Car Crashes into Street Lamp at Main & National during Rush Hour

It was rush hour, about 4:45 p.m., when two cars were involved in an accident which saw one car collide with a street lamp.  The accident occurred kitty corner to Pacific Station, across from the Ivanhoe Hotel.  

 
This man stood by his car, often gazing at the dent.  But he was calm. 

The street at this corner has been dug up over the past few days; there are signs in the background that contruction work is still underway.  

Firemen in the above photos push the second car involved in the accident to a parking spot around the corner.  

A fire truck, ambulance, and police paddy wagon arrived almost simultaneously, but I didn't get the impression there were serious injuries. 

In the above photo, firemen push the second car involved in the accident to a spot around the corner.

Firemen Took an Hour to Arrive at Incendio Fire a Block Away from Fire Station

DTES Enquirer Photo: Incendio restaurant below rooming house. Alexander St. is on the right.


Incendiary Incendio. A former tenant in the rooming house at 90 Alexander St. above the Incendio restaurant, has questions about the fire on Jan. 6 at 5 a.m. that left all tenants evicted. It took the fire department “about an hour to arrive” – even though there is a fire station just a block away at Main & Powell.

Tenants had evacuated, knowing that this was a real fire. Although it was not unusual for the fire alarm to go off in the building, says a tenant, "This time the sprinkler system went off." One tenant recalls waiting and waiting outside for the firemen. "I was thinking, 'They'll be hear in a minute or two'; then I'd think, "Another minute or two, then they'll be here."

Fire damage in the kitchen of Incendio. Photo from UrbanDiner.ca

It has been pointed out that in an emergency situation, people waiting for help can have a different sense of time; they can feel that things are taking longer than they really are. But even if we take that into account, the reaction time here seems uncharacteristically slow for the Vancouver Fire Department. Any Downtown Eastsider can tell you that if a junkie overdoses on the street or somebody is having a heart attack, the VFD fire trucks often beat police or ambulances to the scene.

Even when firemen did arrive, it seemed to the tenant that they “loafed around”. Firemen tried to force open a door and then they gave up; then they walked over to a fire truck and did something there. There seemed to be “no leadership”, says the tenant. “Nobody was giving orders.” The resident described how frustrating it was to watch these firemen. “It was like, “Put out the fire! It’s over there! We all know where it is!”

Tenants believe it was a little too convenient for the offshore owner that the rooming house burned unchecked for some time before firemen dealt with it. "That's a valuable building", said a former tenant, as if that explained everything. The tenant noted that some of the suites in that building have a “million dollar view” of the harbor. The landlord would have been unable under the law to evict the current lower income tenants and 'go condo' in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. A one bedroom suite with a spectacular view was housing a couple and renting for a mere $850 per month, according to tenants.

Photo: Rooming house over Incendio restaurant at Powell & Columbia St.

Several tenants would like to move back into the rooming house. They've been told that it will be six months before renovations are finished, but they doubt they will ever be allowed to move back in. The fire was allowed to burn long enough that the landlord may be in a position to circumvent laws that curb the practice of evicting lower income tenants, doing renovations -- workmen were there yesterday doing renovations -- and then jacking up the rents. “If there is structural damage and the floors are burned,” says a former tenant, “they can say, “It’s not safe, you have to move out.” Indeed, all tenants were told to move, even though only the suites immediately above the restaurant stove, where the fire is believed to have started, were damaged.
Photo from UrbanDiner.ca

A former tenant is under the impression that after the fire started in the Incendio stove, "it went up the pipes and burned out the suites overhead". But the tenant is convinced that if firemen had arrived promptly, fire damage would have been minimal, and a mass eviction would have been unnecessary.

"Do you think maybe they weren't called right away?", I asked, suddenly catching on to what the tenant had been insinuating. The tenant would say only that there were questions. "I'm trying to let it go", said the tenant, who was a little stressed during our conversation, less than a week after being evicted and scrambling to move into a seedy hotel room on Hastings.

This isn’t the first time, firemen have had to deal with a fire in the Incendio stove. I recall walking a friend home about a year ago and finding the air in that area a bit smoky; there were particles in the air. The next day, my friend told me that the wood stove at Incendio, the one used for cooking pizza, had caught fire. The fireman were able to get the fire contained more quickly that time.

The tenant says of the latest fire. “There are ways to make a fire happen eventually; you can avoid maintaining the stove.”

"But Incendio doesn’t own that building," I said, thinking that they would have nothing to gain from the eviction of tenants. "No, they lease", said the tenant. "They'll get fire insurance. That business wasn't doing very well."

