“Storm Watch” is the winter draw for Tofino and other points along the west coast of Vancouver Island, not for mainland White Rock — a small community tucked into Semiahmoo Bay, just 5 minutes from the Canada/US border.
But if the weather doesn’t quite qualify as a storm, it sure is blustery. We have piled on the layers, pulled up our hoods, zipped every zipper, found our mitts and generally shown due respect for the elements, this holiday-Monday Family Day.
Which makes that black crescent in the lowering sky (mid-photo) all the more amazing.
Dog in surf, fine. Bundled-up patient dog owner on beach, fine. But what maniac would want to be out there wind-surfing? We spy his sail, trace the line to his wetsuit-clad body, and shake our heads in amazement.
On along the beachside path, heading for the pier you can just barely make out ‘way down there on the horizon.
We are going to walk, not just a pier, but the pier, the capital-P Pier: the White Rock Pier. “The longest pier in Canada.” That pier.
We plod on, breathless and laughing, past this imposing tree stump, looking at / listening to rolling waves as we go.
And then we’re there! On the Pier!
Everybody else as windblown as we are, bracing against the blasts, and sharing “what-a-day” grins with passing strangers.
How long is “longest,”you may want to know. I did, & later I look it up: 470 metres (1,542 ft) is the answer. OK-fine, but the merest nuthin’ compared to the world’s longest, which is in Progreso, Mexico and juts 6.5 km out to sea. It was built to accommodate cruise ships, wouldn’t you know; ours merely has to accommodate feet.
Also accommodate storms, as it happens. Built in 1914 for steamships, it had to be extensively rebuilt after a huge storm in 2018 and has been smacked around by further storms since then. We walk right to the end, and pause for the landward view before heading back to town.
The view includes the eponymous white rock — the 486-ton chunk of granite so liberally coated in seagull guano in the 19th century that (they tell us) it served as a beacon for sailors. It is now repeatedly coated in Park Dept. whitewash — not to make up for an absence of guano, but to cover up the presence of graffiti.
Return trip along those 470 metres, wind at our backs this time. We are almost literally sailing along…
Up the steps to the main drag, and a look back across the bay. The flag is snapping in the wind…
and the gulls are hunkered down against the wind.
We power on down the street.
We’re headed for fish & chips at Moby Dick (“famous since 1975”)…
and we take in a lesson in maritime etiquette along the way.
18 February 2023 – Three beholders, as we explore the SkyTrain construction site behind Emily Carr campus, and our eyes agree: this jumble is full of beauty.
Fine-textured bristles…
skeletal rust…
columnar rust…
lacework rust…
and even a whole line-up of high-contrast millimetres…
discarded, but still faithfully doing the job they were created to do, measuring the space where they lie.
11 February 2023 – I don’t have signage even remotely in mind, as I head east on East 5th. I am preoccupied with the extraordinary length of this block — so many streets coming in from the south dead-end right here — and I wondering where & how I can carry on downhill to Great Northern Way, steeply below me to the north.
I am about to turn into a promising short-cut between two buildings in this co-op housing complex… and then see the sign telling me not to.
Look at it. Just a few words, and it manages to be both authoritative & persuasive, all at the same time. It orders me to STOP!!!, but then gives me a good reason to stop. So I do. I walk on to the foot of Fraser Ave…
where the STOP is even more imperious. One word, no justification. But that’s the job of traffic signs — instant one-glance information, for instant obedience. The contrast between these two signs starts me thinking about signage, and it becomes a theme for my walk.
I notice the other traffic iconography at this bend in the road, and then take the unmarked footpath down a shabby but sturdy zig-zag wooden staircase to Great Northern Way.
I’m into signs now! Terse text + iconography yet again, as befits the needs of a major transportation route. Traffic lights, ID for the cross street, “Parkway Bypass” notice with a bicycle logo…
and a directional red rubber glove. Oh, all right, it is not official signage. But I follow it anyway, since I do want to cross Great Northern Way. (Still so-named, because originally it was the route into town for the Great Northern Railway.)
I cross, turn westward, and laugh out loud at the traffic signage right there in front of me. Greenway? Not so green.
And then… and then my friends, some signage that is arguably not signage, since it is non-verbal. But just look at this grouping, right next to the shared bike/pedestrian pathway along this busy road.
