Tuesday, January 12, 2010

No Art Allowed - VANOC

Remember this wall?
Beatty Street across from the Armories. It was filled with bright paintings, known as the Beatty Street Murals.
Colourful and vibrant on a very plain street.

But as usual, VANOC didn't want anything that tourists would see as part of Vancouver's multi-faceted identity, even though all of the original 16 paintings were commissioned by the Steve Nash Foundation, so they had them painted over with blue paint. Perhaps they were afraid of secret messages woven into that artwork by Pepsi, or Mastercard, or Telus etc. Ambush Advertising they call it in a feeble attempt to make themselves sound correct.

Just another reason for John Furlong to hang his head over the treatment of the citizens of Vancouver and their exclusion from the Winter Olympics.

Oh, by the way, that's an official Olympic vehicle parked there on Sunday.
I assume standing guard over the blue wall in case someone dares put a happy face on it.

Whoops, someone did dare to make a rather sad statement.

These kinds of attacks on our visual environment need to be followed more closely. WHO actually hired the painters to slosh over the murals? We need to know the actual names of people who follow these directions blindly and stupidly and with no concern for their own city. SOMEONE gave the order.

And it reminds me of all those glorious tall trees that were brutally chopped down on Hamilton street by Concord Pacific to make way for the new CBC studios, none of which would have interfered in any way with the construction or look. And none of which were on Concord Pacific's property.
There IS a law that says if you cut a tree down from city property, it must be replaced by a like tree. Still waiting for that and the name of the person who gave the order.
These people who have so little regard for their own neighborhood couldn't be from Vancouver. Or even live here. Could they?

see my previous post and pictures about the CBC trees - October 2006 - CBC construction, your trees or theirs?
http://caterwauls.blogspot.com/2006_10_01_archive.html

4 comments:

  1. The Vancouver "rep" couldn't even tell us what would happen if you did display a Coke or is it Pepsi sign in your window, but they did know they sent a memo out about it...I think it went like this..."If you post a sign other than Pepsi or is it Coke I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll be really, really mad at you". VANOC didn't even know about the MEMO that was about them? You can bet there will be those who will post the sign to test it out for the rest.

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  2. I read if you do post a Pepsi sign you can be fined a thousand dollars and the police can come into your house and remove it. You can also get six months in jail.Do we live in Russia?

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  3. Richard9:57 am

    John Furlong should be kicked out of Vancouver NOW!

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  4. Russia ALLOWS things now, we in North America can stop being so smug, we are FAR worse than ERussia because we PRETEND we are better because we think we have the handle on Democracy. I hate to tell you folks, but this is NOT democracy.

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