Urban Vancouver

Welcome to my Urban Vancouver blog

By rosslaird on June 16, 2004 - 1:14am

I'm a writer -- and if you've seen "Wonder Boys," the finest film about writing in a long while, you know the mantra: A Writer Writes.

So here I am. And elsewhere, too (on the weblog at my own site). I'm writing for Urban Vancouver because this town is my home, like the Springsteen song says. This is where, more than a hundred years ago, my grandparents came to live in a small house on Davie street (across from what used to be Hy's Mansion) and rowed across to West Vancouver for camping trips.

I've lived here all my life, and I've come to know this city. I've been inside the secret World War II gun turrets on the UBC grounds (designed to halt the feared Japanese invasion). I know where the walled-up rail tunnel is near GM Place, and why there's another tunnel that runs all the way from the main post office building to the waterfront.

I know the best place to spot aliens (at a certain location on Granville Street), and I know exactly where the secret, unmarked (not even an address) cheque-clearing building is on Main Street. Millions of cash dollars pass through there every day.

I know there's a huge aquifer beneath VanDusen Gardens, and I know that the architect who built the Sun Tower fell to his death down the spiral staircase he designed. I know lots of things about this city. And I worked at Expo 86. No greater initiation into the life of this city could ever be had.

In this blog, I'll write -- as another mantra goes -- what I know. Vancouver. Interesting events, good restaurants, social and communal themes. Books, movies. You know the drill. I may even reveal the secret location of the lost attack sub.

This is my city. And yours. We've chosen to be here, within the strange, surreal, and irresistable orbit of the greatest place on earth.

I'll write about that orbit, as the mood catches me, in small snippets or in larger articles and stories centered on the urban life. This is what I do. A writer writes.