Showing posts with label Vancouver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vancouver. Show all posts
[caption id="attachment_8725" align="alignnone" width="497"]
Don't need dangerous spores from space, we've got plenty from Quebec.[/caption]
A friend of mine insists not -- "It's probably just asbestos," he says.
The building in question, on the corner of Alder and West Broadway, he explained, was old -- from the ’60s.
The ceiling tiles were off and the two workers I saw through the window at 11:30 p.m. last night were wearing those suits because they were most likely removing original asbestos insulation wrapping the water pipes, or it could have been the ceiling tiles themselves which contained asbestos.
Canada's asbestos mines -- all located in Quebec -- have been preeminent world suppliers of the amazingly useful and dangerous mineral fibre for well over a century. That trade has radically diminished as asbestos fibre has been clearly linked to lung diseases and cancers such as mesothelioma.
One problem with asbestos products is how "friable" or crumbly they can be. This means they can release asbestos fibres into the air if they are damaged or disturbed. The other problem is the common use of the stuff as a fireproof insulator in countless manufactured building materials well into the 1990s. This makes it one of the more common hazardous materials people can come into contact with every day.
Don't need dangerous spores from space, we've got plenty from Quebec.[/caption]A friend of mine insists not -- "It's probably just asbestos," he says.
The building in question, on the corner of Alder and West Broadway, he explained, was old -- from the ’60s.
The ceiling tiles were off and the two workers I saw through the window at 11:30 p.m. last night were wearing those suits because they were most likely removing original asbestos insulation wrapping the water pipes, or it could have been the ceiling tiles themselves which contained asbestos.
Canada's asbestos mines -- all located in Quebec -- have been preeminent world suppliers of the amazingly useful and dangerous mineral fibre for well over a century. That trade has radically diminished as asbestos fibre has been clearly linked to lung diseases and cancers such as mesothelioma.
One problem with asbestos products is how "friable" or crumbly they can be. This means they can release asbestos fibres into the air if they are damaged or disturbed. The other problem is the common use of the stuff as a fireproof insulator in countless manufactured building materials well into the 1990s. This makes it one of the more common hazardous materials people can come into contact with every day.
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,
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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 ►
South Granville undergoes a year-round schedule of seasonally-themed beautification. I guess it's time for flower bundles hanging from light poles. Around Christmas, in all the planters along South Granville, we get the green shrubby plants with the red pokey leaves -- Poinsettias.
Left to right: 1.) the flowers are delivered about 9 am, during rush hour, on the busy South side of West Broadway Avenue, just East of the intersection with South Granville Street. 2.) Workers jostle with commuters to hang the first of two flower bundles on the South side of West Broadway, at a bus stop. 3.) The workers have moved across to the North side of West Broadway -- they couldn't get the second bundle up, and left the scene on either end of the ladder, with the flower bundle hanging off the middle of the ladder.
See what's in the planters along South Granville ►
Night watering of the South Granville flower bundles ►
This is just one of, seemingly hundreds of similar signs throughout the back alleys of Fairview: "No Parking," "No Stopping," "Do not block laneway," "Dumpster Access, No Parking by Law." The lanes are sometimes as busy as the streets, what with all the dumpster collection garbage trucks, parcel delivery vans, service vehicles, and even occasionally, residents trying to go to and from home. It's a wonder there's any room left for us binners. Click image to enlarge.
Is it there for a tune up and some engine work, ahead of Spring planting of Corn along the Cambie corridor? I do no know, but this classic beauty of a tractor is sitting in the parking lot of a body shop on Cambie Street. An acquaintance, looking over my shoulder blurted, "isn't that the tractor that sits in front of that restaurant?" I don't know that either, I just know that I like it. Click pictures to enlarge.
This graffiti-clad old Grumman aluminium delivery van is "parked" in a lane on the South side of West Broadway, just West of Arbutus. It has been sitting in that same parking space for many years. This is virtually a neighbourhood landmark, and I think Gumman vans are cool. I'd like to find out the story behind this van. There is another long-time, tagged-and-parked Grumman in the Fairview area. Maybe Toad's already covered it; if not ... Click any image to see a larger version.
