Posts tagged with “mount pleasant”

A Vancouver time travelogue brought to you by Past Tense.

As City Hall scrambles to address its realization that million dollar abodes aren’t for most of us, I thought it a good time to remember some of the affordable housing options that our resourceful predecessors came up with, including houseboats in Burrard Inlet and False Creek, squatter shacks in Stanley Park and on Deadman’s Island, and of course tree houses. This Mount Pleasant tree stump contained a three-room home. A note on the photo from city archivist Major Matthews provides the particulars:

Mount Pleasant pioneer’s shack in stump, photo taken before 1910. It was built by a Mr Berkman and was on the east side of Seacombe Road, now Prince Edward Street, between 26th & 27th Avenues. The location is now 4230 Prince Edward St. It was reached by a short forest trail from Horne Road, now 28th Ave. The lower stump on right was the kitchen, the lower part of the higher stump on left was the living room. The bedroom, doorless, was reached by a ladder removed in daytime to the kitchen. This photo & particulars was given me by W. J. Moore, photographer, 420 West Hastings St, whose home was nearby. It appeared as an illustration in “Province,” magazine section, 29 May 1943.

Source: Photo by WJ Moore, City of Vancouver Archives, #Sgn 988

VANCOUVER DAZE showcases and highlights the lifestyle and cultural scene of our beautiful city, uncovering all the INTERESTING THINGS, misadventures, and shenanigans beyond social functions and local happenings. We fiercely promote all the fun times, food, culture, and entertainment the city has to offer, along with the creative minds behind them. Follow more of my work/coverage over at RICKCHUNG.COM and on Twitter at @RICKCHUNG. You can pitch me HERE.

Volume 87: CocoaNymph East chocolate making workshop in Mount Pleasant on September 17, 2012. Photos courtesy of Grace Cheung and Crystal Hendrickson. More photos available on Flickr and Tumblr.

This MINI adventure is all about chocolate. Fall means chocolate season for my sweet tooth. Conveniently enough, CocoaNymph, the local chocolate factory of sorts, is expanding.

As a part of this chocolate making adventure, I travelled there in style in my Countryman from MINI Richmond.
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"Real Estate Office in Big Tree"

While doing some research on street names for an OpenFile story on Vancouver street and public space naming, I learned that although our city’s street names are often based on names of long-dead real estate speculators and their friends — they are just as often based on weird circumstances or personal whims.

Here’s a rundown on some of the odd street name origins I learned by visiting the Vancouver Archives and reading the street names notes binders (copies of Major J.S. Matthews’s old note cards), and also by flipping through Elizabeth Walker’s amazing compendium of these names, in the 1999 volume “Street Names of Vancouver,” which you can read yourself (find and follow the link on this VPL page.)

1) Leg-in-boot Square, so-named in 1976
This name was inspired by an account recorded by Stuart Cumberland in The Queen’s Highway (1887):
“Just before I visited Vancouver a man had mysteriously disappeared; and, on the day of my arrival, a top-boot, containing a foot and a portion of the leg, had been found in the forest at False Creek, a place close …READ THE REST OF THIS ENTRY>>>

Vancouver is arguably the most beautiful and expensive city in the world to live in. For most, the goal is simply to live IN it. We all have to work, and work hard to keep up with Our Lady of VanCity, but there are a select few who know the score. Why not live in the world’s most liveable city and hold down one of the raddest jobs she has to offer? We all know somebody who goes to work smiling. What are these jobs and how do people get them? More importantly, are they as awesome as they sound… VOL.5 HIGHLIGHTS: 2010 Olympics, Rolling Stone Magazine & Gonzo Porn

Contributed

Award-winning travel writer and TV screenwriter, Rolling Stone contributeur and newsfeed humorist Ken Hegan was a given for this series. We first met through another writer friend, Dave Dormer (sorry Dave – you don’t get to travel for a living) and I was immediately intrigued by the Voice of Treason business card that was added to the top of my stack. A quick peek at his website revealed CTV, Discovery, W, The Comedy Network and CBC as a few of the television networks he’s contributed to. I don’t have a TV, so I can’t attest to his small screen skills, but his most recent gig as an MSN and National Post travel writer is a constant source of amusement (and jealousy) for his readers and has allowed his razor sharp sense of humor to shine. Effortlessly capturing the farcical nature of travel the way we’ve all experienced it, Hegan is one of the most entertaining writers I follow.

