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There's a really well-done mural on a building on the southeast corner of Broadway Avenue, and Yukon Street. It has nothing to do with the current retail tenant: A "dollar store," or even the previous tenant -- a bank, I think. No, it has to do with a store called Polson's, which sat on that corner for some decades, but now hasn't sat there for about a decade.

[caption id="attachment_6684" align="alignnone" width="497"] The Broadway Avenue side of the mural, a little worse for wear. I'm sure it depicts the fellow who started the store. Do passers-by even know what he's carrying?[/caption]

Polson's sold typewriters. By the time I move to Vancouver in 1980, they'd been selling them for a long time. I used to ride by, or walk by their shop on Broadway, and admire the sharp lines of the Olliveti typewriters. By the mid-1980s, the writing was already on the wall, and it wasn't in a fixed-width, old Remington font -- typewriters were going to that "better place," where dodos, and passenger pigeons, and Betamax, had previously gone. Polson's was dipping it's toes in the new "word processors." I bought one of them there in, I think, 1985 -- a Canon Typestar 6 -- like a flattened electric typewriter, except it could hold something like eight pages in memory, allowed you to edit the copy, via a two- or three-line display, and when you wanted to print your copy, you just put a sheet in, like you were going to type. I worked that Typestar 6 to death -- I happened to be writing most of the contents of a small newspaper, at the time. I'd sit at my swish, Italian, steel trestle desk topped with safety glass, and write late into the night, occasionally going through a bottle of bourbon in the process. I bought a second Typestar from Polsons within a year, or so. I never bought another thing there.

If the writing was on the wall, Polson's just chose to boldly paint over it!

[caption id="attachment_6683" align="alignnone" width="497"] Connecting the typewriter past to the computer future.[/caption]

Polson's store on Broadway, and Yukon hung on well into the 1990s. I wish I could be more specific. At some point, they commissioned the mural I'm posting photos of. It's mostly on the Yukon side of the building, but smallest piece, which continues around the building's corner, onto the Broadway side, is the most important one, depicting a man carrying a typewriter. I'm pretty sure that's the store's founder. I dimly recall that the owner in the mid 1980s was named Art. Maybe that's him. The mural is a charm. I mean that not just in the sense that it's charming, but that it's kind of an act of magic. The mural summons the store's successful past history, and connects it to the image of a successful future, selling the new personal computers. It's an entrepreneur's bold statement of confidence. Unfortunately it didn't work. The store didn't long survive.

But fortunately the mural has. So far, two (or has it been three?) subsequent tenants, have honored the mural by leaving it as is, and working around it. There's never been, to my knowledge, a mural an Vancouver protected by heritage status, but I, for one, would like to see this mural given that kind of protection, I suppose I should call the Mayor, and see if it's possible. I also believe that Polson's itself survives. There is a "Polson's Office Products located in West Vancouver -- Their Yellow Pages listing is all about new, and used typewriters -- that's good to know.

I know. I never did explain what a typewriter was. Another time. Click the images to enlarge them.