Last photos of the now missing truck ►
Delicious foot-long hot dogs, the camaraderie of peers, and little female garment factory employees, all against the backdrop of the warmest Spring day in Super-natural Vancouver, B.C. made Customer Appreciation Day at the Go Green bottle depot, a day to remember. And I got a T-shirt (thanks Katharine).
Above: Go Green's owner Anthony rates the occasion. Above, top: Anthony's son is thrilled to spend his Saturday serving hot dogs to the hobos! Left: A disappointing no-show. Where was Return-It Man?Additional entertainment came in the form of little women on their breaks from a nearby garment factory. They certainly tried to get their hands on the hot dogs, and anything else that wasn't nailed down -- got away with all the frisbees didn't they? Ha, ha. So sorry ladies. No bottles, no hot dogs!
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A brass monkey in the hand[/caption]
The day after Welfare Wednesday. Many binners still have something better to do. The Fairview alleys are as free of traffic as they will ever get. My big chance.
I bestir myself to find $20 worth of bottles, and a brass monkey. I go to my storage locker, change, and wash my hands. I go off to find a plug-in and trim my hair.
Back on South Granville, with coffee and WiFi, I note a character orbiting my locked-up bike and trailer. There. Gone. There. Gone. Then beside me in the restaurant. "Is that my trailer, and would I like to make $10?" His large rolling luggage blew a wheel and he needs to get to the MPA, a community centre and apartment complex for clients of the B.C. Mental Health system. Sure, $5. Outside the restaurant we load the small luggage, onto my bike trailer; he gives me $4 and change, and he'll meet me there. Takes me all of three minutes. He arrives, finds a mate, and takes delivery of the property. looks are exchanged, "have you asked him?"
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The beginnings of a bad haircut[/caption]
Seems they've a whole shopping cart full of bottles. They'll split it with me, if I cash it in. Why not? I wheel around to the parking garage, and a shopping cart appears, full of wine bottles and garnished with two bags of mixed glass, plastic and aluminium. I load it onto my trailer. and consider: It's 4:15 pm. I'm almost equidistant from two bottle depots. Ten minutes later I'm at the Westside Encorp bottle depot at Blenheim and West Broadway; not just Kitsilano, but Little Greece.
This particular depot is little also. It's naturally jammed full with four people. One of them, a shirtless aboriginal, is dominating the room and most of the sorting tables. "What do I want," he asks. "A table," I tell him. He obliges, as best he can. But there's a lot going on with him, I can tell.
I sort my bottles in this circus, with just one fellow who counting the customer's bottles and running the touch-screen computer which tabulates and spits out a detailed receipt. The counter guy's spitting out a steady stream of complaints. Out on the side walk, the aboriginal is playing in a heap he's collected along with the bottles. Thanks to the counter guy's complaints, he's covered the debris with a pale pink blanket. Inside, the counter person is complaining about the aboriginal, particularly his lack of a shirt.
Vinnie's bottles, for all their weight and volume amount to only $18.10; that's how it is with wine bottles, they look rich but they're poor where it counts. Ten minutes later I'm at the MPA reception negotiating to leave $9.05, and the detailed receipt, with them for Vinnie, which is what he told me to do. It feels good to help, and I found a monkey.
Ps. Notice how one complete stranger twice trusted another complete stranger where amounts of money were concerned.
A brass monkey in the hand[/caption]The day after Welfare Wednesday. Many binners still have something better to do. The Fairview alleys are as free of traffic as they will ever get. My big chance.
I bestir myself to find $20 worth of bottles, and a brass monkey. I go to my storage locker, change, and wash my hands. I go off to find a plug-in and trim my hair.
Back on South Granville, with coffee and WiFi, I note a character orbiting my locked-up bike and trailer. There. Gone. There. Gone. Then beside me in the restaurant. "Is that my trailer, and would I like to make $10?" His large rolling luggage blew a wheel and he needs to get to the MPA, a community centre and apartment complex for clients of the B.C. Mental Health system. Sure, $5. Outside the restaurant we load the small luggage, onto my bike trailer; he gives me $4 and change, and he'll meet me there. Takes me all of three minutes. He arrives, finds a mate, and takes delivery of the property. looks are exchanged, "have you asked him?"