Two chairs, and two crocheted hearts. Never mind car fumes, chainlink fence and piles of construction materials. This “sign” says Welcome! Sit a moment! Plus, I do notice an official sign: the logo of the fencing company with its URL, upside down and very small at the bottom of the fence. Then again, this sign doesn’t need to catch anybody’s attention, or persuade/order us to do anything. So, it is doing its own particular job in an appropriate way.
And now, a totally surplus-to-needs photo: a closer look at one of the hearts and how wonderfully it plays off the lines and colours of the fence and the stockpile beyond. (It’s a bonus. You’re welcome.)
More signs-for-purpose as I walk on west: the bicycle logo on this shared pathway, the stripes to indicate a crossing, and the lean, cool lettering on the Centre for Digital Media, as befits both the architecture of this building and its purpose.
I duck in behind the Centre, where construction is underway for the Millennium Line extension (one of our SkyTrain transit lines) that will somehow squeeze between railway tracks and all these buildings.
More signs! The usual terse traffic icons/texts up top; worker-oriented info in the middle; and words + image at the bottom, signage I see on public construction projects around town, designed to win the hearts & compliance of workers and passersby alike.
I walk the back wall of the Centre for Digital Media, and pass a set of classroom windows plastered with post-it notes — the results, one assumes, of some brain-storming exercise.
I realize my brain has auto-flopped the banner words at the top (did yours?) and instantly reads “Solution IDEAS”.
Out the other side, and I’m about to cross from the Centre onto the grounds of neighbouring (and partner) institution, Emily Carr University for Art + Design.
More diverse signage: up close, a sculpture whose body language makes words unnecessary (no, it is not raining); beyond, the yellow diamonds and red diamonds and directional arrows that tell us about bumpy roads, closed sidewalks and detours.
I cut through the Emily Carr campus. Ahead of me, hoarding around the SkyTrain station under construction, with images and words for this largely youthful and heavily design-conscious location: “z” not “s” for South Flatz, 24/7, and fat, bravura graphics.
Closer, a wonderful contrast in transportation offerings. On the hoardings, “new train of thought” and the transit icon heralding the coming SkyTrain line. Right here in front of me, bike parking.
I walk along the hoardings back out by the expressway, where signage is more geared to the general public. The same desire to appeal, to engage, and to be informative, but for a different audience. It’s a conscious effort, and I like it. We’re not being ignored, we are being treated like reasonable and curious human beings, who have a right to know what’s happening and will enjoy learning more about it.
And so, a map…
and a series of graphics about machinery on-site, such as the TBM…
and a follow-up panel that provides more info.
Even private-sector projects now tell us more about what they are doing. (Required by law, I do assume, not from the sheer goodness of their hearts. But welcome, however motivated.) It’s information relevant to us: when they’re allowed to work, what noise bylaws they must obey, how to reach an emergency contact.
And then, well you have to expect it, don’t you? And then, unofficial adjustments to the official template. Somebody scratched out the “ty” in Safety up there in the title, and I don’t think it was “bad Wolf.” I think his style is to add black paint, not remove black letters.
Red detour signs all over the place…
and, walking south again on residential Scotia St, another red sign. It is equally clear and instructional, but gentled by the green vine climbing the right-hand side. As befits the Gardeners of the Galaxy, who run this coFood community garden at East 4th.
One last sign, on the Native Education College property immediately south of the community garden.
Somehow, it rounds out my walk. Like the NWHC sign on East 5th that started this whole sign-mania of mine, it is both instructional and persuasive.
5 February 2023 – Messy out there, because we are between seasons, even more messy because drizzly, but also mild and therefore easy to enjoy.
Everywhere, the messiness of not being firmly either one season or another.
Old leaves not yet gone…
and new spring blossoms not yet open.
Surprises, too.
I’m walking east on E 10th Ave, and as I cross St. George I look for the sidewalk community library — the take-something / leave-something wooden structure that was a fixture here long before I arrived in the neighbourhood. Well, it’s gone.
I am unsettled by this, feel my universe slightly creaking on its axis, and I am therefore relieved to see that the bizarre streetside attraction a few doors farther east is still in place. I’ve shown it to you before: a metal tub balanced on mannequin hips + legs, with assorted real plants and plastic ornaments — always including a clutch of tiny plastic naked babies, doing their best to escape from turquoise plastic clogs.
