On today’s date I have written 6644 blogs. I never have a writer’s and with all the spare time I now have living alone with two cats I sometimes write 3 bogs per day. Of late I have been looking into my author files. Today I spotted an 8x10 with a handsome man called David Guterson. I did read his Snow Falling on Cedars. Instead of placing here my 8x10 or a very nice 6x7cm transparency I am opting to for a scan of part of the article written by Christopher Dafoe which he wrote for the Globe and Mail and appeared on Ma6 6, 1999.

When I worked with Christopher Dafoe I was always allowed to be at the interview. It gave me time to note his subject’s movements and to learn about them. I also could choose a spot somewhere in the usual hotel room to set up my lights and my heavy tripod with my large Mamiya RB-67.

Had I not delved into my files I would have never remembered this man’s name or face. That seems to be a pity. I am lucky that my mother wrote with white ink the dates and the names of all our ancestors. One of the earliest is from Barcelona in the 1880s. I believe that when one no longer knows who that ancestor in the family album is, that ancestor is finally dead.

I am sure now that if I were to run into Guterson I would see that almost smile of my photograph on his face and I would greet him warmly. He is alive.

When I looked at the 8x10 that the Globe and Mail did not use I decided to place it here. It is a better portrait of the man.

Laurence Gough 1993

There is a literary term in Spanish that has no translation into English. The word is “costumbrismo”.

Some years ago the first Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2002-2003) George Bowering (a good friend of mine) told me that he drove down Broadway to Alma to see if a gas station mentioned in one of Laurence Gough’s novels (he wrote police procedurals set in Vancouver) existed. It did.

After consulting with Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate George McWhirter (2007-2009) he and I arrived at the fact (perhaps?) that the only novels written in Vancouver with Vancouver place names are Gough’s. Today I talked to my friend, former Vancouver Magazine associate editor and she mentioned the non-fiction books by Chuck Davis.

By now anybody who has gotten this far will have an idea of what costumbrismo is. Jorge Luís Borges wrote several stories and poems where he was precise of Buenos Aires street corners. My list of authors who would be deems as being considered to be part of costumbrismo:

Costumbrismo I  

Costumbrismo II 

Michael Dibdin’s novel the Dead Lagoon

Donna Leon’s Inspector Brunetti novels set in Venice

The above novels had Rosemary and me in a February 2019 looking for places mentioned in those novels. We found them!

I would now add Henry James On Italy who wrote: It is a great pleasure to write the word; but I am not sure there is not a certain impudence in pretending to add anything to it. Venice has been painted and described many thousands of times, and of all the cities of the world is the easiest to visit without going there.

Henry James on Italy -1988 by Barrie & Jenkins Ltd – London

More to that list would be Julio Cortázar who wrote about living in Paris where he moved to from Buenos Aires in 1951 in his novel Rayuela (Hopscotch).

I could go on with more authors but I would like to add that Astor Piazzola’s version of the Argentine tango is really the music of one city (not the country) Buenos Aires.

To end here I have to stress that Laurence Gough is special to a slim Vancouver costumbrismo. Will anybody else soon write about our city?  

Oil painting - Will Rafuse

Tony Ricci

 The origin of The Five's Name

Will Rafuse Artist - Instagram 

Tony Ricci & the Malcolm Lowry Room 

The No5 Orange stripper pub that I entered sometime in 1979 would define and help my career as a photographer in Vancouver. By then I was working as a freelancer with Vancouver Magazine. I did not know at the time that my taking photographs of local punk bands and of exotic dancers (as ecdysiasts were called then) would ease my entry into portrait photography. The dancers at the No5 were patient when this bumbling photographer took their photographs. Most of them became my friends and I keep track of them even now.

Tony Ricci, the owner of the The Five and I, have been friends for years. I like to deal with a man who only handles transactions with cash, who has an easy laugh and has always treated me fairly. He and Jack Cooney at the Drake Hotel gave me access to taking photographs in the dressing rooms. This was a privilege that Malcolm Parry (editor of Vancouver Magazine at the time) called the privileged position.

