Viaduct

An old photo. A new project. A bit over a week ago Meg and I decided to embark on our own little chronicle of East Van - its institutions, its food, its history, its people, its struggles and celebrations and possibilities. Viaduct, we’re calling it, though viaducteast is its web-name.

Why viaduct? Well, the Georgia Viaduct is a known marker of one’s entry into the east side, and the former site of Hogan’s Alley, a hugely important but too-often forgotten working class district, and for a long time a centre for Vancouver’s black community. But also - and from the site’s own description - ”a viaduct is a bridge for carrying traffic. It is also a journey over water, a deviation from a path, a step astray, or the practice of traveling.”

And that sounded like what we wanted, that sounded like our community, and that sounded like us.

This all started - as so many of Meg and my plans do - with a lazy Sunday in bed, drinking coffee and chatting about this’n'that. We talked about those places that define the east side for us; we talked about gentrification, and the loss of those places; we talked about the ones that somehow seem to hang-on against all odds; we talked about the fact that, no matter how much the yuppies move in, the east van locals refuse to be moved. (All while recognizing, of course, that each of us fits not only the category of east van locals, given our long histories and roots in working class communities, but also the category of yuppies, as we’ve had a number of years in well-paying jobs that grant us even more economic and cultural privilege than we were born with.)

And so we’re off, the site now up and running with its first post - the story of our dinner last night at The Brave Bull’s House of Steaks on the corner of Hastings and Clark. Yeah, that place. Yeah, there really is food in there.

We’ve got quite a list growing in our heads about what to add -  more restaurants, old theatres, community gardens, pubs and lots of things we’ll leave unsaid til we do our visits, collect some photos and write our stories. And our friend Tammie may well be joining the fun too, so we’re quite hopeful that we can get something going here that captures this part of the world, at least as seen by a few of its  radical “participant-observers”, as we say in sociology-speak. 

For now, you can see the site in its infancy and decide for yourtself if you want to stop in for a bite at the Bull. We certainly hope you’ll visit us on-line periodically to see what we’re up to. And if you have suggestions for East Van places to visit or myths to explore, or want to jump on board and join this little collective-in-the-offing, just give us a holler and come on in.