she could do it, if she wanted to.

Meanwhile, here at sea level…

the forsythia is in full bloom.

Skis and spring blossoms, all at the same time!

Two more blocks, and I’m startled to a full stop by this front gate notice.

Arguably this speaks to darkness, not light, in that it’s about bullying. On the other hand, it’s also all about defiance, and I like the thought of Old Wrinklies speaking up. (Being one myself.)

Another block or so, and a passing teenage girl, noticing my fixed attention, tracks my gaze with her own. We then wag heads at each other in mutual admiration…

for the preening window-framed cat. Feline living art.

More frames, more art, down by Cambie Street, where the fence around subway project construction is a display of an elementary school project.

Here’s my favourite, this child’s joke about the station due to be built at this very corner.

Across Broadway, north toward the water, under the Cambie Bridge ramps as I make my way to the False Creek Seawall. It’s mostly bleak under here, yes it is… but there’s always something.

This invitation, for example.

“Le 6 am club”? “Communauté de course”? Later, I look it up. In both official languages, the website invites early risers to get together once a week, at a given location, for a group run.

I am not about to join them but I am delighted the club exists.

As I am to see — even if only in peripheral remnants — the splendid 2014 mural painted by Emily Gray plus 100 volunteers all over the Spyglass Place ferry dock.

Murals fade, other pleasures endure. Sitting on a log just off Hinge Park, for example, and letting the world go by.

A small act of public kindness, down by the Olympic Village dock. Someone lost track of her pretty straw hat…

and someone else has hung it high, to increase the chance its owner can find it again.

Turning south from the water back towards city streets, I’m cheered by the energy of a pair of junior skateboarders, even more so since one of them is a kick-ass little girl.

And I’m even more, even-more cheered to see them screech to a halt, joined by a slightly older girl on her own two legs.

What stops them? A sign. It blares, “What’s This?”, and they’ve decided to find out. Little boy reads it aloud, older girl hugs younger girl.

Having educated themselves, they zoom off. I promptly move in, to see for myself.

The sign tells me, and I tell you: this is not a ditch. “This bioswale collects and cleans one-third of the rainwater that falls on streets, plazas and other public land in Olympic Village.” All part of Vancouver’s rain city strategy.

One last small delight.

Right in front of me, as I wait for traffic lights to change, just a block from home.

Happy socks!

I am not tra-la-la. My clenched belly shivers with the darkness, all around. But neuroscience tells us that darkness is not the whole story, and noticing the whole story will help. “When you tilt toward the good, you’re not denying or resisting the bad. You’re acknowledging the whole truth, all the mosaic tiles of life…” (Rick Hanson, PhD, Buddha’s Brain.)

7 Comments
by icelandpenny on 29 March 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 29 March 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/03/29/6-am-other-discoveries/

The Light!

25 March 2025 – Politically, the world grows steadily darker. All the more reason to notice and embrace light, whenever and however it presents itself. It, too, is real, and it offers us courage and strength and joy.

I am giddy with it, this early-spring evening: temperature well into the teens, and each day longer than the one before.

It is 7:30 in the evening, and the sky is still bright. The crows have not yet flown home to Burnaby (mid-winter, they go through by 4:30 or so), and — look — golden sunlight still bounces off the library branch window opposite my building.

Here’s the source: the sun just dipping out of sight in the western sky, the sky itself warm with rosy-gold.

Over at Dude Chilling Park, just minutes later, women chat beneath a sky that has now lost its rosy-gold, but is still bright with pink and blue.

Daffodils offer their own gold to the sky, tall against the community garden fence. Warmth & light inform the scene: children romp just inside the fence, parents call encouragement from the far side of their allotment and, behind them, the west face of the school building is a-glow.

But by now, natural light is fading fast. Tree branches are black against the sky…

and it is street lights that illuminate these butterfly ornaments draped on a residential tree…

and it is the security light in someone’s yard that pops my own silhouette back at me from the directional arrow in this traffic circle.

Car lights glitter on the leaves of a street-side hedge…

residents’ lights tumble a visual waterfall through this apartment building…

and the entrance to a neighbouring building punches its shaft of light & colour out onto the street.

Only 45 minutes since I left my door, and artificial light, city light, is now dominant. I peer down an alley, looking for a bit of sky that is still itself, still wears its own colours.

There.

The last washes of indigo and pewter-grey.

Good night.

8 Comments
by icelandpenny on 26 March 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by icelandpenny on 26 March 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/03/26/the-light/

Bike to Baik to ¡Bueno!