Though the babies are always there, the presentation varies slightly over time. Today there is a large, glossy horse chestnut balanced carefully atop the mass of babies.
I’m laughing so hard a young couple stop to see what’s going on. “Clever babies!” cries the woman, getting into the spirit of the thing. “They know they’ll need food for their travels.” We beam at each other; her boyfriend stares patiently into space.
A nearby gate bears this balloon, with its optimistic and timely message…
which you can only read if you stand on your head.
Then there’s the messiness of the construction site over at Fraser, as this vintage home is coaxed back to life…
and, in contrast, across the street the tidy presentation of a vintage home already restored. (Is it just me, or does that gate quite wonderfully resemble an apron? Wearing that would cheer me no end, preparing dinner…)
Messiness, no two ways about it, exuberant messiness is the calling card of any skateboard park — here the twin bowls in South China Creek Park near Clark…
watched over by a metal crow perched on a neighbouring balcony.
Mr. Crow is the start of a run of animal life.
There are salmon (plus frog plus ladybug) in the sidewalk mosaic at Commercial Drive…
and a dinosaur at Victoria & E 8th.
Of course there is.
Clever dinosaur, even more clever than those chestnut-toting plastic babies. And if you’ve never visited the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology in Drumheller, Alberta, home to this enlightened creature, then at least visit it right here, online.
This dinosaur, the other side of the tree informs me, has local friends.
Yet more information over on “The Drive” (aka Commercial) at E 4th.
Where I remember that I picked up a horse chestnut for myself, right next to those enterprising tiny babies. I pull it out of my pocket, and tuck it in with some ferns on my balcony.
Twenty years from now there will be a towering great horse chestnut tree on this balcony, and only you, in the whole wide world, will know how it got there.
27 December 2022 – Back from Abbotsford (yes! I made it to the Valley for a magical few days with layers & layers of family), I wake to the consequences of nature’s switcheroo from snow to rain.
“Moderate to elevated” risk of flooding in low-lying areas near the ocean, warns the City of Vancouver, due to exceptionally high tides plus strong winds plus rain. Sections of seawall along Burrard Inlet have been closed as a precaution, and False Creek is named as an area of possible flooding.
I pull on my Seriously Waterproof Coat, and go take a look.
In behind the BC Dragon Boat dock, the channel is full to the brim…
and every woofer in sight sports a raincoat.
I cross that same little pedestrian bridge over a water channel west of Olympic Village, and close in on the stretch where gravel and stepping-stone blocks link Hinge Park to the offshore Habitat Island.
No gravel, no stones. Lots of water.
Normally (and thank you TripAdvisor for this handy comparison photo), the pathway looks like this…
but not today.
I gawp at the sight, stepping stones gleaming ghost-pale from the depths. I also wonder whether nature threw that log across the submerged pathway, or workers placed it there earlier, to prevent people from making what could become a dangerous crossing.
Doubling back toward Olympic Village, I peer at more submerged stones…
and rain drops imitating the rain-drop sewer grate…
and then, heading south, I enjoy the comic relief of a Peep-Show Moment On Ontario Street. I am outside an industrial laundry facility, looking in.
It’s a huge, rambling, and pretty old facility — dickensian-derelict on the outside, but still heaving great bright-white hammocks of laundry loads around on the inside. I can hear motors grinding away, and the window panes shimmy to the beat.
And then!
And then I stop off at Pâtisserie Melo for hot chocolate…
16 December 2022 – It’s barely a kilometer from the east end of False Creek back to Olympic Plaza, but it is chock-full of invitations along the way. We are encouraged to…
Help design a park:
Get involved with East Park, now in its consultation/planning stages.
Watch the changing tides:
Say yes to any or all of multiple invitations in Olympic Plaza:
Salute the site itself, a from-scratch construction project, “North America’s first LEED Platinum community,” completed in time to house athletes for the 2010 Winter Olympics and subsequently converted to more than 1,000 condo units; or…
Enjoy (but not climb!) Myfanwy Macleod’s The Birds art installations; or…
Admire the sleek industrial-functional lines of the 1931 Vancouver Salt Co., built to process unrefined salt shipped in from floodplains near San Francisco; or…
Indulge a thirst for beer not history, and visit the building in its present incarnation as CRAFT False Creek (“where everything is on tap”).
