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This is about 7:30 a.m., pointing west, down a back alley I usually go through twice a day -- look how tidy it is!

All back alleys in Vancouver are this clean (unless they're not). This alley is in the process of being washed by the rain and having some of its dumpsters emptied -- you can just make out the caution lights on the back of a garbage truck on the west side of Alder Street at the far end of the lane where it doglegs north rather than continuing straight on to intersect with Granville Street.

On the left is a brightly-lit building's gated parking enclosure containing garbage and cardboard dumpsters as well as a set of blue city recycling bins, which are full, darn it! On the right you can see the brown dumpster tucked into its un-gated alcove. Right beside it (see below), is another alcove for the recycling bins. Both buildings have the same building manager.

Each of the accessible dumpsters, from the brown one down to the end of the alley -- seven in all -- is wide open -- again, look how tidy it is! Welcome to Fairview.

Fairview's waste stream will be overflowing its banks today

[caption id="attachment_9242" align="alignnone" width="497"] That box of Kellogg's Just Right cereal is full by the way.[/caption]

Today is the day of the week the blue bins in this area are emptied, so these bins are as full as they'll get.

Notice  the Container bin closest to us is nowhere near full -- us binners did that -- and the farthest bin, for Newsprint, isn't a quarter-full. Sometimes it can be a lot worse, overflow-wise. And it would always be worse if not for the fact that through the week the building manager transfers all the boxes and the largest pieces of cardboard to the cardboard dumpster in the gated enclosure across the lane.

And motivated renters can occasionally be seen gifting their over-sized garbage to the various other dumpsters in this block of the alley. When it comes to garbage, it's always better to give than to receive.



I exited that lane on Alder Street and the above photo was taken farther west in an alley on the south side of West Broadway Avenue.

Photographing rain is like trying to catch lightning on the tongue, or snowflakes in a jar. Click the images to enlarge.