Graffiti is scribbled throughout the city, although civic and private crews do a fairly good job of keeping it under control. However, all hell is allowed — or even encouraged — to break loose in a small pocket of a semi-abandoned industrial zone just east of Main Street, around Station Street and Prior Street (East Vancouver).
Here, on almost every surface — cement, wood, corrugated iron, and Dumpster — taggers and so-called graffiti artists have gone to work.
The cumulative effect is, for better or worse, a kind of outdoor graffiti gallery.
A few buildings have been spared. The 1919 neo-Classical Pacific Central Station (“50 Station Street), where Via Rail, Amtrak, and long-distance bus services operate, has been either zealously guarded or instantly repainted. The historic Ivanhoe Hotel, always a trouble spot in the heart of graffiti-ville, has been transformed into a low-budget backpacker’s haven, the Central Station Hostel (1038 Main Street, 604-681-9118), and at last visit had a gorgeous new coat of paint, with not a tag to be seen.
However, every other building or wall within a two- or three-block radius, and particularly eastward into the railway warehouse district, is plastered with this deliberately cryptic form of expression. Interest-ingly, the Cobalt Hotel (917 Main Street), which in the past competed with the Ivanhoe for notoriety, recently installed a large sign drawn in the universal script of graffiti aficionados that reads “Vancouver’s Hardcore Bar.” Among the victims of graffiti-ville is a small neo¬Classical bank building, long abandoned at the corner of Main Street and Prior Street.
If you doubt anyone ever sees this stuff, take a look at the hoardings on Prior Street, dutifully plastered with multiple posters for indie music events. Or hang about on Station Street at dusk, or in mid¬afternoon, and witness the quiet deals taking place.
Another feature of the area is a memorial to the fourteen female engineering students shot on December 6, 1989, at the University of Montreal. Titled Marker ofChange, the large circle of fourteen stone benches is graffiti-free. It’s set among the trees of Thornton Park, directly across from Pacific Central Station, and was the subject of enormous controversy during the planning process.
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