2 March 2025 – Long ago, I lived for a while in Peru. Only slightly less long ago, I lived for a while in Indonesia. And now, on this one afternoon here in Vancouver, I revisit each — in new physical experience, and in old memories as well.

1 – Bike to Baik

First, courtesy of the VPL (Vancouver Public Library) Staircase Sounds series of noon-hour musical events: a program of Indonesian gamelan music, performed by the Vancouver group Gamelan Bike Bike.

The name Bike Bike is a double, and bilingual, play on words.

In English, it nods to the fact that the musicians complement traditional gamelan instruments with ones they build themselves from old bicycle parts.

See? On the red table-tops: segments of old bike frames (left & far right) and bike sprockets (second from right).

Even their shirts, custom-designed and created in Indonesia, continue the theme, with bike chains and sprockets in amongst more traditional design elements.

The group of musicians is very good — and that is the second, bilingual, part of the play on words. In the Indonesian language, baik baik (virtually the same pronunciation) means exactly that: “very good!” (Literally, good-good.)

I sit for an hour, awash in the intricate beauty of the music as it pulses and swirls through this Vancouver space. Awash, also, in memories of another time and that other place.

Baik baik sekali. Saya senung sekali.

2 – to ¡Bueno!

And then, my head full of glorious music, I leave the glorious Central Library building (thank you, Moishe Safdie) and walk five blocks north to Silvestre (“gusto latino”) on Water Street in Gastown.

More precisely, this deli-bistro offers “gusto peruano,” for it was founded by Peruvian immigrants and is dedicated to Peruvian cuisine and ambiente. I’ve never been here before, but I’ve checked the menu online, and I know what I want: an alfajor dessert (two shortbread rounds, filled with dulce de leche and topped with icing sugar) and a mug of chicha morada (a purple corn drink, slightly tart and refreshing).

The young server treats me to widened eyes and a dimpled smile when I speak with her in Spanish. And I smile — oh, how I smile — when she delivers my order.

Odd thing, memory.

Tracking down alfajores in Vancouver had become an obsession; chicha morada was an afterthought. But now, as I sit with the physical reality again before me and in my mouth… the power is in the drink.

The alfajor is delicious, but it is not tied to any one moment or place we’d visit while in Lima. The chicha morada, however… It is absolutely tied to the one very small café in the High Selva village where we lived, and to the people with whom we conversed in that café, all those people who deepened our knowledge of the language and the place and how best for us to be there with them.

All these decades later, that taste is again fresh in my mouth — and old memories are again fresh in my mind. ¡Qué bueno!

Bike-baik-bueno.

6 Comments
by icelandpenny on 2 March 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, photography, Travel, Vancouver
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Posted by icelandpenny on 2 March 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/03/02/bike-to-baik-to-bueno/

Urban Clutter

1 March 2025 – Clutter? “Juxtapositions” is more accurate, also better PR, but I suspect there’s some kind of rule against using five-syllable words in a title.

So Urban Clutter it is. There’s a lot to be said for it, by whichever name — so many possibilities, all piled atop each other! The pile-up tells stories, and it both sparks and rewards curiosity.

At least, that’s the effect on me, as I stand at Davie & Richards, en route an Urban Treat — a noon-time performance at the Scotiabank Dance Centre. While my feet wait for the light to change, my eyes say, “Look at that!”

So I do.

It’s nothing special, it’s just… it’s just very urban. Tram lines overhead; traffic signals to one side; and, framed by both, the residential towers that lie behind Emery Barnes Park and before Helmcken Street.

The Shiamak dance performance is wonderful. Afterwards I adapt their “Have Feet Will Dance” slogan to my own “Have Feet Will Walk,” and start north on Seymour. (North-ish, downtown streets are on a slant, but I’ll spare you the precisions.) The day is balmy, I’m happy, and I decide to walk right to West Pender, where I’ll catch a bus back home.

But then I get distracted, and my simple plan goes all fractal. Blame it on urban clutter.

Before I even reach Nelson, I’m laughing at this literal sign of our politico-cultural times.

Left on Nelson, right on Granville, and I’m up against the busy construction work beneath one of the street’s stubborn theatrical survivors: the Vogue. It’s a 1941 movie theatre (now event venue), built in Art Deco/Art Moderne style. As you can see.

I veer onto Smithe just past the Vogue Theatre. No particular reason for the change of direction — but suddenly here I am, just before Seymour, at the entrance to Ackery’s Alley.

