Archive for May 2006
Soulless
Years ago, I bought music here, driving in from the suburbs of Vancouver to search the bins of Black Swan for the jazz and folk cassettes I couldn’t find closer to home.
When I moved to the neighbourhood, Black Swan was long gone. For a while, the building housed the rarely open Bayswater Station cafe. Then it became Chez Moi, a French-style bistro where the food was cooked on a standard, home-model stove. The owner, whose name I never got, baked the best croissants I’ve tasted this side of the continent. Occasionally, as I waited just outside the shop for the bus, he would dash out and trade me a warm croissant for a cigarette. Chez Moi never caught on and the building, at the corner of Fourth and Bayswater in Vancouver’s Kitsilano, has been empty for months.
And soon it will be gone. It and three neighbours, also empty now, will be demolished and replaced by “soulless boxes,” the streetfront combination of ground-floor retail and a couple of stories of apartments or condos that has become the dull standard for Vancouver redevelopment.
The dash of colour — the bright reds and dark blues, and the mural that has adorned the structure for as long as I can remember — will be gone and the neighbourhood changed forever.
Damn.
(Link goes to my Flickr photostream.)
