Archive for Neighbourhood

Were you ready for Street View?

{ 12 October, 2009 @ 10:00 am } · { Mixed emotions, Neighbourhood }
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Cove

Now that the Google car has been to our neighbourhood, we can — almost — see our house on Google Street View. For some reason, the view switches over half a block when you get to our cross street. But all these little glitches will get worked out eventually.

The whole thing is sort of cool and sort of worrying at the same time. Fortunately, our provincial Information and Privacy Commissioner, David Loukidelis, is on it.

My daughter and her friends have been captured walking down a nearby road,  their faces obscured; our car has been spotted, with the licence plate ditto. But people are clearly identifiable to their friends and families: it takes more than blurring features to make people unrecognizable. I am taking a wait and see approach before I decide whether I like it or hate it.

I know that I really like the sentiments expressed by letter writer Roger Barany in the weekend Vancouver Sun:

How was I supposed to know Google’s sneaky street crew would come unannounced to sweep my block, snap my filthy car sitting outside my residence and post the image on its planet-wide social mapping site? When picture day is coming, can’t they send an advance note, the way my kid’s school does, so I can jazz up my crate a bit? When’s retake day?

Delhi 2 Dublin 2 West Vancouver

{ 6 August, 2009 @ 11:04 am } · { Music, Neighbourhood }
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West Vancouver hosts the Harmony Arts Festival every summer. This is a ten-day outdoor festival right by the sea, with a craft market, exhibits, interactive sessions of all kinds, and concerts during the day and in the evenings. On the two August weekends it crosses, the place is teeming with both locals and visitors, and the evening concerts, on outdoor stages, are packed.

This year’s lineup of concerts included Delhi 2 Dublin on Tuesday night. Having seen them at the Folk Festival, I was keen to see them again. But when I arrived, I wondered what kind of a reception they would get.  The audience seemed to be composed of a lot of locals — at first glance, it appeared most had grey hair. I assume this was because it was a weekday evening and the retired members of the population had lots of time to reserve their seats close to the front. The younger crowd started to fill in, but they seemed to be in the minority.

I focused on a woman sitting across the aisle, whom I guessed was in her seventies. She was stylishly and expensively dressed, but she had a disapproving face. When the band members came out and started doing sound checks, she looked alarmed and annoyed. The sound system was powerful and the singer (shades and modified mohawk hair), who was shouting instructions to the technicians, looked menacing.

D2D4Delhi 2 Dublin is the perfect multicultural mix. Sanjay, the vocalist, brings it all together with his neo-bhangra sound, his “80s hair metal” and his leaping and dancing around the stage.  Andrew, the Korean, kilt-wearing electric sitar player, is an ideal foil, since he tends to stand still and smile while his hands have a life of their own,  playing at high speed. Ravi plays the dhol. Tarun, the tabla player, is the exemplary mix: half Punjabi, half Irish. Kytami plays the fiddle faster than any I’ve ever heard.

D2D1Their energy is startling; their music is a brilliant fusion of bhangra and Celtic, and their style is infectious. By the second piece, it seemed half the audience was up dancing. Sanjay whirls around the stage and shouts to the audience to all put their hands up in the air. And we do: all of us, including the grandmas and grandpas, the Indian families, and the well-dressed West Van matrons. It’s not long before we are all chanting: long wailing phrases or sharply shouted “hah, hah, hah” sounds,  following Sanjay’s lead. Kytami plays faster and faster and we clap faster and faster.

The woman across the aisle with the disapproving face is up dancing and clapping and making “hah” noises along with the rest of us. She looks over and smiles, just for a moment.

Tinseltown North

{ 27 February, 2009 @ 12:51 am } · { Neighbourhood, Photos }
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tinseltownWent to see a movie at Tinseltown recently. I’d never been to that theatre before, though I rather like the area. At night, there is a magical, alien quality to that no-man’s-land where Chinatown meets downtown on the edge of the downtown east side — especially at twilight when the streets are dark and lit up with neon but the sky is still light. There’s a futuristic feeling to the mix of old buildings, garish new structures like the one housing Tinseltown, and a hard-to-categorize mix of people milling around. It reminds me of the feeling you get from the crowded, Asian-looking streets in Blade Runner.

The Joy of Fall: Soccer Mom Morning

{ 3 November, 2008 @ 6:57 am } · { Neighbourhood, Photos }
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Overnight: one of the first close-to-freezing nights of the season. But the sun is up early, though low in the sky at this time of year, slanting across the field and giving us long shadows. Yellow and red trees dazzle against a blue sky.

The hint of frostiness on the grass is down to a heavy dew by the time we get there. The grass is so wet that for the first while you can see the footprints on it. Sunlight flashes in the corner of my sunglasses.

The soccer moms and dads hang out on the sidelines with their cups of coffee, chatting, as the girls move into position and start playing. The ref is the old English guy, who is very strict and often imposes rules no-one has ever heard of.

The crowd warms up. We start shouting instructions to the team. These instructions often conflict with what the coach is saying, but are probably ignored anyway.

