The Modern Gridded City

In the modern gridded city there are only four directions to set out on when setting out for a walk (360 if you are up for parkour). For me, walks are usually westward, sometimes eastward, occasionally southward and rarely northward, unless I'm walking to my dentist.

The eastward walk quickly crosses Knight Street, passes through the Tyee school grounds and up a short steep hill that looks like it ends in a cul-de-sac but is in fact a community-maintained garden path. On the other side of the path is Fleming Street. Here I turn right a half block towards Gathie Falk's French-style country house, then left for two more, where there's a bustling cafe on the northwest corner and Equinox Gallery at the southeast corner.

The walk continues onwards, eastwards, though sometimes I stop at Equinox to see what's new in Herzogs, and to chat with Sophie, who is honest and funny for a Russian.

Fred Herzog (1930-2019) was a Vancouver photographer who worked as a medical photographer by day and a street photographer on weekends, shooting mostly in colour slide film. Sometimes Fred would see something in one of his slides and place it under his work microscope and re-photograph it, as he did most famously with that seaplane framed by the West End's Ocean Towers.

The picture up top is a crop of an accidental picture I took of a Herzog. I kept it (cropped) because I like the cut of the man's clothes, and because when I sent it to my mother she thought I looked tired.