Homeless in Vancouver: No full moon but I found the next best thing

The evening here in Vancouver has been so pleasant and so ominous looking.

I  really wanted a photo of the crescent moon, sharp against the deepening azure blue sky. But the dark clouds slowly closed in like velvet curtains—I finally had to give up the chase after 10 blocks and two storeys.

Instead I stopped for a bite at McDonald’s.

But I hadn’t quite given up on my quest for an evening photograph.

After locking up my bike and trailer I took photos of the intersection of West Broadway and South Granville, looking west toward the clock tower that dominates the southwest corner.

This jagged pile of bricks is occasionally bad at telling the correct time, particularly when we all change to and from Daylight Saving. On the other hand, it will celebrate its 30th anniversary next year, making it the closest thing to a landmark the 1980s could give to the 21st century in this part of town.

I needed the whole view, not the hole view

As I fired off shot after shot in a careful row-on-row raster of the sky toward creating a panoramic view, a fellow tried to engage my attention by asking me the following rhetorical question:

“Taking a picture of the full moon, eh?”

Moving my eye from the camera but trying not to move the camera so much as an inch, I fixed him with such a baleful look that he hastily reexamined his assumptions without additional prompting.

“Oh, that’s the clock!” was all he said before he hurried on his way.

Getting to interact with the residents is one of my favourite things about being a homeless person in Fairview—they’re all so friendly and I’m such a people person.

In fact, the interruption helped derail my concentration and I produced a panorama with two little black holes where I didn’t overlap my shots properly. Fortunately I was able to return to the exact spot and take the shots needed to fill the gaps.