I'm never sure if this is an ash or an elm. Maybe it's neither, but I'd like to know one way or the other.
Tomorrow I'll write a letter to the City, asking that a legend be posted, with info on these trees. There are so many different kinds. It seems intentional. Let's carry intention to its logical conclusion.
The easternmost end of the lane between East 10th and 11th, just before Commercial. Not sure what this wall and razor-wire is protecting, but there's a pawn shop on that block, and pawn shops are where the desperate exchange what is dear toward what is needed.
Work continues at the SW corner of Commercial Drive and East 12th Avenue. It's been so long since the application came down that I forget what the building will look like. Judging from the hole, maybe five storeys?
Curious about the head: a mullet with sideburns. If it were geared at construction workers, the head would be helmeted. So it's for us, not them.
The sticker on the "YOUR" is interesting. It too brings to mind sound levels.
The Burrow is the new name of the dead-named Banditas, a Vegican restaurant that opened fifteen years ago and was so full of Fuck you, dude energy I couldn't get enough of it. A great place to go and behave.
And then, a couple years ago, the name change. Not the first name change in light of our changing times -- a Toronto literary publisher did the same a few years before it, when it thought BookThug implied exactly what it hoped it implied when it started in 2003 and dropped the "T" for the asterisk. Thus, Book*hug was born.
Of all the associated names Banditas could have chosen (The Donkey, The Mule, The Ass), it chose The Burrow. The Burrow. Like the awning says: THE/ BUR/ ROW.
Try the Mixed Walnut Lentil Enchilada!
A poster in my neighbourhood. KIDNAPPED, as opposed to MISSING. An old man (75), not a child. In the Middle East, not East Vancouver. As for the kidnappers, a militant, fundamentalist community-based group whose work is informed by religious law and is funded by those who seek to hold regional power, or at least wrestle it from those who take their "cues" from the West.
Would we be having this problem now had the CIA and MI6 not ousted Iran's democratically-elected poet Mosaddegh in 1953? Or was that ousting a condition laid out by the family that has the country named after them -- and a good part of the world's oil?
As for Israel, what was Mosaddegh's position on this newly-created U.N.-sanctioned state that took up roughly half of Palestine? Israel was way more socialist then than it is now. Same with Iran. Oh, what do I know? Well, I do know that the Jewish diaspora is thousands of years old, that it began roughly in the area where Israel is today, and not in some of NYC's non-Manhattan boroughs in the 1950s.
David Shalev has had a rotten October and his family and friends want him home. I hope that happens, just as I hope Palestinians can shake off the fundamentalists who insist on fighting in their name. For thousands of years Palestinians have been trod on, used, blamed. Why? Why is that? Maybe that's the basis of my poster. And yet who would my figurehead be?
Among the cavalcade of stars appearing at the 10th anniversary of the East Van Opry last night, Spank Williams came closest to reminding me what fun it was to be on stage, when the audience is wool and your instruments knitting needles. Williams has definitely mastered James Brown's protracted ending as between-song-banter, but not as the Godfather of Soul would do it, more like the Band's Rick Danko. I have no memory of Williams's songs or how they sounded, only his incredible ludic energy. If I was still in show business, I'd package Williams and Shirley Gnome together and send them on the road -- forever!
It is called an easement, though there's nothing easy about it.
In New York City, spaces like these are not part of the commons, but considered real estate, and owning the buildings on either side doesn't mean you own it. The technical term for these liminal if not uninhabitable spaces is "odd lots", and you can buy them from the City, as the artist Gordon Matta-Clark did to make a point, as artists are want to do.
What attracts me to this Kingsway easement includes its surfaces: the concrete ground, which for years was dirt, some plant life and garbage; the stucco siding on the wall of Mùi Ngò Gai to the right; and the more recent update on wood protection: the vinyl siding on The Tipper to the left.