[caption id="attachment_202" align="alignright" width="150"]
The beginnings of a bad haircut[/caption]Seems they've a whole shopping cart full of bottles. They'll split it with me, if I cash it in. Why not? I wheel around to the parking garage, and a shopping cart appears, full of wine bottles and garnished with two bags of mixed glass, plastic and aluminium. I load it onto my trailer. and consider: It's 4:15 pm. I'm almost equidistant from two bottle depots. Ten minutes later I'm at the Westside Encorp bottle depot at Blenheim and West Broadway; not just Kitsilano, but Little Greece.
This particular depot is little also. It's naturally jammed full with four people. One of them, a shirtless aboriginal, is dominating the room and most of the sorting tables. "What do I want," he asks. "A table," I tell him. He obliges, as best he can. But there's a lot going on with him, I can tell.
I sort my bottles in this circus, with just one fellow who counting the customer's bottles and running the touch-screen computer which tabulates and spits out a detailed receipt. The counter guy's spitting out a steady stream of complaints. Out on the side walk, the aboriginal is playing in a heap he's collected along with the bottles. Thanks to the counter guy's complaints, he's covered the debris with a pale pink blanket. Inside, the counter person is complaining about the aboriginal, particularly his lack of a shirt.
Vinnie's bottles, for all their weight and volume amount to only $18.10; that's how it is with wine bottles, they look rich but they're poor where it counts. Ten minutes later I'm at the MPA reception negotiating to leave $9.05, and the detailed receipt, with them for Vinnie, which is what he told me to do. It feels good to help, and I found a monkey.
Ps. Notice how one complete stranger twice trusted another complete stranger where amounts of money were concerned.
I like these new pedestrian countdown timer signals being installed through the City of Vancouver; there's nothing wrong with a little extra certainty where traffic is concerned. Even better would be if The Coast Mountain Bus Co., aka Translink, would put a similar countdown timer on the rear end of all their transit buses, so a driver, or cyclist, would have an idea how long a particular bus planned to sit at a bus stop; sometimes it's stop, drop, and go, and other times it's 5 minutes -- you never know, and they can pull away from the curb quite quickly. A little more certainty wouldn't hurt, but getting hit by a bus would.
I don't know if storage locker beats shopping cart in the game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, but I believe, from personal experience, that it does in real life.
I was lucky to get a storage locker within two weeks of becoming homeless in late 2004. I had some cash from selling my Mac hardware on consignment through The Mac Market, a wonderful shop, and, I think, the only one of its kind in Vancouver, but I couldn't find a company willing to rent a locker to me; I made no secret of my situation and, it turns out homeless people are not always generally known for paying their bills or keeping their lockers in good order. I was also a bit appalled by the poor security and shoddy construction I was seeing: plywood and chicken-wire, dim-to-no lighting, and not cheap at that. Finally I found a brand new company on West 7th; they still had lots of available lockers, they were willing to give me a try as a customer; I could afford their rates, and they were set-up in a concrete building, with two levels of lockers constructed of aluminum and steel -- some with lighting and even temperature control, and overall clean, well-lit and secure.
I've had my locker at Guardian Storage for over eight years now. My rent generally coincides with the increased panic binning the week before Welfare cheques are issued; I try to pay early to beat the rush, as I did this week, but some times I just have to gut it out and work extra hard again the increased competition. It's massively worth it, as far as I'm concerned. I'm grateful that they took a chance on me, and I recommend them highly for their facilities and their service.
I was lucky to get a storage locker within two weeks of becoming homeless in late 2004. I had some cash from selling my Mac hardware on consignment through The Mac Market, a wonderful shop, and, I think, the only one of its kind in Vancouver, but I couldn't find a company willing to rent a locker to me; I made no secret of my situation and, it turns out homeless people are not always generally known for paying their bills or keeping their lockers in good order. I was also a bit appalled by the poor security and shoddy construction I was seeing: plywood and chicken-wire, dim-to-no lighting, and not cheap at that. Finally I found a brand new company on West 7th; they still had lots of available lockers, they were willing to give me a try as a customer; I could afford their rates, and they were set-up in a concrete building, with two levels of lockers constructed of aluminum and steel -- some with lighting and even temperature control, and overall clean, well-lit and secure.