The alley backs the Orpheum Theatre on Seymour, and celebrates the venue’s long (and continuing) history of live performances. It was painted and generally spiffed up in 2018, the idea being to welcome pedestrian as well as the existing delivery-truck traffic. I had recently arrived in town, walked it then, and yes, it sparkled.

It hasn’t had much maintenance since, and it’s a lot grubbier.

But it’s still in pedestrian use and, with its strong lines and commercial functionality, it is very Downtown Right Now.

Out the other end at Robson, where a window sign apparently invites me to dial down my consumerism.

Well… not exactly. This is the window of a cannabis shop, which prides itself on bargain prices. So: keep spending money, just spend it with us! (And discover the wonders of our products.)

Since I still plan a quick ride home, I take to Granville again, heading for the bus stop at West Pender. But then, when I reach Pender, I look farther down Granville and I am again distracted — beguiled! lured! tickled! — by urban clutter.

It’s the dome. I start wondering about the dome.

I could always walk one more block and check it out — but what fun is that? Especially when, just before I reach that next corner, I can instead dive into Alley Oop, the first of the downtown alleys to be spiffed up, back in 2016.

Also grubby by now, but it does have that hanging sphere at the far end.

Which rewards my head-tilt very nicely. Geometry at work.

This brings me to Seymour and West Hastings, with Waterfront Station in the distance and this building opposite, whose upturned lip always makes me think of whale baleen. (That frog-splattered white car, even closer, is a gift from the Traffic Light Gods.)

By now I’m well off-track for the mystery dome. I correct course and walk west on Hastings. This time the urban clutter offers me a distant view of the Marine Building at Burrard, framed against glass towers, and a close-up of elaborate lanterns and trim on another heritage building right next to me.

The bus stop at Granville is a reminder that the cruise ship terminal is nearby and, in season, its passenger loads wreak havoc with local traffic.

Perversely enough, I now head away from the mystery dome. Instead, I follow the raised Granville sidewalk all the way north to the lookout at Burrard Inlet.

Small but satisfying, this little plaza lies between the East Convention Centre (with its “sails”) and the cruise ship terminal on one side, and, on the other…

harbour cranes, Waterfront Station, the SeaBus terminal, train tracks and a helicopter landing pad.

About face!

Back up the raised sidewalk I go, now aware that this entire four-building foot print — including the mystery dome — comprises the Sinclair Centre. I knew this, I really did. It just took a while to reconcile my memories of this once-busy office/service/retail complex, with the boarded-up reality of right now.

??? They look like giant condoms, ready for action. What is going on in there?

I don’t know, is the answer to my own question. The complex seems mostly closed, and I later read online that a massive redevelopment proposal has been under review. Is work now underway, or becalmed? I can’t tell.

Whichever, it is a sad sight.

Walking the West Hastings side of the complex toward Howe, I pass a medallion face looking suitably distressed. As it should. The wooden door is in good condition, but the plaque beneath the medallion has been hacked away.

Corner of Howe, I take one last look at the dome that started my long, happy loop-about through all that urban clutter.

Then, satisfied, I finally board my bus for home.

There’s one last delight, as we roll south on Main Street, and I manage to grab a shot through the bus window.

The Pacific Central train station is in the background, but who cares. I’m focused on the red & white “flag” now installed above the pub entrance, right at the cross-street. It is yet another literal sign of our politico/cultural times.

The final, perfect detail? The name of that cross-street is… National Street.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 1 March 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, photography, Uncategorized, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 1 March 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/03/01/urban-clutter/

Wind, Water, Light

2 February 2025 – Let’s hop back a few days.

Let’s ignore this morning’s sloppy snow (cleared from the fern by my loving fingers but slumping off the chair all by itself)…

and let’s ignore yesterday’s sullen drizzle that had this would-be patron waiting in vain for someone to open up the Espresso Bar at False Creek and start serving coffee.

Let’s instead revisit January 29.

It is a breezy-clear day that rewards a walk along the Coal Harbour stretch of Burrard Inlet — even if afternoon light is already fading by the time I reach this installation, which overlooks the Vancouver Harbour Flight Centre from its spot beside Vancouver Convention Centre West.

I’ve seen it before, always liked it a lot, but today, I pay more attention to it. I start reading the signage. I learn the artist is Vancouverite Doug R. Taylor, who has “a passion for building whimsical mobiles that reflect the storyline of a site.”

The more I read, the more I understand what this means. And understand there’s more going on here than artistic whimsy.

The site, in fact, is directly opposite, not here — past the float plane activity, over there on the north shore where sulphur piles mark one of the many terminals that comprise the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority.

What we have on this side, in this Wind Wheel Mobile, is a memorial to the workers who loaded asbestos over there for so many years.

