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UTown@UBC: A part of or apart from campus?

Post author By Claudia Goodine
Post date September 14, 2010
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There’s no signpost stating “Welcome to UTown@UBC,” but the growing community is easy to recognize. Wander far enough southeast at UBC, past the music blaring frat houses and student buzzing residences, past the cold, sterile-looking Health Sciences buildings, and there are post-card worthy neighourhoods made up of elegant condos, tree-lined bike paths, immaculately trimmed hedges and kids, lots of kids.

“I never knew how many kids lived on UBC,” said Saangeeta Lalli, a volunteer at the Annual Barn Raising event that took place on Saturday at the Old Barn Community Centre in the heart of UTown@UBC.

The centre, built in 2007, is neither old, nor a barn. Its name and design were inspired by an old barn that existed in the same spot in 1920, when UBC’s land was being cleared by Clydesdale horses. Today it is home to the University Neighborhood Association in charge of running the community.

Families were out enjoying the festivities on the grassy park outside the centre, despite ominous sprinkles of light rain. Sights of baby-strapped and stroller-pushing parents looking relaxed, of colorful balloons and face-painted children were everywhere. Joyful fiddle harmonies from the Celtic Folk band Blackthorn provided a fanciful backdrop as kids played and parents socialized between lining up for the BBQ, riding the horse-pulled-carriage, and checking out information booths. The event, like the community, seemed to be all about the kids.

“I moved to UBC for my son, who goes to Lord Byng,” said Rocio Escalona who works for the UNA.

Meanwhile, Tim Fijal, who runs Little Mountain Campus Academy located in the UBC Village, said that many Korean and Chinese parents like to expose their children to the university environment hoping for an “osmosis-like affect on their intelligence.” Fijal’s literacy tutoring programs are popular among Korean and Chinese families who make up a significant portion of the residents in UTown.

So how much of a connection is there between these communities and the rest of UBC? The student-run booths showed the UNA connecting with pockets of the student body that can help fulfill their stated mission of providing a “sustainable residential community.” These included the Beaty Biodiversity Museum and Sprouts, which delivers local organic produce to UBC residents by bicycle.

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Searching for a Place to Stay

Post author By Vinnie Yuen
Post date September 13, 2010
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While apartments and townhouses are in the process of being built, homeless individuals in the area of Marpole struggle to find a place of refuge.

“Rezoning Application”, said a glaring yellow sign stood in front of the large Safeway parking lot on Granville Street. At 3pm in the afternoon on Saturday, September 11th, a homeless man in a black hoodie laid underneath this bright-coloured board. He glanced up briefly to look at others passing by or reading the sign, and then quickly went back to sleep.

The Marpole Safeway is a locus for activity. It is the only large chain grocery store in the area. Families shop here for groceries. The homeless often beg for change in front of its entrance and hang out in the parking lot.

According to the sign, there are plans for the Marpole Safeway to be re-developed. This project is being conducted by the City of Vancouver Planning Department Rezoning Centre. According to the website displayed on the sign, this project involves “redevelop[ing] the site with four major building elements which includes replacement of the Safeway grocery store on Granville Street, a 24-storey rental tower, a 14 storey market condominium tower, and a 9-storey slab building consisting of townhouses at street level and condominium units above.” This project is considered under the Short Term Incentives for Rental Program, which responds to low vacancy rates and the lack of new purpose-built rental housing.

A few months ago, the ATM machines inside the Bank of Montreal branch at Granville Street and 67th Avenue were removed and replaced by a machine outside the building. A customer service representative said that there was a problem with homeless people sleeping inside the bank in front of the machines, and customers could not get access them.

Laura Poon, Manager of Customer Service at the HSBC branch a block away, said that they do sometimes discover homeless people sleeping inside the bank in front of the ATM, especially when the weather is cold.

Rick Hofs, the homeless man on 70th and Granville said there had been trouble in the past with the Royal Bank branch in the neighbourhood, as “guys from downtown” would sleep in there. An employee inside this branch, Stephanie Merinuk, said this problem happened a few years ago, and they no longer had this problem.

Hofs said he usually sleeps behind the stores on Granville Street in his blue sleeping bag.

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Collective Arts in the midst of Gentrification

Post author By Krystle Alarcon
Post date September 12, 2010
1 Comment on Collective Arts in the midst of Gentrification

Looking for something interesting to do on the corner of Fraser and Kingsway, it is easy to gravitate towards the dainty French bistro, Les Faux Bourgeois. But the sound of boisterous laughter and beer bottles chiming across the street was more intriguing, even though it appeared as just another thank-goodness-it’s-Friday student party. Having asked a cheerful stander-by smoking, it turns out the event was a record release of a local musician, and the unlabelled beer they were sipping was home brewed and cost 3 bucks.

The pencilled-in text on the door of 648 Kingsway speaks for itself of the penny pinching nature of the place, which reads, “Toast: Fine Arts and Portrait Studio.” The space was decorated with mounted film photographs and withering red velvet couches nestled in the corners. About a dozen of 20-somethings sprawled across the room. One of them, Charlie Latimer, is the founder of the Toast Collective, a non-profit arts collective who runs DIY (do it yourself) workshops and provides space to local emerging artists.

Latimer, a tenant who lives above the space, said the initiative was borne out of a weariness from the place constantly changing to different businesses. “First, it was a vintage boutique, then a dollar store, then at some point it was a church,” he recalled. A UBC student in Global Resource Systems, Latimer is an art enthusiast who had several artist friends who were willing to pool their money together and indeed, “make something good of the space.”

