Performance on Carrall Street this Tuesday

This post is a duplicate of a post in my Carrall Street Journal.

Art on Carrall – literally about Carrall Street. This is the kind of thing I’ve been thinking about for years, and now it looks like Althea Thauberger is making art about this street and its complexities.

Can’t wait to walk out my door and see what she has put together.

ARTSPEAK | CARRALL STREET | ALTHEA THAUBERGER | SEP 30
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CARRALL STREET | ALTHEA THAUBERGER

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
8-11pm in the 200 block of Carrall Street, Vancouver

Carrall Street Public Forum
Thursday, October 2, 2008
7pm at 33 West Cordova Street

Althea Thauberger’s one-night performance, Carrall Street, will present the
street (brightly lit like a film set at nighttime) as a stage, or zone of
illumination where the roles of performer and spectator blur. The
interweaving of organized performers, passers-by and audience members will
allow for unforeseen interactions to take place that reveal something of
the street’s history, its current issues, as well as its future. Carrall
Street is planned in collaboration with local directors, performers and
community members.

Carrall Street is one of the oldest streets in Vancouver. It can be argued
that the entire history (and pre-history) of the city can be mapped along
its six blocks. Caught between urban gentrification and decay, the street
marks transitions from the most touristic parts of the city to what is
often described as the poorest neighbourhood in Canada. In ways that are
both unique and similar to other inner cities, it has been affected by
development, public policy neglect and polarized politics.

A publication accompanying the project will be available in 2009.

Althea Thauberger is an artist based in Vancouver. Her work involves
research and collaboration that result in performances, films, photographs,
audio recordings and books.

The performance and forum are free and open to the public.

This project has been supported by Arts Partners in Creative Development,
The Canada Council for the Arts, the City of Vancouver and the Portland
Hotel Society.

August Weekends: Events on Carrall

This post is a duplicate of a post in my Carrall Street Journal.

August weekends featured festivals and events on Carrall Street.

In early August the canopies covered the intersection of Carrall and Hastings for the Insite event at Pigeon Park, with bands headlined by the venerable DOA.

Then the next weekend was the Chinatown festival, and people were walking along carrying their clay pots on cardboard squares, or lining up to go to the gambling booths and kiosks. Spilling over from the regular Night Market set up, people walked through Sun Yat Sen Park and out the alley by the Garden entrance, into Carrall.

Then this past weekend in Gastown saw the Motorcycle Show and Shine. Weather cooperated as again the street was filled with parked motorcycles all on display.

And coming up we will see the annual Gastown Concours D’elegance, Saturday September 1st.

Motorcycles lined up on display along Carrall

Nude Cyclers Protest Ride on Carrall Street

This post is a duplicate of a post in my Carrall Street Journal.

Anti-Oil protesters rode through Carrall Street on Sunday to a shouting and cheering crowd. Hearing the commotion, I barely had time to get out my camera before they were gone. Quite a different atmosphere from the Tour de Gastown group of cyclists a short time ago!

Bus passengers, motorists and tourists on the street check out the cyclists in their peaceful protest ride.

What Next for the Boulder Hotel?

This post is a duplicate of a post in my Carrall Street Journal.

This afternoon Vancouver City Council will be addressing the situation of the Boulder Hotel development proposal, which has been in the works for some time now. Incorporating the old Pig and Whistle one-story building into an innovative residential/commercial project, the developers are looking for more support from the city to bring life back into this building that hasn’t seen use on its upper floors for over 28 years. From the street it doesn’t look abandoned, as there have always been restaurants on its main floor, notably the new Boneta has been making a bit of a splash. But two floors above the restaurant have been empty for all this time.

The project has been brought by the developers twice to the civic Gastown Heritage and Planning Committee for consultation and approval of plans, particularly for heritage facade considerations. It definitely is a pity that this building which had been in the original centre of Vancouver should have been left to languish for so many years. Archival photos show this building in its heyday surrounded by bustling crowds, active and well-used. As Gastown changes, this building is in a prime location for redevelopment. There have been many delays in this project going past the planning stage, due to its need for more city support – which for some has been a contentious issue. The result of closed-door meetings between city staff and committees and the developers will be brought to Council today.

On the corner of Carrall and Cordova both the Ranier Hotel and the Boulder Hotel buildings have been unused for some time. They face each other across the intersection at Cordova. The Ranier appears to be undergoing some minor changes, but the main floor, boarded up and inactive at this time, faces the new upscale Boneta restaurant at the Boulder Hotel. It is a picture of the rate of change and the current transformation of this area.

Carrall and Hastings 1907

City Reflections is a historical film project that follows the early footage shot in 1907 from the front of a streetcar in Vancouver, and recreates that same route today.

Click on this image of Hastings and Carrall from 1907 to get to their site.

Hastings and Carrall

Carrall and Hastings

Looking at Pigeon Park along the city right-of-way toward Tinseltown, with the old Merchant’s Bank building to the right, and the BC Electric building, which now houses Centre A gallery on the main floor at this key Carrall Street intersection.

