Wise people say that giving a person a fish only feeds them for a day, but giving them a fishing rod feeds them for a lifetime. So what if you give them a McDonald's Monopoly contest instant win Snapfish prize -- what does that do for them? I can only try to answer that question hypothetically, because, as a homeless person, I cannot complete the requirements for claiming my instant win Snapfish prize -- NFA, and all that.Snapfish -- a division of Hewlett Packard -- describes itself as an online photo service. It's services include photo sharing, and storage, but all it's other services are heavily weighted towards providing photo prints, in book form, on coffee mugs, and jewelery, and so on. A prize of online image storage might appeal to me, but, the sticker describes the prize as a 4" x 6" photo book, and I can't begin to express how underwhelming that sounds to me.
When I started binning, back in 2004, several supermarkets had adopted coin deposit systems to deter people from walking off with shopping carts. Idle carts were nested together, and daisy-chained, handle-to-handle. A customer could unlock the cart at the very end of the chain by depositing a coin in the locking mechanism of the cart -- either a quarter, or a dollar coin -- in Canada, a so-called "Loonie." Pushing in the coin, pushed out the chain link connected to the next cart. Pushing that chain link back in pushed out your quarter. Simple.
Stores may not have reckoned on how many customers just wouldn't care enough about recovering their deposit to put the carts away properly. And then there were a number deliberately leaving the carts unchained so binners could re-chain the carts, and recover the coins.
Binners immediately started trying to extract the coins from carts found in the wild. If you found two carts, you could use the chain from one to recover the coin from the other. I began to see bent up lengths of coat hanger wire jammed in the chaining end of the coin box, which "fooled" the cart into releasing it's coin.
Stores may not have reckoned on how many customers just wouldn't care enough about recovering their deposit to put the carts away properly. And then there were a number deliberately leaving the carts unchained so binners could re-chain the carts, and recover the coins.
Binners immediately started trying to extract the coins from carts found in the wild. If you found two carts, you could use the chain from one to recover the coin from the other. I began to see bent up lengths of coat hanger wire jammed in the chaining end of the coin box, which "fooled" the cart into releasing it's coin.
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Arc du Cressey? Point of sale advertising for the developer, after a fashion.[/caption]
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Two months ago we'd be nearly in the alley looking at the yoga studio.[/caption]
The bowling alley still sits off in the North-West corner, and the facade of the former supermarket stands facing Arbutus like a remnant of the London Blitz; otherwise the former site of the old Ridge Centre is just a mess of rubble. The entire North-South alley behind the lot, between 15th, and 16th Avenue, is fenced off -- understandably, but this will be a big inconvenience for the residents along the first East-West block of 15th, and 16th directly behind the lot, which will continue for as long as the construction project does.
I had to sneak onto the site to take the photo of the supermarket facade without the fence getting in the way. Eventually security woke up to the fact that I was inside the perimeter and came over and insisted I stay behind the fence. I didn't press the point; it was a genuine security issue, and there was a sign indicating an asbestos "abatement" specialist was involved in the demolition of the 1950s structure. The security guard told me that the previous night a group of people had broken into the site -- I couldn't imagine why -- there was nothing left to take, and few surfaces worth tagging with graffiti. Police came with dogs, but the guard said he couldn't let even the police onto the site. I didn't know what to make of that story, but he was a very nice security guard, and, when he saw I was bottle-collecting binner, he emptied his car of a remarkable number of two-litre 7-Up bottles, Apparently his secret to staying alert was sugar. Click the images to enlarge them.
[gallery type="slideshow" ids="6056,6057,6058,6059,6060,6061,6062"]
Go back to my first post about the redevelopment of the Ridge Centre ►
Arc du Cressey? Point of sale advertising for the developer, after a fashion.[/caption][caption id="attachment_6053" align="alignright" width="180"]
Two months ago we'd be nearly in the alley looking at the yoga studio.[/caption]The bowling alley still sits off in the North-West corner, and the facade of the former supermarket stands facing Arbutus like a remnant of the London Blitz; otherwise the former site of the old Ridge Centre is just a mess of rubble. The entire North-South alley behind the lot, between 15th, and 16th Avenue, is fenced off -- understandably, but this will be a big inconvenience for the residents along the first East-West block of 15th, and 16th directly behind the lot, which will continue for as long as the construction project does.
I had to sneak onto the site to take the photo of the supermarket facade without the fence getting in the way. Eventually security woke up to the fact that I was inside the perimeter and came over and insisted I stay behind the fence. I didn't press the point; it was a genuine security issue, and there was a sign indicating an asbestos "abatement" specialist was involved in the demolition of the 1950s structure. The security guard told me that the previous night a group of people had broken into the site -- I couldn't imagine why -- there was nothing left to take, and few surfaces worth tagging with graffiti. Police came with dogs, but the guard said he couldn't let even the police onto the site. I didn't know what to make of that story, but he was a very nice security guard, and, when he saw I was bottle-collecting binner, he emptied his car of a remarkable number of two-litre 7-Up bottles, Apparently his secret to staying alert was sugar. Click the images to enlarge them.
[gallery type="slideshow" ids="6056,6057,6058,6059,6060,6061,6062"]
Go back to my first post about the redevelopment of the Ridge Centre ►
My post showing the demolition at the end of September ►
HAL, I said, open the UPS bay door. Open the damn door HAL! ... Oh, it is open. Never mind HAL, my bad. Click the picture below to enlarge it.
It's gone, as in vanished, vamoosed. The overly tagged truck which hasn't moved from it's parking spot for ... ever, has finally moved out.
The Grumman delivery truck with the tires gone flat, probably under the weight of all the graffiti tags overlaying it's earthbound aluminum airframe, has been the subject of a previous post. I went back about a month ago, and took more photos. I was hoping to come back with a ladder, to see if taggers had spared the roof or not. No rush, I thought. The truck had always been there, and wasn't in any shape to go anywhere, anytime soon. I was wrong. Within a week the truck was gone. It's still gone. I don't think it's just in for a tune-up either.
Here are the last known photos of an endearing eyesore.
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Peterson for The Vancouver Sun, September 27, 2003: A federal central Canadian politician courting the "local" Western B.C. vote.[/caption]
The great Canadian editorial cartoonist Roy Peterson passed away Sunday, at his West Vancouver home. He was 77. Peterson was one of the finest editorial cartoonists of any country, and any time, but he was Canadian; born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1936, and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. He served as the editorial cartoonist for The Vancouver Sun newspaper from 1962 to 2009 (read the Sun's obituary). From 1978 to 2001, his illustrations appeared in the weekly national news magazine Macleans, illustrating Allan Fotheringham's back page column -- that would likely have been where I, and most Canadians, first saw his work -- and what work!
Peterson for The Vancouver Sun, September 27, 2003: A federal central Canadian politician courting the "local" Western B.C. vote.[/caption]The great Canadian editorial cartoonist Roy Peterson passed away Sunday, at his West Vancouver home. He was 77. Peterson was one of the finest editorial cartoonists of any country, and any time, but he was Canadian; born in Winnipeg, Manitoba in 1936, and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. He served as the editorial cartoonist for The Vancouver Sun newspaper from 1962 to 2009 (read the Sun's obituary). From 1978 to 2001, his illustrations appeared in the weekly national news magazine Macleans, illustrating Allan Fotheringham's back page column -- that would likely have been where I, and most Canadians, first saw his work -- and what work!
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