East Van Exists!

On Friday, the Monument For East Vancouver was erected a few blocks from where I live. Vancouver artist, and East Van raised, Ken Lum created it as part of the Olympic and Paralympic Public Art Program. The sixty-foot structure is shaped like a cross, with EAST verticle and VAN horizontal intersecting at the A. It’s a familiar graffiti image to most long time residents of the east side of Vancouver and, some say, a gang symbol that belonged to bunch of up-to-no-good working class kids that liked to rough up the rich west side kids. From what I’ve gleamed, the gang had a couple of tough guys, rumoured to have joined a biker club, and a reputation as racist but it doesn’t compare to today’s gun toting, armoured SUV variety. It fizzled out in the eighties and much of the gang activity has left for the suburbs, but east siders, wanting to differentiate themselves from the white washed west side, adopted the symbol, which usually includes the word “rules”.




The piece is as controversial as art should be. The Jesus lovers and haters object to the use of a cross, especially one with a gang insinuation. Others are afraid it will scare away the tourists and wealthy neighbours. Some think it’s just fugly.

Vancouver has long been divided by east and west, historically the upper classes reside along the water, with the sailboats and the seawall, while the east is working class and rims the port. The east has long history of being overlooked. In the seventies, when the NDP first came to power in BC, Premiere Barrett, angered that only the schools on the west side had gymnasiums, made it a priority to a build gymnasiums in schools in the east. East Vancouver has become relatively affluent since then, but public art still remains something found in the west.

Until recently, if you visited Vancouver and consulted the tourist sites you would not have any information about the east side. Most erroneously associate it with the notorious downtown east side, despite the fact that a million dollar loft owner in Gastown has a much closer proximity to the human horror show than anyone living on the east side. To me, the Main Street and Commercial Drive areas of the east side are two of the most vibrant interesting neighbourhoods in the city. Both a ten-minute cab ride from the centre of Vancouver, they are full of unique restaurants and shops with a vibrant street life. You can’t throw a rock in my neighbourhood without hitting a musician or filmmaker or visual artist. (Of course, you may also hit a mom with a stroller the size of a Volkswagen or the panhandler with the pigeon on his head.) It’s about time East Van got some attention.

The Monument For East Vancouver is at the corner of Clark Drive and Great Northern Way. It is on the hillside beside a busy three-way intersection of the major truck route from the port south and an artery to the west. It borders the train tracks and the light industrial area that divides downtown from the east side. It's a gritty, graffiti riddled site which evokes of the rough east side's past. The letters face the west and, when the lights that form each letter and the cross are lit at night, it is visible to many areas of the west, virtually none in the east. It isn’t a piece that east siders can sit on a bench and eat their lunch beside, or even see unless they go west, but it’s definitely provocative rising up to warn that it’s different over here.

Driving up the hill toward it at night I felt like I was approaching a church in a David Lynch movie. It's an interesting piece. East Vancouver is the home of many of the lefty, we don’t trust corporations and hate the Olympics, crowd but I think that they might appreciate this bit of Olympic swag.