This mobile is Taylor’s way of working with that history, and those consequences.

I give it a moment, I do, and then I walk on.

I am almost immediately captivated by another storyline — this one created by the dance between the two sites now in front of me. Orange harbour cranes, down there on the left, bounce a fiery explosion across Convention Centre windows, here on the right.

I keep walking, treat myself to a closer look at the reflection, which by now has only the peaks of Convention Centre East to play with. (Plus one swooping gull.)

And then, very well satisfied with wind, water and light, I go on home.

To wait for the snow.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 2 February 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 2 February 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/02/02/wind-water-light/

Of Snowdrops & Elephants

23 January 2025 — My legs want to go celebrate the relatively balmy temperature (4C) and the lack of anything heaving down at us out of the sky. Rough plan: bus rides to Morton Park on the edge of Stanley Park; my own two feet back through the West End on the Comox-Helmcken Greenway to downtown; a visit to the Outsiders and Others art gallery on Howe; and then … well I don’t know. It’ll sort itself out.

Fun, right from the first bus ride.

Old geezer hops on, sporting a grubby old hockey sweater bearing this logo:

I squeak with delight, shake two-thumbs-up at him, and soon we’re deep in our old-geezer memories about Rocket Richard, Boom-Boom Geoffrion and other heroes of the 1950s/60s Montreal Canadiens hockey team. I bail, to catch my Beach bus on out to Morton Park, but the hockey talk continues: he and another geezer start arguing the merits/stupidity of current Vancouver Canuck team strategy.

Second bus ride is as larky as the first. We would-be passengers put in an extra 30 seconds at the stop while the approaching driver brakes and waits for a solitary gull to walk — very, very slowly — across Station Street in front of the bus. We climb on board cheering the driver.

(He later proves equally considerate of human life forms, making a safe but illegal stop that allows an elderly lady to get off a bit closer to her destination, the Aquatic Centre.)

So I am buoyant with good humour and confidence in the day, as I turn turn off Davie Street onto Bidwell to walk on over to the Greenway. Right at the corner, I’m charmed by Fiona Dunnett’s design for the City utility box, with its happy musicians in a local park…

and I am equally charmed by the message I see on a stickie pressed to the top of the box, on the other side.

More street art, or at least street-viewed art, at Bidwell & Pendrell, where the base for the fence around Lord Roberts Elementary School bears design work by its 2016/17 students.

At Comox, I join the Greenway. The intersection is marked a pair of comfy black chairs (prudently bolted into place) — a repeating feature of this corridor, with its emphasis on restful human interaction.

This pair has an impromptu addition: a decidedly unofficial, and decidedly battered, wooden chair left by some anonymous donor. It is not bolted into place!

Street-side gardens everywhere, even if, mid-winter, there are more bare branches and bare earth than plants. This plaintive notice near Nicola, for example, seems unnecessary…

but no, I’m wrong.

Half a block on down the street…

I see my first snowdrop of the year.

The accelerating trend to glossy new towers, so visible on Davie Street, is less apparent here. Here so far, and this far west, architecture is older, smaller-scale and somehow more restful. A vintage brick apartment building faces an only slightly newer wooden equivalent at Comox and Broughton.

Volunteer-tended Green Streets gardens are prevalent — a feature here, as elsewhere, of the City program to promote greenery in (and I quote) “traffic-calming spaces.” Often accompanied by benches or pairs of those black chairs, the garden surroundings are indeed calming. You don’t have to love jargon to love the result.

Though sometimes, as in this garden at Broughton, I don’t much love the aesthetic, either.

But then… ohhhh, I get over myself. What’s not to love about gnomes & plastic owls & toads & toadstools & bunny-rabbits & watering cans & even a startled bird atop a column of improbably turquoise plastic vine?

Furthermore, there are gardens I really like a lot. So there.

Like the one at Jervis.

No… more precisely, like the brightly daubed fire hydrant next to this garden. With its elephant on top. (I did promise you an elephant, here he is.)

I’m also very fond of this garden near Bute, with its bike-wheel tribute to the joys of cycling.

Right at Bute, not a garden, but another expression of community and joy and creativity.

Chalk art.

I don’t know who Baba and Addy are, but this young artist wishes them well, and so do I.

I’m on the diagonal now, slicing through Nelson Park, passing between happy dogs in the off-leash park on my right and happy kiddies in the playground of Lord Roberts school annex on my left. I meet Bella, a slightly skittish Pomeranian/Husky cross, who eventually decides I am to be trusted and gives my hand a nuzzle. Her owner reaches the same conclusion, and allows me to feed her a treat. All three of us are pleased with the encounter.