My daughter scores! but this is a bonus. Being out here on this spectacular morning is enough.

The Joy of Folk

{ 20 July, 2008 @ 10:23 pm } · { Neighbourhood, Personal }
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The third weekend in July rolls around and, once again, it’s Folk Festival time in Vancouver. Once more, one digs out the beach chair, the blanket, the 60 SPF sunscreen, and a range of clothing for various weather possibilities throughout the 13-hour days.

For many years now, I’ve immersed myself joyfully in the annual experience. The complete experience requires a slight adjustment of approach in order to behave as one of the Folk. Folk are laid-back and display camaraderie. As a group, they do things the “right” way. Should you be unclear on the right attitudes, there are helpful signs. At the toilet lineups, you’re reminded to let kids (“Little Folk”) and pregnant women go ahead. You’re encouraged to dance at the side of the seating areas so as not to obscure the view of the musicians for others. The left wing package of beliefs and attitudes (pro-choice, anti-war, pro-union, distrustful of politicians and big business) is to be accepted unquestioningly. You are happy to buy expensive, organic, fair trade coffee, since the proceeds go to support education for girls in (pick an underprivileged country).

Age and listening to the same thing year after year does induce a kind of yeah, yeah, heard it all before, cynicism. Yes, we know sunset over the north shore mountains is the most beautiful sight on earth. Yes, let’s once more give a round of applause to Emily the tireless, who signs for the hearing-impaired (or whatever this year’s politically correct term is). Yes, we’ll wait another five minutes while the sound people add more bass in the monitor. We accept that the toilet paper always runs out about the time that the level of the contents is unpleasantly high. We line up to fill our metal water bottles from the common tap. Have I outgrown this? I ask myself this every year, during the first few sets.

Yet, each year, there is always a moment when it all comes together and a warmth towards all humanity surfaces again. The music must be perfect: this time it was Delhi 2 Dublin (described as Punjabi/ Celtic electro-acoustic dance music). You couldn’t see them, as everyone in front of me was up dancing, but the music went straight into the pleasure centre of my brain. I was leaning back against the knees of my uncomplaining partner. Although the sun was beating down, auguring a future headache, I was too blissed out to move. And suddenly, I love them all:

  • the obese, aged woman standing in front of me for an hour, rhythmically jiggling whatever there was to jiggle (a lot);
  • the kilted man standing beside me whose toenails needed cutting;
  • the buoyantly topless young woman doing her best to look unselfconscious.

It’s happened again: the magic of the Folk Festival (and cheap at $112 for the weekend ticket).

Something retro, II

{ 15 July, 2007 @ 1:13 am } · { Neighbourhood, Typography }
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Helen Arnold closed her store, Helen’s Children’s Wear, on Hastings Street in Burnaby, in April this year.

HelenHelen’s was a wonderfully old-fashioned store. Italian mamas shopped there for frilly, white confirmation dresses for their daughters. The mannequins were from another era—and those old-style child mannequins are strange and rather spooky things, with lacquered hair and painted faces. But the store’s crowning glory was the Helen’s neon sign, featuring a girl on a swing. Installed in 1956, the sign has been a landmark in the area ever since.

oldhelen.gifOne day this past week, the sign was taken down and was lying forlornly upside-down on a truck before being removed to a warehouse. Locals and others interested in heritage issues hope that the City of Burnaby and Sicon Group, the sign’s owners, can reach an agreement that will see the sign restored and relocated close by in the Burnaby Heights shopping area. The plan is to replace the word “Helen’s” with “Heights,” but to use the same typography. It might work, although those who remember the plan to retain the Bowmac sign on West Broadway in Vancouver while covering it with a see-through “ToysR’Us” logo may be dubious. However, it’s worth a try. The Lower Mainland building boom has rendered many formerly unique neighbourhoods sterile and homogeneous, so I applaud those who try to save some of the idiosyncratic things that add character.

Footnote: Helen is married to Elgin Arnold, who owns the Oasis Car Wash.

Something retro

{ 9 July, 2007 @ 8:22 pm } · { Neighbourhood, Typography }
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oasis3.jpgThis is the logo of the Oasis Car Wash in North Vancouver. Everything about the Oasis gives you that time warp feeling: the unglitzy, one storey building surrounded by an unlikely profusion of palm trees ; the dated typography on the signs; the grey-haired cashier who calls customers “my love” or “my dear;” the orange and brown moulded plastic chairs with chrome legs in the waiting room.

The Oasis car wash staff wear orange overalls. They are men of few words (“Wax?”), who concentrate on energetically vacuuming, scrubbing, and polishing the cars that go through day after day.

oasis1.jpgYou can watch the cars going through the automatic wash and rinse from the waiting room (or “viewing area”). There are arrows with red and white flashing lightbulbs that draw your attention to the wax dispenser.

At the end, the car is unhooked from the conveyor belt; a staffer drives it out into the parking lot. It’s clean and shiny, with water still dripping from the underside: another fresh start.

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