Early spring on Carrall Street 

Greenway Construction – Keefer & Pender

Sign on Keefer Street, beside the Sun Yat Sen Garden wall, warns of what’s to  come.

It’s great to see this construction of the Greenway has begun, but as you see, we will have some tricky walking and roadway navigation until it is completed. This, combined with the downtown construction for the rapid transit line and the temporary narrowing of Hastings street will make for a lot of congestion in the area.

Construction Signs for Carrall Greenway

Construction signs are up for the Carrall Greenway. It’s been a long time coming, and there will be quite a few congested days before the whole thing is completed. However, I know the finished greenway will be a real asset to the whole community. The first sign I saw was on Powell Street, warning of the Greenway construction – fantastic! Then another day, the orange sign was on Carrall, before Keefer. This city means it this time, and we’ll see a remarkable change in the nature of the street.

The Carrall Street Stewardship Group really did include all stakeholders at the table for this one, but of course there is bound to be a critique. I’d heard rumours that deals were made for access across the tracks – which would feed Carrall directly into the proposed and contested stadium.  One thing the Stewardship Group endorsed was the support of the SROs in the area and a commitment to housing that would not displace those who live along the street.

Naturally there will be plenty of changes to the area over the next two years. The development on the corner of Carrall and Cordova will see renovation and development in a building whose upper floors have been vacant for over 27 years, and there is definitely something going on behind the hoarding at the old Spinning Wheel location beside the Blarney Stone. When the old bank building that faces into Pigeon Park on Hastings and Carrall finally becomes the media center which has been planned, we will see a whole new Carrall Street.

Those of us who have lived here for a while were surprised by the change that the two way street brought to us. Imagine the impact of the Greenway. Can’t wait to see how this greenway functions on this remarkable Vancouver street, which is a microcosm of Vancouver history and identity.

Names…Carrall and Hastings

Intersections call history and future to our minds even as we sit just waiting for the light to change. The light always seems red at Carrall and Hastings, forcing a pause, asking you to notice. It demands an answer or a recognition. It’s a bear rustling in the bushes just out of your sight. It’s the possible animal shadow in the woods at night. It’s a familiar face disappearing in the crowd. It’s the history. It’s the past, it’s the future, it’s the poetry we ignore as we search for numbers and time, money and truth. Carrall and Hastings. The first of these to call. The strongest call, in many ways. The intersection isn’t just a place where traffic flows meet. Intersect is to pierce or divide at the point of crossing. A boulder in the river. Here. Carrall and Hastings.

The poetry here is Hastings, an evocative name, one of the few that actually does call something to mind. Or elicits a clever smile as those who remember their grade 9 history say ‘1066’ and all that… whatever that was. Well 1066 was a year of hardship for an elected king Harold and his soldiers, who first defeated another Harold, Hardraata by name, and at their celebration feast were called to a second war, marching across England to battle the Norman mercenaries and indentured serf-soldiers of William (the Bastard) of Normandy. And installed at the small fortress of Hastings after this time, to sit silently by as the Norman William (the Conquerer) burnt the fields and crushed the manhood of England, were those men whose surname was merely locative “de Hastings.” We don’t know, and I couldn’t make the link, but those Earls of Hastings and of Huntington generations later had a second son, a George Fowler Hastings, who would be called “Commander”.

Hastings saw action, a lot of it, once he got out of the coast guard. He commanded the Harlequin in the East Indies, Cyclops on the west coast of Africa, Curacoa in both the Mediterranean and Black Sea. After the Russian War he spent time on land (in Portsmouth) as Superintendent of the Haslar Hospital and Royal Clarence victualling yard, before queen and ocean asked him to captain the Hannibal and then finally, to come to the Pacific and home in Esquimalt. As Commander in Chief, flagship the Zealous, and later the Nore, he made his mark on our city. Stamp’s Mill was renamed Hastings Mill. And this street that cuts from downtown to Burnaby is called, after him, Hastings Street. There was even “Hastings Townsite,” which various folk hoped would become the real town. Thus we would all leave the rowdy unshaven men in Granville/Gastown. Those more civilized folk would inhabit the Vice Admiral’s town and not the town of vice.

There is a second stanza to this one, for our Admiral cuts and separates and breaks the flow of Carrall as it stretches from waterside to waterside. And here at the intersection of Hastings and Carrall, we see the history of war and famine, a scorched-earth of conquered man. And where Hastings may have brought it down, does Carrall lift them up? From waters edge, R.W.W. Carrall, a humble Ontarian doctor working in Ladysmith, BC, was one of three important men chosen to do the hard sell of Confederation between British Columbia and Ottawa. This Robert William Weir, a patriotic Canadian of epic proportions, spent a deal of time at war himself. He volunteered as a contract doctor for the Union side of the American Civil War, serving three years as a surgeon in military hospitals in Washington DC and New Orleans before requesting release from service. He returned to medical practice on Vancouver island. In his spare time, he engaged in local politics, organized a brass band and attended the Masonic Hall in Nanaimo. His street, and soon his greenway, unites waters, a tiny echo of his dream of a united Canada stretching coast to coast.