Sylvia Hotel

Among the least remarkable aspects of Vancouver's Sylvia Hotel is a narrow strip of lawn that runs between the hotel's elevated south patio and the Beach Avenue sidewalk. On this strip the hotel has placed eight picnic tables with umbrellas, and you can dine there, as we did yesterday evening, and watch people moving over the mound of grass that leads down to the seawall and beyond, to the sands of English Bay, its waters, and eventually its sunset, which by now is west enough to enter our north facing windows.

The picture atop this post was taken around 8pm yesterday in the Sylvia's "Men's" room. The window is west-facing and allowed a framed picture of the hotel's exterior trees and vines. I thought of Carolee Schneemann's Fuses (1967) when I saw this window, how at any minute it might cut to her or James Tenney or Kitsch the Cat. Fuses, too, was filmed in a room not far from a beach. This was almost 55 years ago. Tenney passed away in 2006, Schneeman in 2019. If Kitsch were still alive he would be the oldest cat, ever.