Mountain View

A picture taken at Main and 27th, looking north, 4pm. The clouds that brought rains these past couple days had lifted -- just in time for sunset. I love how the winter mountains look. Sunset's pink icing.

Fiddlehead Farm

The Schreiber Farm in the 1970s, when it was a teaching medium for students of Total Education, a Vancouver-based alternative school. This is the same Powell Lake farm that Eden Express (1975) author Mark Vonnegut and his Swathmore pals purchased from the children of the Gagliardi Farm (1914-1968) in the late-1960s and, in the 1980s, was renamed Fiddlehead Farm by Linda Schreiber. The site became a hostel after the Schreibers moved on. In 2002 it was sold and logged.

Urban Landscapes

Windows to past landscapes can be found in the strangest places. The above is a section of a frame taken from a 1977 American film dubbed in German and renamed Die Hasen von San Francisco. What attracted me to this frame were the two cars in the intersection: the economical (German-made) Volkswagen and the gas-guzzling (American-made) Cadillac(?). But what stays with me is the sky. All North American west coast cities have their own version of the sky. They even write songs about them. Like this one, about Seattle.

Howdy Partner

Such a rich red. And all these signs to look at. A painting of an Indigenous man from the neck up, a story of drawings between him and the door. Who's behind this invitation to "partner up"? 

Demystify Chinatown

Banners are usually there to promote tourism, or a sense of place. These are different. As citizens we are asked to participate in the relaxation of what we think we know. Chinatown is not what we think it is. But what is it? And what does it want to be?

Pour Lore

Time is slippery. The best measure of time is the optical lattice clock, a faceless monstrosity that is useless to anyone who doesn't know how to use it. An archive is another kind of clock, though less precise, given that microseconds aren't important in the overall scheme of things.

Up top is a grab from when I Googled "glue pour." Note the disparity in the date of Robert Smithson's Glue Pour. Marian Goodman, one of the world's leading modern/contemporary art gallerists, lists the Glue Pour performance (document) as 1970, when the person who took the picture (Christos Dikeakos) says it happened in 1969. Who do we believe? Ah, it's the 21st century, so they're both right.

Pandora's Locks

Pandora's Locks feels like where New West's British store was located. If so, it's hard to imagine a locked room adventure in its place.

The British store was small and narrow. Seems these locked room games require a succession of spaces? I can't imagine it otherwise. Just thinking about it is giving me claustrophobia.