happiness is a red

happiness is a red 

headband, sailor school uniform,

and a big stuffed bear

Our hosts from Van Arts take us on a field trip to Gastown, the Victorian area of Vancouver, a favorite hangout for both tourists and locals.

Brick sidewalks, brick streets, brick buildings, ornate wrought iron everywhere.

Strangely shaped narrow buildings between angled streets and red trolleys.

And, of course, round white "gaslights" clustered on iron lamp posts. It looks like the dragons are blowing bubbles!

A statue of the man for whom Gastown is named, "Gassy" Jack Deighton, a steamboat captain from Yorkshire, who opened the first saloon in the Vancouver area in 1867, which he called the Globe Saloon (perhaps an allusion to Shakespeare's Globe Theater back in England?). As a barkeeper, he was known to be quite talkative and a storyteller, hence the nickname, "Gassy." If you look closely, there's a bit of torn banner over his heart.

An iron gas cover in a carefully cut of bricks in the curved pattern of the brick street. I notice that all of these bricks are nameless, none bear the name of the brick company.

And the manhole covers are decorated with Victorian filigree.

A cyclist and a Smart car zip across a pedestrian crosswalk marked by alternating bands of cobblestones and brick. On the other side of the street, For Lease signs are plastered on every double-decker bay window. I am told that rents are almost as high or even higher than mortgage payments in this rapidly growing city.

Cobblestones provide a stronger foundation for the lamp post and a swag iron chain fence separates the brick sidewalk from the wide curbstones.

Many restaurants, including the original Spaghetti Factory with its Gastown trolley.

At the Smart Mouth Cafe, a woman takes a selfie.

The window of an interior furnishing store blends the modern striped furniture with a passerby wearing a striped top.

"Hip" fashion boutiques abound. This black skirt really is hippy!

Gastown provides an outlet Native American Artists in the numerous art galleries, everything from totem poles to original prints and paintings, stone carvings, drums, ceremonial masks, dream catchers, jewelry, native-inspired clothing and blankets. One gallery that looks particularly appealing, Hill's Native Art, features more than 1200 artists from every known Tribe and Nation of the Northwest Coast. I return the next day to buy a pair of handmade silver earrings with a whale motif and a pair of moosehide moccasins.

Something for everyone: a collection of old license plates.

And those essential phone cards, especially when you're traveling outside your server area.

Because it's a big city, grilles and locks on doors are standard.

At the end of a rainy evening in Gastown, globe lights and sparkling tree lights highlight the wet brick patterns on the sidewalk, while the red maple on the Canadian flag seems to cling tightly to its "branch."

street life staples

street life staples --

cardboard (sign, sleeping mat),

small donation cup,

backpack, blanket, towel,

umbrella, shopping cart,

one pink tulip

Coming from a small town to the big city of Vancouver, the first thing I notice, which everyone else does not seem to notice, are the homeless people. Sleeping on the sidewalk in the middle of the day or huddled under an umbrella by the bus stop in the rain. But no one is holding out a hand, just the cardboard sign and the cup on the pavement.

One evening after a generous meal, as we are walking back to our rooms in the YMCA, we spot a woman sleeping in an alley. Our teacher, Gabe, who hails from Mexico, walks up quietly and leaves his carryout container by her feet. This becomes our modus operandi while we're in Vancouver. On our last day, we eat at a Thai restaurant before driving down to Seattle. A man is sitting outside our cafe beside his two dogs, carefully covered with a blanket, reading a dogeared copy of Crossroads of Twilight by Robert Jordan, one of my favorite authors. When I hand him my extra rice, the dogs get to their feet, sniffing, but he says, "That's not for you." I'm wondering how he feeds those two big dogs, but I don't ask. Instead, I dump all of my remaining Canadian coins in his cup and say, "That's for your dogs."

Then there are the street performers. A young man with long hair playing his banjo, case open to collect donations. I like to support people like this who actually provide a service. However, I pass up the guy sporting a blue Mohawk and holding a white rabbit (better than a cardboard sign) because he doesn't look needy and he doesn't even pull the rabbit out of a hat.

I get drawn in by the man in an orange street maintenance worker's jacket. He doesn't look like an actor, but he's soon commanding an audience as he dramatically recounts an incident where a truck nearly collided with the steam-operated clock in Gastown. I'm happy to give him a tip for his storytelling. Ironically, I find out later, one of the reasons the clock was built in 1977 was to cover a steam grate so that homeless people wouldn't be able to sleep on the spot warmed by steam from the underground pipes which heat most of the downtown area.

I love the street artists, but because we're on a Van Arts Institute tour, we don't have time to stop and shop.

Some painters are happy, some are serious.

We take note of a little group of cheerful wood carvers, promising to come back when we're free.

I'm of course intrigued by this highly focused (ha, ha) photographer and models (girl and dog). Not sure who is paying whom here!

And I do take the time to purchase one flower from a smiling street vendor.

green apple, hidden

green apple, hidden

face, green scarf around the neck

of a headless man, 

green jacket, eyes shadowed by 

the brim of a cap

On a street in Vancouver's Victorian Gastown, I pass a storefront window that appears to be a gold-framed painting of a man in a bowler hat with a green apple hovering in front of his face, a large reproduction of a famous self-portrait by René Magritte. Between the portrait and the glass window, a headless mannequin in a blue suit with a green scarf around its neck appears to float in front of Magritte's shoulder. Outside the "painting," a man in blue jeans and a green jacket leans against the gold "frame" smoking a cigarette, his eyes shadowed by the brim of a cap. 
          Green apple, green scarf, green jacket. Hidden headless, shadowed. Mysterious synchrony.
          Like Magritte's painting, cryptically entitled The Son of Man. Perhaps the surrealist painter was simply referring to humanity in general, or he may have been alluding to Jesus, who is frequently referred to as the Son of man, or it could be an allusion to the apple from the Tree of Knowledge that Satan uses to tempt Adam and Eve, the first man and woman, thus ending their innocence, and causing them to hide their nakedness and flee from the Garden of Eden. But there's more subtle meaning in this painting.
          In a 1965 radio interview, Magritte had this to say about Le fils de l'homme:
At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It's something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.
          Magritte, wherever you are, can you see this wonderful serendipity of the visible that is present and the visible that is hidden?