Redeemed

Going back the thread about the damned ugly whale-things appearing all over town, it's worth mentioning in fair counter-point that the city has over the past couple of days started putting up the summer banners along Georgia and Granville, and they are genuinely interesting. I noticed the first of them yesterday on my way to work. The 1100 block of W. Greorgia features banners that are of the MacMillan Bloedel Building (i.e. "the waffle"), the 1000 block (ironically, since this is the block the waffle building is on) doesn't have banners of the waffle building, but of what I recognised to be the stairs by the waterfall off Robson Square/the provincial courthouse. From work I couldn't tell exactly what the ones further east on Georgia were of, but tonight walking home from the Warhol opening (thanks again to miss_tease for the tickets!) I realized they were of the Waterfall building on W. 2nd Ave., and clued in that all the banners were of Arthur Erickson designed buildings around town. In front of our apartment the banners feature the Museum of Anthropology and elsewhere I saw ones of the quad at SFU. I checked on the city's website and sure enough, it is in fact a tribute to Arthur Erickson.

This, I think, is fabulous. Unlike the usual let's-slap-on-some-salmon-bears-and-killer-whales "West Coast" "Super-Natural B.C." approach to making crap "uniquely Vancouver", this is something that is utterly, genuinely, and truly uniquely Vancouver. Vancouver is a city, not a forest. There are no bears wandering down Howe Street. Salmon do not leap out of the sewers under Davie Street. Since the Vancouver Aquarium ended it's killer whale programme in 2001 when Bjossa was moved to Sea World in San Diego, you're not likely to see a killer whale anywhere in the city either. Cities are made of buildings and people. If you want to live in a forest, move to Youbou.