sqwabb

I'm tearing East on 7th Avenue, almost to the bottle depot. I pay attention to my surroundings, I'm a good cyclist -- there's a few cars behind me, some oncoming traffic. On the sidewalk, pacing me, there's a dog in a side-car, armed with a machine gun. ... Okay, I'm armed with a camera.

Gary is out for a ride with his dog Yoda, who has the look of a dog accustomed to travelling in style. Gary is better known a Mad Dog, a multimedia artist, with deep roots in the Vancouver arts and music scene going back to the late 1970s local Punk scene.

Mad Dog built this one-of-a-kind side-car, for his not-mad dog Yoda,  from an old tin baby buggy. You can see an earlier incarnation of it on his Facebook page. He makes this sort of stuff for both his living, and his art. The fit and finish of the work is impressive, and displays all kinds of serious know-how. It's so, uncompromisingly great, on so many levels: concept, engineering, workmanship, steampunk, badass-attitude, sense-of-humour, and don't the ladies just love it! Click the images to enlarge them.

An interview with Mad Dog from vice.com ►

Another side-car-style bicycle trailer ►

Florida Pete told me he had to get back to work -- he was down to one beer, so he's headed back intto the Fairview back alleys, in search of bottles, and "full ones," at that. He'd found me, in the first place, to show me an eye-popping, original painting he'd found earlier in the day.

The painting is signed "Evadna Chapman June 1973," making it a month shy of 40-years-old. After all that time, the painting is still a blaze of fluorescent colours.-- the photos do not begin to do it justice. I can find no information on an "Evadna Chapman" of any kind. Given the lifespan of an original painting, sitting exposed in a back alley, or carried on top of a shopping cart, in Vancouver, British Columbia, the images in this post will likely soon be all that's left. Click on the images to enlarge.