Go for the gold:
This gentleman, in largely legible and fairly grammatical prose, states that the CIA has buried two tons of gold in a secret location beneath the City of Vancouver — and he knows where it is. (Which, he adds, is why the cops shot at him the other day and CSIS is pursuing him.)
Or...
in a final invitation discovered up on West 2nd Avenue…
12 December 2022 – Not yet Mount Pleasant Station, that’s still years from reality. Not the purpose of my walk either. But this block-long construction site neatly bookends my walk — a rectangular path that takes me purpose-driven south on Main to East 18th, then whim-happy west to Quebec and north again to Broadway.
The planned station so tidy on the map! It’s our local segment of the Broadway Subway Project — the 5.7 km extension of the Millennium Line west beneath Broadway to Arbutus Street.
And so appealing, so welcoming and soothing, in this early-stage conceptual illustration!
But in the reality of right-now, here at Broadway and Main, it looks like this.
Pedestrians scurry past. Only the mannequins in the vintage shop window opposite pay any attention…
and they are unimpressed.
I visit a few shops. I achieve my holiday-season purposes. Yay! So I am ready for amusement by the time I hit East 18th.
I think I am familiar with both visual treats at this corner, but I learn something new about each. (I only learn the somethings-new later, and that’s directly thanks to you, as it always is, because I look things up to share with you.)
This Vancouver Mural Festival project on the S/W corner, I later verify…
dates from 2020, the work of indigenous artist Steve Smith ~ Dla’kwagila.
And these great bendy arches in Sun Hop Park on the N/W corner, I later learn to my delight…
reference the drinking straws in the Palm Dairy & Milk Bar that stood here 1952-89. Nearby seats, I now realize, are bottle-top shaped, and everything is painted Palm Dairy’s signature bright red. (See what you cause me to learn? Bless your boots.)
Around the corner onto East 18th, and another treat: a surviving Vancouver Special. Arguably not a visual treat, but I think an icon worthy of respect — vernacular architecture from 1965-85 that helped address the housing crisis of the day and has continued to serve city residents with the flexibility that was always a core intention of the boxy design.
Another visual icon, at least of this Fairview/Mount Pleasant neighbourhood — street-side swings. So simple, so friendly, so… neighbourly. I am charmed, every time.
Right-turn north onto Quebec Street, and a great smack-up of colours: designer-red on that house opposite, nature’s own moss green up and down this magnificent tree and, beneath it, the careless gold of autumn leaves.
One block farther south, more of nature’s colour palette: black.
What you see when someone rakes up all those sodden leaves to reveal naked soil below.
Down at East 12th, yet more seasonality: St. Patrick’s Secondary School is in the Christmas tree business.
Then more trees, but street-side, and firmly rooted. I stand mesmerized by the play of colours and texture. (And that one stubborn leaf!)
Thump.
I am back at Broadway. West end of the Mount Pleasant Station site, and just as busy a jumble as the east end.
More fun, though.
All those leaping salmon in the mural (apparently climbing the wall, as real salmon climb a waterfall), and that silver bear, one paw raised in benediction. You’d think he’d be busy nabbing salmon for lunch, not blessing the street…
1 December 2022 – “To explore,” says Stephanie Rosenbloom in her book Alone Time, “we need only put one foot in front of the other.” And the best part of that is… you and your feet, you can do whatever you want! You can stop your feet, reverse them, loop around, hesitate, scratch your head, get lost in thought. Your feet don’t care, and you don’t need to find a parking space.
All of which links with an observation in my very own About comments for this blog, and with my theme for this post.
In About, I explain that until August 2012 this blog concerned training for and completing an Arthritis Society charity trek in Iceland, and then, as of August 2012, I walk on. “With my feet, and in my mind as well.”
In two recent walks, I was struck by how my feet explored very limited physical spaces, while my mind spun through decades of time and a whole world of continents.
The Alley, Manitoba south of West 5th
I’m walking east in the alley, almost at Manitoba. My eye snags on this turquoise/yellow reflection, a bright flag in an otherwise entirely boring window in an equally boring building.
And here’s the source, the mural on the side wall of that building on the left. I like everything about it, from the mural itself to the hydro poles and their play of shadows, and the far view of one of my favourite VMF (Vancouver Mural Festival) murals right across the street.