My interest in this easement is first and foremost formal, but for Matta-Clark, his formal interests always carried a social-historical imperative, and he was known for having a big heart and for opening an inexpensive artist-run restaurant called FOOD. Gallerist David Zwirner, who represents Matta-Clark's artistic estate, told me once that Matta-Clark was the last great modernist, and the more I learn about Matta-Clark, the less I care about modernism.
Who says retention can't be decorative? And eco-friendly? I love this stone wall. Rare to see walls like this in production today. Maybe down the road we'll see more of them, given cement's 8% carbon dioxide contribution to global warming.
A picture taken on East 19th west of Fraser, still in the Tea Swamp, where, as any developer or City engineer will tell you, right-angles have been abolished. Not sure how deep this pot sits, but it would have to be deep enough to keep from tumbling down. Below, a picture of the piles you need to drive into the ground to keep your house from winking.
Walking home last night from Hero's Welcome, the old ANAVETS legion at 23rd and Main, scene of too many indiscretions committed by students, faculty and sessionals of UBC's "success-oriented" Creative Writing Program, but now a sparkling place made safe for $7 pints and, where Thursday was once Karaoke night, "Thursday Night Football" and the barking dogs who watch it.
The picture up top was taken a couple blocks west of Fraser Street on the south side of 19th. An unfinished house and an almost-full moon. Today that moon will be fullest, and I'll be at the Rickshaw for the release of Art Bergmann's new album and the long overdue launch of Jason Schneider's biography of the man, the myth, the legend.
That section of 19th between Main and Fraser is what was once known as the Tea Swamp. The "tea" being Labrador Tea, a common and effective indigenous medicine for all manner of things, except post-colonial syndrome. Those who live in this part of Vancouver will know that's why the ground beneath them is unstable, an instability that is most evident in the up-and-down nature of the sidewalks, which are unsafe at any speed, especially after a night of pints.
My neighbour is done with lawns. His last stretch of lawn was the boulevard, which he covered last year in an effort to kill the sod's root system. This spring the tarp came off and mission accomplished -- with grass on only my side of the property line. Not that I blame him, because when he asked if I was committed to my lawn, I never gave him a definitive answer, and he is not the kind of person who asks twice when given anything less than an affirmative.
Last week he asked to borrow my metal rake so that he might break up the hard packed soil and get the rocks out before seeding. The seed will be a cereal grass of some kind, like the magnificent sliver, green and blue rye he planted last year on what was once his front lawn. Can't say I wasn't a little sad for not having said No to lawns when he asked me, because I like the idea of our boulevard being unified, and not divided.
While tempted to bust my sod and join him, I decided instead to preserve the lawn, shine a light on it. I began by giving it a wide edging. From there, I pulled up everything that wasn't from grass seed. Because the ground is hard with tree roots, I highlighted one of the knuckles from the Japanese cherry trees the City planted some 70 years ago. I even took it further, roping it off and hanging from it a sign. Well, that sure got the kids stopping on their way home from school!
On my way out I asked Susan if she had read The Green Mile. She said no, but asked to hear more, so I talked about a couple of her works that could have appeared nearer the beginning of the book and she jotted down the title and author. I know I bought a second copy of the New Directions edition, so if I find it I'll be sure to drop it by.
An apartment in the lane between 13th and 14th Avenues, just west of Knight. A Tower of Babel -- but of fire escapes.
Behind the gallery, up the stairs to the lane, is a nursery built from sick and discarded plants, most of them rescued, I was told, though some have been dropped off. Because not everyone can afford a car (nor want one, even if they can), there is a three car width of room for plants.
I was walking about the nursery when a middle-aged woman came down the back steps and started dead-heading. I introduced myself, and she told me her name is Cammy, though I wasn't sure of the spelling. Later I heard that Cammy came to Canada from Vietnam, so it's more likely a French "C" Cammy than a Pol Pot "K". Pictured below if a rose cutting she gave me. I will do what I can to bring others like it to life.