There is no solid evidence of wrongdoing against anybody. Not against the operators of Incendio, not against the offshore owner, not against the fire department who may or may not have been called promptly. It's just that evicted tenants can start thinking along the same lines as fire insurance investigators: “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

Woman Thrown Out Window of Balmoral Hotel

On Sunday, Jan. 18th, a woman is believed to have been pushed or thrown out of the 5th floor window of the Balmoral Hotel on Hastings St. near Main.

The Downtown Eastsider who mentioned the incident didn't know much about it, but he said, "Her picture is all over the place." He was referring to the photocopied photo of an aboriginal woman on bulletin boards around the Downtown Eastside, announcing a memorial.

Man Jumps from Third Floor of Ivanhoe Hotel

As a bus was passing the Ivanhoe Hotel at Main St. and National tonight at about 10 p.m., a man came flying out the window, landing on the sidewalk. He had reportedly jumped from the third floor window of the hotel where he had a room.

Police and ambulance workers arrived on this foggy night and the body was covered with a white sheet. Yellow police tape cordoned off the scene, but the Main St. door of the Ivanhoe Pub remained open and customers continued to go in and out.

A man who lives in the Ivanhoe and works in the bar stood outside on the sidewalk and said of the apparent suicide victim, "It's not the first time he's tried." He said the man, whom he estimated to be around 60 years old, previously "drove into the cement barriers at the sky train". He knew the man personally as he was a "regular" in the bar and had lived in a room at the hotel for about five months. The man had previously lived in Ontario.

Photo above was taken from inside the Ivanhoe pub, looking out onto Main St. The curtains were closed but people could still peak out.

The elevator of the Ivanhoe had been out of order for a month so the man had been getting assistance from others at the Ivanhoe. "We used to help him up and down the stairs with his walker," the worker said. The worker seemed genuinely saddened by the jump, calling it "a waste of life".

Obama Flubs Lines of Presidential Oath, but Chief Judge John Roberts is to Blame

(Photo: I found this photo of Obama, who is reportedly a closet smoker, at Covenant Zone blogspot.)

When listening to Barack Obama swearing the Oath of Office this morning, I felt embarrassed for him when he muddled the lines. But when I read the transcript, I realized that it was Chief Judge John Roberts, showing off by using no notes, who first flubbed the lines and threw Obama off.

The Constitution prescribes the text: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Here's a transcript of how it was actually recited this morning:

ROBERTS: I, Barack Hussein Obama...
OBAMA: I, Barack... [Obama may have jumped in too early here to repeat his name, but Roberts then interrupted him.]
ROBERTS: ... do solemnly swear...
OBAMA: I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear...
ROBERTS: ... that I will execute the office of president to the United States faithfully... [Roberts makes two mistakes here: the word "faithfully" should come before "execute", and the word "to" the United States should be "of".]
OBAMA: ... that I will execute... [Obama repeats Roberts' mistake of failing to say the word "faithfully" before "execute". Obama nods at Roberts at this point, like a teacher prompting a student to try again.]
ROBERTS: ... faithfully the office of president of the United States... [It should be "faithfully execute" the office...]
OBAMA: ... the office of president of the United States faithfully... [Now Obama echoes Roberts' earlier mistake, saying "faithfully" after "United States".]
ROBERTS: ... and will to the best of my ability...
OBAMA: ... and will to the best of my ability...
ROBERTS: ... preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
OBAMA: ... preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
ROBERTS: So help you God?
OBAMA: So help me God.
ROBERTS: Congratulations, Mr. President.

Such muddling of the oath could lead a listener to, as George W. Bush would put it, "misunderestimate" these men.

Elizabeth Alexander's Inauguration Poem: Love but Pay the Reparations

Elizabeth Alexander read a poem at Barack Obama's inauguration today. He had invited her to write it for the occasion. The poem was called, "Praise Song for the Day".

I listened to Alexander read her poem live and the part about love stuck with me:

"What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance."

It sounded to me like she was saying, 'Love, but don't let it interfere with paying the reparations.' "

Alexander wouldn't want grievances preempted as identity politics has been a family business. She is head of African American studies at Yale. Her mother has taught Black women's history for years.

[A few minutes later, civil rights leader Rev. Joseph E. Lowery, now in his eighties, injected a particularly dated version of identity politics into his inaugural benediction. "Lord...we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back ...when white will embrace what is right."]

When Alexander was recognizing the working class in her poem, including the Black working class, who had "laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce", it reminded me of the speech former social democratic Premier Dave Barrett gave when he was announcing the BC Day holiday. I didn't hear the speech but a friend recently was reciting what he remembered of it. Barrett had apparently said this holiday was in recognition of the people who had built the bridges ...he listed types of labour done by the working class, just as Alexander did.

The left has definitely gained ground in the U.S.

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'Praise Song for the Day' - Transcript

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues.

Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.