LGBT+

Could East Vancouver get a permanent Dyke Chilling Park sign?

by Craig Takeuchi on August 16th, 2018 at 11:08 AM
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      Vancouver has Dude Chilling Park—but will an LGBT version be next?

      A temporary Dyke Chilling Park sign was installed on August 4 on the day of the Vancouver Dyke March and Festival at Grandview Park on Commercial Drive in East Vancouver.

      A petition has been launched to request for the sign to be permanent installed as an art installation at the park to "support the value and importance of recognizing queer space".

      While Vancouver's West End has rainbow crosswalks and the Jim Deva Plaza to mark the neighbourhood as a historic and current site of LGBT communities, this sign could serve, as the petition points out, "as an acknowledgement of this historical place, as a gesture of solidarity, and a gift of visibility to our marginalized community".

      Numerous LGBT events such as Eastside Pride, the annual Vancouver Dyke March and Festival, and the Stonewall Festival have taken place at the park for several decades.

      The temporary sign gained support on social media. 

      The sign riffs on the Dude Chilling Park sign that was installed in 2012 as a prank by artist Viktor Briestensky at Guelph Park on Brunswick Street in Mount Pleasant.

      As a result of an online petition launched to save the sign, the Vancouver Park Board made the sign permanent in 2014.

      Unfortunately, the sign has been the repeated target of vandalism and theft.

      However, the sign even attracted the attention of TV host Jimmy Kimmel.  

      Vancouver park commissioner Sarah Blyth and Dustin Bromley, who launched a petition to save the sign, unveiled the Dude Chilling Park sign on February 27, 2014.
      Doug Sarti

      There's no word yet if Richmond's West Dyke, South Dyke, or West Dyke Recreational Trail could be claimed as LGBT spaces as well.

      You can follow Craig Takeuchi on Twitter at @cinecraig or on Facebook. You can also follow the Straight's LGBT coverage on Twitter at @StraightLGBT or on Facebook.
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      Craig Takeuchi

      @Cinecraig

      The urban beastie otherwise known as Craig Takeuchi is a UBC BA (art history/film studies) and MFA (Creative Writing program, with a screenplay thesis) graduate who has had his fiction and non-fiction work published in numerous local and national publications. He's covered a wide range of topics...

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