The capacity building is obviously working, as the photograph installation of the night was for The Dark Room Co-op, just beside Toast, on 652 Kingsway. The collaborative exhibit, entitled Agent Silver, was officially launched Saturday. The work of 12 film photographers who are themselves members of the co-op were featured. The live musicians had to pay a small fee, but founder Tamara Lee did not collect any commissions from the profits made from sales of the photographs, a rare agreement for an art studio.

Seeing the contrast between Friday’s casual CD launch with homemade beer and Saturday’s photo exhibition with white wine goes to show how two spaces can be transformed and linking with your neighbour proves a more effective business strategy than competing with each other. Membership for the Toast is $25 annually and as low as $48 per month for the Dark Room Co-op , rates that rival their industries’ exuberant prices. But the two collectives manage to make rent every month. If only other businesses would apply the same self-sustaining, communal strategy to combat gentrification, Vancouver might not always have the dual nature of extremely rich or filthy poor.

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Knotty but Nice

The West End of Vancouver is an area of tremendous contrast. It is an area where within minutes one is able to walk directly from an elderly populated diner to Pumpjack Pub, a gay bar only three blocks away.

Yet while initially these unusual images evoke the thought of “contrast,” if one walked through the Davie Village the contrast of the situation quickly fades, and the terms “convergence” and “acceptance” possess more significance.

At closer observation, an elderly gay couple strut contentedly holding hands smiling at a young straight gay couple waiting at the bus stop.

In the heart of the Davie Village, sitting on a bench while acknowledging everyone that walked by sat a 75-year-old man, Gary Resdin. Resdin has lived and retired in Vancouver’s West End with his boyfriend of many years.

“Everyone blends in here: the transgendered, the young and even the homeless,” said Resdin.

When asked about the relationship between the gay and elderly communities he said, “there is a nice flow here. It really does feel safe and civil.”

Elderly gay and lesbian communities such as Gary Resdin have been a demographic group that have been virtually ignored. Programs and events for the gay and lesbian community are fairly common in today’s modern environment but are not often targeted at senior citizens.

Fortunately, Qmunity, the West End’s LGTB Resource Centre, seeks to support older gays and lesbians through a variety of intergenerational activities, illuminating the sexual liberation of the area itself.

Out of an immense schedule outlining a series of activities and workshops held by Qmunity was a weekly knitting club, or as they more enjoyably like to refer to themselves as “The Knotty Knitters.”

The Knotty Knitters are a Sunday knitting club with an overarching goal to advocate support and acceptance for the elderly gay community and generate generational assimilation. As everyone passed around varying colors of yarn while complementing the oatmeal cookies in which one woman had brought in, the atmosphere remained pleasant.

Ranging from the elderly gay man from Nova Scotia to a first-time young Asian knitter, the conversation then flooded with interesting personal anecdotes lasting until the late afternoon.

While the generationally diverse group of knitters sat peacefully knitting and teaching others, the ambience and outlook of the West End’s population became clear: it is not about how old you are, but how you experience your age.

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A Brief Encounter with Rick—a homeless man in Marpole

Post author By Vinnie Yuen
Post date September 12, 2010
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Despite being a 30 minute drive from the Downtown Eastside, a visible homeless population roam about in Marpole amidst the ethnic restaurants, chain coffee shops, banks, and grocery stores on Granville Street between 60^th and 70^th Avenue.

On this cloudy Saturday afternoon, Rick Hofs sat against the brick wall of the Royal Bank of Canada branch on the corner of Granville Street and 70^th Avenue. He watched the passerbys as he smoked his cigarette.

Hofs spoke in a slow, calm manner as he told his story. He exposed a set of brown teeth with large missing gaps. Hofts is originally from Hope and came out to Vancouver to find employment a few years ago. He worked as a carpenter, but could no longer work when he began having seizures. He said has had numerous blood tests done, but he is not yet cured. “I’ve had so many blood tests, I almost have no blood left in me!” Rick joked.

Hofs compared himself with other homeless people who sometimes come from Downtown. He said that the “guys from Downtown” usually cause a “ruckus” and are often on drugs. “I don’t do that,” Rick said with bloodshot eyes.

A group of homeless men chatting boisterously on benches in front of the Safeway parking lot. Hofs said that they have been drinking for the past few hours. He advised others, especially young women, not to go over there, as they will most likely be subject to their “verbal abuse”. “You don’t deserve that,” Hofs said to this student journalist.

A woman sat in front of the Liquor Store entrance that shouted, “Spare change?”, whenever someone walked by. Hofs told me that he likes to take on a more passive approach than this woman. “I mean, I’m here. You know why I’m here,” he said.

When asked if he is able to make a living in the neighbourhood, Hofs shrugged and said, “I survive.” He likes it here in Marpole, describing it as a real “community.”

A woman drops off a bag with oranges, apples, and a big bottle of V8 juice. When asked who the woman was, Hofs shrugged and said it was just someone in the neighbourhood.

Hofs said he regularly hangs out here, up against the north wall of this Royal Bank of Canada branch.

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Welcome

Welcome to the first annual launch of the ThunderBlogs, a writing hub for the UBC School of Journalism’s intrepid first-year beat reporters. From Kitsilano coffee shops to the bustling Punjabi Market in Vancouver’s Sunset neighbourhood, follow our student bloggers as they hit the streets and explore the ins and outs of Vancouver’s many diverse communities.