At Your Convenience is a weekly ode to our indie convenience stores. The ones we frequent everyday and the hidden gems nestled in the heart of each neighbourhood. An old-school throwback in our modern world.

Nameless and out of the way, even Google Maps doesn’t know where this place is! Kinda like an old west facade that made it to the 21st century and now sells lotto tickets. I love finding places like this!

Jason Statler – Photography

Vancouver Autos captures vehicles in their parked environment, showcasing and sharing some of the Lower Mainland’s beautiful wheels. Vancouver Autos is about cars; cars as art; cars as transportation; cars as a part of our culture. Whether or not we should choose more sustainable forms of transportation (i.e. walk, bike, transit), cars are part of our culture and we at Vancouver Autos really like the way they look! Follow along as we snap pics of everyday, unique, high-performance, off-road, on-road and fuel-sipping cars in our fine city. Here’s this week’s Vancouver Auto. For more car-spotting around town, guzzle our daily snaps on Twitter, Instagram, or Tumblr.

Rolls Royce Silver Cloud.

Each week we sift through the nearly 8,000 entries that our friends at the Canadian Design Resource have made since 2005, selecting one particularly awesome Vancouver-centric design that they’ve featured and sharing it with you here.

Design: Unknown
Client: City of Vancouver
Date: 2010

In time for the 2010 Olympics and presumably for all the visitors from abroad, the city had these polite reminders to look in the direction of traffic to avoid walking into it unwittingly. More than two years later, this street paint has worn considerably, but is a reminder of our efforts to extend a warm and safe welcome to a mass of foreign travellers.

Once again we’re co-sponsoring Sam Sullivan’s Public Salon at the Vancouver Playhouse! As you likely noticed in the title, the former mayor of Vancouver is now a member of the legislature. I INTRODUCED you to the fact that he was running in the riding I live in a little while back, then Cory Ashworth INTERVIEWED him for his Vancity Fair project, and at the last Salon (which I coincidentally attended with Cory!) we noted that he didn’t mention it once while he was hosting. It was pretty classy of him, and it certainly didn’t hinder his efforts to get elected in last night’s provincial election.

And speaking of class, there are so many great speakers on the bill for the upcoming Public Salon on June 5th. Personal standouts for me include restaurant critic Alexandra Gill, Offsetters co-founder James Tansey, and historian Henry Yu. Tickets are available HERE. See you there!

Vancouver Heritage Foundation is a registered charity supporting the conservation of heritage buildings and structures in recognition of their contribution to the city’s economy, sustainability and culture.

Vancouver Heritage Foundation‘s 2013  Heritage House Tour is coming up in two weeks and we’re giving you the inside scoop on some unique sites opening on tour this year! The tour is on June 2nd from 10am-5pm. One of the more interesting sites on this year’s tour is a 1906 Japanese tenement, now converted into Single-Room Accomodation (SRA’s). Volunteers from the Nikkei National Museum, the Vancouver Japanese Language School and James Johnstone, House Historian, will be on site to answer historical questions about the site which has a very intriguing history! From a tenement for Japanese workers, to a possible (unconfirmed) stint as a brothel, to its current use as an SRA, this building holds a wealth of Vancouver history. It will be open only in the morning (10am – 1:30pm) during the tour, so if you want to get inside, make sure you get there early.

If you fancy a lunch stop, the Vancouver Japanese Language School at 487 Alexander St will be open from 11am-2pm offering a delicious bento (udon noodles, Japanese side dishes and dessert) for $10. They will also offer 15 minute building tours, highlighting the heritage daycare renovation of the 1928 Hall. Tours begin every 1/2 hour.

So who was Yonekichi Aoki? From the 1901 census, Yonekichi Aoki (1861- 1940) immigrated in 1896.  His wife Suye (1877-1931) came in 1897.  They had at least one son, George Tameo Aoki who married Kiyo in 1929. (He went to get his bride in Japan and brought her back to Canada). There was an Aoki still living at the buildings address in 1941, before the forced expulsion of all Japanese Canadians from the Coast in 1942. There are two large biographies of Yonekichi Aoki and the Nikkei National Museum Archives will have them on display at the Heritage House Tour in translation!

The tenement building was typical of those built by early Japanese settlers in Vancouver. Aoki started logging in 1895 at Indian River and like many, worked at the Hastings Sawmill on Burrard Inlet at the foot of Dunlevy. From the late 1800s to World War II, Alexander Steet was part of the bustling Japantown district centred on Powell Street.  In 2006,the tenement become Ross House, a privately owned Single Room Accommodation (SRA). A tribute to the owner’s son who died of a drug overdose in 2000, the house has 24 rented rooms and much of the original 1906  building still remains including fir floors, tongue and groove panelling in the hallway, and the ghost lines of many doors that lead to speculation that it may at one time have been part of the Alexander Street red light district. …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

It’s a new dog once a week! Click here to find out how to get your dog posted if you haven’t sent in your photos yet!

Today’s dog featured in Dogtown Vancouver is Denver, Morgan T’s pup. Here’s what he had to say about him…

NAME: Denver. BREED: Duck Tolling Retriever. HOOD: Lynn Valley. FAVOURITE SNACK: Cheese. OTHER INFO: In August 2012 Denver was deemed the “Cutest Puppy in the World” by the Daily Mail and Huffington Post. Unaware of his international fame, he spends his days gallivanting in the North Shore forests, making friends everywhere he goes. To catch up with Denver’s adventures, check out his set on flickr.

…READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>