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This is for the McDonald's Canada 2013 Monopoly contest. Someone redeemed the other one I posted, as part of my explanation of what the heck a Snapfish was. Go here to redeem the prize of a Snapfish photobook. Click the image to enlarge the teeny-tiny type.

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.

We're having the kind of Fall a person could fall in love with. I've tried to share a bit of my good fortune in the form of a patchwork panorama of Jonathan Rogers Park, just a few block from the Go Green bottle depot. Click the above crop to see the large 8505 x 1000 pixel version, and/or click the turn to see it as a long, sideways, strip.

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.

[caption id="attachment_6224" align="alignnone" width="497"] Even secret agent Maxwell Smart knew better than to talk on his shoe phone while driving. Get Smart people! It's dangerous.[/caption]

Our public auto insurance authority, ICBC, has teamed up with British Columbia's police for a province-wide, month-long campaign against distracted driving. Operating a handheld electronic device such as a cellphone, while driving a motor vehicle, has been illegal in BC since January 1, 2010. Penalties include a $167 CDN fine and three penalty points on a driver's license, which affects their auto insurance rate.

Distracted driving is no laughing matter, but people are always good for a chuckle. According to this item in The Vancouver Province newspaper, a B.C. Provincial Court  Judge has brushed aside one defendant's claim that he wasn't even holding his cellphone, but rather his wallet.

The Vancouver Coastal Health authority has been testing the health benefits of giving crack cocaine users smoking kits. Between December 2011 and November 2012, 65,000 such kits were freely distributed in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, to 4,213 crack smokers, at a cost of $118,000 CDN, according to a several reports, including this Vancouver Courier item. Now they're crunching the numbers and looking at the results.

Vancouver Coastal Health is telling the media that the 13 month program met it's harm reduction goals, reducing both burns to crack smokers, and reliance on used smoking equipment -- without increasing drug activity.

Knee-jerk conservatives may blanch at what they see as another example of lefties enabling the druggie lifestyle, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. "Harm reduction" means reducing the harm drug users do to themselves, and -- this is an important point -- reducing the harm drug users do to the society at large. Reducing the sharing of drug-taking equipment, is meant to have far-reaching social benefits:

• Reducing the transmission of infectious diseases among drug users.


• Reducing the number of drug addicts who become chronic health care cases,


• Reducing the risk of drug users spreading infectious diseases to the general population.

This custom sports car lives in Kerrisdale, a perfectly normal neighbourhood, except for the mansions, wrought iron security gates, 20-foot hedges, and the occasional custom Porsche 356 Speedster painted hot pink.

And before anyone assumes a person rich enough to splurge on this conspicuous symbol of wealth hasn't a care in the world, just imagine how hard it must be to find an outfit that goes with this high performance piece of bubblegum? I shudder to think.



It's even difficult for average digital cameras to photograph this sort of high-temperature pink, so, fair warning, there's been some colour correction -- actually more like corporal punishment, but all in the interests of truth. I couldn't leave them looking like this shot of ... perhaps the same Porsche, at a 2011 Vancouver car show; so sad and wan. The colour actually blazes. Click the images to enlarge them.