I had a fit of morbid laughter when I saw this redevelopment banner today. The graffiti could be its Greek chorus. Do you think the condo developer actually bothered to read The Iliad before naming a building after it? Or even bothered to Google it? I guess you could style any condo as the location of ten years of vicious warfare, flaming arrows streaming past the gates, grieving women tearing their hair in anguish, the dead lying unburied, horrifying and inglorious trips to the underworld, juvenile and narcissistic gods, the death of heroes, and then ultimately the destruction and fall of Troy. Everyone loves a condo building named after a gruesome cautionary tale about fallen cities. Think of the decor potential – let alone the potential for irony! Someone should advise the strata owners that if Greeks/a large wooden horse ever knock, don’t open the gates. And the graffiti – do you think it means Troy? Or Vancouver? Or the 2010 Olympics VANOC committee? Or all three? My mother looked up at this banner darkly, after I pointed it out, and said “The Iliad… well, they’ve never read it!” Then, more hopefully: “Do you think they were being ironic?” You’d think a developer could at least have seen the Brad Pitt movie. Nearly everyone dies, I seem to remember. “Liveability!” Capricious gods! Bloody battlefields!

P.S. The boutique Iliad building is not being built on this spot. It already exists a few blocks away from this site. It’s on Homer Street, of course, but that street was not named after the blind poet. It was named after an early Vancouver lumber magnate, which makes it similar to most of our downtown streets. But let’s pretend it’s Greek, why not? I wonder what war story the condo developer will borrow for the new building to be built on this spot?  The Das Boot, maybe? The boutique Deer Hunter? And I guess this means goodbye to the William Davis Centre for Actors Study. It was housed in this building – you can see the sign at the end of the block. Davis is the Canadian actor who played The Cigarette Smoking Man on The X-Files. The character was a jerk but I bet he knew what The Iliad was about. Lastly: if you live in the Iliad building, you need this painting for your decor! It’s at the Hastings Street Value Village.

Above, the Trojan horse from the film “Troy,” starring Brad Pitt as Achilles.

Tags: accidental irony, Achilles heel, architecture, boutique Iliad, condo apocalypse, condos, corporate twits, developers bearing gifts, graffiti, Greeks bearing gifts, history repeats, illiteracy, James Schouw & Associates, rampant development, real estate, Smash the State, So this is eco-density., The Iliad, Vancouver, war of attrition

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