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Happened to look up from my coffee at Waves today, and look across the street -- two kids were setting up to take a photo in the doorway of a shop. I was chuckling to myself because last night that very spot was host to a difficult drunk who required the services of not one, but two police cars. I used the camera's zoom to have a better look, and snapped a few shots in the process. I wondered why the shop wasn't open; they sell some of the the best-quality umbrellas in Vancouver; business should be good after Wednesday's deluge. Anyway, when I looked back a moment later the pair was gone. Click the photos to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_4701" align="alignnone" width="497"] After dark, it's all the same junk, only moodier.[/caption]

It's end-of-month, end-of-summer: Let's all move! Binners of every persuasion, enjoy pawing through what Fairview renters throw away when they move out. Dumpsters will be dived, repeatedly, and painstakingly, with every bag opened, in the search for, well... whatever. Who knows? There's all sorts of good things to find: fresh food, trinkets, even money! I'm not much for dumpster diving but even I get the whole, "you'll never know what you'll find until you look" mentality that drives experienced binners to spend hours searching all the way to the bottom of a full dumpster.

[caption id="attachment_4702" align="alignright" width="150"] Someone didn't want to take this stuff with them?[/caption]

Of course, there's another side to this. The building managers of the Fairview neighbourhood's many apartment buildings are all about tidy, well-ordered properties -- they hate the way their departing tenants shed unwieldy junk behind the buildings on their way out the door to some new apartment with all the mod cons, and wainscoting -- several of them have been quite blunt on the subject of tenants, and their trashy ways.

What gets building manager's goats isn't so much bags in the dumpster, or even cardboard boxes full of discarded items -- it's the big stuff like mattresses, and furniture, and mirrors. Mattresses are the worst; they won't fit into dumpsters, the City of Vancouver doesn't want to take them away anymore -- in fact, thanks to the possibility of bed bugs, no one wants to get within 20 feet of a discarded mattress anymore. Mirrors are a pain, because the longer they linger in an alley, the more likely that they'll end up smashed. Click the images to enlarge.

[caption id="attachment_4690" align="alignnone" width="497"] One of the great photo of the rain in downtown Vancouver by the CBC! My photos sucked. Click the image to go to the CBC item.[/caption]

Last night's heavy, heavy rain, and thunderstorm was a short, sharp, shock, which overwhelmed the city's drainage capacity, and largely caught everyone by surprise -- it's at least a month early for this sort of rain. According to this CBC item, Vancouver only received between 12 and 18 mm of precipitation. That's 0.7 inches, so no records were in danger. But it was overwhelmingly fast. The storm came, and went inside of an hour, with the heaviest rainfall occurring in a span of minutes. The accompanying  thunderstorm was a rarity, speaking as a 30-year resident of Vancouver. According to the CBC item, nearly 1,000 lightning strikes were recorded during the hour-long storm which dumped 17 mm of rain on the downtown area of Vancouver.

[caption id="attachment_4673" align="alignnone" width="497"] North-East corner of Broadway and Spruce, just after 11 p.m. The South side corners were ankle deep in running water.[/caption]

Wowzers! One of the many details the Book of Genesis omits to mention is whether the rain was warm or cold. Last night our deluge was warm. You could have taken all your clothes off and happily run around in it -- for all the good rain gear did. In the winter we call this a "Pineapple Express;" a gift of warm wetness all the way from the tropics. Environment Canada called it a "moist front" in their heavy rainfall warning. And, as predicted, the gift came wrapped, special, in thunder and lightning -- a rare treat in Vancouver. Click the images below to enlarge them.

I think this is an old "el-pee," an analog music storage device. I've never heard of the record label, but it appears to be a recording of some kind of Metal band. Unfortunately it might as well be a grinding wheel for all the luck you'd have trying to get the music out of it -- you'd need a veritable room full of obsolete hardware to do that. Click the image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_4652" align="alignnone" width="497"] Free apples. How come I'm not biting?[/caption]

Yesterday's free fall fruit post, mentioned Vancouver's many apple trees -- here's some photos of one of them. As we can see the apples end up all over the place. They can actually be a bit of a haz ... Whahhhhhhh...  Ow, ow, ow!