I pause at a tree. It has pussy-willow-ish catkins on it, though I don’t know for sure that’s what they are. Anyway, that’s not why I pause. It’s the ornament that stops me. The world’s tiniest baby rain boot, bright green and adorable, dangles from a branch. Some infant kicked it off, and some later pedestrian has hung it high, in hopes the parent will come searching and find it.

Once on Nelson Street, I’m heading for the business/entertainment/financial district — serious downtown. At Burrard, the Wall Centre rises tall. It’s arresting in its own right, even more arresting as it throws Gaudí-esque reflections of buildings opposite.

Still arresting when I’m right in front of it, fountain spray adding further dynamics to the scene.

One last image: the quiet majesty of Arthur Erickson’s Law Courts Complex, seen from Nelson at Hornby…

before I turn onto Howe, make my visit to Outsiders and Others, with its decidedly different sensibility, and finally walk on north to Pender Street and my bus ride home.

No hockey sweaters or hockey talk, this time — instead, a loving young father gurgling nonsense at his toddler son. Everyone within earshot is as charmed as the baby.

5 Comments
by icelandpenny on 23 January 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 23 January 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/01/23/of-snowdrops-elephants/

Doctrine, Doorways & Details

12 January 2025 – First, “D” for the Everything, Everywhere Doctrine, which has set its targets for 2025: Greenland, Canada, Panama.

It is beyond alarming & insulting, it is surreal to hear the duly-elected incoming leader of a supposedly principled (and supposedly freedom-loving) country announce his intention to subjugate his neighbours — my country included.

Greenland he plans simply to buy, though upon questioning he explicitly does not rule out the use of military force. Canada he believes he can crush “by economic force.” Panama… well, the U.S. has a history of intervention in its southern neighbours, so there must be a long list of strategies already in the arsenal.

It is stirring, but not comforting, to read David Suzuki’s account (Toronto Star) of why he chose to return to Canada from the U.S. and why he hopes all Canadians “will fight to preserve our differences from [that other] great nation.” It is no comfort that some Americans (cf. this comment on my previous post by a Seattle-based reader) think that members of the incoming administration are “evil, twisted… and some are very stupid.” And it is no comfort to read that the subjugation plans are bound to fail (cf. Stephen Marche analysis, Maclean’s Magazine) since “at this point in history, America has come off 70 years of failed imperialist adventures.”

Even when the target nations are united and patriotic, even when the leaders of the aggressor nations are stupid and bungle their projects — even then — those projects still inflict great damage and suffering on the way through.

…

Shall we move on to a happier pair of D’s?

Doorways and Details

Fresh off a visit to a stunning exhibition in Equinox Gallery, I prowl my way back down this southern extension of Commercial Drive.

It is still home to vintage architecture and to small, independent shops and activities. Doorways are individual, and expressive.

This café with its door wide open…

and a collection of vintage bottles overhead.

This crafts workshop…

with its glorious live-edge door pull.

This café one block farther north, where the door may be physically closed but the signage welcomes you…

and a small notice apologizes for the need to bar pets…

and offers a free “puppiccino” in compensation.

An adjacent door, barred and locked, appears unfriendly, but is deceptive.

It guards something very friendly indeed, a tool-lending library — “an affordable community-based alternative to personal tool ownership or tool rental.”

Sadly, its window detail, hard to read through bars and glare, suggests neighbourly puppiccinos may become a thing of the past.

“How can you call this a development when the only thing going up is my rent.” Later I see land-acquisition notices in front of other vintage properties, citing CD-1 zoning, i.e. Comprehensive Development.

Another, much smaller doorway, this time near the north end of a narrow linear park threading its way parallel to Commercial Drive, on down to East Broadway.

One Little Free Library door, with two heart-warming details. First, the pointillist celebration of whales on the door…

and, second, the introduction to Harmonious Joan taped to the frame inside. (You don’t need to be a ukulele player, to be glad that people like HJ exist.)

One final “doorway” for you, and note those punctuation marks of uncertainty.

I debate its inclusion, and then decide that, yessiree! it qualifies. True, it is an intersection…

but are not intersections the doorway to a pair of streets?

Anyway the detail, another of the city’s sidewalk mosaics, deserves attention…

even if I cannot find a reference to it anywhere and so cannot identify it for you.

All these small things — ordinary, everyday, and worth defending.

2 Comments
by icelandpenny on 12 January 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 12 January 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/01/12/doctrine-doorways-details/

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