9 April 2024 – A post title borrowed from a specific sculpture (you’ll see), but broadly applicable to pretty well everything else (as you’ll also see).

First, and more precisely: Eyes on the chain link. Two days ago I’m looping south-east of home, my attention caught by the bold line of graphics visible through chain link fence on East Broadway near Fraser.

Curiosity pulls me around the corner, into the lane, and onto that big rectangle of gravel. Bright graphics all right, but otherwise? One park bench, one dog bowl, no dogs, and one crow, who promptly flies away. That’s it. Yet a neat sign on the gate has the gall to declare this the Broadway & Fraser Dog Garden.

Please! I curl my lip. Later, online, I visit the Dog Garden website, discover a group called Community Garden Builders “transform vacant properties into temporary dog parks” … and uncurl my lip. I invite you to do the same.

Tail end (!!! unintended pun, but I’m gonna leave it) of that walk, I’m passing the mesh fence that keeps Guelph Park tennis balls inside the City courts, where they belong. A player has just stooped to retrieve one, but that’s not what I notice.

See? Our local yarn bomber has branched out. Not just crochet hearts…

but tassel hearts as well.

And now, my friends, the magic of the Historical Present Tense swoops us past yesterday’s rain into today’s bright sunshine. More streets to be walked. More places for my feet to lead my eyes.

Starting in a near-by alley at East 5th, where a whole passel of City workers are clustered around that venerable H-frame hydro pole.

I am relieved to learn that (A) while it is terminally non-functioning, (B) it will be replaced by another H-frame, not by some sleek 21st-c. interloper.

I’m still gleeful with that bit of news as I turn down another alley en route False Creek, and try for a more interesting way to look at Alex Stewart’s 2023 VMF mural, Vibrance Overgrown.

It dominates the alley side of a snazzy new eco-conscious build on East 4th and, viewed straight on… ummm…. I find it boring. Well-executed and bright, but no better than decorative.

Then I stop being cranky, lean into the wall, and look straight up.

Well, that’s more fun, and I resolve to spend more time looking for odd angles.

Next opportunity arises quickly in yet another alley — more properly, in the developer-groomed pathway between condo complexes close to the south-east end of False Creek. We’re in the area’s old industrial/railway footprint, so visual/verbal references abound. For example, in the street name just before me: Pullman Porter Street.

Right here, next to the water feature signposted as private property, I once again enjoy Eyes on the Street. The plaque tells me that the two forms in this 2018 installation by Marie Khouri & Charlotte Wall “mirror themselves & their surroundings,” and inspire us to think of our neighbours, ourselves and our surroundings, and to “consider the beauty of their interconnectedness.”

I go close. The form before me does mirror its surroundings…

and I find that I do then spend a moment considering the interconnectedness of all things.

False Creek at last, where I hook around to the north side, and head west. On past my usual turning point at the Cambie Bridge. Water on my left and, up above me along Marinaside Crescent to my right, one of the three shelter + chairs installations that comprise Lookout.

Created by Christos Dikeakos & Noel Best in 1999, the works feature carved & frosted words to remind us of the Creek’s heritage. I’m not often here, but when I am, I always pause long enough to read some of the words.

Yet farther west, foot of Davie Street, with boats anchored in Quayside Marina on my left and, at water’s edge, the six bronze I-beams of Street Light, by Alex Tregebov & Noel Best. According to the City’s online public art brochure for Yaletown-False Creek, the perforated panels atop these pillars align historic events with actual dates in fancy visual ways. Alas, I’ve never been here at the right moment to see any of that wizardry.

So instead, and as usual, I simply tilt my head up to enjoy some of the superstructure…

tilt my head down to read a few words on the plinth about False Creek Shacks in 1934, and…

level my head to look out across this bit of False Creek, on this very day in 2024.

Focus your eyes a bit above the railing near the cobblestones, and you’ll spot the Canada Goose enjoying the moment right along with me.

By the time i’m passing David Lam Park, my avian companion is a cormorant, not a goose.

There he is, posing atop Buster Simpson’s 1998 work, Brush With Illumination.

I have a very-much-favourite art installation in this park and — with apologies to Simpson (and the cormorant) — Brush isn’t it.

This is it.

Marking High Tide, like its companion pavillion Waiting for Low Tide, is the 1996 creation of sculptor and retired landscape architect Don Vaughan. The latter work is a contemplative circle of large stones in the Creek bed; this one honours the tides with an overhead 360° tribute of words: “As the moon circles the earth the oceans respond with the rhythm of the tides.”

Finally, I leave the water and take myself up to Pacific Blvd where, all along the block stretching east from Homer Street, my eyes are literally on the street.

Well no, make that: literally on the sidewalk.

Which, in this block, is dotted with Gwen Boyle’s 1994 selection of words to reflect the area’s long history.

Once, just once, she offers more than a word or two.

The exception is a longer excerpt from the poem I first noted in my 28 March post “The Beating Sea.”

“… the manstruck forest ..”

I stand there, stunned by the power of his imagery.

So thank you yet again, Earle Birney. You live with us still, in your words and, through the artists you inspire, on our streets.