It is hard not to stop short when you walk by the Nestor's Coffee bar in Vancouver's Arbutus Mall. Some people might do so when they smell the java, or see the Nestor's sign that tells them the business was established in 1929. That makes it the second oldest coffee shop in Vancouver, behind the much more famous Murchie's. There was a time when four Nestor's shops dotted the city, but now there is just one left. But most people would not stop to reflect on how this business got overtaken by big franchise operations.
No, what makes them stop is the owner, who sits quietly painting a portrait while waiting for customers to arrive. He's being doing it for years - and his abilities grow whenever his business gets slow. Coffee Studio 
You probably have seen the various ways cities try to deal with graffitti art. Much of it is viewed, quite rightly, as an annoyance, a defacement of public and private property. So Vancouver and other cities spend alot of money hiring people to pressure wash it away or paint over it with some neutral colour. Utilities have adopted the habit of covering their unsightly public boxes with more pleasing plastic photo wraps of green shrubbery. It dissaudes some of the taggers, though not all. 
One backstory of the annual Hope in Shadows photography contest concerns a little incentive people get to participate. For eight years, the Pivot Legal Society has sponsored this event - handing out a few hundred throw away cameras to people in the downtown eastside and asking them to take pictures of their community. When they hand in the cameras after three days and used up all the film (I was surprised they still make film throwaways), each competitor gets five bucks. Many people confess that's what drew them to the photo contest in the first place. In a place where many people are constantly broke, five bucks is five bucks and their pictures might win a prize for more money. 
The Dutch Master, Rembrandt, is so revered in art circles that his paintings sell for millions of dollars. But his influence also can be seen every day on television screens. All of the camera operators I've worked with over the years are very familiar with "Rembrandt Lighting", a technique that uses key and fill lights to emphasize one side of a subjects face on the screen. The idea, traced back to Rembrandt, is that this lighting allows viewers to focus better on a subject and listen better to what they have to say. Apparently, it puts people at ease.
It is one thing to go into an art museum and see some of the remarkable creations people have made throughout history. But it is something else again to go to an Art Auction house and check out what is for sale. That is quite an education to try to figure out why one painting might go for, say, ten thousand dollars and another for two million smackers. Museums generally do not deal with such crass matters as what people think a painting is worth, at least openly. 
He is one of the most celebrated artists in Canada, so when I was offered the chance to meet Robert Davidson I jumped at the chance. His Haida artwork, sculptures, carvings, paintings, prints, jewellery can be found in museums and galleries around the world. This week the Vancouver Art Gallery named him the recipient of its Audain Award for lifetime achievement. 
My father in law, who lives in the U.S., is addicted to a weekend TV show called Book Time. In it, a fellow talks with an author for at least an hour about a latest novel or non-fiction work he or she has written. Just the two of them. Paul, my father-in-law, loves the show because he has lived his life in the world of ideas and two people thrashing out ideas on TV is, to him, pretty good theatre. 
The trouble with doing a story about neon signage in Vancouver during the day is .... (fill in your answers here). 
You could scratch your head over this one. Here was yet another glorious dry night in Vancouver. It was the kind of evening that had brought out hundreds of thousands of people all weekend long. But on this Monday, the streets suddenly emptied out the moment the sun went down. I do not think this is a case of Olympic fatigue. Either almost everybody who wanted to head downtown had already done so, or they were seated in front of their own TV sets watching Moir and Virtue win gold in Ice Dancing. I suspect the latter. 
Imagine this. You fall in love with your adopted country and decide to create a big monument to express your patriotism. You drive all the way across the country towing it on a trailer. Your destination is Vancouver. Your goal is to give your monument to the city as a gift during the Olympics. But once here, you discover the city has no time to talk to you because the Olympics are about to begin and it has just installed dozens of big pieces of art throughout the city. How would you feel? That, in a nutshell, is the story of a man I met in Stanley Park. What do you think of his sculpture? 
I once read a rather literary defence of drinking alcohol that pointed out that beer and wine were, along with bread and cheese, the very first processed foods, with a history extending back thousands of years. "When I drink beer," intoned the writer, "I commune with the ancients." 
Now here's a bit of detective work for you to work on. B.C.'s Lieutenant-Governor, Steven Point, was walking along a Victoria beach last year when he came across an old log. Someone had obviously been working on it - trying to carve it into a canoe. But from all the wear and tear and rocks embedded in it, the job had clearly been abandoned decades ago.