Every year I remember, all over again, how nice a fresh apple plucked off a branch can be, and how treacherous apples can be after they hit the ground, and get underfoot, and even more so when they get crushed under car wheels. It's most likely that many current home owners didn't plant the trees in their yards, and, in the case of apple trees, some owners seem to ignore their bounty, as if to disavow any responsibility for what hits the ground. I say, clean up after your dogs, and clean up after your apple trees -- unless your dogs really like applesauce. Click the images to enlarge them.

Looks like I stumbled onto a wet T-shirt contest for cars. Is this what they mean by autoerotic? Honestly, these European models are so shameless. If the weather was better, I'm sure it would go topless. Click the image to enlarge it.

In Vancouver we like to kid ourselves we have four seasons, like everywhere else -- Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. but, there's a strong case to be made that here, on the Wet Coast, we only have two: Blue-green, and Gray-green. Click the images to enlarge them.

What? It's supposed to do that -- for real? Okay, never mind. This alleged firetruck -- not an alien robot in disguise -- is being inspected by firefighters of Fire Hall No. 4, located at 1475 West 10th Avenue. The current Hall, which serves the South Granville, and Fairview Slopes area, shares a building with the area branch of the Vancouver Public Library. The current 1990s building replaced the 1911, Craftsman-style, Fire Hall No. 4 in this location. Click the images to enlarge them.

Come fall in Vancouver, binners who hunt, and gather bottles, and cans in the back alleys and side streets are also in the right places to find the ripening fruit, hanging off countless trees, and bushes, free for the picking.

The efforts of Vancouver's urban gardeners finally begin to bear fruit in late August -- I can get away with writing that because tomatoes are a sort of closeted fruit that passes for a vegetable. Most of the obvious fruit -- apples, and berries -- are essentially feral, and grow, and ripen in Vancouver's impossibly fertile climate without any human assistance.

Blackberries, in particular, thrive all over Vancouver, in spite of wholesale culling efforts. Everyone loves the blackberries themselves but it takes tough love to keep the bushes, with their long, thorny, tendril branches, from spreading like wildfire. So what looks like an attempt to wipe out the entire blackberry plant species is merely light pruning. This time of year, blackberry bushes become a neighbourhood hangout,

[caption id="attachment_4610" align="alignnone" width="497"] The ripe berries vanished just after I snapped this photo. Yum![/caption]

Apple trees are also common in every neighbourhood I've been in. Lots of these apples will get picked, but it's my impression that most ripen, fall, and rot where they lay. When I'm sitting in the McDonalds at Broadway and Granville, I am less than one block away from apricot trees -- two varieties -- both delicious. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Vancouver's blackberries -- an invasive species ►

[caption id="attachment_4597" align="alignnone" width="497"] Did I get a spot on the camera lens again?[/caption]

Are we looking for a spider, or is the spider's name "Spot?" If we wanted to find a spider named Spot, could we even write a sentence like "Spot Spot the spider" without the language police whisking us away to a minimum security spelling bee? Whatever. This post isn't about bees, it's about spiders.

Okay, dumpsters are always being "tagged" with graffiti, but this ones literally tagged. Seriously, I'm not sure, but think this may be a bit of a game play flowchart. After all, strip away all the bells and whistles from a computer video game, and what are you left with -- post-it notes on a dumpster, right?  I don't really know about these things. If only Konata Izumi were here, she'd know. She's the the video gaming otaku lead character from the 2007 anime Lucky Star.

Here's a "real" RPG flowchart, just for comparison ►

[caption id="attachment_4576" align="alignright" width="129"] The very definition of "rustic."[/caption]

I know, you're looking at the ripe apples on that tree, but this post is about the over-ripe pickup truck under the apples. Classic cars and trucks are running roughshod over Vancouver's streets -- lots of pickup trucks from in and around the World War II era. A person who knows car stuff tells me there's a big difference between old, and classic. Most of the time that snazzy old truck is a rich boy's toy; a nice way to spend money, and show it off. Real classic cars, apparently, are legit investment vehicles -- they predictably hold, and appreciate value. So is "Rusty" just a fun "fixer-upper," or "money in the bank?" Either way, it looks like this Fairview owner has been saving it for a rainy day a bit too long. Click the images to enlarge them.

