12 November 2024 – It’s definitely a leaden sky up there, but down here there’s lots to look at. Plus there’s a rain jacket in my backpack. I am equipped.

Colours pop against all that grey.

Bright autumn leaves snagged in a still glowing shrub…

seed pods tawny against yellowing foliage…

seed pods cascading from their vines…

and a small tree, starkly elegant against its stone & brick backdrop…

all of them my companions, as I walk my way north down Scotia Street, flanking the east wall of…

the Brewery Creek Building.

Not its original name! Even “Fell’s Candy Factory,” still visible above the brass lettering, is not the original name.

Built c. 1904 as a storage cellar for Vancouver Brewery Ltd., this building was later (among other things) a candy factory, a creamery, a grease works and a stucco manufacturing plant before the restoration and renovations that, in 1993…

transformed it into a collection of live/work condos in a Class A heritage building.

New-builds are now springing up all around. It more than holds its own.

Though I like some of the sassy newcomers.

Especially ones that prove modest building materials can also hold their own — when deployed with bold colour and strong, clean lines.

And this is the back-alley view!

A bit farther north, I’m still caught up in the old/new mix that is Mount Pleasant these days. Low vintage buildings and early (2017 or so) Vancouver Mural Festival artworks mark East 3rd and the alley just off Main Street..

but behind them to the south rises one of the sleek new eco-conscious work facilities that are now reshaping the area, East 5th in particular.

I’m headed in the opposite direction, north & west to the east end of False Creek. My route takes me past Mountain Equipment now-American-Company-not-Canadian-Coop. I consciously Don’t Go There; I instead enjoy the exterior of this mass timber building. Including the corvine slogan under one pillar’s footing…

and droplets sliding down the water course built into the Quebec Street façade.

You see? It has rained, it will rain, but at the moment, it is not — not quite — raining.

I’m closing in on False Creek…

but it’s not the geodesic dome of Science World that catches my eye. it’s the runaway red balloon down there against the railing.

And then I forget all about the red balloon.

I can hear chimes & gongs & cymbals & whistles, and I know how to interpret them. They tell me that the glass tower by the Science World entrance, sadly silent during a long restoration, is once again in glorious, ridiculous, delightful, full-tilt operation. It has no name that I can find, but if ever any 2024 contraption deserved the name Rube Goldberg Machine — this is it.

Things clank, whiz, fly around, spiral and drop, tip and tilt, climb and do it again. A woman grins at me over her children’s heads. “The kids are the excuse. I could stand here all day.” I nod.

But we eventually move on …

I, past the reclining question-mark outside Science World’s creek-facing west wall that invites us to consider our daily choices, all of which affect the environment.

Question-mark nicely suits what happens next. I find myself in an impromptu focus group of SeaWall pedestrians — diversified in our demographics, but united in our conclusion.

Despite much conjecture among us, we remain puzzled. Goose? Swan? We settle for Very Large Waterfowl. We also agree that he/she is gliding over a sunken boat (the hull gleams greenish-white, the mast protrudes). Pleased with ourselves and each other, we go our various ways.

By the time I reach my Cambie Bridge cross-over point, the threat-of-rain has become really-rain.

I stand under bridge ramparts, exchange forecasts with a guy also pawing his backpack for a jacket, and watch a young woman toss her red umbrella aside so she can kick up her heels on one of the playground swings.

Jacketed & be-hatted, all zippered up, I climb my way up onto the bridge and head out over the water. I am so charmed by this graffito on the railing…

that I stand here until a ferry obligingly comes along, to include in the picture. (The wait gives me time to compile a Glad They Exist list, ferries being just one item. I find it a helpful exercise, very soothing, a counterbalance to all that I wish did not exist.)

And then I put the camera away, because, good grief, this is now serious rain.

And I then I take it out again, one last time.

Here at West 8th & Yukon, a living demonstration of the slogan back there under the MEC pillar.

Crows know! This crow knows he is very wet. And he is telling us all about it.