Close-up to admire the new mural…
and then I peek around the corner, to discover it’s on our friend, the snazzy new 2131 Manitoba building (cf. Taking the 5th) with snazzy new tenants like AbCellular Biologics.
No attribution for their mural, which I find disappointing, but there is attribution for the 2019 VMF mural across the street.
It’s the work of Beijing-born, Vancouver-based artist William Liao. I think his website’s use of the phrase “fine arts” is entirely justified — both for what you can see online, and for this haunting face.
Tender, traditional, very fine-arts, yet entirely at home in its alley context.
I backtrack to the west side of Manitoba and south to the corner of West 6th, for one last look at the “2131” mural through the security fencing for yet another of the new builds transforming this neighbourhood.
This hole in the ground will become the new home of Ekistics, I learn.
And that, my friends, stays my feet and launches my mind.
Ekistics is a multi-disciplinary design and consulting studio, specializing in “sustainable planning, architecture, landscape architecture and land development” — and who can argue with that? I’m all in favour.
I just think this Vancouver firm, founded in 1992, might at least give a passing nod to the pioneering work of Greek architect and urban planner C.A. Doxiades, who first coined the word “ekistics” and laid out the elements of its science and study in an October 1970 article in Science magazine. Doxiades, who was active in the Greek underground during World War II and helped lead the country’s reconstruction post-war, went on to found a firm of engineers, architects and urban planners that in time had offices on five continents and projects in more than 40 countries.
I was interested in these things, in the 1970s, and followed his work for a while. This Vancouver team owes him some respect…
The Plaza, Cambie south of West Broadway
Another day, and different weather: a snow-heavy sky about to dump all over us.
I’m just south of the Skytrain station on Broadway, about to cut south-east toward home, and find my feet slowing down. Perhaps in sympathy with all these feet.
Walking Figures, they are called, the cast-iron last survivors of a group created in Poland by Magdalena Abakanowicz and erected here as part of one of our Vancouver Biennale exhibitions.
I circle them, look at the hollowed back views marching toward the transit station as cranky gulls wheel through the grubby sky.
And I walk my own feet the other way, up the “Welcome to City Hall” (top riser) steps just beyond.
Walk-walk, admiring as I always do the architecture of this building: a Depression-era project, opened in 1936, and visually somewhere in that transition from the vertical, highly ornamented lines of Art Deco to the simpler and more horizontal lines of Moderne. Admiring also, that in our recent civic election that saw a major shift of voter sympathies, all the defeated candidates conceded quickly and gracefully. (I am only appalled that I have to be grateful for behaviour I used to take for granted.)
My feet stop at this rock, one of the City’s millennium-project incised rocks still to be found in landmark locations. Annoyingly, I can’t decipher the name or later find it online, but as I stand there, feet stilled, the words set my mind walking.
My mind and my mental ear as well. Spread the image, try to catch more words, but here’s the gist of it. It’s all about everyday sounds we no longer hear, and they are picked out in the equivalent of bold face: clickety-clack (push lawnmower), cock-a-doodle-do (rooster), clip-clop (delivery wagon horses), ah-on-gah (early car horns), whack! (the smack of a wooden frame screen door). I particularly like that whack!, it shoots my mind back to Dorval Island and our cottage there of the 1940s & 50s. That is exactly the sound.
It is still in my ear as my feet move on, just a little, carrying me across the winter-desolate plaza whose empty picnic tables bear witness to the weather. (Where are the mountains? They should be out there… All hidden.)
My busy feet scamper off the far side of the plaza and then stop me before this plaque, set my eyes reading and my mind again hard at work. This plaza bears a name. It’s a name for us all to honour.
I had never heard of Helena Gutteridge! Food for continued thought, as my feet pick up the pace, urge me back home in time to beat the snow.
22 November 2022 – There are surely many more things to know about seriously pissing-down rain, but here is your starter’s kit of three.
1 – In Nature
The Burning Bush (Euonymus alatus) still deserves its nickname.
2 – In Shops
The doorway umbrella stand is chock-full.
3 – In Pedestrians
Here you have to take my word for it. As we cross paths on the sidewalk — splish-splosh in our wellie-boots, zipped up in our Seriously Waterproof Coats — we wrinkle our noses at each other in amusement.
“Isn’t this the silliest weather ever?” our noses ask each other, and we beam agreement as we walk on by.
