Homeless in Vancouver: Sun-baked bricks in the morning!

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      At 8 a.m. this morning, I had my 1 millionth, 5,000th, 300th, and 42nd opportunity (give or take) to admire the three little 1920s-era brownstone apartment buildings on 15th Avenue between South Granville and Fir Street.

      Any one of them is handsome from any direction. Here they are all from the back, showing off the pixelation of their brick work and their lovely, intricate, wrought-iron fire escapes.

      The closest apartment building to us—right on the corner of 15th Avenue and Fir Street—is these days called the “Brambly” (back in 1928, it was the Roxborough Apartments). The two other are something like the “Richly” and the “If-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-affordly”.

      Who know what people thought of these kind of apartment buildings when they went up in the 1920s? Maybe back in the day they looked like dull boxes with little windows and a few obligatory touches of character.

      Eighty years later, almost every apartment building from the 1920s looks at least stately—grand and dignified.

      They also look hand-crafted, which is not something most people would say about the prefabbed glass curtain-walled condos that will inevitably replace them.

      Those are okay too, I guess—boxes with big windows.

      I bet people from the 1920s would’ve probably loved them.

      Stanley Q. Woodvine is a homeless resident of Vancouver who has worked in the past as an illustrator, graphic designer, and writer.

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