Polis (/ˈpɒlᵻs/; Greek: πόλις pronounced [pólis]), plural poleis (/ˈpɒleɪz/, πόλεις [póleːs]), literally means city in Greek. It can also mean a body of citizens. In modern historiography, polis is normally used to indicate the ancient Greek city-states, like Classical Athens and its contemporaries, and thus is often translated as "city-state".
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In this 21st century I have no idea if Ancient Greece has any bearing in what is taught in elementary and secondary schools. The ideas of ancient Pre-Socratic philosophers and those that followed like Plato and Aritstotle are perhaps gone the way of shoelaces.

All my life I have lived in a big city (Buenos Aires, Mexico City) two small ones, Veracruz, Austin, Texas) and now in Vancouver. I could never survive more than a month in my eldest daughter’s Lillooet where she happily teaches elementary school with probably no mention of anything Greek. I could not stand not having dance, theatre, music, art galleries and the rumble of traffic.

With that out of the way, at my age of 75 I get out less and I could almost be living in Lillooet. My Rosemary and I are content (happy?) in our little Kits duplex and going to Safeway seems to be an outing.

Thanks to some concerts that I cannot resist or a friend like Ian Bateson who nags me to accompany him to art galleries I do manage to get out.

Bing Thom

Yesterday was an example of such an event, one that I will hope to make less rare.

I met up with Bateson in front of the BC Architectural Institute on Cambie across from Victory Square. We went in to see the Building Beyond Buildings – AIBC Exhibition  which runs until August 26. This is a show of models made by Bing Thom’s firm of building he designed that have been finished or are being built  around the world. There are a few that are renderings of projects not yet accepted.

The scope of the exhibit is big but the gallery is small. The buildings are beautiful but the rendering of the exhibit is colourless and sterile. Bateson and I were the only ones. The person behind the desk was a temporary. The place felt cold. Bing Thom, whom I photographed many times was a warm person with an easy smile. He told me that he taught Arthur Erickson to meditate.

I told a couple of my architect friends about the show. They did not know about it. 

The exhibit should have had red carpets and trumpets and somebody there to enthuse us about a Vancouver architect of note (now dead) and how his influence has left a firm imprint in our city.

I wonder how many people in this city are aware of the existence of the institute and its location on Victory Square kitty corner with the Dominion Building and the Cenotaph built by the firm that became Thompson Berwick and Pratt and Partners. With those three, we have a history of Vancouver’s polis all in one square.

Ned Pratt

Ned Pratt's Mondrian on Burrard

From the Bing Thom exhibit we went to the Dominion building to look up on Zvonko Markovik the gregarious building manager (on good days he might offer you some of his special slivovitz which he keeps in his desk drawer). As we left from the visit (it was before noon so we did not indulge in any spirits) I did not have the heart that some years ago the UBC School of Architecture had a presence next door in what was a small annex of its school on campus. It was there where they had a show of architecture photographs featuring the photographers who had recorded the city from its inception to its present. I was called and told (not asked) that I had relevant stuff. I did. Seeing my photograph up on the wall on the day of the opening finally made me feel (if only for a fleeting moment) that now I was part of the city of Vancouver. It had become my city because my photographs of Vancouver architects and some of their buildings were up on the wall.

Zvonko Markovik

From Victory Square we found ourselves in Sikora’s where I bought a recent recording Tango Nuevo with Pablo Ziegler (Piazzolla’s pianist for many years) and pianist Christopher O’Riley of NPR’s
 From the Top.

The music is of course the music of only one city, Buenos Aires. Listening to it much later I was in the throes of a terrible nostalgia for a city that knows and feels that it is a great city.

Bob Williams

At the Railway Club (formerly known by the few that knew, and I was one of them, The Railwayman’s Club we had lunch. The place with the longest bar in Vancouver has changed a bit since Bob Williams’s time. The model railroad that went from one side of the bar to the other on tracks suspended from the ceiling is gone as is the dart board. The round tables have been replaced by picnic style long tables. The floor is all wood and immaculately clean. But there has been one thing that has not changed. The food is good as was my chicken and corn soup. The view of Dunsmuir and Seymour from our windows is a genuine cityscape full of throngs of language students.

Ian Bateson at the Railway Club, July 28 2017

I bid Bateson goodbye and walked a couple of blocks to Macleod’s Books on 455 West Pender. Owner Don Stewart was in residence and I must confess I should have put more effort on the two pictures I took of the used books bookstore. I can honestly say that New York City has The Strand Bookstore and we in Vancouver have MacLeod’s.