A heart drawn with flower petals! -- doki doki! (heart be still). The message is loud,but not crystal clear -- I'd love to know who's loving what, but beyond that, I love that someone had the idea to do this, and then did it, and I love the way that it looks. This was right in the heart of Fairview on the front lawn of a single family home. Click the images to enlarge the.

Plush toys have it the hardest. Unlike their hard plastic compatrriots, they're softies through-and-through. When they're thrown out onto the street, they take it personally -- it hits at their self-esteem, and they often hit the bottle to drown out the pain. This plastered plush pachyderm was most of the way through a bottle of ripple when I came along. And when I left, he was already off in Fantasia-land. I took the bottle, he didn't need it any more. Click the images to enlarge them.

MEC's rooftop parking lot affords a great view North, over False Creek, of downtown Vancouver and the mountains beyond -- I slyly say "the" because I think they're the Rockies, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I went up there a few days ago to enjoy the view, and it was great, so naturally I took photographs -- of a street light -- who can say what goes on in my head? I did tear my attention away from the beautifully prosaic, to take one snap of the merely spectacular. Nice keepsake now that gray-skied Fall has fallen upon us. Click the images to enlarge them.

Lots of people put stuff out that they don't want any more, seemingly with the thought, or hope, that someone else might want the stuff -- you know... "one person's trash, is another person's, et cetera, et cetera. This is a good thing.. It's quite common with kid's toys -- bashed, abused, broken, sticky, kid's toys.

I see "Children Playing" signs in all the residential areas I ride through; aside from some provided by BCAA, they're handmade. I think this one rocks. About 12 blocks dead-South of the Go Green bottle depot, is a family-oriented neighbourhood -- lots of children running around. Nice, until you watch one chase a ball into the path of an oncoming SUV. I saw that about two weeks ago, not a block from the location of this sign -- the driver screeched to a stop in time.

[caption id="attachment_4524" align="alignnone" width="497"] Sloppy in a good way! Gee, I wonder if the kids helped?[/caption]

I often swoop down on the bottle depot at Ontario Street, and 7th Avenue like a cormorant. Starting in the West, I'll meander South-East -- Straight East is the direction of the bottle depot -- South is a gentle uphill climb into comfortable, family-friendly neighbourhoods. I'll generally arc as high as the 20s. and fall back down towards Broadway, aka 9th Avenue, towards my final stop at the Go Green bottle depot. Click the images to enlarge them.

There's good-and-sloppy, and just plain sloppy ►

These two houses go well together. Reminds me of a liverwurst sandwich with watercress, tomato, and mustard. Mmmm. Click to enlarge the image.

Night before last. Fellow across the lane watched as I stood, bracing the camera against the corner of a building, taking photo after photo; each time the camera bleated an advance burst of red light in a vain attempt to focus on the Moon.

This CRT television tube -- a techno-fossil, has been sitting here for days; stripped of it's copper focusing array (ripped off the pointy end of the leaded-glass tube) and it's copper degaussing circuit (from around the front of the tube). The writing's new, and it looks like someone put in an effort. Okay, they couldn't spell "revolution" -- a big word.  But they boggled "the" even as they nailed "digitized." So they just had trouble with the older analog words? Click images to enlarge them.

Is “graphicide” even a word? This is marked off like a crime scene for good reason -- they killed this word! This is in the entrance-way of the Holiday Inn on West Broadway; not a shabby little business by any stretch of the imagination, rather a big, image-conscious, hotel chain. Twenty years ago, or more, a sign painter would've wacked this sort of thing off freehand, without having to lay down any more than two lines, from a chalked string, if that. Actually this sort of big word on asphalt is generally stenciled. There are even applique letters for pavement. What they have instead is amazingly sloppy. Click the images to enlarge them.

Sloppy can be beautiful ►

A binner named Jo-Jo picked this up -- he wasn't thinking it had any value, it just caught his fancy. I didn't know what it was either, but I could see it was a print, rather than original handwriting, and it looked very artful. Well, yes, it's a facsimile of "Marty's letter" from the movie Back to the Future (1985). Click the image to enlarge it.