There was something uncanny about the people that worked at The Five’s bar. I remember going into the bar after some years of not going and asking the man behind the bar if I could see Tony. He (even remembered my naem) answered, “Yes Alex, take that door and go upstairs.”

When I would sit at a table the waiters would come up to me and say, "Alex, your usual soda watter?' I felt like I was Humphrey Bogart in a film noir.

Today I called up Tony, who immediately said, “Alex I love you.” I called him because I want to arrange to give him an image sent to me by friend Will Rafuse who lives in New Brunswick and specializes in oil paintings of neon signs, house fronts, bar fronts, etc. He sent me a scan of his painting (owned now by someone in the US) of the No5 Orange. I will find a way of paying Rafuse.

There is one neat connection between The Five and punk bands. One of my favourite dancers, now gone, was Miss Mew who danced to the music of Lou Reed. One day as I left The Five on my way to a D.O.A concert at the Carnegie Centre she was walking in the same direction. She was going to the same concert and we became friends then and there.

In Fond Memory of Miss Mew 

Another connection I had with The Five was with my shooting photographs of variety specials for the CBC. James Hibbard had a troupe of jazz dancers at the CBC. He was also a DJ at The Five. He would teach some of the pub dancers how to dance and even convinced a few to wear ballet shoes.

My Rosemary never ever browbeat me for going to The Five. She knew I behaved, that the place was clean and that I never drank alcohol.

God bless you Tony.

Aconitum carmichaelii 'Arendsii' 26 September 2025 and print of Aconitum napellus

A quote I often heard from my grandmother comes to mind these days when I find myself idle and bed rotting with my cats on the bed. The quote: “El diablo cuando no tiene nada que hacer con el rabo espanta moscas,” translates to, “The devil when he is bored he swats flies with his tail.”

Sometime in the year 2000 I did not know what to do in my Kerrisdale darkroom so I tried something that worked beautifully the first time. I would place plants from my garden on my medium format enlarger as if they were negs. I became crazy and made many of them in 8x10 and a few more as 11x14s. Then I stopped doing it and by the next year I swatted flies by scanning the plants on my Epson flatbed scanner.

The special significance of today’s scan is that the plant was one of my Rosemary’s favourites because she loved blue. People who are botanically inclined will tell you that this  plant known as monkshood is highly poisonous. It is used in one of the Brother Cadfael novels. 

Brother Cadfael's Monkshood 

What is also attractive of this plant is that it is shade tolerant and it begins to flower when most of the garden now is on its way to resting until next spring,

Joseph Bonaparte - Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' bottom - middle- Rosa 'Buttercup' and top - Rosa 'Mary Magdalene - 25 September 2025

 

When I saw these fine roses blooming today I equated it with something my grandmother Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena often told me. It had to do with the remarkable memory of Spaniards. While my abuelita was born in Manila she was educated in Spain.

She would tell me how some people could be rude and that they would leave a party without saying goodbye. The expression was “despedirse a la francesa” or “to say goodbye French style”. The saying had all to do with the fact that in August 20 1815 Joseph Bonaparte (Napoleon’s older brother who was the king of Spain) left Madrid in a hurry when he noted that Wellington was close by and had defeated the French Army at Vitoria. Joseph left on August 20 1815 and by 1816 he settled in Bordentown, New Jersey.

My 3 English Roses are gently saying goodbye and would never disappear just like that. They might have buds in a few days that may not open. But they are gentle.

Because we humans are so, because of our ability to associate, I like to connect Joseph Bonaparte going to New Jersey with Mozart’s librettist starting grocery store in New York City.

Lorenzo Da Ponte left for the U.S. in 1805. He boarded an American packet boat, the Columbia, at Gravesend, England, on April 7th of that year. He emigrated with his family to escape creditors and establish Italian culture in America, eventually teaching at Columbia College and promoting Italian arts. But he first had that grocery store.