Don Stewart, right, MacLeod's Books

Don Stewart who does not hide his obsession for acquiring books started in another location in 1964. He changed in 1973 to another location that suffered a big fire and has been in the present spot since 1982.

People who enter the bookstore for the first time are awed by the quantity of books everywhere. Stewarts seems to know where everything is.

A couple of years ago I discovered that the bookstore as big as it is has a basement just as big and it is, yes, full of books.

Many of the gems in my library have come from Macleod’s. One of them was a recent acquisition. I dropped in a couple of months ago and Stewart who knows his clientele went to a pile by his long window on Richards and brought me The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luís Borges. Of course I could not resist and it was marked down to $25.

Another book I went to find. I had read that 19^th century Argentine strongman Don Manuel de Rosas had been friends with Charles Darwin and that the two of them had gone horseback riding on the Argentine Pampa. Of course Stewart had Voyage of the Beagle by Darwin in an especially lovely edition.

At one time I would have defined a great city as a city with a fine daily newspaper, good bookstores and because I am a photographer a lab where you could have Kodachrome processed. This might have defined Vancouver some years ago. What is left? One very good bookstore.

Walking back on Dunsmuir to Hamilton where I had parked my car in a back alley (I have municipal plates) I passed the park (it is a hydro substation of sorts) across from Holy Rosary Cathedral. Architecture and political writer Sean Rossiter (now sadly gone with nobody to have picked up his interest in things city), told me that the park had been designed as a place for people to safely shoot up.

I drove home and passed the now two year old mess that is called Pacific at Burrard.

At home I have been thinking that what my city of Vancouver does not have besides all the stuff mentioned above is something that makes my Buenos Aires very special.

Tango & Jorge Luís Borges & Julio Cortázar

Argentina has a most interesting tradition of provincial music called folklore but unlike any other country that I can think of, Buenos Aires has its own music. Listening to any tango be it old style or Piazzolla’s Nuevo Tango I am instantly transported to Calle Corrientes and other streets and corners of my native Buenos Aires.

Tango para una ciudad (Tango for a city)

Borges and to a lesser extent by exiled-in-Paris Cortázar are classic examples of a style of writing called costumbrísmo. These are novels, stories and essays about a city, not any city but of Buenos Aires.

La Recoleta - Jorge Luís Borges

I remember that writer Lawrence Gough wrote police procedurals set here. But I don’t remember much else and there is no music of Vancouver with the only possible exception of Art Bergmann’s Hawaii.

Sure we have bike lanes but no affordable housing yet. Few if any would know about the waffle building on West Georgia or that its architect, Arthur Erickson is singly responsible for the curious twist of the Trump Tower.

Arthur Erickson - UBC Library

We live in a city with a short memory. We all know where the Golf Ball is but do we know that its architect Bruno Freschi is alive and almost well?

Bruno Freschi

We have a treasure in landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander (over 90) who is the person who contacted Moshe Safdy and told him, “Why don’t you and I enter that competition for the Vancouver Public Library?” And she is now working to install her original garden on the roof of that library.

Who knows that the CBC Building on Hamilton was designed by Paul Merrick and that it won a Governor General’s award?

Paul Merrick's CBC and the beautiful skylights that were removed.

Who would know that Pyatt Hall and the Orpheum Annex are modern concert venues of the future and that they are designed by bingham + hill architects?

Every time I drive past Brentwood I look up in awe at the Brentwood Skytrain Station built by Peter Busby. It reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke science fiction book covers of the 50 and 60s that showed awesome views of cities of the future.

Peter Busby

We need to obtain the music for our city, the literature for our city and to honour and marvel at the architects that have built this city that still has some way to go before it finds its path to greatness.

The Pyramids, Vancouver Pot Holes & Pacific at Burrard

Yesterday Thursday, Rosemary and I walked in Kitsilano Beach after dinner (and after Rachel Maddow). It was a lovely late afternoon. We watched some beach volleyball games and noticed two very large Magnolia grandifloras growing not far from the salt-water pool. In spite of the nearby picnic barbecues we could note and enjoy their exquisite scent.

Living in the 21st century can be tough if you are a definite product of the previous century. Since I can remember (kindergarten) I have been interested and attracted to women.

