The New Look Vancouver Police Department on Flickr.
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Stylish new cruisers for the VPD, along with their new mission statement: ‘To Protect & Serve Man’ were out in full force this weekend.
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*Actually, prop cars. I think for the new JJ Abrams pilot ‘Human’, currently shooting in town.
Hours of Fun on Flickr.
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Play date at Trajan’s good buddy Tycho’s place. In which Dad learns that the hundreds of dollars we’ve spent on toys was all money wasted. We should’ve just gotten drapes in the living room instead.
Masonry on Flickr.
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A lost art, apparently.
Beschissen on Flickr.
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The Burrard Bridge as seen from the Granville Street Bridge during the squall. Thursday, Dec 19, 2012
The Apocalypse Will Be Televised on Flickr.
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Or, at least it’s prelude. After a 2 hour bus ride from downtown to 5th and Burrard, that only got me as far as Broadway and Granville in any case, I decided to walk home in the storm on Thursday. Luckily, I had my handy, dandy Nikonos V with me. And gloves. Walking only took 1 hour, twice as fast as the bus.
It was quite the day despite the fact that the weather wasn’t ‘weathery’ enough to merit mention on the weather forecast in any other town in Canada. In typical Vancouver fashion, the snow had turned to freezing rain by mid-afternoon and at dinner time, there was hardly any snow left downtown at all.
Some excitement in the ‘burbs though as the Mayan god Chaac warmed up for Friday’s apocalypse by hurtling Ice Bombs at flustered commuters on the newly completed, multi-billion dollar Port Mann Bridge. Say what you will about NDP vs Liberal in BC but, at least the Fast Ferries could float (and continue to do so, somewhere in the middle east).
Are we going to fit? on Flickr.
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Trajan got quite concerned as to whether we’d make it under the bridge.
On the Aquabus on a day much like today.
The City Primeval on Flickr.
Oh, how I love living in a jungle of concrete and glass while having this just a 20 minute walk from my front door.
Whaddya mean, nap time is over? on Flickr.
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Usually, Trajan will let us know when he’s ready to get up from his increasingly rare afternoon naps but, sometimes, he’d rather just sleep. Sunday was one of those days.
I think I’ve got the rangefinder on the Canon 7s properly calibrated, this was 1/8 sec at f/2.0, lit by Vancouver’s typical December gloom filtering in through the window. Nice and sharp too, thanks to the Abrahamsson Softie. Of the 8 or so shots I took before he decided to actually get up, any blur was due to his movement, not mine! If you have a camera with a traditional cable release socket, you should definitely get one!
Trajan’s days in a crib are certainly quite numbered at this point. He hasn’t actually gone over the wall yet but, he’s definitely got the tools.
Multitalented on Flickr.
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Not only can he wield a spoon with the best of them but, Arnaud can also put together one heck of a photography journal as well.
Here he is proudly displaying a very rare inaugural issue of BOP magazine, prior to it’s general availability sometime in January. Very nice work and, as a special bonus, yours truly gets featured in a guest slot on the very last page.
Keep your eye on www.bop-photolab.org/ for news of it’s general availability and pick up a copy when it’s out!
Just barely clinging on on Flickr.
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Kinda how I’ve been feeling these last couple weeks. Very busy preparing all sorts of exciting new stuff that should’ve been released today but, will have to wait until early next week now because, well, it’s just gotta be perfect.
Very excited by what I’ve been cooking up. Stay tuned!
Hard to imagine on Flickr.
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That this was just a month ago. Sigh. Sunny today but, a wee chill in the air.
More of the past disappears on Flickr.
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There wasn’t a particularly good vantage point to show this now empty lot at the corner of Alberni and Thurlow Street downtown but, the building that previously stood there wasn’t much to look at either.
A parking lot with retail on the ground floor and sort of a restaurant mall in the basement, the building won’t be missed by any but a few.
It did have a few tenants over the years to recommend it though. Most notably Vancouver’s Theatre Sports League, where noted comics such as Ryan Stiles, Colin Mochrie, Dean Haglund and Nancy Robertson got their starts, made it’s home here in the late 80’s and early 90’s. And, of course, if you lived downtown at all in the last 20+ years, you knew that this building held the liquor store that stayed open until 11!
Of primary interest to your narrator, however, is the little café that sublet the space in front of the theatre, the Passion House. It was here I met many of the people that I still consider amongst my closest friends, discovered that coffee can indeed be a very effective hallucenogen, spent an entire unemployment insurance claim playing chess, fell in and out of love a dozen or so times (the last one stuck to this day), learned to roll cigarettes without putting down either the one I was smoking or my beer, read Leonard Cohen, Lao Tzu and Friederich Nietszche, pretended to read Proust and Coleridge.
It was probably the last place downtown that you could sit and nurse a coffee all day with 25¢ refills and join pretty much any table at pretty much any time.
Oh, and the light in the place was simply marvelous. I’ve really got to dig up some of the pictures I took there and post them.
It shouldn’t be a surprise that it didn’t last. For the last 20 years, the space had become a McDonalds, pretty much a complete negation of all it had been. I’m glad the building has gone now. It’s never good to be reminded that your warmest memories happened on the ground floor of a parking garage.
