Homeless in Vancouver: The beauty of back alleys is that they just work

There may be two sides to every issue but there are at least four sides to West Broadway Avenue: two street sides and two alley sides. And often as not, the alleys are the sides that look the most interesting to me.

The street sides are lined with bland storefronts and office buildings that hide their machinelike nature behind smooth facades. This means that all the necessary piping and ducting is shunted out of sight—often to the back of the building, with the result that most buildings really look like they mean business only from the back.

In the back alleys, especially the ones off of main streets, the timeless beauty of geometry and form fitting function holds sway over fickle fashion.

I’m especially fond of all the “looks” in the northern backside of the 1100 block. Dozens of photographs later (and now two more) and I haven’t begun to exhaust all the visual possibilities.