It seems to me as if the fancy area of Olympic village in False Creek downtown Vancouver has a competition of which developer will build an uglier building.
Beatty Street marks the beginning of Gastown, the only "historic" part of Vancouver...that's way prettier than what I'm gonna write about today.
Honestly, for the horrendous amount of money that the apartments in the Olympic village area sell, the developers spend exactly zero on beauty side of things. Each time I walk the seawall I look at the monotonous grey cubes and wonder: who would win the "ugliest" of them ? They would certainly all qualify.
Developers always seem to find a new spot to build upon in the already over populated Olympic village...
I'm not surprised. We live in a profit-driven world. Cash in as much as possible, spend as little as possible.
I can't think of a better song that the good ol' Depeche Mode's "Everything counts" to describe it:
Grabbing hands,
Grab all they can,
All for themselves,
After all,
It's a competitive world...
And that is why I painted the lonely abandoned 1st Mill Machinery depot on 1st Avenue. It's a marker of not so distant past with broader vistas, less grey cubes filled with $1-5M dollar apartments with literally no parking spots and way too few trees compared to the rest of this beautiful city.
It's a marker of soon to be gone view, to let way for more grey cubes, to sell to rich overseas investors (Chinese, let's say it...), that you can never afford unless you make $200k + a year.
I simply love it. It reminds me of the landscape of industrial town outskirts I grew up in, back in Czechoslovakia
I painted the sky with my fingers...
It's oil on old board that I found in garbage bin. Talk about recycling power ;)
The tilted "no stopping" sign casts a melancholic shadow of the hot summer afternoon, while skyscrapers on the opposite side of False Creek outline the panorama of Yaletown.
Life on Earth goes on, and grabbing hands keep on grabbing all they can.
Until we say "Enough is Enough!" and rewire our priorities, choices and actions.
Blessed be that day.
Much Love to all,