Hegan was also a writer on CTV’s Open Essay of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games, a risky choice for the network, given he can apparently “kill people with a single glance” and has “tens and tens of fans.”

Contributed; centre: Dino Antonio

How did this writing thing happen?

When I was a teenager, my dream job was becoming a world-famous Rolling Stone journalist like Hunter S. Thompson. I loved his muscular writing style. At his best, he was lethally smart, sharp, and comedic. So I decided I really wanted to write comedic articles. I figured since I hadn’t gone to journalism school, I’d have to try five times as hard. That meant that I’d write a fresh fun article every couple of weeks. Then I’d polish it until it was so tight and funny, newspaper/magazine editors would have to say yes.

So I did it. I got up early or stayed late after work at my day job. For months and months, I kept writing fresh articles and faxing them to every newspaper in Vancouver and across Canada, like The Province, Sun, Globe and Mail, Vancouver magazine, and the Georgia Straight. I sent the same article everywhere. Soon the Sun started printing my stuff and the impact was immediate. My sarcastic style generated a lot of letters to the editor.

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Vancouver is arguably the most beautiful and expensive city in the world to live in. For most, the goal is simply to live IN it. We all have to work, and work hard to keep up with Our Lady of VanCity, but there are a select few who know the score. Why not live in the world’s most liveable city and hold down one of the raddest jobs she has to offer? We all know somebody who goes to work smiling. What are these jobs and how do people get them? More importantly, are they as awesome as they sound… VOL.4 HIGHLIGHTS: Secret supper clubs, winning and subliminal boobs.

photos: Kelsey Klassen

You know the guy who does that addictive Secret Mommy stuff you heard at the Biltmore a few weeks ago? How bout the owner of Ache Records, the experimental record label that boasts Death From Above and Hot Hot Heat releases, whose displays you’ve seen in Scratch Records, Zulu Records, Red Cat Records, Audiophile, Zoo Zhop and Dandelion Emporium. Do you remember staring at the designs for Said the Whale and thinking, ‘Oh that’s by the same guy whose art I saw on Main St. last night?’ (Obviously)

If I didn’t already know the well dressed gentleman waiting for me at the bar in Nuba, this week’s Undrudgery might not have existed. I would have never made the connection between the prolific Vancouver artist, musician, designer, illustrator and businessman if I hadn’t seen him in action myself. Andy Dixon. Now you know.

I sat down with Dixon and some 1516 to find out how all this happened.

photos: Kelsey Klassen

When did you start down this path?

It’s not that easy to trace back in those terms. I’ve been playing music since I was 12 in bands and stuff but that didn’t make any money until we started touring, and then it was just enough money to pay for that tour. But then I had to go back to high school so I didn’t really have to worry about it.

What was the band?

d.b.s. – kind of a kid punk band. When the band started gaining in popularity, one of the things we had to deal with was album art, t-shirts….I was the most artistically inclined. I was that quintessential kid that just drew all day and made comic books and shit so I was elected to do that and I started to really like that process of coming up with a visual representation of someone’s music.

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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!

What do you do when you are feeling a lack of creative inspiration? Do you have a special spot that you head to, that helps clear your mind and sharpen your focus? For me, without a doubt, this is Main Street. Initially I wandered a different neighbourhood for this week’s feature. But I did it on a day where I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired – and it showed in both my pictures and my writing. So although I love to explore a lot of places I haven’t yet become acquainted with, for the purpose of this week, I needed to find creativity by familiarity. And over the course of 20 blocks and a few hours, I felt as though I had pressed the ‘reset’ button on my imagination.

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