I've had my locker at Guardian Storage for over eight years now. My rent generally coincides with the increased panic binning the week before Welfare cheques are issued; I try to pay early to beat the rush, as I did this week, but some times I just have to gut it out and work extra hard again the increased competition. It's massively worth it, as far as I'm concerned. I'm grateful that they took a chance on me, and I recommend them highly for their facilities and their service.
Saturday, April 20, Surrey, British Columbia was the place to be for over 200,000 people attending the 12th annual Vaisakhi Parade. Vancouver, wasn't much to anyone in particular, until the evening, perhaps, when the Vancouver Canucks beat the visiting Detroit Redwings.
I spoke to two fellows who fairly gushed at how wonderful the parade was; how it was an entire day of every kind of free food; how people came from around the world; how there were "two million people" in attendance. ... Okay, they got that last bit wrong, but the rest was apparently bang-on. It's a big, fun, family-oriented event which thousands mark on their calendar and attend every year. Vancouver, the 800-pound gorilla of British Columbia, has a hugely-attended Pride Parade, but Surrey has one of those also. Vancouver now only leads Surrey in semi-annual hockey riots.
The City of Surrey is Canada's largest municipality, and it looks to compete with Vancouver to become B.C.'s centre of gravity in the near future, fuelled in part by a steady influx of immigrants, who continue to make Surrey their home as they make a new life in Canada. Surrey's popular mayor, Diane Watts, appears to be successfully re-branding and reshaping Surrey. Image-wise, it is now officially referred to as "the city of Surrey," with the slogan, "The future lives here," rather than "that sprawling suburb, where people keep cars up on blocks in their front yard." To back up the claim to city-hood, the Watts administration has adjusted zoning to encourage the development of dense urban cores; they have also tackled the reality and perception of Surrey as a crime capitol.
Vancouver's earnest mayor, Gregor Roberson, who gets a mixed report card for his eviro-friendly agenda to make Vancouver a "green" city, may be a bit green with envy the way his regional peer Watts has gone from success to success as she works to pull Surrey out from under the shadow of Vancouver.
The 2010 Winter Olympics surely helped Vancouver shake it's reputation as "no-fun city," earned for a decade of squashing large scale public events, but it's also true that Vancouver got to "host" the games which were, for the most part, not actually staged there, because Vancouver had the best-known, and most marketable, brand name in the Lower Mainland. The City of Surrey is clearly working to change that; their Vaisakhi Parade, which is the largest outside of India, is one more piece in successful campaign to make Surrey a world-class destination in its own right.
I spoke to two fellows who fairly gushed at how wonderful the parade was; how it was an entire day of every kind of free food; how people came from around the world; how there were "two million people" in attendance. ... Okay, they got that last bit wrong, but the rest was apparently bang-on. It's a big, fun, family-oriented event which thousands mark on their calendar and attend every year. Vancouver, the 800-pound gorilla of British Columbia, has a hugely-attended Pride Parade, but Surrey has one of those also. Vancouver now only leads Surrey in semi-annual hockey riots.
The City of Surrey is Canada's largest municipality, and it looks to compete with Vancouver to become B.C.'s centre of gravity in the near future, fuelled in part by a steady influx of immigrants, who continue to make Surrey their home as they make a new life in Canada. Surrey's popular mayor, Diane Watts, appears to be successfully re-branding and reshaping Surrey. Image-wise, it is now officially referred to as "the city of Surrey," with the slogan, "The future lives here," rather than "that sprawling suburb, where people keep cars up on blocks in their front yard." To back up the claim to city-hood, the Watts administration has adjusted zoning to encourage the development of dense urban cores; they have also tackled the reality and perception of Surrey as a crime capitol.
Vancouver's earnest mayor, Gregor Roberson, who gets a mixed report card for his eviro-friendly agenda to make Vancouver a "green" city, may be a bit green with envy the way his regional peer Watts has gone from success to success as she works to pull Surrey out from under the shadow of Vancouver.
The 2010 Winter Olympics surely helped Vancouver shake it's reputation as "no-fun city," earned for a decade of squashing large scale public events, but it's also true that Vancouver got to "host" the games which were, for the most part, not actually staged there, because Vancouver had the best-known, and most marketable, brand name in the Lower Mainland. The City of Surrey is clearly working to change that; their Vaisakhi Parade, which is the largest outside of India, is one more piece in successful campaign to make Surrey a world-class destination in its own right.
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