It was in my Buenos Aires kindergarten that I had the experience of having the Diligenti Quintuplets ( two boys and three girls) in class. I have fond memories of lifting up the skirt of María Fernanda. I wonder how the Vancouver school system would have handled the young sexual predator that I was.

But it was sometime in the late 70s that Vancouver Magazine assigned me to photograph live bands playing in joints that were trying to compete with canned disco. One of the places involved the Smilin’ Buddha. It was there that I saw the K-Tels (soon after called the Young Canadians) and I was mesmerized by the brutal, primal music and by its lead singer Art Bergmann. Then and there I became a fan of punk bands and I have always held Art Bergmann as my proof in the non-existence of God. If God existed Bergmann would be very rich and very famous.

Art Bergmann

It was at the Smilin’Buddha that I noticed my raw attraction to a man who was very much alive and played his guitar with an elegant but sexy style. I was attracted to his passion.

As a fan of Bergmann I have photographed him all these years. It was at one session in the mid to late 80s when he fronted a band called Poison that I faced a man in my studio that had me confused. I noticed a manly femininity in his poses. I began to understand what all those squealing female teenagers saw in him. I saw that in me, too.

And so I became aware of my feminine side which so many of us try to dispel by growing beards, riding motorcycles and driving Corvettes. For a man who was a product of a Latin American upbringing (and who lived for many years in macho Mexico) this was troubling only for a while. After that I became comfortable in my new skin.

It was Malcolm Parry who in my early years at Vancouver Magazine who used to introduce me as Lenso the man who made beautiful women look ugly and ugly women look even uglier. I decided then and there to prove him wrong and this I have for many years. I love to photograph women.

Many ask me, “Don’t you have photographs of men?” I do, of course but certainly my files are not as thick as those of my photographed women.

One that comes to mind is the beautifully handsome David Charvet whom I photographed in the mid 90s and I wrote about him here.

Another favourite subject of mine is dancer Noam Gagnon and just about any male dancer in the Arts Umbrella Dance Company. A couple of years ago I thought Albert Galindo was so terrific he became my hero and I was very disappointed when Ballet BC did not hire him (idiots!).

Perhaps my sexiest photograph (be it a man or a woman) is of dancer Wen Wei Wang. 

Wen Wei Wang

I remember when Robson Square was a going concern. It had restaurants and there were lectures at the Judge White Theatre. Some of them were presented by that active organization of our past called The Urbanarium Society. In many of them Arthur Erickson was in the audience. And I could usually spot Alderman (that's what they were called then) Gordon Price sitting nearby with a copy of the NY Times under his arm. And very important in 1986 Premier Bill Bennett had an office there. Robson Sqare was a thriving part of our city core. With Chapters, Duthie's and Murchie's gone from the area we can now boast a lingerie company occupying the former site of the Vancouver Public Library an important example of Vancouver Modernist architecture.

We went up the stairs to the Law Courts and again (it was 11am) the whole area was deserted.

Everybody knows that Simon Fraser University has a downtown campus. There are many cultural events held there (my fave are the concerts of the Turning Point Ensemble. But who many people know that UBC has a downtown campus? How many people have ever shopped at the UBC Bookstore there?

It is my belief that UBC likes to have the best of both worlds. When it is convenient they are not part of Vancouver. They are at the Endowment Lands. These are becoming a huge condo city.

When it is convenient UBC is in Vancouver and seems to do nothing about stating that it has a presence here.

Before he died, my friend, architect Abraham Rogatnick and I discussed this and he agreed. Not only that he was very much against the Vancouver Art Gallery moving from where it is. 

In our Buenos Aires garden my mother had a few hydrangeas in our Coghlan garden. But I never knew them by that name. For me they were hortensias. These plants have always occupied a warm place in my heart.

In our old Athlone Street garden in Kerrisdale here in Vancouver I amassed 32 of them. There were many mopheads and the lacecaps (the macrophyllas) but we had species, a climbing one and that special one the oak leaf hydrangea or Hydrangea querciofolia.

Look closely and you will see that each individual floret looks like a teacup. Notice two in this first scan how the flower opens small in light green and progresses to blue via pink.

The name of this glorious hydrangea is Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Ayesha’. You might think that this is a misspelling of Mohamed’s wife Aisha. But that is probably not the case. It is the name of “She who must be obeyed” protagonist of H. Rider Haggard’s She and Ayesha, the Return of She.

Hydrangea macrophylla 'Ayesha' & Rosa 'Ferdinand Pichard' Sept 1 2008