C’mere Go Away
June 8, 2016
Vancouver
Fur lifejacket, for fabulous shipwrecks
January 18, 2016
I made this fur lifejacket partly in homage to Meret Oppenheim, one of the founders of surrealism and most famous for her “Object in Fur,” a fur teacup and spoon. Oppenheim is yet another woman artist who did not receive the credit or status she was due.
Harvey Molotch’s “The City as Growth Machine”
November 12, 2015
Sociologist Harvey Molotch
“A city and, more generally, any locality, is conceived as the areal expression of the interests of some land-based elite.”
Harvey Molotch‘s seminal 1976 article “The City as Growth Machine”—which is equally applicable today—just happened to be published the same year of the UN Habitat Conference on Settlements that took place in Vancouver (and is the subject of my upcoming book).
…release and just feel the weight of the world on your back and it’s crushing you
Just breathe, your life means nothing and your children’s lives are worth nothing and the only thing that matters is the almighty dollar
Yoga instructor:
“OK good, now hinge at the hips but don’t flip the tailbone and feel that stretch right from the heels to the tips of the fingers and come into the present moment, and dog stretch, and don’t think about this town, and if I see one more man with a bun, not a ponytail but an honest to god bun with an honest-to-god SCRUNCHIE and those birkenstocks like he’s some kind of homeless samurai… And he’s the one turning me down!
Whoa Canada
October 14, 2015
Whoa Canada is a film by the young activists who brought us “Shit Harper Did” during the 2011 federal election. It’s a really unsettling tour through the Canadian security state, with great cameos by Edward Snowden, Pam Palmater & many others, all gathered together in one excellent compendium.
NeverHome – refugees in Canada, & Aylan Kurdi, the child who never made it here
September 3, 2015
“Between 2010 and 2014, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees found that Canada dropped from fifth to fifteenth in the list of refugee-receiving industrialized countries.”
This fact about Canada’s failure to take in its share of refugees, and about the way it imprisons refugees in Canada for years on end, with children being born and growing up in jail, comes from the excellent website NeverHome.ca.
Weather
August 30, 2015
Gastown poster – 1960s or 1970s style
July 4, 2015
Because of my research on a 1976 event, people keep bringing me things from that general era. Thanks to my friend Resi for finding this in her mother’s house and bringing it to me yesterday.
Categories:
British Columbia,
Canadian design,
graphics and signage,
Uncategorised,
urban planning,
Vancouver
Compulsive restaurant decor commentary
June 27, 2015
The receipt says October 21, 2013. I was at a local restaurant (which shall remain nameless) with two architect girlfriends. As I looked over the restaurant’s faux-Victorian, Yukon gold rush brothel decor (readers of this blog know is something that has been irking me for a while) I asked for their opinions.
Categories:
architect,
British Columbia,
Canadian design,
design,
interiors,
Uncategorised,
Vancouver
More colonial craft
June 25, 2015
Once you start seeing something, it’s suddenly everywhere (and it doesn’t help that people keep sending me examples). After noticing that we seem culturally obsessed with our colonial settlement of this city/province/country/continent right now, and that this pioneer DIY craft style has spread as far afield as Brisbane and Berlin, based on what people have written me, I feel compelled to keep collecting it.
Categories:
British Columbia,
craft,
design,
DIY,
graphics and signage,
politics,
Uncategorised,
Vancouver
