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News :: Miscellaneous |
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How I Found the Vancouver IMC |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul Kotheimer
Email: herringb (nospam) prairienet.org (unverified!)
Phone: (217)344-8820
Address: http://urbana.indymedia.org |
17 Feb 2001
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Serendipity at Cambie and Hastings |
Yesterday, it snowed in Vancouver--which, I\'m told, is rare. My host, Pille, a biologist and cybernetician, suggested I join her for her daily walk in the University Endowment Lands, a forest preserve just east of the campus of the University of British Columbia [UBC]. I was eager to get on the trail of the Vancouver IMC, but figuring that the UBC might be a good place to look for clues, I tagged along for a short walk in the woods.
I saw tall firs and stands of birch, the like of which we don\'t have in Illinois. Pille pointed out to me some amazing pathways, tree cathedrals, tree skyscrapers, a fallen ancient trunk, broken off and smoothed by rain into the exaxt shape of a huge concert harp--an accidental Brancusci. What struck me particularly along the pathways, though? NO TRASH!
Not a single bottle cap, plastic six-pack ring, fast food container, or even a cigarette butt. In the middle of a huge North American metropolis, I found this little detail an astounding testament to Canadian quality of life and to the committment to urban greenspace.
The UBC student union provided just one clue: The mandate, posted on every flyer on the lightposts and kiosks, saying \"Get your ass to Gastown!\" The public transit loop on campus gave me the rest of the resources I needed: a city map, bus route number, schedule information--I was set up.
I headed on in to Water Street, saw hipsterville and tourist town, as well as the skid row of boarded-up shops on Hastings Street, where lumpen proles (many of them alienated and dispossessed Native People) hustle heroin, pot, and sex at every bus stop. I found the famous youth hostel called the Cambie, with its expansive pub and grill, jam-packed with twentysomething scenesters and travellers. And, not knowing where to look or whom to ask next, I decided to double-check my bus route back to Pille\'s and call it a night.
Lucky thing I did double-check, too. I had gotten my bearings crossed while wandering, and would have boarded the #16 bus going the wrong way out from the city center, if it weren\'t for the assistance of the staffer at the Cambie, who sent me to the westbound corner of Cambie and Hastings Streets.
As soon as I turned that corner at Hastings, I knew I had a sure-fire lead: Right near the bus stop, I spotted the sandwich board of the Spartacus Bookstore--another amazing melange of pamphlets, \'zines, and paperbacks arranged on bare-wood racks and shelving units. I asked the staffer there, and he let me know that the Vancouver IMC was literally RIGHT NEXT DOOR. The Spartacus even hosts a reading room in their space, dubbed the Obscure Anarchist Martyr Memorial Reading Room. (The acronym, OAMMRR, makes for a fitting direct action mantra).
So, this morning, I grabbed the #16 inbound and made my way up a rough-and-tumble stairwell to the shared space of the Vancouver IMC, the OAMMRR, and TAO Communications--this last organization being \"a federation of collectives and individuals involved in radical progressive activism,\" which includes the Direct Action Media Network , the Student Activist Network , Network Services for Radical Communities, and A-Infos <www.ainfos.ca>, an \"international multi-lingual anarchist-organised newswire service.\"
Staffers there gave me a tour of the space, showed me their public access terminals (from one of which I am posting home to Urbana right now). I saw the reading room, the darkroom--a work in progress, just like ours--their meeting boards, their flyer center, their comfy chair center under the warehouse skylight. I grabbed a copy of the Sleeping Dragon Press, a quarterly newsprint publication dedicated to activist causes and news from around Canada, as well as a Co-op Radio Listener\'s Guide, the newsletter of Vancouver\'s hard-working community radio station, CFRO 102.7FM,
To top of my stack of reading material, I grabbed a flyer for Enough is Enough, an organization working against gentrification on behalf of drug-users and other residents of Vancouver\'s East Side, and a handbill advertising for Queer Revolution\'s Queer Fest (coming September 2001) and the Makeshift Manifesto, a brand new distro for records, zines, videos, and the like.
Most importantly for me as a Serious Folking Musician, I got the word that the Flying Folk Army, a local band of activist folk performers, direct action designers, and veteran protesters, are playing a show just a few blocks from here on Pender Street, tonight.
Maybe they\'ll let me sit in on a chorus of \"Hallelujah, I\'m a Bum!\" More on that next time from your roving songster and Urbana IMC\'sta. |
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Come Visit the Van-IMC |
by Jane Doe
riotbitch (nospam) ziplip.com (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
19 Feb 2001
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Visit the Vancouver Independent Media Center - open every day! Surf to http://www.vancouver.indymedia.org
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See also:
http://vancouver.indymedia.org
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