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Last evening McDonald's was playing host to no fewer than eight homeless people, which was no problem in and of itself -- customers are customers, but two of them: Jonathan and Marnie were loudly chattering like magpies to no one in particular.

It can be hard to concentrate when someone else is thinking out loud. It's harder when two of them are being thoughtless out loud.

So when I left about 9:30 p.m. I gladly exchanged the hothouse atmosphere of McDonald's for the quiet coolness of a January evening.

My mind was on going eastwards to bed but as soon as I crossed Hemlock Street and crested the little rise of the alley on the south side of West Broadway Avenue I was moonstruck.

How to describe last night's rain? As I  tried to get an interesting photograph of what was admittedly rather uninteresting -- neither that heavy, nor that fast. -- good old Rob McKenna came to mind. He's a character in Douglas Adams' five-book trilogy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

McKenna is a long-haul truck driver who hates rain but can't escape it. He has no idea he's actually a Rain God. All the clouds want to follow him and shower their love down on him.

The following is an excerpt from Chapter Two of  So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, the fourth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy.

Rob McKenna had two hundred and thirty-one different types of rain entered in his little book, and he didn't like any of them.

He shifted down another gear and the lorry heaved its revs up. It grumbled in a comfortable sort of way about all the Danish thermostatic radiator controls it was carrying.

Since he had left Denmark the previous afternoon, he had been through types 33 (light pricking drizzle which made the roads slippery), 39 (heavy spotting), 47 to 51 (vertical light drizzle through to sharply slanting light to moderate drizzle freshening), 87 and 88 (two finely distinguished varieties of vertical torrential downpour), 100 (post-downpour squalling, cold), all the seastorm types between 192 and 213 at once, 123, 124, 126, 127 (mild and intermediate cold gusting, regular and syncopated cab-drumming), 11 (breezy droplets), and now his least favourite of all, 17.

Rain type 17 was a dirty blatter battering against his windscreen so hard that it didn't make much odds whether he had his wipers on or off.

He tested this theory by turning them off briefly, but as it turned out the visibility did get quite a lot worse. It just failed to get better again when he turned them back on.

In fact one of the wiper blades began to flap off.

Swish swish swish flop swish swish flop swish swish flop swish flop swish flop flop flap scrape.

Only a person born and bred on the Prairies would be so small-minded as to compare a beautiful, vibrant, Vancouver sunset to the colour of canned salmon but there it is. These technicolor evening productions always make me feel small -- in a good way.

This is alternately called the Fairview House, built in 1892, or the Steamboat House, built in 1890. Either way, it's a very old house from the late 19th Century, originally built for a British doctor, John Watt Reid, Medical Director-General of the Royal Navy who retired to Vancouver in 1888. It is designated as a Group R (for Residential) heritage building by the City of Vancouver, Canada, and legally protected by the city's heritage by-law No. 4837. It was painstakingly restored, inside and out, in 2011, to serve as high-end office space.

Of course, as a binner -- a sort of alley rat -- searching for bottles, and cans, I mostly see this building from the back, and at night, when I think it has a wonderfully creepy character. The photo below is a looong exposure composite of three shots. I believe the red light is from an over-abundance of exit signs. Click the images to enlarge them.

Another lacklustre, long-exposure, night photograph: We're looking at Oak Street, a block-or-so on the North side of Broadway Avenue. I think the grade is over 20° at this point. On our left, going North, Oak gets even steeper -- over 30°, as it drops down to sea level to meet False Creek.

Years ago, on an August afternoon, I had a heart-stopping bicycle "ride" exactly two streets West, down the slightly steeper Alder Street. A sudden light rain shower -- the first after literally weeks of hot sun -- brought out the oil in the asphalt, and I could not stop -- my front and back brakes were clamped. The wheels weren't turning, but I was picking up speed. Looking ahead of me (looking down really), I didn't see my life flashing in front of my eyes, just the cars speeding to and fro along West 5th Avenue. I was able to use my body to lean into a turn and managed to crash-land in some bushes at the intersection of an alley between 6th, and 7th Avenue. I didn't have a bike trailer, or the story would have a different ending.

During particularly heavy rain, the three North-South streets, Oak, Spruce, and Alder are blocked off on the North side of West Broadway Avenue, because they are so steeply graded they can literally become water slides. Some parts of the concrete sidewalks have raised strips to act more like steps. Click the image to enlarge it.

Last night's moon over Vancouver (I'm told everyone on Earth sees the same one, but I find that hard to believe).

Following up my post about a motorhome scraping through the narrow lane behind my sleeping spot, here are some photos of the wall of the condo, which the Winnebago, very noisily scraped on it's way through. The lowest damage will be from the motorhome, the higher breakage is from something else.

Good thing I seem to like taking photos in the rain -- I'm in the right place for that sort of thing for, oh, the next eight months, less a few days here and there for good behaviour. The real rain was kind enough to wait till I got to bed, but I kind of took my time, and a few times I heard the rumble of nature drumming her fingers impatiently in the distance.

A nocturnal Pontiac finally captured

I might have mentioned I do no drive. Never have. But even before I didn't learn how to drive, I liked the look of Pontiacs. I still do. It's fitting they all have that "prow" in the grille, given what full-size boats they are. The one pictured above (no idea if it's a Parisienne or Laurentian), only appears at night, and is always gone by morning. This is the first photograph that doesn't look like a lump of coal on a black velvet background. If you could see it like I can, you'd see that it's not the wheels holding the body suspended above the ground, it's pure design.

The view North from Choklit Park

[caption id="attachment_5412" align="alignright" width="150"] A light by the entrance to the first level of Choklit Park.[/caption]

At the North end of Spruce Street is a little city-made terrace. It's like a giant step. Little, human-size steps lead down to another giant step, where I stopped to take the above photo. I think there's one more plateau, and the little steps continue all the way down to the next street, which I think is 2nd Avenue. The whole thing is called Choklit Park. It commemorates the Purdy's Chocolate company's brave attempts in 1970 to expand it's loading bay at government expense, by the simple expedient of throwing in a nice little park for the neighbourhood kids. Purdy's moved their factory from 7th and Spruce to Kingsway Avenue in 1982,



The blue plaque, pictured above, reads:

"Charles Flavelle of Purdy’s Chocolates created Choklit Park in 1970 on the unused Spruce Street right-of-way at 7th Avenue, using a crew of six hired on “Opportunities for Youth” grant. The chocolate factory at 1107 W.7th needed an improved truckloading facility and the children in the neighbourhood needed
an adventure playground. The crew used the right-of-way and all the available space around the factory for the children’s park. Purdy’s made chocolates here from 1949 until 1982."

The plaque was presented last year by the Vancouver Heritage Foundation as part of the city's 125th anniversary celebrations.

Behind the West side of South Granville Street, Just a bit South of the intersection with 10th Avenue. It's Friday night; all the noise, and activity is on the street side. Here in the back alley, it's peaceful, and quiet. Behind the window, a fan spins silently. The security light stutters, as if in time to a sound, audible only to burglars.