The battle between I just gotta be me! and Don’t mess with us! plays out in the shoe arena outside this tatami room at Koko’s. Which is more interesting, the similarities in this footwear code, or the subtle individual differences within it, or just the choice of this particular type of shoe for a sushi outing? You can read a history of Koko’s by writer Brian Fawcett. It’s an interesting, chequered Vancouver history. Photo below is from here.

Paris Shoes at 51 W. Hastings, in Vancouver, possibly 1919. If shoeboxes still looked this beautifully white, you wouldn’t have to have salespeople constantly disappearing into the back. I somehow doubt that the uniform whiteness of this bank of shoe boxes could every happen again, though, and if it did it would be some sort of high art hipsterism rather than pure utility. In 1945 this shoe shop was still in operation, and that’s Pierre Paris in front of it, below, just after the end of the war. Like so many buildings in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, the building fell into disrepair (see bottom) over the past few decades and was condemned. But it has been gutted and saved and has just been turned into condos. That’s optimistic on the developer’s part, considering that the block is even sketchier now than it was when Hastings Street was the logging skid road that gave birth to the term skid row. You can see the building’s interesting retail neighbour in the before pre-renovation shot at bottom. Lots more pictures of the building and neighbourhood are at parisblock.com. From the site:

… For over 60 years The Paris Block was home to Pierre Paris & Sons – a logging boot manufacturer and shoe retailer. Today, the Paris family company continues as Paris Orthotics on West 4th Avenue. Originally built in 1907, The Paris Block is unique in that massive iron i-beams were employed to span the entire width of the building… A mixed retail and commercial building, The Paris Block was originally known as the Eastern Building, and attracted prominent tenants from the beginning. Not long after its construction, the upper floors became the Strathcona Hotel while the ground floor was occupied by Pierre Paris & Sons in 1919. Remnants of the painted signage for both these businesses are still visible on the east and west exposures of the building.

The above location is about 2 blocks north of where I live and work, and if you walk down to the water another 7 or 8 blocks to the northwest, you’re standing on the birthplace of Vancouver. The Hastings Mill was built there in the late 19th century. Lumbermen skidded their logs to the mill along a “corduroy” road made of timbers and logs greased with fish oil. That road traveled along the stretch of Hastings Street that you see here and then down Dunlevy Street, as it’s known today. The road was lined with cheap shacks and hotels and is the origin of the term “skid row,” a distinction that I’m sure must give Vancouverites a sense of civic pride. Today Hastings Street frightens visitors from New York, but it’s not particularly unsafe as long as you’re uninvolved in its local economies; it just looks disturbing because it’s the headquarters of drug use, homelessness and prostitution. The city has continued to try to contain and concentrate those things here since the early 60s, so it’s just getting worse. That’s the Astoria Hotel there in the photo, with its relatively traumatizing beer-and-wine store and a bar that’s suddenly gone hipster and one of the best neon signs in the city and you can’t cross Hastings to buy a cheap bottle of wine there without getting propositioned by johns. I mean if you’re a girl. The empty lot to the right of the hotel has been sitting unused for years and is now, amazingly, going to the be the site of United We Can’s “SOLEfood” Urban Farm, below. It’s an excellent project and I’m volunteering to dig. Come by on Saturday! More info here, news story here and in the Globe and Mail.

You can see downtown Vancouver in the semi-distance at left. If you just keep walking west along Hastings for 15 minutes, you’re there. The mountains that you can see are north and northwest. Thank goodness for Google Street View, because it’s raining and I didn’t want to walk over and taken my own photos of this corner.

This fantastic new pendant lamp or chandelier is by our friends Propellor, an award winning collaboration of three Vancouver designers whose ridiculously beautiful studio is a few blocks from ours. The lamp was publicly launched today and while we have loved their Red Square chandelier for a long time, and would like to install it in our studio, we like this one just as much. Propellor also organizes Swell, an annual exhibition of sustainable design.