Posts tagged with “east vancouver”

Wanderful is an ongoing feature where each week I throw a hypothetical dart at the Vancouver map and travel there – by foot or by transit, and attempt to capture some of the cool and interesting small details that make that particular neighborhood unique and special. From sidewalks to back alleys, gardens to graffiti, I’ll become a wandering tourist in my own backyard. Armed with only a camera and very little natural sense of direction, it’s an journey of modest proportions, and an opportunity to see more of what makes this city AWESOME!

I was immediately interested in this area the second I caught sight of the colourful gigantic bird mural painted on a wall high above two buildings, when meeting a friend at his job one afternoon. It seemed a bit like something you could walk by a bunch of times and never notice unless you had your head in the clouds (which I often do – accounting for a large part of my inherent clumsiness).  It’s one of those things that you might never notice it until you did, and then you’d wonder how you ever actually missed it.

When I headed back to the area during the week to more thoroughly explore, it definitely is a lot more of an industry-oriented neighbourhood, but there is also a ton of great little charming touches, once I stop and look a bit more closely.

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Hey, remember this post?

This is the East Vancouver version……

There was a crow sitting on the cross too….but it took off.

VANCOUVER DAZE showcases and highlights the social life and scene of our beautiful city, covering all the misadventures and shenanigans at various cultural events, mixers, parties, meetups, and local happenings. We fiercely promote all the fun times the city has to offer along with the interesting people behind them. Follow more of my work/coverage over at RICKCHUNG.COM and on Twitter at @RICKCHUNG. You can pitch me HERE.

Volume 2: The first ever East Vancouver Tweetup at the Army Navy & Airforce Veterans Unit 298 Canteen, organized by Yelp Vancouver Community Manager Cyndi Hunter and Ajay Masala Puri on February 2, 2010. Hashtag: #EastVanLove. More photos available on Flickr.

East Vancouver is not my hood. As a kid, I spent weekends there often with my parents eating at pho and Vietnamese restaurants and shopping at Asian grocery stories, but not much else. Cyndi told me her and Ajay were determined to throw an East Van tweetup and celebrate their hood. They wanted to hold it at a veterans club and highlight the neighbourhood with its rich cultural diversity. I heard friends like Kris Krüg (above), Kemp Edmonds, Jason Baker, Canadian Kelli, and other would be there and it piqued my interest.

Above is 88-year-old Whistlin’ Smith, a blind veteran (standing with Cyndi and Ajay). He regaled us with tales of times past ad war Grandma Simpson style, but much more coherently. The canteen volunteers spoke of the purpose of a veterans club and its role in the community. They need new members and business to sustain themselves and offer services to vets.
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Somehow one of the most divisive public sculptures in this city (and my personal favourite), V.I.A. originally REPORTED on Ken Lum’s Monument for East Vancouver back in January of last year right after it was erected at Great Northern Way and Clark Drive. Ken has since been gracious enough to do a PROOF feature for our print magazine and has also SPOKEN at a Pecha Kucha Night that we co-sponsored. I recently found this video clip detailing the making-of floating around the internet so I pinned it down and embedded it here for you to enjoy!

Learn about this sculpture on the official COV site HERE.

A few weeks back, I made this post about possibly one of the highlights of my year, finding out that TSN was now basic cable.

In the comments section Keith Chan let me know that Novus also offered a pretty good package so, I thought I’d give them a phone call. You know what I got…

“We don’t offer it in your area….’

My basic cable high, was now a basic cable low, I know my package is decent, but it sucks when you get rejected like that, even if it’s just cable. For a second there, I was ranking this right up there with rollerblades in the ‘man..they got everything downtown’ category.

Then it struck me, as I walked past this house below in my hood. I counted ‘em…not one, not two, but three satellite dishes! There was one in the back to boot. This made me feel that much better. Keith Chan, now I know maybe this is dated technology….but I’d like to see you cram four satellite dishes in your Yaletown condo. Not sayin’ I’m gonna, but if I wanted to, I could join every fourth house in East Vancouver and get at least one of these babys.

I’ll leave to you to discover them…..