15 November 2022 – Not “the 5th” as in a self-shielding legal manoeuvre in a US courtroom. Instead, “the 5th” as in bouncing down Vancouver’s West 5th Avenue, wide open to the cultural/commercial fizz erupting on all sides.
Fizz indeed. I’m in the Quebec-to-Alberta stretch running through Mount Pleasant, known (well, in real-estate circles) as “Vancouver’s most desirable mixed-used neighbourhood.”
I am all in favour of mixed-use, aka diversity; I grow either nervous or bored when faced with homogeneity. No fear of that around here! While this cityscape has lost any trace of the millennia-old indigenous use of the land, it bears remaining evidence of early working-class settlers, who used their muscle-power either in their own small enterprises or in service of the industrial needs of the CPR. You still see a few auto-body shops, for e.g., but by now the transition from strong arms to strong brains is well underway.
Emphasis on creative/digital brain power.. all wrapped up in green. Proclaiming eco-sensitivity along with floor space. (Cf. my recent Into The City post.)
This brand new “slats” building between Quebec & Ontario…
offers “a superior location” and boasts its high ratings for walking/transit/biking criteria.
→An aside to explain the cross streets: I’m in a stretch named for the provinces in Confederation at the time of naming. They are slightly out of geographical order and include a territory, but let’s not quibble.
At the intersection of 5th and Ontario, older & newer versions of creativity shimmer at each other from every corner.
ricochets midway down the next block, to nature’s own rust on this chain. It locks the courtyard gate beside the heritage brick home of Image Engine (“world-class visual effects for film”).
More nature near the corner of 5th & Manitoba, this time yellow flowers that survived the snow and are still perky as all-get-out.
They sit in front of another artisanal bakery, Terra Breads. Together, they play compare/contrast with high-tech parking and the shiny-new neon-green “2131” building kitty-corner.
Completed last year, says the online promo, it provides office and light industrial space for a number of tenants, including AbCellular Biologics.
All very fancy and brainy and new… but with older art styles as the streetscape context.
Right across the street, this 2019 Vancouver Mural Festival wall…
back on 5th and just west of Manitoba, some grotty-old, unapologetic-old, roof-top graffiti…
and a tad farther west again, two doorways plastered with stickers.
I am not a stickers fan. Don’t get it. Grumble, grumble. But I read these, and… oh all right… some are mildly bemusing. “Scrub out racism not stickers” says one; “dump your porn addicted boyfriend” urges another; and another proclaims “timbit taliban,” which I suspect would confuse the Taliban as much as Tim Hortons.
More mixed-use, as I make my way from Manitoba to Columbia: Maison d’Etre Design Build (surely the world’s best bilingual marketing pun, but I wish they’d kept the accents), and two beauty-devoted outlets, focused respectively on hair salon supplies, and high-end residential flooring.
Almost at Columbia, I’m stopped flat by the elegant, but enigmatic, signage on an otherwise entirely anonymous building:
It only makes sense much later, when some online scuffling around shows me this used to be a Canadian Tire customer pick-up centre.
5th & Columbia is like a case study in past-present-future.
The south-west corner lot is for sale, with this tidy but older home surely doomed. (Note the home immediately beyond — beautifully painted, its owners raking leaves and very much not for sale.)
Facing the for-sale, an already-sold: something new rising up from the ground on the north-west corner, bearing the name Renditions Developments and promising “a new chapter.”
Beyond that, continuing west on 5th, wonderful names for what I fondly hope are wonderfully creative little boutiques — Rad Power Bikes; Hot Sauce Digital Marketing; Adventure Technology; Black & White Zebra. (And somewhere in here, I forget exactly where, the offices for the newspaper Vancouver Is Awesome.)
Corner of 5th & Alberta, a very empty, very space-y, space, announcing “This must be the space.” Tenants yet to arrive.
Kitty-corner, a space already full of tenants: Beaumont Studios — outdoor courtyard; indoor venues available for events; and an artists’ collective of rental studios.
I cross over, walk along the mural, contemplate the humanoid at the end.
Pop-eyed in amazement, as seems fitting, and with hands raised either in horror at recent developments…
or to warm them at the flame of all this new creative energy.
"Traveller, there is no path. Paths are made by walking" -- Antonio Machado (1875-1939)
"The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
"A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities" -- Rebecca Solnit, "Wanderlust: A History of Walking"
WALKING WOMAN 