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This evening, I observed a commendable thing: Fairview residents patrolling back alleys as Kitsilano Fairview Community Policing volunteers. Three residents, to be precise. They were wearing outfits appearing to be made up of hand-me-down articles reminiscent of police, or traffic flagging gear. Better still, the three of them were as noisy as a murder of crows. They were mostly interested in each other, but they did notice me, naturally -- with my bike and trailer, I stick out in a lane, but so did they, and I made a bee-line for them.

They explained what they were, and then told me a shameless fib, to the effect that they patrolled the alleys all the time -- That may be what they're telling the Vancouver Police -- they were, as they told me, "the eyes and ears of the police" -- but I can not remember the last time I saw Community Police volunteers in the back alleys of Fairview. They wouldn't consent to be photographed -- privacy issues -- but they gave me a card; a model of late 1990s connectivity; street address, phone, fax, and an email (plus a mailing address), but no Web site. When I left them, they were busy analysing the different bits of gear each of them had.

It's good when residents take a pro-active interest in looking after their neighbourhood, even if, like the three I saw this evening, they treat it as a game. On top of the increased police patrols of the lanes, seeing it tells me Fairview residents may be feeling there's a bit too much disorder in their back alleys.

The alley beside the McDonalds restaurant at Broadway and Granville, isn't particularly notable for much besides dumpsters, oh, there is the storm drain pictured above -- "stuff" from the McDumpsters drains into it -- that's not a problem is it?

There's lots of these "Fish Habitat : Keep our waters clean" storm drain covers throughout the City of Vancouver. It seems, over the years, every natural creek and stream surrounding the city has been culverted or co-opted in some way to serve the water drainage system. Ideally, it's just water, but in one case, home owners on the nearby North Shore emptied their pool into a storm drain, and not far away, 1000 fish were literally bleached-to-death [■]. I snapped the photo of the above storm drain because a panhandler who's been in and out of that alley for years, suddenly just noticed the fish imprint yesterday. I have to wonder how much this is helping protect fish. I guess, having destroyed the original habitat decades ago, this is the best we can do today. Click the image above to enlarge.

While reading around on the Web for this post, I came across this fascinating sewer's-eye-view look at Vancouver.